Blade Breakers

Cult of Struggle

The culture of the Blade Breakers evolved from the camraderie of the 961st. This eventually progressed into an almost 'warrior-cult' mentality among its members, with some Breakers even dedicating themselves to Gods of War from their respective cultures, and sharing the nature of their War Gods with one another. It is seen as a sign of respect to share such a thing with your compatriots.
One does not join the Blade Breakers for the promise of good pay, as might be the case with joining other mercenary organizations. Rather, its recruits are largely drawn on ideological grounds. The warband's chief belief is thus: The galaxy is very much an unforgiving place and one's purpose in life - their reason for even existing - is not initially clear cut. By entering into fraternal bonds and immersing one's self in some of the most difficult circumstances that sapients can create, being that of war, an individual can develop the tenacity needed to not only survive their existence, but develop their own sense of purpose through such struggle.
Though the belief is akin to a religion, members of the Blade Breakers are not expected to abandon their original faiths. If anything, they are encouraged - if with delivery that places greater importance of battlefield conduct than traditional morals. Multi-denomination chaplains are thus not only a commonly seen position in the ranks of the warband, but a very much respected one at that. This is especially true as Blade Breakers Chaplains are not stopped from participating on the battlefield as other, pacifism-inclined preachers might.

Siblings in Strife

Among the ranks of the Breakers, the terminology of 'brother' and 'sister' is commonly used to refer to a fellow Breaker. Though there is a true pecking order, it is family-like, as all Breakers are the violent children of the Gods of War, and fight side by side. As such, when Blade Breakers come across those abandoned in the field of battle, or who have had their lives upended by violence they did not take part in, especially children, the Breakers often make an effort to reunite them with their family. If this is not possible, they will take the child in, and they shall be raised as one of their own. From that day forward, they are initiated as a Breaker and taught their ways.

Pale Armored Oath

The white paint that characterizes Blade Breaker armor has its history in the Krogan Rebellion and Turian Unification War. The original 961st Legion had a greal deal of tactical emphasis on boarding actions. Since these would frequently evolve infantry crossing in E.V.A., their armor plating was made white to better reflect solar radiation and thus keep cool. In the modern Blade Breakers, the color is now kept for a myriad symbolic reasons. First is the high visibility of it is intended to mean that warriors are unafraid of being spotted, wanting their foes to see them. Second is the "paint canvas" philosophy of turning the armor other than white through organic paints on the battlefield. Third is white's association in many galactic cultures with death - something the Blade Breakers are inclined to represent with their occupation.
Thus it is that the white armor of the Blade Breakers is so synonymous with them that the "pale armored oath" is named after it.

Never Truly Retired

Members of the warband are not obliged to serve for life, at least actively, and may retire after one-fifth of their species average natural lifespan has passed in the ranks. For humans and turians, this number stands at 30 years, while for asari and krogan, 200 years is the given span. Granted, many will be killed in combat before they reach these marks - and those that do often still choose to stay for the rest of their lives, seeking surgical augmentation to keep them combat viable.
For those that do reach retirement and choose to take it, they are afforded the honor of keeping their armor, their shortsword or other backup weapon, and an end-of-service payment. This being said, there is considered to be no such thing as an "ex-Blade Breaker" and retired individuals are expected to aid the warband in their own ways when able - including ending their own lives if an enemy is trying to interrogate them for intelligence.

Early History

Being an organization that has been effectively destroyed and then revitalized on more than one occasion across the years, the Blade Breakers' various returns to prominence have been dubbed "Foundings" within the organization. The very first of these is the so-called Null Founding, used to describe the original 961st Shock Assault Legion of the Turian Hierarchy.
Truly earning its start during the Unification Wars, its personnel largely came in the form of loyalists from the Gothis and Parthia Colonies. Frequently considered to be "backwards" and even "barbaric" by their Palaven kinsmen, the legion's members nevertheless proved themselves to be highly capable; garnering a speciality in infantry assault and boarding actions against separatist forces. Further developing into outright tactical doctrine, the 961st would carry its legacy of effectiveness - and suicidal tenacity - all the way through the course of the Krogan Rebellions.

The "First" Founding of the Blade Breakers comes near the end of the Krogan Rebellions. Having suffered extrenuous casualty rates through some of the most horrific infantry engagements against the Tuchankan war machine, leadership of the 961st legion slowly but surely had become embittered; not necessarily at the losses themselves, but for the fact their men were dying at the behest of ungrateful aliens - the Citadel Council.
To the high command of the 961st, it seemed the Hierarchy had spent a whole generation of the turian population in a war that was never originally theirs, and that their "reward" for this was roundabout political subjugation by outsiders. Attempting to share their view with others in the turian state, the officers of the legion instead became isolated from their peers, if not being reprimanded by higher authority for their opinions. Tensions grew. The view held by command soon trickled down through the legion's ranks. Tension and xenophoboic remarks became the trademarks of any interaction with Council forces. Hatred usually reserved for their krogan enemies was bleeding over to anyone who wasn't turian.
The rubicon for the legion came in the aftermath of a friendly fire incident. Salarian naval elements had struck a krogan military site with orbital bombardment - but had failed to realize that 961st personnel were assaulting the base at the same time. The resulting loss of life led to the legion's general boarding the responsible vessel and - after some insinuations of incompetency towards the 961'st men - ordered the accompanying legionaries to exterminate the ship's bridge staff.
They obliged, and so did the legion's naval assets in abruptly engaging the union vessels utterly unprepared for a violent attack by their supposed allies. Naturally, this resulted in the legion being recalled to Palaven for judgement. At first intending to follow this order, the general of the 961st was convinced by their subordinates to pursue a different path. The Blade Breakers were formed, becoming a paramilitary group fighting all-comers for as long as they persisted; Krogan, Council, and eventually even Hierarchy forces could be numbered among those the former legion came into hostile contact with. While initially presumed to have a minimal lifespan for the sheer number of enemies they had made, the newly formed brotherhood would draw in new recruits who shared a similar mindset on the Hierarchy's future with the Council.

First something of a terrorist organization before evolving into a mercenary warband through need of resources, the Blade Breakers would try and morally raise themselves above other soldiers of fortune through their "Pale Armored Oath." Effectively a vow undertaken by each and every member that tied these individuals to a stringent code of behavioral boundaries. Said boundaries did not stop the Blade Breakers from committing atrocities against various foes, though did offer a nexus for their morale and culture to solidify around.
Enjoying a string of successes ranging into a decade after the deployment of the Genophage, the Blade Breakers would meet their first extinction at the hands of their former brethren. Baited onto a world through the offer of an especially high paying contract, the mercenaries would be ambushed by a vengeful Hierarchy combat group; outraged at the shame of their apparent treachery and committing to the annihilation of the rogue legion. The removal of a stain on the Hierarchy's honor.

Modern History

The Breakers' refounding during the compounding years saw the organization reformed into a true mercenary company; but it held to its historical precedent. Over time, many alien races joined the ranks of the Blade Breakers, and the organization swelled to its largest size in recorded history. The organization continued to operate as an army-for-hire in the Terminus Systems and Attican Traverse, rarely setting foot in Citadel Space.
By 2179, the Breakers had become a potent force, feared and respected by even the likes of the Blue Suns and Blood Pack. It was in August of 2179 when the Blade Breakers answered a request for a private army that would seal the fate of many of its members. Mizora's working population had set to oust their corporate masters, and the financial superpowers of Ariake Technologies and Eldfell-Ashland Energy were not going to take that lying down. After their in-house corporate armies proved insufficient, mercenaries and private armies were called in; the Blade Breakers notably among them.
The newly proclaimed 'Revolutionary Army of Mizora', or R.A.M., had fully expected a company response to the planet's new belief in self-governance and had prepared accordingly with less-than-stellar moral boundaries of their own. Their primary "infantry" would be vorcha, with the local population of the species being directly encouraged via food and territorial allocations to grow as quickly as possible in the few years before the corporate invasion began in earnest. Supplementing their presence, the sizable quantity of uranium on Mizora was quickly put to military applications - namely nuclear weaponry, both conventional and improvised. This, alongside modern weaponry such as Disruptor Torpedoes, set the table for truly brutal warfare - and its participants arrived eagerly.
The Blade Breakers' 93rd Assault Clade, ever one to be at the very tip of an attack, immediately began to suffer severe casualties. Mercenary warriors would breach bunker complexes and residential sectors, only to be swarmed by improbably large hordes of vorcha supported by the traditional combined arms forces of the R.A.M. Given the culture of the warband, retreat from such encounters was a rare occurrence. Given that mercenaries beyond the Blade Breakers did not share the same belief and frequently fell back (if not running for their lives), the sight of white armored bodies surrounded by slain vorcha became very frequent on the front lines of the conflict. It was at this point that the Breakers' high command began to look at the situation with impatient eyes. The bounty would raise the warband greatly, indeed. Nothing less than full deployment would do.
With over two hundred thousand mercenaries already believed to be in-theatre against Mizora's revolutionary forces, the Blade Breakers opted to commit the whole of their strength to this singular conflict. Recalling Clades from campaigns all across the Terminus to assemble at Omega, a force of nearly forty thousand combatants with supporting logistics and fleet elements gathered to assault the border world - not to mention offer reprieve to their already heavily depleted comrades on the ground. For the Blade Breakers already on the world, in spite of the fact that the R.A.M. was collapsing under its own weight, their ability to fight, even survive, had become a shadow of its former self. Nearly eighty percent of those originally deployed were now listed as fatalities, while the hope of the rest of the Breakers arriving died as they abruptly lost contact with high command. When the end of the war finally came, it would not be with a glorious final assault. Instead, the Blade Breakers were forced to try defending their gains from the predations of other mercenary groups - and largely failing. Even the corporations that had originally hired the warband would ultimately betray them as their weakness became apparent; distancing themselves from Mizora entirely.

As far as those who still dwelled upon it were concerned, Mizora was dead; killed many times over in the attempted defiance of capitalist masters. Nuclear winter put much of the world's flora and fauna to the sword of extinction, leaving swathes of black and grey visible from orbit wherever there was once vibrant, natural color. Frontier settlements and even entire cities were rendered into ghostly husks, where the only life still clinging on was that of roaming tribes of scavengers, preying on each other as much as they did any survivors in these places. The corporations returning to the ruined world did not bother to try reclaiming such sectors, instead establishing fortress-like resource nodes that stripped away eezo buried in atomic ash through mass strip mining.
It is not known what happened to the survivors of the Blade Breakers deployed to Mizora, nor is it known where the rest of the organization disappeared to after departing from Omega. All attempts to contact the Blade Breakers in the following years have been met with silence, or messaging errors. Many theorize they were destroyed in some hidden conflict as reprisal for some unseen sin. What is known is that, in the weeks and months following the conclusion of the Siege of Mizora, reports of certain corporate rats being bloody eagled in their own homes were not impossible to find.