Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Tephrike for future rp.
Image Credit: Here, here.
Role: Special forces.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: Dominion of Light, Disciples of the Vader, The Republican Guard is the Strongest, Tephrike, Force-Dead, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Devastation Deeps, Mace Windu Thought, Popular Front.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Rock Breaker Corps.
Affiliation: Republican Guard, Tephrike.
Classification: Combat Engineers, Saboteurs, Sappers.
Description: The Rock Breaker Corps is a special purpose unit that operates as part of the Republican Guard, a partisan movement of Non-Force-Users and Force-Dead that fight to liberate Tephrike from the grip of the Sith and Jedi Lords. The Republican Guard is the weakest of the riven factions in terms of manpower and industrial strength. Lacking the ability to field big armies of soldiers or churn out hordes of aircraft and armoured fighting vehicles, it must rely on mobility, guile and subterfuge. Its armies are a mix of low-tech militias and professional partisan units backed up by Yuuzhan Vong shock troops and a surprisingly potent maritime flotilla.
Within this framework, the Rock Breakers act as crack combat engineers, commandos, sappers and saboteurs. The roots of the Rock Breakers lie in a group of concentration camp inmates who were ordered by their tormentors to burn the bodies of prisoners who had been murdered. During the many months spent covering up their captors' crimes, the prisoners were chained together and kept in a pit. Defying their captors, they managed to dig a secret underground tunnel to escape. The Rock Breakers specialise in sabotage, clandestine military operations and spearheading attacks by the main force. Their tactics are a combination of those used by commandos and combat engineers. They play a pivotal role in digging the underground tunnels the partisans use to build their secret bases in, move their troops around and assault enemy strongholds. By digging narrow trenches and tunnels, they can provide an avenue to move allied troops and light artillery closer to the enemy.
Moreover, they can use their talents to act as commandos, raiding enemy bases and strongholds to destroy bunkers, assassinate officers and blow up vehicles, aircraft or supply depots or help prisoners in concentration camps escape. Their skills at digging, climbing and tunnelling came in handy in this capacity. Typical targets include bunkers, command posts, prison camps, munitions' depots and artillery positions. Their missions require a lot of flexibility, careful planning and improvisation. Oftentimes they will have to rapidly strike against a strategic objective guarded by a larger force, using the element of surprise to attack before withdrawing into the darkness. An attack is preceded by reconnaissance and, where possible, training drills using mock-ups of the intended target.
They generally attack static rather than mobile targets, eschewing contact with enemy forces on the move. The types of missions they undertake requires thorough scouting. For this reason, operatives are trained in reconnaissance as well as camouflage techniques. Rock Breakers learn how to scout, use a map, and use the stars to navigate, spot hidden enemy defences, guard routines, hidden bunkers, supply depots and so on. They are also trained concealment techniques such as use of camouflage, moving stealthily and navigating dark, narrow, muddy tunnels and laying traps. All these survival skills are sorely needed.
By necessity, they have developed tactics for avoiding or dealing with Sithspawn beasts that may infest the tunnels and catacombs due to being sent there by the Vaderites to root out partisans or simply having escaped. The typical Rock Breaker is of average height or shorter than average because that makes it easier to crawl. They are also trained in mine detection and clearing and overcoming obstacles such as razor wire fences. Naturally, they are also taught about demolitions, including how to make bombs and improvised explosive devices. Typically a Rock Breaker receives six months of training. This is a lot more than the average Republican Guard partisan, who will be sent off to combat after a mere one month.
The Rock Breaker Corps is not a large unit, though the somewhat bombastic name implies otherwise. The largest operational unit is a battalion, though the Rock Breakers will usually be deployed on a smaller level. Regiments exist, but only serve administrative purposes. Each battalion has reconnaissance and signals platoons to support it. It is to be noted that like many rebel groups the Republican Guard does like to embellish its numbers a bit. This serves propaganda purposes, but is also supposed to confuse enemies about their true strength. Thus individual units may actually be far below regulation strength. Being partisans, their supply train is quite irregular. They favour hidden depots over a long logistics train. Necessity has made them masters of improvisation and scavenging. The Rock Breakers prefer Villips to using conventional comm links. Since these organic devices can only communicate with their siblings, they cannot be intercepted, jammed or interrupted. However, they also use more old-fashioned methods of communication, such as couriers and signals.
The commandos are sometimes stereotyped by their partisan comrades for being grungy troglodytes and scavengers. While loyalty, bravery and initiative are desired traits, a desire for glory or a 'heroic' death is not. The Rock Breakers are specialists whose training requires a lot of time. A Rock Breaker who has been too severely injured to continue fighting can still be used in a support role to train recruits, make bombs, detonators, trip wires and listening devices or carry out construction and demolition tasks. This means they favour prudence over vainglory. Retired Rock Breakers have played an important role laying the Raddus Trail, a clandestine network of dangerous roads, trails and underground tunnels that runs through the forests and mountains of Tephrike. The partisans do make an effort to rotate units between frontline and 'rear' duties, as far as this is feasible. Some of them are stationed at Devastation Deeps, a secret underground base located beneath the ruins of the ghost town of Synorostad. The Rock Breakers helped build the clandestine bastion.
The Rock Breakers' training includes political education, though membership of the Republican Guard's political front organisation is not a requirement. Many officers and to a lesser degree non-commissioned officers are members though. The Rock Breakers are a multispecies formation, though aliens constitute the majority. Rodians are not uncommon, as their martial skills and comparatively short stature make them a good fit. Moreover, they have a good sense of smell and can see in the infrared spectrum. Bothans, Weequay and Twi'leks are also not an uncommon sight.
One of their prominent members is a Rodian called Thal Gannar. His parents were arrested for breaking curfew to buy food on the black market instead of subsisting on rations that were inadequate to survive on. When his father died, Gannar had to 'repay the debt'. He worked as a mine slave of the Vaderites and was skilled enough to be taught and to learn mining techniques. It helped that the racist Vaderites stereotyped Rodians as weak. He used this knowledge to sabotage a dam to flood a Vaderite barracks and led a small group of escaped miners away. Few survived but the dozen or so who made it to the Republican Guard were welcomed as heroes. His engineering skill and resolute hatred of the Vaderites and the Dominion make him a good leader. He volunteered to become Force Dead. The request was granted due to his seniority, as he is privy to many secrets of the corps, and so it was wise to shield his mind from sorcerous intrusion.
Kalinga is a Togruta member of the group. Unlike many others, he is a clone, for the Dominion dislikes natural conception. To Mace Windu Thought, family units are bourgeois and promote selfishness. He was not the clone of anyone important, simply one of many servitors. When he was still young, the partisans raided the facility he was being grown in and freed a few clones. His template had leaked intelligence to the rebels after learning that he had been defective, in return for safe passage. But the raid went awry. Kalinga was partly raised by an elderly female partisan who had been part of the original Rock Breakers. He has flash memories of a template he never knew. These tell him the Dominion is benevolent. He also has a recording from the template, as well as the knowledge the rebels gave him, which says the opposite. He has had to deal with anti-clone bigotry from certain partisans, but is committed and skilled despite his youth.
Another member is a female Weequay insurgent against the Dominion of Light called Sysk Lyval. She hailed from a frontier settlement that was taken over by the Dominion's clone army. She was taken in for 're-education' after being reported for committing the sin of singing a song that mocked the Jedi Lords. Officially, it was a vocational education and training centre that was supposed to turn her into a productive citizen by 'de-radicalising' her and 'transforming her thoughts'. Every day, the inmates had to sing the praises of the Windian Jedi Order's policies as well as Mace Windu Thought. Radicalised by the experience, she escaped and led a guerrilla war against the Dominion's oppressive rule until she was forced to flee. The partisans recruited her and she works with Gannar.
Daniela Galatas is an unusual member, for she is a human and a former member of the Vaderite army's military police. As a member of a policing unit charged with 'keeping order' behind the frontlines, she interacted with Twi'leks and other aliens who were being used as forced labourers, clerks, drivers etc. However, unlike many of her comrades, she felt sympathy for their plight. She was horrified when a few 'indentured assets' were promised an improvement in their status...if they succeeded in clearing a minefield laid by rebels with their bodies. Naturally most died. She was also alienated by the Vaderites' misogyny.
When she learned a deportation was imminent, she hid a Twi'lek family that was on the secret police's arrest list and organised their escape. Later Galatas deserted was captured by a Republican Guard cell. She was close to being lynched, but one of the soldiers recognised and vouched for her. She is not without doubts about the partisans and has had to wrestle with the fact that her family would have been punished for her defection, but is committed. She knows that she will be killed if she falls into the Vaderites' hands. Galatas applies her investigative skills and knowledge of Vaderite protocols for the rebels' benefit now.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Medium
Unit Availability: Rare
Unit Experience: Veteran
Equipment:
Armor:
- Blast Vest, Thinsuit, helmet, bandolier.
- May include Plastoid or Durasteel armour parts. Commonly mismatched and patched together from various sources. Camo painted to match terrain.
- Bolt-Thrower
- Slugthrower Rifle
- Imperial Heavy Repeater
- Chitin Carbine
- GLX Firelance
- J-7b Beamdrill
- Stouker Concussion Rifle
- Scattergun
- Enforcer Pistol
- Ripper
- M9 Boomer Heavy Pistol
- FWG-5 Flechette Pistol
- Vac Attack Mk-127
- Adjudicator
- Verpine Shatter Gun
- IR-5 Intimidator
- Gatling Gauntlet
- ZX Miniature Flame Projector
- Model MGL-1
- CSPL-12
- Firecaller Light Flame Projector
- Model C-22 Flame Carbine
- FC-1 Flechette Launcher
Misc. Equipment:
- Interference Box
- Monofilament Net
- Villips
- Grappling Spike Launcher
- Suicide Pill
- Fusioncutter
- Silencers
- Plasma Drill
- Fusion Drill
- Plasma Torch
- Power Shovel
- Thermal Wells
- Land Mines
- Thermal Imploder, Sonic Imploder
- T-44 Power Shunt
- Plasticene Thermite Gel
- Sapper Charge
- Impact Grenade
- Demo Pack
- Cave Cracker
- MM-40 Thermal Charges
- Grenades (various, such as ion/emp, thermal, frag, gas, incendiary, flash, smoke, etc.)
- Sonic Imploder
While not the only such unit, they are involved in building the tunnels the partisans use to move their troops around and assault enemy bases. They are important for maintaining key underground partisan bases. They are trained in infiltration, demolitions and penetration techniques. Their methods revolve around slipping through enemy lines to launch attacks against crucial installations such as command bunkers, artillery, aircraft and other important targets. This is an economical approach that is supposed to deliver a serious blow to the enemy while requiring minimal allied resources. The Rock Breakers are mostly armed with scavenged weapons. Aside from explosives, they favour close quarter weapons such as shotguns, garrotes, daggers, pistols, flechette launchers, flamethrowers and sonic guns.
While there is a chain of command, individual units have a lot of autonomy. Applying a decentralised mission command, the top leadership is responsible for long-term planning, but usually delegates tactics and operational conduct to lower-level leaders. This enables local leaders to take the initiative and gives them a lot of flexibility, though it also means that partisans units may not be able to support each other. Their command and control is effective, but low-tech.
In order to maximise operational success, a sapper attack may be concealed by a simultaneous attack by allied forces in order to create a diversion. Their most important weapons, aside from patience and good planning, are satchel charges and other explosives. Their skill at infiltration can allow them to slip through an enemy's outer defences to launch an attack inside a fortified position. They are very good at tunnelling, helping allied forces bypass enemy strong points in order to attack them from the rear. They can also use these skills to undermine entrenched enemy defences and collapse structures.
If a Rock Brealer unit manages to stealthily penetrate enemy lines, they will attempt to place explosive charges on key installations and cause havoc before retreating. This is not only supposed to hurt the enemy by targeting their resources and personnel, but undermine their morale. Before initiating an operation, the Rock Breakers carry out reconnaissance and surveil enemy troops and positions. Their work is very dangerous, so they are characterised by ingenuity, bravery and a gift for improvisation, as they will have to operate in enemy territory with little support. The majority of the Rock Breakers are Non-Force-Users, but a small minority of them are Force-Dead. Like all Force-Dead, they cannot be sensed in the Force and are immune to most direct Force powers. Of course, this also means that they cannot be aided by beneficial Force powers either.
Strengths:
- Crack engineers and sappers. They excel at tunnelling, and strategic use of demolitions.
- Along with their skill as combat engineers and demolitionists, they are also highly skilled commandos.
- They are commandos, not direct assault troops. When facing heavy fortifications, they cannot storm them directly, but have to use guile to undermine them.
- They favour close quarter combat weapons and are at a disadvantage in open terrain. Lack heavy support forces and are only lightly armoured. They are an infantry unit and lack heavy integrated support such as artillery or heavy combat vehicles.
The Rock Breakers have their roots in a group of prisoners who dug an underground to escape a Vaderite concentration camp in the forests of Tephrike. Some of the captives were resistance fighters; some were petty criminals; some had been arrested for having bad identification papers, for singing a Twi'lek song or simply because the secret police needed to fulfil a quota during a round-up.
In the end, it did not matter, for they had all been condemned to die on account of their species because the Vaderites were human supremacists. If they did not die of starvation or disease, they would simply be murdered. But the Vaderites were eager to hide evidence of their atrocities, and so this group of inmates was used to burn the bodies of the dead that had been dumped in the forest. Approximately one hundred thousand prisoners died in the camp. The work's crews labours took many months. During this time, the prisoners were chained to one another. Secretly, the inmates dug an underground tunnel out of the pit they were kept in. One of the prisoners had been part of the partisans before being captured. The thirty-five tunnel was their salvation. It took seventy-six nights of digging, during which the prisoners used their hands, spoons, and other improvised tools.
Somehow, the guardians of the human 'master species' did not notice until it was too late. The fugitives started out with forty members. Most of them were shot during the escape. Eleven survived and were able to reach partisan lines. The Republican Guard forces they came across had few supplies, and had been battered and bruised by Vaderite and Dominion bombings. But they welcomed the new arrivals and shared what little they had. It was a dark time for the rebels, and the escapees offered them a ray of hope. Moreover, their testimonies helped expose Vaderite crimes. But most prisoners had not made it out of the camp. And it was just one of many slave labour camps and mass killing facilities. The Guard could use able men and women who understood the scope of their enemies' crimes. Some of the surviving fugitives wanted to enlist.
They formed what would become known as the Rock Breaker Corps. The Republican Guard was a vanguard revolutionary movement, not a station state. Its troops were a mixture of low-tech militias of varying quality and professional partisan forces. But the fugitives had learned valuable skills about tunnelling, escape and underground warfare. And they were very motivated to sign up - for revenge, to free more of the oppressed, for a purpose and what passed for a paycheck. Their first missions were simple sabotage operations, targeting Vaderite and Dominion infrastructure. They also sabotaged deportation trains and sought to infiltrate concentration camps and work with prisoners to free more of the downtrodden. In that regard their tunnelling skills came in handy.
Moreover, they taught partisans in the liberated zones their engineering skills and took charge in digging tunnels that would allow the rebels to move troops and supplies. It was dangerous work. The enemy put prices on their heads. Their original leader died during a raid on a Vaderite mass killing facility. The Rock Breakers made a name for themselves blowing up a Vaderite armoured train and sabotaging a railway line to disrupt the flow of ore that was important to the Vaderite war effort. Moreover, they sabotaged a Dominion cloning facility which was breeding an army of genetically enhanced Force-using clone, which set back the Jedi lords significantly. They worked with other partisan units to help alien fugitives escape the 'Prosperity Quarter' ghetto and Camp Progress, a forced labour camp.
When the Republican Guard took advantage of the disruption caused by the Netherworld Event to launch its grand offensive, the Rock Breakers were heavily involved. They guided the partisans through the network of secret tunnels and carried out commando raids against Dominion strongholds. They distinguished themselves through their bravery and skill. However, the expected general uprising did not materialise. The Dominion suffered serious territorial losses, but was able to rally. The Rock Breakers suffered heavy casualties during the assault on Fortress Purity, engaging in fierce fighting with Dominion troops and Jedi in the tunnels and trenches.
The Dominion's mentalists made use of illusions to conceal bunkers and machine gun nests. As the situation grew desperate, engineers and commandos were forced into doomed frontline combat. When the partisans were forced to flee, the Dominion's troops launched a ruthless campaign to root out the 'tunnel rats'. There was a brutal fight when the Dominion assaulted one of the few towns the partisans had been able to hold onto. A brutal battle under the earth ensued when the Breakers defended a bunker the partisans were holding to buy time.
Long after evacuation, fighting continued in the town's labyrinth-like catacombs. The Breakers had used them to maintain a subterranean presence and evacuate sympathisers. Several partisan detachments and underground fought used the catacombs as a hiding place. Here they maintained barracks, kitchens, improvised factories for bombs, a printing press to manufacture propaganda, bathing areas and barricades. The Dominion carried out brutal reprisals after a bomb went off in the harbour, causing casualties. It made 'salient examples' of alleged Republican Guard sympathisers. To cleanse the tunnels, Dominion troops tried to flush out the rebels by sealing the entrances to entomb their enemy. They flooded them with water and dropped canisters of smoke and nerve gas down the shafts. With supplies dwindling, some Rock Breakers were forced to eat their dead. They eventually starved to death.
Elements of the Rock Breakers and militias attacked a Vaderite KEC force engaged in an 'anti-terrorist pacification campaign' in a mountainous area dominated by hills. The KEC force managed to hold out. Supplied with actual efficiency by the air and relieved after a long siege, the Vaderites managed to hold out and the partisans were forced to withdraw. However, overconfidence and underestimating the enemy was what had gotten the Vaderites into the position into the first place. Despite inflicting minor casualties, the Vaderites destroyed their base and withdrew from the area.
Still, the situation was grim. The partisans' situation took an unexpected turn when Firemane entered an uneasy alliance with them after being betrayed by extremists in the Dominion's government. Neither side trusted each other one bit, but they had a lot to offer each other. The Republican Guard had the numbers and the knowledge of the local terrain, Firemane had the firepower and advanced technology. The fruit of this accord was a joint assault on Fortress Purity. Not all of the Breakers' secret tunnels had been discovered. They served as a launching pad for the rebels' assault. A vicious battle was fought in the trenches and while storming the Dominion troops' bunkers.
During the lead-up to the assault sappers overwhelmed a Dominion firebase by throwing satchels at the command bunker, stabbing the defenders to death and blowing up communications gear. However, the cost in blood was high as the Dominion troops rallied despite the heavy Firemane bombardment. They made extensive use of Force-Users and were able to partly negate Firemane air power through a weather control machine. They also deployed a large force of Younglings and Padawans as cannon fodder. Eventually, the allies prevailed, though at a heavy cost.
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