by Jason Soles

Overview

The Marcher Worlds occupy a vast swathe of space that has long defined the farthest reaches of the Hyperuranion. It is a borderland between the heavily populated regions of human space and the unknown beyond, the edge of the known galaxy. It is here the Empyreans’ great network of void gates terminates far from the centers of civilization and the galactic core itself.

The Marches are fundamentally distinct in character from the territories controlled by their rivals because they are defined more by true astronautical boundaries; contrast this to being made up exclusively of disparate zones of control centered around void gates spread across a multitude of worlds, as is characterized by the settlements throughout Alliance and Continuum space. The Marches are settled by rugged individualists, hardscrabble miners, outlaws, mercenaries, and the remnants of an ancient warrior aristocracy. They come here for freedom of movement, low taxation, and the right to live by their own rules, to build something they can truly call their own. The inhabitants themselves are pragmatic, proud, and hard working; they have to be, as life on the frontier is hard, and those who cannot make their own way will not survive for long.

The Marchers typically survive on subsistence agriculture, cattle ranching, and hunting. While planted crops are tailored to the local environment, livestock and wild game vary enormously from world to world, as determined by the local fauna. The Marcher Worlds are home to many exotic species of wildlife found nowhere else in the Hyperuranion. Trade and barter are of extreme importance on the frontier where the only currency accepted is gold, Arc, and blood.

To their rivals, the Marches are a rogue territory, a hostile backwater established by rebels, pirates, smugglers, and all manner of fugitives on the run. The Alliance’s justicars claim, “Whoso lives beyond the Marches lives beyond the law.” And while the region’s criminality is often overstated, it is true that the Marches are far from the safety of galactic core. Strange and unexplainable things happen here with an unsettling regularity, and the inhabitants of the Marches have long sensed they are not alone. Mysterious disappearances are common here, and whole settlements have been lost to natural disasters and to far less comprehensible phenomena.

It is a hard place to live, requiring self-sufficiency, pragmatism, and strength. Unlike the settlements of the Iron Star Alliance, which are always established near the void gates they are intended to dominate, the Marchers tend to settle in sparsely populated regions far from the bustle of the trade ways, where they must rely on their own means for survival and defense.

The Marches are not represented by a single unified, monolithic state. Instead, they are a patchwork of ancient feudal estates, pirate warrens, independent cities and townships, mining and heavy industrial operations, smugglers’ dens, trade hubs, military and scientific outposts, ranches, and freeholds. Most of these are tight-knit, democratic, self-governing, semi-militaristic communities. Traditions in such places run deep, and strangers are viewed with grave suspicion.

The Marchers themselves are politically fractious, chiefly unified only in their antipathy for the Alliance and desire to remain free of outside intrusion. The politics of the Marches are riven by conflicts between powerful trade guilds, labor unions, and the industrial concerns that employ them. Old Marcher families fight to protect their ancestral rights against newcomers not beholden to the region’s ancient traditions. Criminal syndicates struggle against settlers to undermine the incursions of law and civility. Motivating these disparate factions beyond enlightened self-interest requires time, subtle diplomacy, and existential pressure. The great parliamentary body of the Marcher Worlds is the Coalition of Free States, a rowdy and contentious council of shifting allegiances and open to all free people of the Marches. Decisions are made through direct democracy and by majority rule. Little exists in the Marches in the way of settled policy, and getting anything accomplished involves building coalitions that change with the tides.

There also exist within the territory of the Marches a number of settlements and organizations that remain completely independent of the Coalition of Free States. While they may have established trade or non-aggression pacts with their neighbors, these insular groups consider themselves neutral actors, unaffiliated with the Coalition. Some may even owe allegiance to external powers, such as the Aeternus Continuum or the Alliance, giving cover to these factions to operate within Marcher space.

Despite the apparent hardships of life on the Marches, the territory is blessed with an abundance of natural resources left virtually unspoiled by human development. This is especially true the farther one travels from the Marches’ void gates. While much of the territory of the Marches has been mapped and well traveled, vast areas still remain unexplored. For thousands of years, the region’s rich Arc deposits have drawn interest from mining concerns across the Hyperuranion. Many of these concerns have taken steps to protect their interests by forming private armies or joining the Coalition of Free States. While their continued association with that body troubles some among the free citizens of the Marches, the wealth they bring helps to maintain both the territory’s rudimentary government and its military, the Ranger corps.

While it is true that the Marches are relatively sparsely populated and lack anything rivaling the Alliance’s great cities, the territory is home to a few highly industrialized population centers. These true towns and settlements offer material support to the Marches while serving as the spiritual and philosophical centers of the Coalition of Free States.

A History of the Marches

The Marches have a long, storied, and ancient history dating back to humanity’s early exploration of the Hyperuranion. This ancient territory, which was first settled

by proto-Khazar tribes thousands of years ago, was known to human explorers as the Old Frontier for millennia. Though the Khazars departed the region due to an unrecorded threat that arose within a few hundred years of their initial settlement, it was not long before the Old Frontier was repopulated by the Caspian Federation and the Rachlavsky-Laris Combine. Both factions hoped to exploit the rich Arc fields abandoned by the Great Khazaraki Horde.

Settlers flooded into the Old Frontier during this second wave of migration, which ended when a series of solar storms paralyzed the region’s primary hub of void gates. Though localized phenomena, the storms crippled travel and severed vital supply lines, causing whole settlements to collapse and be abandoned. The storms also coincided with an attack by parties unknown on the Caspian settlement at Gedorra Secundus. The settlement was completely destroyed, and not a body or living soul remained to tell the tale of what had come to pass. The entire population seemed to disappear in the aftermath of some great battle; the perpetrators had arrived at Gedorra Secundus despite the apparent disruption to the settlement’s void gates. It appeared as though the attacks came from the depths of space, possibly from beyond the Hyperuranion itself.

Worse yet, the attacks fit a pattern that dated back to the earliest settlement of the frontier. Unexplained attacks and disappearances of this nature have haunted the region since its first settlement. Whatever so unsettled the Khazar tribes may be related to a threat lurking beyond known space. The implications of such a threat led directly to creation of the first Marches.

With a stake in the settlement of the frontier, the Caspian Federation responded to the destruction of the colony at Gedorra Secundus by instituting a military boundary between its holdings in the Hyperuranion and the frontier beyond. The Marches, as this boundary came to be known, were divided into great military estates, each commanded by a Marcher Lord. The Marcher Lords commanded small armies from their border fortresses and were the absolute authority within their territories. These territories were established at the farthest edges of the Hyperuranion’s void gate networks, where the population of the frontier was at its thinnest. The Marches were expanded three times over the next five hundred years, and for a time, eleven Marcher Lords enforced peace and justice across the frontier.

The last centuries of the third millennium, however, brought cycles of expensive and destructive wars that, when coupled with unstable expansion, sapped the strength and resources of the Caspian Federation. This had the effect of forcing the Federation into withdrawing many of its military forces from the frontier, thus placing greater and greater responsibility for the security of the frontier on the Marcher estates. While this increased the stature of the Marcher Lords within their domains, it also taxed them well beyond their capabilities. The Marcher estates grew increasingly self-sufficient and independent, even as their lords felt betrayed and abandoned by the Federation.

In this time, Ravonel’s World—and especially the gate city of Shyr—rose to new prominence. Ravonel’s World sat at the edge of the frontier where the Marches met Caspian space. It had long been considered the gateway to the Marches, and when the Caspian Federation withdrew their forces, Ravonel’s World came to rely on the Marcher Lords for protection more and more. With the Marcher Lords maintaining a presence in Shyr, it soon grew into the de facto regional capital at this time.

The situation between the Caspians and the Marches became increasingly tense as the Federation started to worry about the growing independence of their wealthy colony. Inevitably, the Caspians sent a battle fleet to Shyr to reaffirm its commitments to the Federation. But this fleet was ambushed upon its arrival by a combined force made up of the inhabitants of Ravonel’s World fighting alongside soldiers drawn from the Marcher estates. The Caspian fleet sustained heavy damage and was forced into retreat until the Marches declared their independence from the Caspian Federation. Among the Marchers’ greatest assets in this fight were the battle-hardened warcasters who had long served the ancient estates.

The Caspians returned and were repelled two more times before being forced to recognize the independence of the Marches and sue for peace. The humiliating incident both hastened the collapse of the Federation and hardened the patriotic notion of the free Marches. The Caspian Federation survived another two hundred years before collapsing under its own weight at the start of the Thousand Worlds Era.

Though the frontier itself was recognized as a region free of outside allegiance, it was never truly unified. The Marcher estates were spread far apart and positioned on the extreme edges of the frontier. They were also fiercely independent, though they maintained close ties and were bound together by treaties in times of war. Each was a law unto itself but only controlled limited swathes of territory near their fortresses and watchtowers. Away from the Marcher estates, there was no law, save for that which could be enforced by strength of arms.

Outside goods and settlers still flowed into the frontier primarily through Shyr. Since the collapse of the Federation, many private concerns and free settlers had flocked to the frontier. The most powerful of these were the independent mining concerns that came to exploit the Arc deposits and other mineral wealth. Over time, new settlements grew in the shadow of the Marcher estates, relying on the safety and security they provided while serving their closed markets and industrial needs. Settlements in time grew into villages and then into modest towns, sometimes even eclipsing the estates that had nurtured them.

While some Marcher estates continued to expand their territorial holdings by building ever larger and more formidable fortifications, in the main, time was not kind to the Marcher estates. Over the next thousand years, three of the ancient estates were abandoned and left to go fallow. A fourth was overrun by pirates, which then preyed upon Shyr and the trade lanes across the Marches. Only those that grew into regional capitals with sizable populations and their own manufacturing capabilities flourished.

The Marchers existed in this state for a thousand years, with the surviving estates slowly growing into small, independent but interconnected fiefdoms in the midst of a vast lawless region unclaimed and beyond the authority of any rising power. Then came the Iron Star Alliance, whose rise marked the end of the Thousand Worlds Era.

As the burgeoning Alliance grew to prominence in the Hyperuranion, it reached out to invite the various Marcher factions to join the bloc. While most Marchers reflexively refused to even consider giving up any of their freedoms or autonomy, there were some willing to hear out the Alliance, prompting intense squabbles, infighting, and recriminations; this may have been the true objective of the empire’s overtures all along. When the largest Marcher factions signed a joint response refusing membership, the Alliance exploited the internal dissention it had provoked and sought sympathetic allies. This enabled it to establish its own so-called mining operations within the territory of the frontier. These operations were little more than thinly veiled military camps that enabled the Alliance to build up a troop presence within the frontier. As the situation grew tense, mercenaries from across the Hyperuranion streamed into the frontier, recruited by the Marcher estates, free settlements, or private mining concerns that were seeking to protect their holdings.

It was the mining companies that first bore the brunt of the Alliance incursions. When small skirmishes broke out between the private mining concerns and the Alliance forces over their territorial claims, the miners brought their concerns directly to the other Marcher factions, which they did in order to point out the duplicity of the empire’s actions. Their argument was simple: while the Marches were roiled by internal clashes instigated by the Alliance’s overtures, the bloc simply moved in right under their noses to establish its own presence on the frontier. The mining corporations demanded that their allies across the Marches deny the Alliance its territorial claims and access to void gates across the frontier in hopes of choking off their support and forcing the empire to abandon the frontier. The Alliance countered with its influence and wealth, buying access where it had previously been denied.

Then, in an obvious precursor to a greater invasion, the Alliance’s Paladin forces overran Shyr. Having completely taken control of the city and its multitude of void gates, Alliance supply ships and troop transports rushed into the frontier to bolster their presence across the Marches. Ships arrived day and night.

Word of the Alliance attack and pending invasion circulated quickly throughout the Marches. With hostilities on the rise, the Alliance bases within the Marches were under the constant threat of attack. In the meantime, the mining concerns called upon the remaining Marcher Lords to dedicate their forces to the coming conflict. Some agreed, but others stayed neutral, at least for a time. One Marcher Lord, Alexander Kyrvin, even sided with the Alliance, though he was soon murdered in his sleep and his estate pledged to neutrality.

The costly fighting drew in virtually every faction in the Marches. Though the Paladin forces achieved remarkable successes early in the war, the deeper they dug into the Marches, the worse the fighting went for them. Vigilantes hunted down any who took the Alliance’s bribes, effectively ending the bloc’s support throughout the frontier and further isolating the invading Paladin forces. Though the Paladins were more disciplined and better equipped than the Marcher forces, they were disadvantaged by their lack of knowledge of the terrain of hundreds of frontier worlds. They also faced an insurgency in which the fighters rose from the local populations, so they could never be sure who was hostile and who was a civilian. The fighting forces of the Marcher estates were also surprisingly professional and performed well compared to the mercenaries, whose loyalties were always more informed by the coin in their pockets rather than by any true allegiance to the Marches.

After eight long years of fighting, the Paladin forces finally fell back to Ravonel’s World and sued for peace. The victorious Marcher forces came together ahead of the treaty negotiations to hastily form the Coalition of Free States in order to serve as the official voice of the Marches. The Coalition was more of an umbrella organization of affiliated and semi-affiliated independent fighting forces at the time of its founding than it was a true governmental body. Amongst the Marchers, there was a growing concern that all the Alliance had to do was stall the negotiations long enough, and the Marcher position would simply fall apart under its own uneven weight. And even at its most unified, the Coalition of Free States has never truly represented more than sixty or seventy percent of the population of the Marches.

Yet they held together for this, and the Treaty of Ravonel’s World was signed the next year. The treaty ended the war, officially recognized the Coalition of Free States, and returned Ravonel’s World to the Coalition. The old Caspian bases on Ravonel III were ceded to the Iron Star Alliance, where they immediately began to build up their forces on the edge of the frontier. Various mining concerns also agreed to buy out the Alliance’s claims at exorbitant prices meant to end the bloc’s military presence throughout the Marches.

The troubled peace held for another three hundred years before the Hyperuranion descended into the state of open warfare that has remained for the past two hundred and fifty years. In the interim, the Coalition of Free States instituted the Ranger corps about a hundred years after its own founding. During that hundred years, the factions of the Marches had coalesced into a rudimentary government, though one that lacked the authority and presence to enforce its laws and dictates. Worse yet, unemployed mercenaries who came to the Marches to work for the various mining concerns streamed into the lawless regions, fueling an epidemic of piracy that jeopardized both trade and industrial production.

It had become clear the Coalition needed its own military to maintain security and the integrity of its borders. What started as a negotiation between several powerful mining concerns and the most prominent of the old Marcher estates began to gain traction amongst the settlements that had grown weary of the mercenary presence on their doorsteps. The Coalition had long been at the mercy of the hired soldiers brought in from across the Hyperuranion. Lacking a military force, the Marchers could do little to protect their citizens from mercenaries, who could be turned against those hostile to their employers’ policies at any time. The mercenaries themselves could also act erratically when challenged, especially while off duty. Those charged with maintaining peace could open themselves up to retribution if they took too heavy a hand with the mercenaries. And those who left the services of a respectable employer could turn to piracy or other forms of criminality that was plaguing the Marcher Worlds.

The fierce debate went on for months, but in the end, it was determined the Coalition of Free States would consent to fund a small military force paid for by a new tax on the sale of goods and raw materials through these Marcher territories. The officer corps was drawn from amongst the most capable soldiers serving the old Marcher estates. And so the Rangers were formed as a volunteer fighting force utilizing the ancient tactics developed by the Marcher estates over the millennia.

A proposal to outlaw private armies and mercenary employment throughout Marcher space gained little traction, and the practice of mining interests employing mercenaries remains to the present day. Additionally, friction between the Rangers and the mercenaries has been a near constant.

The founding of the Rangers had the effect of greatly strengthening the position of the Coalition of Free States. Not only was it now capable of enforcing its rule of law, but the precedent for tax collection would be greatly expanded to fund a number of new policies and institutions. Slowly, the Coalition began to evolve into a full and proper apparatus of government. The Rangers would grow and evolve over time into one of the largest and most formidable fighting forces the Hyperuranion had ever seen.

Thus, the Iron Star Alliance and the Marcher Worlds remain stalemated in a constant state of war. On one hand, the Marchers are incredibly well positioned and effective within the confines of the frontier, where they know the terrain and have spent centuries fortifying their holdings; on the other hand, they can seldom match the strength and resources of the Alliance outside their home territories. The Marchers tend to rely on hit-and-run tactics, limiting their military operations to quick, targeted incursions. They move rapidly with small-scale forces to achieve their objectives with the intention of withdrawing before enemy reinforcements can arrive and draw them into a protracted conflict, in which they would have little hope of victory. The Alliance in turn typically seeks to establish large troop buildups that can be used to overrun and crush their opposition, tactics that have proven ineffective and disastrous when utilized in the Marches.

This state of war is nowhere as clear as it is on Ravonel’s World, which degenerated into open and sustained war when the Alliance invaded eighty years ago. While many of the communities on Ravonel’s World had begun to support membership in the Alliance, Shyr remained absolutely loyal to the Coalition of Free States. Sensing an apparent weakness in their enemies, the Alliance invaded in force. The planet has remained a conflict zone ever since, with one side temporarily gaining the upper hand over the other until fortunes reverse once again, plunging Ravonel’s World back into chaos. At stake is the vast wealth of Shyr, a potential staging ground for strikes into either Alliance or Marcher territories, and control over the dozens of dormant void gates across Ravonel’s World and the unknown worlds beyond them.

Marcher Defenses and the Coalition Ranger Corps

Since the open fighting on Ravonel’s World drew Shyr directly into the conflict, the headquarters of the Coalition of Free States has remained mobile, moving amongst the largest settlements and fortresses of the Marches wherever it is most needed and security allows. Not only does this afford the free people of the Marches to witness their government in action, but it also helps to keep the Coalition safe from the predations of their enemies. When hosted by a Marcher estate, the Coalition has the feel of a feudal court. And when the Coalition meets in a larger town or industrial center, it takes on airs more akin to a law court or corporate board.

The Coalition’s officers and body of representatives move about the Marches on a fleet of skyships protected by a host of warcasters and a legion of Rangers for defense. The large, slow-moving fleet is vulnerable, and its heavy escort is necessary to repel attacks. The fleet and its personnel consume vast resources, and so it seldom remains in one place for long.

While the Marchers fight their war against the empire along the edges of Alliance space, so too must they remain constantly wary of the xeno threats represented by both the Empyreans and those originating from beyond the Hyperuranion. While there is little recorded proof of the existence of outsiders, few who live long in the Marches doubt their malignant presence. And the Empyreans were once active hunting Keepers on the fringes of the known galaxy before they began their attacks in the open throughout human space. The true ancient purpose of the Marcher estates—to shield the galaxy from the threat of the unknown from the darkness between the stars—feels more pertinent now that it has in a thousand years.

In addition to the threats posed by xenos and the Alliance, the Marchers must also be on the watch for piracy and more subtle incursions. The Khazars have become more emboldened in recent years and occasionally make forays into Marcher space, where they try and pick off merchant ships traveling overland between void gates.

The Aeternus Continuum is also active within the Marches, but they seek to establish a hidden presence. The Continuum strongly desires access to the xeno relics they believe lay buried throughout the frontier. They are also aware that the region is home to a number of Keepers seeking solace from teeming population centers of the galactic core as well as the predations of the Empyreans.

To counter these threats, both human and other, the Marchers have overlapping layers of defense. The primary fighting force of the Coalition of Worlds is the Rangers. However, they can also call upon the liegemen of the Marcher estates, the private mercenary armies of the mining concerns, the defense forces and militias of settlements across the Marches, and small numbers of sanctioned privateers who prey upon enemy interests that get too close to the Marches. While the professionalism and readiness of these militias and mercenary armies may be in question, the Coalition Rangers and estate forces are among the most highly trained and well armed in the Hyperuranion.

The forces of the existing Marcher estates have remained in a state of readiness for thousands of years. They have acted as both standing armies and regional police forces, establishing order and gaining the trust of their citizens by their deeds and actions. They operate as autonomous feudal societies where the word of the Marcher Lord is law. These estate forces were instrumental in the development of the Ranger forces, contributing officers to both train and lead the growing corps. In turn, the estate forces have gained access to weapons and equipment developed for the Rangers, bringing the two militaries into closer cohesion and expanding the estates’ access to arms and gear they lack the means to produce themselves.

The Marcher estates do, however, train their own warcasters and have kept close relations with the Keepers of the frontier for countless generations. The whole of the Marches have benefitted from an abnormally high number of theurges and naturally born warcasters amongst their populations, in all likelihood owing to the large concentrations of Arc deposits found across the Marches. These sensitive individuals arise with the greatest frequency in settlements bordering large Arc mining operations, of which there is now shortage along the frontier.

The Rangers themselves are drawn from the hardiest recruits from across Marcher space. While the Rangers are generally a volunteer force, in times of need the Coalition has turned to conscription, an incredibly unpopular policy among the freedom-loving Marchers. Even the suggestion of a return to conscription is enough to cause riots to break out across the settlements on the frontier.

Those who join the Rangers tend to be tenacious, hard-fighting problem solvers. Life on the Marches breeds good soldiers who are used to depending on themselves when failure is not an option. Though anyone volunteering for the Rangers must complete a rigorous health evaluation, most raw recruits are both excellent physical specimens and have already developed a number of the skills required for service via their daily lives. Hunting, tracking, overland navigation, proficiency with small arms, and a capacity for general survival in the wild are all requirements of life on the frontier.

Most join for their own reasons. They are often motivated by a strong desire to protect their ancient way of life, to ensure future generations will live free across the Marches. Such patriotic sentiments are voiced both in the deepest wilds of the Marches and within the Coalition’s industrial heartlands. Many are motivated to join out of vengeance for personal losses suffered during the endless waves of bitter conflict. These soldiers desire nothing more than to bring hurt to the faceless Paladin shock troopers invading their homes and claiming the lives of their loved ones. There are also those recruits who hope to improve their prospects in life by gaining the skills, discipline, and contacts they believe will better position them for success. Certainly the Ranger Corps is well respected throughout the Marches and an old soldier can find friends and company anywhere across the frontier.

Those who pass the physical evaluation must then endure the grueling nine months of training required to become a Coalition Ranger. In addition to learning discipline and mastering the necessary fighting skills, Rangers must also master survival techniques in a wide variety of environments. They must learn Coalition tactics and code talk, especially the silent language and hand signs employed by Rangers in the field. The must learn to operate complex mechanika, which many will not have handled before joining the Rangers. They must become comfortable fighting alongside warjacks and understand the strengths and limitations of these potent warmachines. And they must learn to rely upon the power of the warcasters to protect and augment them in battle while mastering the ability to call down arcane strikes and to endure the brutal Cyphers of their enemies.

Service in the Rangers is divided into five-year enlistment periods. While most soldiers only serve a single five-year term, lifers make service a career, with some serving thirty years or more. In times of conscription, the conscripted are released from service soon after the conflict that necessitated the draft has been resolved. While some conscripted soldiers may choose to reenlist, most muster out and return to their old lives.

It is the nature of the Marches that many settlements and points of strategic interest exist far from the void gates and so must be traveled to on foot or by air. The Rangers patrol the territories between these places and as a result must be prepared to cross vast distances overland on the march. To facilitate these patrols, the Rangers maintain small boltholes and minor fortresses across the Coalition’s settled worlds. They also rely on a variety of mechanika-sensing devices placed in the most inhospitable and distant regions where the practicality of patrols is in question.

They are trained to operate in small, fast-moving sections and companies that can operate autonomously in the field for long periods of time. While in the field, they rely on techniques perfected by the liegemen of the Marcher estates over thousands of years to turn any terrain to their advantage. Like the liegemen of the Marcher estates, the Rangers, who must often operate deep in the field without the benefit of warcaster skyship support or established supply lines, have learned to become experts in foraging and salvage. They are cunning and resourceful scavengers who repurpose and recycle anything they can get their hands on in the field. Wrecked sky ships and burned out vehicles make for excellent impromptu shelters, broken arms and mechanika can be scavenged for ammunition and power cells, and destroyed warjacks can be stripped for parts. The Coalition combat engineers who fight alongside Rangers are known to cobble their warjacks back together with any suitable materials they can get their hands on, at least until they can get back to HQ for proper diagnostics and repairs. This has led the Rangers to coin the phrase “Marcher Special” when referring to particularly ugly jury-rigged warjack in the field.

When the Rangers have to shelter in the field away from their sporadic fortifications that dot the Marches, they tend to seek out naturally fortified positions, underground tunnel systems, or to take advantage of ancient ruins.

The Ranger training produces tough, skilled, and brave soldiers prepared to overcome any obstacle in their path. Unlike the soldiers of the Alliance, however, they are not hammered into a rigid mold. The Coalition values freethinking, problem solving, and individual initiative, even while adhering to strict military discipline. While some of the Marcher estates maintain true officer programs and training schools, the leadership of the Rangers generally rises from the ranks to be promoted to the officer corps. Officers go through limited additional training, and service in the field is considered the best school.

Once they have completed their training and are in the field, the Rangers are part of something larger than themselves that transcends individual motivations and desires. They serve in the defense of the Coalition of Free States, both in terms of its territories and the ideals upon which it was formed. Service also changes the Rangers in a number of subtle ways. During their service, Rangers tend to become more quiet and introspective, having faced the worst of war but also the endless beauty of the Thousand Worlds of the Hyperuranion firsthand. They will have known the depths of hunger and fear and exhaustion like few people living ever will. They will have marched countless miles across alien landscapes foreign to human eyes even after millennia of habitation on the frontier. And they will have peered into endless blizzards while white blind with fatigue, witnessed flesh sheering sandstorms, made harrowing voyages through the trackless void, and seen strange fauna defying simple explanation or categorization.

To keep sane and to their minds limber, the Rangers turn to many forms of sport and amusement. Most prefer hunting, hard drinking (when drink is available), and games of chance. Some turn to music, though song is preferred in the field where instruments would prove encumbering. This song is all too often limited to traditional dirges, though some prefer fighting and drinking songs or even popular tunes. Additionally, anything that can be ground and steeped in water to a dark color and bitter taste passes muster for “coffee.” If the boredom becomes particularly intolerable, soldiers can amuse themselves by “imprinting,” or seeing who can cajole one of the company’s warjacks to adopt the worst habits or behavioral traits. Despite this being banned by Coalition decree since the inception of the Rangers, the practice remains popular.

The life of a Ranger is actually even more solitary and lonely than it might otherwise seem. By practical tradition, Rangers do not marry while serving because they can remain in the field for so long. Instead, the Rangers form tight bonds with their compatriots, the only family they will know throughout their long periods of service.

The Ranger motto is “We come with the Storm.” This is a reference to their mastery over all terrains and their ability to adapt to all that nature throws their way as much as it is a boast of their fighting skills. The Rangers are typically lightly armed and armored to preserve their swiftness on the battlefield. The natural capabilities of these soldiers are further augmented by the slip displacers integrated into their armor. When these mechanika devices are empowered with Arc, they can greatly enhance the speed of the Rangers, making them inhumanly fast and unpredictable opponents.

Much of the mechanika employed by the Rangers was refined in antiquity, long before the foundation of the Coalition of Free States. This is same ubiquitous mechanika known throughout human space. The Marches have managed a number of significant technological advancements, however, that have not been replicated to the same degree by their rivals, like the Rangers’ Arc-stripping null detonators. The Marcher estates had experimented with a number of particle weapons for thousands of years, though these short-ranged weapons were only refined in the past few centuries and are still prone to shutdowns due to overheating, which can, on rare occasions, lead to catastrophic failures in the field.

The Coalition’s highest tech weapons were generally the product of technological knowhow liberated from their rivals by the Rangers’ intelligence services. These services rely on networks of sympathetic agents throughout Alliance space who give support to the Marchers’ cause. The services answer only to the Coalition’s High Command.

The Rangers rely on a variety of small arms, from fusion blades and axes to ballistic battle rifles and a variety of explosives. The Ranger Infiltrators, the close combat experts of the Coalition forces, are armed with magnetic charges that can be used to devastate enemies, disable warjacks, or breach structures. Along with their rifles, Ranger Fire Teams are equipped with null detonators, mechanika grenades that drain Arc from their field of effect. The heaviest weapons typically used by the Rangers are the Talon rocket launchers employed by their support forces. These powerful weapons have integral, Arc-powered targeters that greatly enhance their accuracy.

The Coalition also manufactures a number of warjack chassis and heavy vehicles to fight alongside their Ranger forces. In stark contrast to their swift-moving Ranger forces, the Coalition’s warjacks are heavy, ponderous machines. If not for developments in portable void technology and augmenting mechanika built into the warjacks to speed them in battle, these machines would fall far behind the fast-moving Rangers. The Coalition’s Dusk Wolf warjacks utilize both Arc-fueled arcane turbines and the same slip displacer mechanika as the Rangers. The heavier Strike Raptors possess integral jump jets that can greatly speed them in battle or even grant them limited flight when powered with Arc.

The Rangers’ Razorbat light battle tanks provide heavy firepower on the move. When strapped with supplies and moving alongside Ranger forces, these vehicles can greatly extend troop deployments in the field. The cantankerous machines are beloved by the soldiers in the field, who rely upon them for protection and to devastate their enemies. Further, the recklessness of their pilots is legendary.

Both the Razorbats and the Coalition’s warjacks make use of a surprising range of weaponry, from ballistic cannons, rocket launchers, and flamethrowers to more high-tech mechanika weapons such as heat-beam-generating Blazers to a range of destructive particle accelerators along with a range of brutal melee weapons. While the Marchers generally have not mastered the manufacturing of man-portable energy or force weapons, they have managed to create a variety of heavy weapons for warjacks and vehicles.

For the Marchers, however, even the environment is a weapon. The Ranger forces are adept at turning the terrain against their enemies, snarling them in rough ground and sometimes turning whole forests into blazing infernos in order to destroy those who would pursue them.

Organization of the Rangers

Typically the largest regular regiment in the Coalition Rangers is the corps. While on paper a full-strength corps is made up of 9,000 soldiers, in reality, few Rangers Corps have ever operated at full strength, even briefly. Coalition supply, funding, and manpower issues have meant most Ranger Corps typically operate at half-strength or less. A corps is led by a lieutenant-general.

The relatively modest size of Ranger regiments is a reflection of warfare in the fifth millennium, where a small force of soldiers supported by a warcaster and a battlegroup of warjacks acts as a powerful force multiplier. In some rare instances, three or more corps will be combined into an army, though forces of this scale are rare. Armies are always led by a general, who in times of war is referred to as a ”warchief.”

Corps are, in turn, made up of two to four brigades of up to 2,250 soldiers each. A Ranger brigade is commanded by a brigadier-general.

A brigade is made up of three to five battalions of up to 450 soldiers each. A battalion is led by a colonel.

A battalion is made up of three to five companies of up to 90 soldiers each. A company is led by a major or a captain. If a company is led by a major, its second-in-command will be a captain.

A company is made up of three to six sections of up to 15 soldiers each. A section is led by a lieutenant or a sergeant. If a section is led by a lieutenant, its second-in-command will be a sergeant.

A section is made up of three to five squads of 3 soldiers each. Each squad is led by a corporal who commands two privates.

The manpower shortages plaguing the Rangers are severe enough that the Coalition has taken it upon itself to fund “eventual armies” that exist only on paper. This designation enables the Coalition to stockpile gear and weaponry until fresh recruits can be trained to fill its ranks. Most of the Ranger Corps currently in service began as eventual armies.

The Ranger High Command serves as the Coalition military’s general staff. It is made up of active and retired military commanders and travels with the Coalition’s mobile headquarters. The High Command is responsible for the administrative, operational, and logistical needs of the Coalition forces, including decisions pertaining to large-scale troop deployments, long-range military planning, and war production. The general staff, however, has virtually no direct oversight of forces in the field, which is left to the Rangers’ officer corps.

Conclusion

Owing to their flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness, and utter commitment to defending the freedoms of the Marches, the Ranger Corps have persevered through nearly five hundred years, even while disadvantaged in technology and resources. They pose a hard-fighting tradition that is celebrated across the frontier and respected even by their adversaries. The Coalition Rangers come with the storm, and all who stand in their path shall know a primal reckoning. They are the spear of the Marches and humanity’s shield against the darkness beyond the stars.