The Imperial Legionnaires

The warrior elite. The career military. The soldiers whose existence is war.   Part political officers, part elite special operators, part commissioned officer corps, the Imperial Legionnaires make up a small but integral part of the military. Children are taken from their families when the empire deems it fit. They are indoctrinated and trained to be the finest soldiers humanity has ever seen. Training is brutal and fatalities are common.   Live fire training begins as early as 10 years of age. Live combat trials against captured aliens, animals, and condemned criminals soon follow. Many die during theses trials. Despite the years of training, a child is still the size of a child and can be over powered by an alien beast or fully grown adult criminal.   But those who make out of the crucible of the war college are the fiercest and most dangerous combatants the empire has. Once the baseline training is completed they are placed into specialized training.   Legionnaire Officer: Leads the conscripts and volunteers in battle where a strong leader is a vital role in terms of keeping the troops from routing or surrender. Legionnaires inspire by fighting alongside the troops in the thick of it. They will be the best trained and most disciplined among the platoon. Any petty officer is glad for the tactical knowledge they bring. And Imperial marines are happy to have such a fierce and talented warrior among them. To boost moral, legionnaire officers do not fight with specialized equipment and instead will be armed and armored with the standard issue gear his/her troops will be supplied with. Imperial marines are unlikely to follow a leader who gets access to special equipment they don't. Officers rarely have gene mods or cybernetic enhancements as to be on par with the fighting capability of the troops they lead. Although rare, sometimes Legionnaire Officers are even tasked with training and leading the various poorly armed and trained militias on the outer territories. In such cases the L.O. will also forgo his specialized equipment to use the standardized militia weapons and equipment.   Legionnaire Operator: The special operations elite of the corps. Unlike the Legionnaire officers, Operators are granted access to advanced weapons, armor, and equipment that needs additional specialized training. Also unlike the Officers, Operators rarely fight directly alongside the marines or sarakis soldiers, instead being deployed in Legionnaire only platoons and battalions for special operations. Gene mods and cybernetic enhancements are issued on a case to case basis. To limit the physical differences among the operators and keep operational cohesion.   Imperial Agent: Elite agents used for intelligence gathering, espionage, and clandestine operations. Combating threats both foreign and domestic.   Peace Keeper: Legionnaires trained to be the elite police force that can deal with the situations the civil police force is unable to. Riots that spiral out of control will be quelled by the peace keeper corps. This elite force is also trained in counter terrorism and all manner of domestic threats from hostage rescue to apprehending extremely dangerous criminal targets. As this corps operates in urban environments, they are urban combat specialists and occasionally exported off-world to fight in urban war zones on hostile worlds. Peace Keepers are trained to defend the urban centers/civilian population in case of outside invasion. They are expected to be the first line of defense against external threats, holding the line, absorbing the bulk of the fighting, and coordinating defenses while the civil police evacuate the citizens and emergency services carries out its duties. The Civil Police headquarters also doubles as a fortress forward operating base for the Peace Keeper Corps on most imperial worlds.   Goliath Pilot: Legionnaire that pilot the massive, multi-man war mechs. Theses massive beasts tower over the battlefield and serve as a walking weapons platform/ super tank.   Legionnaire Superior: Should a legionnaire cadet show prowess in combat or strategy beyond that of their peers, they have the option of undergoing a series of genetic modifications, cybernetic augmentations, and neural rewiring to become a centurion. Theses heavily modified candidates are the super soldiers of the legionnaire corps and the empire as a whole. They are faster, stronger, and more mentally formidable than their un-augmented brethren. Like the Operator corps, centurions fight in their own battle groups. Theses super warriors are deployed when all other options have failed and the battle calls for a superior class of warrior. Ones that can shrug off wounds that would kill a mortal man. Ones that can fight with less sleep, food, and water than even the most elite trained mortal warrior would not be able to survive off of. When theses titans take to the battlefield it is a sight to behold for all involved. Moving and fighting at speeds so fast, few mortals can even track the movements. Commonly deployed as hunter-killer units, small squads of legionnaire superiors can turn the battle by taking out key units. Occasionally a marine battle group will have a dedicated squad or even single legionnaire superior that serves as the group Champion. Single handily taking on the biggest threats on the battlefield and being a source of inspiration and moral for the men, legionnaire and marine alike.   Despite the vastly differing combat capabilities and strategic value of the legionnaires, all started their training at the Imperial Academy. As such all legionnaires are trained at the same facilities and often interact with each other for mock combat trials and simulations. Each group learning the strengths and weaknesses of the other and how as a whole they are expected to coordinate with each other on a battlefield. All legionnaires are given 2 insignia upon graduation. The first being the Academy Sword and Shield, representing their shared heritage as legionnaire cadets. The second is the insignia of their specialized legionnaire cadre; Naval Officer, Naval Combat, Space Marine Officer, Special Operations, Goliath Corps, and Legionnaire Superior.   A legionnaire's life is defined by war. Covering such large expanses of territory, the empire is in a perpetual state of war or at the least vying for control against an adversarial force somewhere.