Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Tephrike with more historical references. Sub utterly horrible people for Kyriaki, Elpsis and friends to kill with fire.
Image Credit: From The Force Awakens.
Role: NPC antagonist. Officially counter-insurgency, special operations, 'bandit-fighting' and 'political security'. Actually death squads.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: Tephrike, Prosperity Quarter, Hope Falls, The Valkyrie's Diary, Adlerberg, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Glorious Conflict, Fortress Vader, Kyriaki, Castle Maysaf, Yuuzhan Vong, Sentinel's Rest, The Akrut, Amidala Corps, Reavers of the Red Fen.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Special Peacekeeping Task Forces (SPTF)
Affiliation: Humanist People's Party, Darth Lachesis, Tephrike, KEC, Darth Eisen, Disciples of the Vader, KEC Stormtrooper Corps.
Classification: Infantry.
Description:
"Those Twi'leks stood up, were lined up, and were shot in true military fashion. I saw to it that no atrocities or brutalities occurred." - an SPTF commander.
"We're fortunate the Republican Guard has given the order for partisan warfare, for it gives us the opportunity to exterminate anyone who is hostile to us. Naturally, the vast area must be pacified as quickly as possible; this will happen best through shooting anyone who even looks askance at us." - a former Vaderite Supreme Leader.
For the Imperium and the Vaderites who govern it, the war they wage for control of Tephrike is not a merely a conventional war to secure territory or resources. Rather it is an ideological war of racial purification and annihilation. Mankind committed the original sin of 'polluting its sacred genome' with alien blood. It is the 'xenos' who created and unleashed the Gulag Virus to decimate mankind and plunge the galaxy into a never-ending dark age. For the human is the only bearer and creator of civilisation. Mankind can only purify itself through the redemptive power of violence, 'reclaiming' Tephrike as a human world. Of all the 'xenos' the Twi'lek, Mon Calamari and the Yuuzhan Vong are the most implacable enemies of mankind, pulling the strings behind the galactic xenos conspiracy and the machinations of the xenos Jedi, whose ideology of pacifism and equality seduced mankind into decadence. There are rules in this war. Soldiers must forget soldierly camaraderie, for it is a struggle of annihilation. The xenos must be eradicated or subjugated to 'make Tephrike safe for future generations'.
The Special Peacekeeping Task Forces - SPTF - are among the instruments of this ideological war, though not the only ones. Set up by the KEC and the police, these relatively small but mobile units follow the Imperial Armed Forces into territories they invade, with an ostensible mission to pacify the rear areas. They are meant to identify and kill enemies of Imperial rule, seize important sites and documents, prevent sabotage and recruit collaborators. But above all, they are mobile killing units notorious for slaughtering 'xenos' designated as racial enemies, including women, children and the elderly. In occupied territories or areas under martial law, they are authorised to act as judge, jury and executioner to crush political or ideological dissent and facilitate the 'reclamation of human land'.
The 'honourable' Imperial military is fully aware of their true mission and actively aids and abets such shooting operations. It often provides trucks, ammunition and guards and helps an SPTF round up their victims and sometimes even provides shooters. Furthermore, the army issues explicit requests for 'cleansing actions' by the KEC and police troops. Relations between regular army units and the SPTF are generally very cordial. When a town or city is taken and undesirables are rounded up, they work together and negotiate over how many should be murdered and how many should be left alive to perform forced labour for the military. The Special Peacekeeping Task Forces are fairly small, and thus reliant on the help. They regard themselves as ideological warriors and political soldiers. Their leadership is recruited from the State Protection Police, the Imperial Office of Criminal Investigations and Imperial Intelligence, and they receive manpower from the Order Police and the Stormtroopers.
Each task force comes specialists to conduct interrogations and secure and study important documents. Operations range from the murder of targeted groups of individuals named on carefully prepared lists, to joint citywide operations with the army and regular police. They also make use of collaborators in form of Humanist militia and members of alien species deemed acceptable to use - Gamorreans, Akrut, Trandoshan, Houk, sometimes Zabrak. Indeed, SPTF commanders are encouraged to instigate pogroms. Particularly devious officers use this to frighten Twi'leks and Mon Calamari into going along with their orders, presenting themselves as their only protection from the 'barbarians'. Partisans are all branded as 'bandits'. Captured 'bandits' and their families and the whole host of communities who are taken in as hostages are enslaved or murdered on the spot.
With the help of the KEC Stormtroopers, regular police units, the Imperial army, and local collaborators, the SPTF have conducted mass shootings. Usually, a massacre begins when Twi'leks and other victims are rounded up or ordered to report to a central location. Subsequently, the victims are marched or transported to a killing site, where they may be forced to dig their own graves. Then they are stripped of their belongings and valuables and driven in groups to the pit, and shot. Families and friends have to watch their loved ones die before it is their turn. Local collaborators and prisoners are used to bury the bodies and catalogue their items.
The mobile killing units go door-to-door seeking out those who have previously opposed them. Furthermore, people who have been labelled 'superfluous eaters' are among their victims. If an area has been designated to be 'cleansed due to 'bandit activity', in other words turned into a dead zone stripped of life, the SPTF will cooperate with 'anti-bandit units' of the army and the KEC. They will also work with people from the food ministry who are supposed to seize the wheat, livestock etc. and the office of the General Plenipotentiary for Labour Allocation, who will want to claim locals who haven't been killed and are seen as 'productive' as forced labourers. SPTF leaders are fond of likening 'cleansing operations' to hunts. Indeed, in some ways it looks like an aristocratic shooting party, with the beaters driving the prey into the nets for the hunters. And then instead of taxidermy heads on the wall, they take a bunch of photos of the game, and later finish up with a hearty lunch and toasts. Some alien skulls and skeletons have been donated to medical colleges for research purposes.
The higher and mid-level cadres of the Republican Guard and the Dominion are to be eliminated. In addition, they are exhorted to instigate pogroms against designated racial enemies, encouraging the 'self-cleansing efforts' of the local population. One of their key tasks has been the extermination of the educated classes of alien races seen as a threat. To this end, they have been directed to 'render' the upper levels of society harmless by murdering tens of thousands of Cathar, Nautolans, Bothans, Twi'leks, Togruta, Mon Calamari etc. In the world view of the Vaderite leaders, a nation whose upper levels have been destroyed can be pushed into the ranks of slavery. So members of the intelligentsia such as physicians, clerics, teachers, artists, officers and professors must be murdered before the general population can be subjugated. They approach their tasks with murderous energy. Ironically, they are, in some sense, killing their peers, for many SPTF leaders are academics who hold doctorates. By and large, their leadership is composed of a strikingly homogeous group of young academics, who come from the educated stratum of society.
Far from being mere 'technocrats', these men identify themselves with the Humanist conception of the People's Community as a racial bond of blood. These men are not dispatched to head special task forces as a punishment or proving ground per se, but because these operations require exactly those modern, technocratic skills of leadership, decision-making, man-management and negotiation in which they are well-versed in. Initiative, enthusiasm and zeal are required, not passive, robotic obedience. Commanders work closely with planners to develop panoramic schemes of 'resettlement', 'pacification' and 'reordering'. They do not not just follow orders; they innovate, devise and implement policy to fulfil the dystopian vision of the Humanist system. Their leadership and methods represent a synthesis of bureaucratic police methods with a 'scientific' racial outlook accountable not to the state, but to the race as embodied in the will of the Supreme Leader, unbound by ethical or legal norms.
True to their self-conception as political soldiers, they have absorbed the purported front values of toughness, ruthlessness and totality, framed all the while in a highly intellectualised rubric of 'objectivity'. They are not just racial, human supremacist theorists, sitting in the proverbial ivory tower, dreaming and ranting among their fellow cohorts about the necessity of a homogenous and strong nation. They organise, and command the organisations that make theory and ideology a reality. Orders from the central office to individual task forces are infrequent and often broad and discretionary, leaving the organisation of Special Peacekeeping Task Forces and their sub-units and how the executions are to be performed in the field up to individual commander.
There is a bit of a gulf between the SPTF leaders, who tends to be drawn from the aforementioned strata, and the rank and file. The latter are generally less well-educated and drawn from various branches of the police, including the uniformed police. Many of the regular policeman that form the backbone of an SPTF have working class or low middle class backgrounds. They have been drafted, but found ineligible for regular military duty. Not all of them are hateful racists, but they carry out their murderous tasks regardless. Peer pressure is an important motivator. Being a 'good comrade' means going the 'extra mile' in sharing the burden for obeying 'difficult' orders and 'doing the things only soft civvies won't understand and only hard men can do'.
They also benefit from financial bonuses and accelerated promotion. One day a traffic policeman might be issuing parking tickets, the next he might be patrolling the perimeter of a ghetto, participating in an 'anti-terrorist operation' or a mass shooting of innocent civilians. They are joined by young graduates from the Security Police's school, who are eager to make their mark and prove their toughness. Service in the SPTF is a chance for them to 'bloody' themselves. True to the Vaderites' patriarchal social values, the SPTF are overwhelmingly male. Female members are usually relegated to support roles. However, far from being bystanders, they are integrated into the murder machine. Female clerks write up orders for the murder machine, and female medics assist in 'selections' and even administer lethal injections. Female members tend to have a background in the Amidala Corps. And there are women who serve in combat and executioner roles; they're just rare. Those who join are under a lot of pressure to prove they are 'just as tough' as the men. It has also been observed that male 'peacekeepers' are extra brutal whenever human 'womenfolk' are around, as if they want to impress them by demonstrating their 'masculine toughness'.
Significantly, soldiers are not forced to participate in massacres. There have been KEC officers, even from the dreaded secret police, who could not cope with murdering women and children and requested transfers. This is usually granted, or they are given support duties. Officers and men are simply incentivised with perks. For every man who develops moral qualms, there are two - or ten - who will enthusiastically pull the trigger. For example, a secret police officer who was fine with murdering Togruta men, but balked when the order came to kill women and childen and argued it would take too much of a psychological toll on his young soldiers, was allowed to return to the capital. Indeed, he was promoted. He was disparaged as 'weak' and eventually lost his cushy job at the central office to an enthusiastic butcher, but nothing happened to him. Typically, his concern was for the perpetrators rather than the victims, for the spiritual demoralisation the operations might cause. Mass killings take a psychological toll on the men, even though they are framed as a collective act without individual responsibility. Some collaborate with the Skyhammer Fleet's paratroopers to organise death flights, which means dropping victims to their death from airplanes. Some leaders become excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal, others break and turn to alcohol.
To make their grisly tasks less stressful for themselves, the SPTF have devised alternate ways of murdering large numbers of people, such as utilising chemical weapons. Or driving their victims into a building and blowing them up with explosives or setting them on fire. SPTF men suffering ill health are excused from participation in executions and the KEC provide them with rest and mental health care. Moreover, KEC leaders encourage the recruitment of expendable alien auxiliaries and Humanist militias. No human soldier will be shot for refusing to commit murder, but an alien will. All this reflects the KEC's leadership considerable trust in its men.
The security services can take merciless action against all enemies of the Imperium and Humanism, but show almost no end of empathy and understanding for their cormades, first and foremost, those who become members of these mobile murder commandos. Even Sith from the Disciples of the Vader will be punished for arbitrarily electrocuting or Force choking an SPTF member. The KEC builds sanatoriums and health resorts to treat SPTF members who need to convalesce after suffering a physical or emotional breakdown. Many of these are located in areas that used to be inhabited by 'lesser beings' before they were 'resettled'. Indeed, several used to be psychiatric hospitals that were repurposed after the patients were murdered or denied medical care and food until they died.
SPTF officers often organise fellowship evenings for their minions, featuring song, poetry, and, more often than not, alcohol. Such celebratory rituals often take place before or after 'cleansing actions'. One man described it as follows: "We sit round the table, eating, drinking and singing. Alex brought his accordion and is playing folk and pop songs, with us joining in." Official orders stress the importance of song and music for building group camaraderie and for creating the right atmosphere for fellowship evenings. Song also becomes an expression of community, camaraderie, and shared values in the wake of mass murder. A Mon Calamari woman recalled the aftermath of a killing operation: "I smelled the odour of burning bodies and saw a group of KEC men who sat by the fire, singing and drinking." Sometimes they play music while carrying out 'executions'.
True to the vaunted ideal of bureaucratic efficiency, the SPTF keep official records of many of their massacres and provide detailed reports to their superiors. Moreover, most people on the home front in the Imperium have some idea of the atrocities perpetrated by the SPTF. Although taking pictures of the murders is officially banned, it is common for SPTF members and bystanders to do so and send them back home to their loved ones. No Imperial citizen is totally ignorant of the war crimes and crimes against sentience committed by the Imperium's security forces. Just as the camps are not secret. Everyone knows what is happening on some level. Indeed, the political leadership finds it helpful to have phases where it openly speaks of its crimes with considerable candour, viewing it as a useful way to close the ranks by reminding their citizens that they are all in the same boat. People simply don't talked about in polite company. Significantly, no SPTF has a political commissar because it is correctly assumed that the soldiers' political reliability will be above reproach.
The SPTF are not permanent institutions, but constituted on as needed-basis. As the task forces follow the army, some of their detachments are converted into stationary units to enforce state security within a conquered city or even a district or province. A senior SPTF commander is not simply an ideological enforcer, but a political representative who will work closely with the civic administration, military and local collaborators. In some areas, he may be actively involved in setting up a rudimentaty civic administration by vetting and selecting native collaborators for adminstrative and policing posts in the local government. They also often play a role in vetting the 'blood purity' of humans who live in newly-occupied areas alongside alien populations.
All these tasks require more than robotic obedience. Here it is pertinent to reflect on the youth of many of their leaders. These men are typically in their thirties, but may be as young as their late twenties, yet they wield considerable authority over large numbers of subjugated people. Leading a special force of 'peacekeepers' is not a punishment; it is a career move. Indeed, the Special Peacekeeping Task Forces often stand in competition to each other as to their 'scores'.
Moreover, task groups are constituted to carry out 'anti-partisan warfare' and 'bandit-hunting'. The regular army doesn't just provide logistical support and help facilitate massacres. It actively helps by fully cooperating with the 'selection' of its prisoners for execution by the SPTF. It knowingly seeks out Twi'leks, Mon Calamari, Yuuzhan Vong among captured Republican Guard or Dominion soldiers and allows them to be murdered. Sometimes 'mudbloods' or 'half-bloods' are thrown in as well, depending on what the leadership's stance on near-humans happens to be. Fundamentally, their anti-partisan strategy is obsessed with maximising 'body count'. Bloated figures of dead 'bandits' and staged photos paint a reassuring picture for high command and the masses on the home front to make it seem like all is going well. And naturally, their methods ensure that there are always partisans to replace the ones they've killed. In other words, their methodology is not just evil, but also self-defeating.
The Vaderite military's' view of warfare as without limits and their obsession with attaining complete order in occupied territories - an impossible task - has generated a predilection for extreme violence against civilians when, inevitably, total order is not achieved. The term 'partisan' has been very deliberately banned. Instead all who resist are branded 'bandits' and thus viewed as standing outside the law. Punishments for villages accused of aiding 'bandits' can range from the imposition of even more oppressive quotas, deportation, slave labour to its complete annihilation. Native informers are cultivated by an SPTF to identify 'bandit-helpers'.
Cavalier Titos Panageas is a senior SPTF commander. A university graduate with a law degree and a history of Humanist Party activism, he gave up a promising legal career to dedicate himself solely to the movement. For a while he ran a KEC sport school before becoming a full-time employee of the security services. Highly organised, disciplined and pedantic, he instills fear in his subordinates, but also respect because he doesn't excuse himself from doing the 'dirty work'. His behaviour ranges from impulsive to choleric. Panageas has personally overseen mass shootings, as a hardened perpetrator who stands at the pit and leads the killers carrying out the shooting. He is known to encourage his subordinates with motivational speeches before executions, and has even personally executed victims to set an example of killing without remorse or passion. Indeed, he insists that every member of his command, officers, included, participate in such 'actions'. In one particularly infamous instance, he abandoned his usual detached and efficient approach to mass slaughter. After a successful escape of five Twi'lek prisoners from his custody, Panageas ordered the entire Twi'lek population of a local ghetto to assemble in the square where he asked them all to start to count off.
The frightened victims did not immediately follow his order and began to murmur amongst themselves in a perceived show of defiance. In response, Panageas, without showing any sign of murderous list or being particularly excited or, let alone threatened or in danger, drew his pistol and discharged two full magazines of ammunition into the crowd at random and without discretion, killing and wounding many. All this shows he has lost the firmness of his ideological, cold, merciless mission in the limitless killing. He is an ideological perpetrator who has lost the limits of his own task in his quest to bring the murderous utopia of Humanism to fruition. His zeal for slaughter has been noticed, and he has been earmarked for future promotion to a senior administrative post in the security apparatus. Panageas is married and met his wife, a secretary from the Amidala Corps who has written up execution orders, 'on the job'. She strut around with a bullwhip while a ghetto was being 'cleared' and likes to parade around in stolen clothes.
Cavalier Andrianos Galliadis is in many ways the model pupil of the SPTF. The son of a business executive, he passed his lawyer's exam with one of the best marks in his home state. He obtained his doctoral degree in law at a young age. A brilliant networker, he is in regular correspondence with well-known jurists and civil servants in the Imperium. In many ways, he represents a contrast to Panageas. Where Panageas is impulsive, Galliadis maintains his calculating, dispassionate composure, without being any less of a believer. Where Panageas insists on displaying 'leadership' by doing the dirty work himself, Galliadis prefers to build a rapport with local collaborators and outsource much of the unpleasant business to them. He has even built up a good relationship with certain alien collaborators deemed 'half-bloods', using them as well as 'worthy' human clones as a death squad. This has the side-effect of ensuring that they cannot easily desert from the Vaderite cause because they've burnt their bridges. They are treated well, but expected to follow his commands instantly.
He has directed vicious 'hunts' against Cathar, Mon Calamari and Nautolans, wracking up a huge 'body count'. To him, his victims are all 'bandits' and just have to be wiped out. He has also been charged with the 'racial evaluation' of 'half-bloods' and humans who grew up outside Imperial territory. Galliadis' self-image is that of a 'scientific' man. He conceives his job as a 'noble' pursuit in service of the greater good. Per his orders, contact between his men and their victims is to be minimised during 'executions'. To that end, victims should be lined up and shot from a great distance, with three riflemen being allocated to every victim, to alleviate feelings of individual responsibility. SPTF soldiers in his unit are forbidden from taking their victim's valuables for themselves or undertaking individual actions. Collective murder is sanctioned; individual murder is a breach of the rules. None of this is motivated by moral scruples. Galliadis simply wants to maintain discipline and cares about the mental health of his men. His superiors appreciate his discretion, which bodes as well for a future career as his social background does. As a committed Humanist, he compares his work to that of a gardener removing unwanted weeds.
Alex Kanelakos is an ordinary man who serves in a death squad; he performed military service, but was granted a discharge after sustaining a serious injury. He opened a bakery, married and became a respected member of his community. But he was later drafted into the Order Police, given officer training and commissioned owing to his social status, education and success in civilian life. Ultimately, he was transferred to an SPTF. He wasn't born a mass murderer...but adapted well, turning himself into an efficient and calloused executioner. Kanelakos has a benign, fatherly attitude to his men. When giving criminal orders, he never threatens or insults them, but appeals to their patriotism, camaraderie and generalised notions of the Twi'leks, Vong and other 'undesirables' as part of 'the enemy'. He also tells them that everything they do is done by the command of the Leader, which means they are not responsible since 'orders are orders'. He helps assuage their guilt, the order is carried out and the machinery of murder runs efficiently.
He stood up to a Sith who was brutalising soldiers for not being fanatical enough. Ultimately, the Sith was punished and Kanelakos promoted. By Vaderite standards, he treats forced labourers 'decently'. That is to say, he doesn't casually beat them, and disciplines soldiers who do. But if he is given the order to 'cull' them, he will carry it out. He may write up a petition requesting that a skilled worker he's fond of be spared, arguing that the police cannot do without them. But he won't ever defy the order or help any of them escape. He sends back parcels to his family that consist of the stolen belongings of the Vaderites' victims. Kanekalos likes to play his accordion at fellowship evenings.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
UnitSize: Medium
Unit Availability: Rare
Unit Experience: Trained
Equipment: Not something every single soldier would carry into battle, but rather a list of what's available. Typically a soldier will carry a standard rifle, one pistol, a knife and a couple grenades.
Armour:
- Stormtrooper Armour.
- Sith members may wear Sith apparel - Zeyd-Cloth tunics and trousers, Synth-Hide gloves, belts, and boots, armourweave cloaks and stylised masks, but may be encouraged to don Stormtrooper armour instead to present a less obvious target to snipers.
- ST-W48 Blaster
- Scattergun. For CQB.
- Stouker Concussion
- Verpine Shatter Rifle. For designated marksman/sharpshooter.
- Model MGL-1. For grenadier. Commonly mounted on another rifle as an under-barrel grenade launcher.
- Imperial Heavy Repeater. For machine gunner.
- SH-9 Slugthrower Pistol
- SE-14r Light Repeating Blaster
- Hard-Sound Gun
- DX-2 Disruptor Pistol. Limited to officers and Sith.
Support/Heavy Weapons:
- FC-1 Flechette Launcher
- CSPL-12 Projectile Launcher. Specialist weapon, mission-specific.
- Model 134a "Buzzsaw" Rotary Cannon. For heavy weapons trooper. Two per squad max.
- D-93 Incinerator Flamethrower. Alternate weapon for heavy weapons specialist. Two per squad max. A squad can have two flamethrowers, two rotary cannons or one of each.
- Vibroknife
- Z6 Riot Control Baton
- Force Imbued Blade. Limited to Sith, and thus not present in every task force. NFUs aren't allowed to wield it.
- BL-155 Laser ax. Mission-specifc. Limited to execution purposes rather than being a combat weapon.
- Camouflage paint for armour
- Shock collars and cuffs/manacles for the purpose of restraining prisoners.
- Grenades.
- Breaching Grenades. Detonite Explosive Charges. Mission-specific.
- A-A5 Speeder Truck. Armed variant is used.
- 008 Heavy Landspeeder
- Armoured Groundcars
- Kath Hounds. For searching for fugitive, guarding prisoners and 'keeping them in line'.
Their chief target are alien populations that the Humanist ideology, in its warped and asinine world view, has branded as hereditary enemies of mankind. In order to facilitate the achievement of Humanism's ideological goals, the task forces carry out campaigns of state terrorism, ethnic cleansings, deportations and massacres. The task forces will commonly have backup, as they will be attached to a regular army command. The army provides logistical support and helps them carry out their bloody work. Moreover, they often make use of native auxiliary police, commonly drafted from humans who must prove their purity or aliens deemed acceptable enough to serve. Indeed, the most dangerous or unpleasant work is often outsourced to them.
They will gather intelligence on the members of security forces and government officials, as well as their families in order to identify, apprehend and murder them. To further this goal, they will seek to secure vital documents from foreign archives, and capture enemy government officials, officers, commissars, and clerics - or their family members - for interrogation. Twi'lek, Yuuzhan Vong and Mon Calamari in such positions are almost universally tortured and executed in the case of capture, for they form a trinity of evil in the Vaderites' warped world view. Captured alien Force-Users are to be executed unless they are required for interrogation or experimentation.
Moreover, the SPTF will be deployed in 'counter-insurgency' campaigns, which are often a smoke-screen for crimes against sentience and genocial violence, to combat real and alleged partisans. Finally, they are used for 'counter-terrorist' operations to investigate terrorist attacks, track, apprehend and eliminate suspected partisans. Moreover, they are sent on missions to recover important documents and other data. When carrying out 'reprisals', they disproportionately target civilians deemed politically suspect or racially undesirable. The taking of hostages to cow the conquered population and the abduction of high-value targets is also part of their methods. Entire villages may be burnt down, with those inhabitants who are not murdered outright being forced into slavery, in order to inflict 'punishment' for partisan attacks. The SPTF will even stage false flag attacks in order to create a 'justification' for making a 'salient example'.
When an area has been designated as a 'bandit zone', the standard approach is first to map it, then ensure the flow of supplies to the troops, gather intelligence and carry out an encirclement to block inhabitants and alleged 'bandits' from leaving and prevent anyone else from entering. The troops should blockade and 'clear' the area, acting in concert with units from the regular army, the KEC-Police and auxiliaries. The task forces are to assault the heart of the 'bandits' and decapacitate their leaders. Escaping 'bandits' are to be killed in flight and escapees to be pursued and murdered. Collective punishments are imposed on settlements within the 'bandit zone', with the goal of segregating supposedly 'bandit'-supporting villagers from the rest. Men from 'guilty' families and their immediate family circle are murdered. Certain species such as Twi'leks and Mon Calamari are automatically assumed to be hostile.
The SPTF perform their tasks in the rear area, but while they be deployed close to the frontlines and combat partisans, enemy stay-behind cells and stragglers, they will not be deployed in conventional, frontline combat. They would be unsuited for such operations. They are a tool of savage repression an intelligence gathering, not assault troops meant to storm the trenches. The task forces are all motorised, giving them a degree of mobility, but they lack armoured fighting vehicles such as tanks. In short, they cannot stand up to a well-armed, and well-trained opponent in a conventional engagement.
The majority of the SPTF members are Non-Force-Users, with a small contingent of Force-Sensitives whose Force connection is too minor to merit dedicated training, but who still benefit from advantages such as enhanced senses. Here and there, actual Sith from the Disciples of the Vader may be assigned to an SPTF. Ironically, stereotypically unstable Sith are rejected because they are the type to throw tantrums and murder their comrades for petty reasons. Because they are not frontline combat troops, Sith assigned to an SPTF tend to focus more on cerebral Force abilities than raw power. None of them carry lightsabres or are trained in their use.
Force Abilities (Force User Units Only): As mentioned above, Force-Users who serve in the SPTF are a distinct minority. Most Force-Sensitives have a very minor connection to the Force that grants them benefits such as Force empathy, enhanced senses and reflexes Those whose Force affinity is strong enough to merit proper training from the Disciples of the Vader are Sith who focus on cerebral Force abilities. They specialise in skills such as mind probe, Force persuasion, Force Fear and standard telekinetic abilities. Sith will commonly employ their abilities to terrify or sway victims or read their minds, sense dangers...or people in hiding.
Strengths:
- By Tephriki standards, they are relatively well armed for the types of mission they conduct...even if ironically they're not great fighters.
- Zealous. The SPTF are highly motivated. Anyone who stays in that unit is dedicated to the cause and unlikely to desert. Not the least because they know the Vaderites' enemies will line them up in orderly lines and shoot them en masse for their horrible crimes.
- Inexperienced in conventional front-line combat, as their typical foes are lightly armed guerillas, isolated stragglers, militias...and unarmed civilians. They are not suited for pitched, frontline combat against professional soldiers.
- Lack armoured fighting vehicles, artillery and so on. They also lack heavy weapons to take on tanks and the like in frontal combat.
The SPTF have their origins in death squads fielded by the KEC, an amalgamation of various far-right human supremacist paramilitary forces, terrorist groups and armed thugs that served as a shock unit and bodyguard for Darth Militia, the leader of the Vaderite cause. The Knights were fanatical fighters, kept 'order' in conquered settlements and cultivated a reputation for fearlessness in battle. However, discipline was incredibly low and their officers often mistook revolutionary elan for leadership. They also became infamous for massacring alien civilians and prisoners of war, running several 'wild' concentration camps.
KEC death squads participated in Malitia's war against the Dominion of Light, seeking to 'reclaim' Tephrike from the so-called 'galactic xenos conspiracy' they blamed for the outbreak of the Gulag Virus. The Stormtroopers participated in the Palmyra campaign and took the lead in a uprising in Vortanstad, a major Tephriki industrial centre controlled by the Dominion. KEC death squads and allied militias conducted savage pogroms in the city against non-humans and so-called race traitors. However, their savagery could not win the battle. Promised reinforcements from the Vaderite's main army never materialised, as it was beaten by the Dominion at the bloody battle of Palmyra. This came at great cost, for the former capital became Palmyra's Wail, a radioactively contaminated hellscape tainted by the dark side.
The Vaderites were forced to retreat, staging the so-called Arduous March. However, the war had exhausted the Dominion and under new leadership the Vaderites were able to carve out their own state, built upon the principles of human supremacism, magocracy and slavery. In the process the KEC was also reorganised to turn it into a more cohesive and disciplined, though no less brutal fighting force. It would serve as an instrument of racial and ideological warfare. Videos showing beheadings of prisoners were now a thing of the past. The KEC learned fast that the 'innocent' Imperial citizens would not object to the vilest atrocities if only they were committed out of sight so they could pretend not to know anything.
The hour of the SPTF came when Supreme Leader Vengeance directed the energies of his followers towards expansion. From the start it was clear that this would not be merely a campaign to seize land and resources, but an ideological war to create a racial 'utopia'. The Vaderites still lacked the capacity to confront the Dominion directly, so they turned towards weaker targets. One of them was Tephrike's Vuuzhan Vong communities, which had been formed by Vong who had been left stranded on the planet centuries ago. Centuries had passed since then and resulted in many Vong becoming integrated despite suffering from discrimination due to past crimes. But the Plague brought about a schism, and cut off from the outside galaxy many Yuuzhan Vong turned towards isolation and sought solace in the true gods. There were many who believed the Four Hundred Year Darkness to be yet another time of tribulation much like their journey between the extra-galactic void. They believed that when the darkness lifted, the gods would bless them with utopia.
Regarding the Vong as abominations, Vengeance ordered them to be put to the sword or enslaved, initiating a genocidal campaign. Their land, he decreed, would be settled by human colonists loyal to the Dark Father Vader, chosen one and son of the Force. SPTF units acted as mobile killing units, tasked with 'pacifying' the rear areas after military expansion. Each unit was attached to a military command and operated in cooperation with the regular troops. Viewing themselves as ideological soldiers, they were exhorted to decapacitate the upper levels of society. This mission was soon expanded to full-scale slaughter. Lacking conventional military strength and many of the war beasts and advanced biotechnology of their ancestors, the Vong had to resort to partisan warfare. This, in turn, was viewed by the Vaderite leadership as a 'justification' for vicious 'reprisals'. Early on a Sith leading a unit of the Vaderite SPTF and regular soldiers was ambushed by Vong partisans. Being Force-Dead, they were immune to his mind control abilities, so he and his unit were wiped out. The partisans were able to withdraw into the dense forests. In retaliation the nearest Vong town was sentenced to extermination by the Vaderite military. Soldiers from the Humanist Protection Army and stormtroopers surrounded, natives were rounded up by the SPTF and murdered.
Such savage massacres decimated the Yuuzhan Vong population, but drove the survivors into an alliance with the Republican Guard, a radical anti-Force-User insurgency. This had a strong element of irony, as traditionalist Yuuzhan Vong would have normally never agreed to this. It also led to a series of bombings and assassinations by rebel agents. The SPTF played a key role in a brutal 'counter-insurgency' campaign carried out by the Imperial army. The fact that the leader of the rebel vanguard movement at the time, Sinya Kairn, was a Twi'lek, was also used to 'justify' atrocities perpetrated against this group. Following the occupation of Adlerberg, as the Vaderites renamed a Dominion city occupied during the Windians' self-destructive Cultural Revolution, also participated in the deportation of Adlerberg's alien population into the Prosperity Quarter. It was a darkly ironic name for an overcrowded, impoverished ghetto.
The SPTF were involved in the 'reclamation' of Chios, an island dominated by human landowners, but whose population was mostly alien. Togruta, Gungans, Nautolans, Togruta and frog people were particularly prevalent. Life had been oppressive for them, as they were confined to 'reservations' and forced to provide forced labourers, but they had a modicrum of autonomy. Some alien groups such as Togruta were even slightly privileged to make them cooperate and police the others for the human imperialists. This changed when Lord Lachesis, a scion of impoverished landowners, took the reins as governor and sought to claim the 'virgin island' for settlers and veterans. To that end, the natives would have to go. For a while the regime used deception, proclaiming that the aliens were being 'resettled'. But the transports took the victims to execution sites, where they were stripped of their possessions, forced to dig their own graves and murdered.
Inevitably, the natives fought back, leading to partisan struggle. The Republican Guard provided support to the rebels, as it had aided earleir slave revolts. But the regime had no qualms about using chemical weapons and aerial bombings. A Togruta town was devastated by relentless shelling, turned into a massive detention complex and finally an extermination site. SPTF units conducted mass shooting operations as well as 'hunts' to apprehend fugitives. At first their targets were the alien elites, then all males sixteen or older, then all. However, partisan attacks led to heavy casualties, though the rebels were ultimately doomed because their allies could not provide enough support.
When soldiers from the death squads were ambushed by partisans in the swamps and hung from trees or fed to beasts, the Vaderites unleashed chemical weapons to drive the rebels out of their hideouts. Gamorrean auxiliaries were brought in to do the most dangerous work. As part of one operation, stormtroopers, SPTF and regular army soldiers created a forty kilometre wide 'dead zone' - a no man's land where any 'xenos' was to be shot as a 'bandit'. The bloodletting took a psychological toll on many men though. Some became depressed, turned to alcohol and suffered mental breakdowns, others became unhinged sadists. More 'refined' killing methods were introduced to murder people in an assembly-style manner while making it less stressful for the killers. Perversely, several of the perpetrators of these atrocities became respected members of the all-human communities built by the Vaderites. After dismantling the killing facility, they built trees on top of it. But soon no human dared venture into what became known as the Bone Forest. Those who did never returnd.
SPTF spearheaded the 'clearance' of a Twi'lek 'residential area' called the Penitent Hearts Residential Community at the request of the army after a bomb attack on a railway line. Twi'leks had been forced into the ghetto as a 'security measure' because their land was supposed to be 'colonised' by human settlers. Inevitably, diseases were widespread due to overcrowding and malnutrition. There was, in fact, a Twi'lek resistance group with some agents performing actual sabotage and assassination against the Vaderite policemen and auxiliaries as well as factories that provided them with goods, and smuggling weapons and food. However, the Vaderites massively overreacted because their only tool was the hammer. It all fit their perverse world view of Twi'leks being monsters who devoured human blood and flesh and were part of a sinister cabal that was behind all the misery that had befallen mankind. Ironically, the local council had done all it could to appease the Vaderites. The chairman's motto was to be at least ten minutes ahead of every Vaderite demand. He believed that by appeasing the Vaderites, he could keep them satisfied and preserve the community.
The ghetto police violently broke up demonstrations and cracked down on escapees. In his bid to protect the ghetto, he founded sweatshops for textiles and other goods. Appealing to the Vaderites' greed was supposed to disincentivise them from annihilating the community. At the same time, the council collaborated with the Vaderites by helping them round-up 'work-shy' and 'terrorists'. In the end, even this was not enough. Because the Vaderites only had limited manpower available, they employed a devious tactic by telling the natives that only the red and purple Twi'leks were being targeted and that if they denounced the rest they'd be spared. So they made the xenos do their work for them, then said all the others needed to present themselves to make sure they were not using dye to conceal their colour. When they were there they were seized and executed, too. The last to die were the members of the Twi'lek 'Order Service' and their families. The Vaderite security forces only spared two dozen Twi'lek craftsmen at the request of human businessowners. An entire community had been wiped out. A couple ghetto inhabitants managed to escape. Republican Guard agitators had tried to get the population to rise up, but when they didn't they capitalised on the survivors for their forces.
Some of these survivors of this atrocitiy later formed part of the first Reavers after SPTF and regular forces destroyed a swamp settlement called Red Fen. The town was primarily inhabited by Gungans and Mon Calamari. It had largely stayed out of the war, but had some Republican Guard agents in their midst. Whether because some saboteurs from the Twi'lek ghetto had fled there or some genocidal bloodlust, the Vaderites attacked. However, their assault was a lot more costly than imagined, as the bad ground and maze of steams and mangroves made it hard to navigate and the first attack was repulsed. Many of the people got away...but many did not. Hundreds were rounded up and shot or hung whilst the settlement was razed to the ground by the enraged humans. Only ruins remained. The survivors formed the nucelus of the Reavers of the Red Fen, a Republican Guard unit composed of irregular cavalry who went on to spread fear and terror among the enemies of rebels. They first made their mark by ambushing and annihilating a Vaderite unit that had taken part in the massacre. Later they burnt a Vaderite settlement down.
When, after a long period of skirmishes and low-intensity fighting, all-out warfare resumed between the Vaderites and the Dominion, SPTF units were once again deployed. To the Vaderites, the Dominion was a most abominable foe, led by a 'xenos Jedi cabal'. Ironically, the rampant cruelty unleashed during the campaign was self-defeating after initial successes. The Dominion was a repressive, statist dictatorship that sought to impose complete conformity on its people, forcing them to assimilate into a conformist monoculture and denying them cultural expression or freedom of religion.
Force-using groups who disliked the Republican Guard as well as escaped clones and 'naturals' - that is to say, people who'd come into the world for natural reproduction - were at first on the fence about the invaders. Certain minorities such as 'half-bloods', as the Vaderites disparagingly called near-humans, and Trandoshans were inclined to support them if they were granted autonomy and cultural rights. However, to the Vaderites non-humans were only fit for enslavement or eradication. One SPTF unit used groups of Trandoshan and Mirialan nationalists to undermine the Dominion and slaughter Twi'leks, then arrested and murdered many of their leaders for being too independent. And Vaderite troops did not discriminate when it came to requisitioning foodstuffs for the army or the civilian population of the Imperial heartland, triggering famine. Vaderite methods lost friends and added relentless enemies.
As the war ground into a bloody slog, and Dominion troops were able to carry out breakthroughs, the Vaderites had to even through reservists and rear echelon security forces into combat. Aside from Order Police reservists, some SPTF units had to hold the line...and performed poorly due to their lack of training or competent battlefield leadership. Furthermore, the Dominion executed all survivors to punish them for their evil deeds. To add insult to injury, the 'human overmen' not even defeated by crack clone troopers, but conscript troops and militias composed of 'randoms'. Many were Twi'leks. A group of captured SPTF and KEC soldiers were paraded through the streets of a town, while a jeering crowd threw rubbish at them. They were forced to dig up the bodies of those they'd murdered. Then they were shot themselves.
When the frontline moved closer to the Imperial heartland, the security services initiated Special Operation 1005. The purpose of it was to hide any evidence of the mass killings perpetrated by the Vaderites. Under the supervision of SPTF and KEC-Police units, prisoner work crews were forced to exhume mass graves and burn the bodies. Then the workers themselves were executed. Some camps set up new crematoria so that they could do without prison labour. Aspasia Koukoura, former commandant of Camp Progeress and a notorious butcher, was in charge of the operation.
The Netherworld Event threw both the Dominion and the Vaderites into turmoil. The Vaderites experienced a civil war that resulted in the brief ascendancy of a sect of 'Light Sith', formed by renegades who'd discovered a tome that told the true story of Vader's redemption. It was a bitter time for the SPTF, whose leaders were targeted by Light Sith agent, and rebellious slaves However, several managed to hide their deeds. Indeed, some infiltrated the regime, claiming they had turned a new leaf. Along with becoming embroiled in a ruinous war with the Dominion, this contributed to the Light Sith's fall.
However, rebellious slaves, surviving Light Sith and sympathetic Republican Guard insurgents fought on in Prosperity Quarter, temporarily managing to seize parts of Adlerberg. A mixed force of regular army troops, KEC and SPTF initiated a brutal 'cleansing operation', facing several days of brutal house-to-house fighting against an outnumbered and outgunned, but determined enemy. The rebels knew they were doomed, so many fought to the last man to buy time to allow as many people as possible to escape and show that they would not be led like lambs to the slaughter. Eventually, the invaders were able to overcome the noble resistance. The 'reprisals' were only stopped because the Vaderites still needed slave labour. Upon the suggestion of Eisen, some of the ghetto inhabitants were deported to Hope Falls, a settlement that masqueraded as an autonomous alien reservation, but was actually a glorified slave state. SPTF officers were dispatched to organise the round-ups and deportation in concert with the Security Police's 'experts' and the Imperial Railway.
Along with other KEC troops, auxiliaries and regular army forces, the SPTF were incorporated into the regime's 'bandit-fighting' campaign. After the regular troops had established territorial control, 'anti-bandit' tas forces would secure lines of communications, rural communities and ensure harvest collection. Villages accused of collaboration with 'bandits' were subjected to harsh 'reprisals'. Able-bodied workers might be deported to perform slave labour, those deemed 'superfluous' due to being too sick, frail or young to work were killed. Labelling the victims as 'bandits' made it psychologically easier to murder them. SPTF methods produced tremendous civilian casualties. Indeed, civilian were often slaughtered in order to inflate the number of enemy fatalities. The discrepancy became apparent when one compared the fatalities reported with the number of captured weapons. More pragmatic SPTF leaders utilised auxiliary units made up of Gamorreans, Houk or 'half-bloods' to do the killing for them. Twi'leks, Mon Calamari or Vong apprehended in so-called 'bandit zones' were routinely murdered. Ashlanites or Equalists were also murdered due to being considered enemy agents.
The SPTF remained uninvolved in the Vaderite civil war that broke out after Firemane's bombardment of Castle Maysaf killed Supreme Leader Furcht and most of his inner circle. Most SPTF units were engaged far from the Imperial heartland in 'bandit-suppression' operations. Moreover, all of the claimants were Sith Lords of the Disciples of the Vader. In a twisted way, it showed their loyalty to the office rather than the man who occupied it. They pledged themselves to Darth Eisen after he took the helm.
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