Hey, Veeky Forums, please share ispiration of a small order of elite, badass troops, assassins or spies who fuck shit up as soon as they enter the picture. They can be from real life, a setting you played in or from fiction.
I'm looking for stuff like:
>Spartans from Halo
>Varangian Guards of the Byzantine Empire
>Seal Team 6
>Witchers
>Kingsguard from ASoIaF
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Taarnakians from heavy metal. I assume they aren't all busty half naked milfs, but don't let that stop you
>>See's this image...
Well huh....
Janissaries
youtube.com
The Red Shoulders from Armored Trooper VOTOMS. Hand picked troops who display abnormal survival rates whose initiation into the unit is a live fire exercise where those unfit to join or remain in the unit are killed off. Also known as the "Bloodsucker Batallion", they were known for being unleashed on the battlefield rather than deployed, and more than once they would attack troops on their own side if it meant protecting their secrets from the rest of the military.
Unless the guys from OP's pic roll up
...
>Pikes counter horsemen
>"Let's just use longer lances"
genius.
...
Sardukars
The Arditi. Italian special forces, ww1 era, their motto was "we win, or we all die." Their standing orders were to engage, at no time to think of retreat, and to show absolutely no mercy.
Who knew the Ottoman empire had such groovy beats?
Fekete Sereg, the Black Army of Hungary. Formed under the orders of King Matthias Corvinus and directly inspired by army groups of Julius Caesar, the Black Army was one of the first professional armies in Europe since the Roman Legions. They wore all black armour inspired by their liege's nickname 'Corvinus' (latin for 'The Raven').
They helped the Kingdom of Hungary establish itself as a great power during the 15th century, and even boasted the first calvary formations known as Huszars.
I have one for a campaign I'm running. They are wizard knights of a Arcanocracy. People who can use magic are the ruling class etc. Nobilis Oblige has them fielding powerful battle wizard's in mass combat,. They also have a Code of Chivalry & such, basically taking the place of knights in society, where these guys are seen at the brave honorable & glorious lantern jawed dudes to live up to.
I call them the Zauberhaft, because the world is a Not! Holy Roman Empire
Weren’t knights actually kind of rare and badass compared to most soldiers?
basically any force from the deathstalker books who weren't rank and file, it went from 8' werewolf geniuses to a semi hivemind band of cyborgs to psionics who could set melt steel with pyrokinesis to tech zombies to aliens who spat energy blasts to other aliens whose psychic choir allowed them to fly in space and punch starships to death and we haven't even started on the crazy bastard shit the protagonists pulled yet. Essentially any relevant group had at least two types of ott headbangers, if not more.
>Blood Knights
An order of knights who acted as elite troops and personal guard to Emperor Chebkorsis. They were established by the Emperor himself, who was once Blood Knight in his younger years, and are deeply devoted to their dark god. They practice dark magic, focusing particularly on rituals that sap life force from enemies and transfer it to the caster, but also the raising of undead. It should be noted that the Emperor and his Blood Knights are lizard-like race that are immune to poison and disease, and so often employ such things in their weaponry.
The knights wear plate armor that is stained red and wield a sword they call a kasshar, which is similar to a long sword but with a slight flare near the point, giving the tip a sort of diamond shape. They also carry a circular, slightly convex steel shield engraved with a wreath of thorns. The god they worship is called Uhashatmat and has the head of a nautilus, but the tentacles are longer and more closely resemble those of an octopus. It has a massive, muscular humanoid body covered in salmon-colored scales, four arms, and large spikes protruding from it's back. Uhashatmat is the god of fear and is so highly revered for his blessings, which surrounds the knights in an aura that instills fear in their enemies.
the doppelsoldners, essentially old timey stormtroopers with zweihanders, these were the guys that you would send to break pikewalls.
Janissaries have already been mentioned, so I'm going to throw in the Mumluks as well.
Along with being crack shock troops, these guys were a bit of fantastic social engineering by the societies that produced them:
One of the biggest threats to rulers before professional standing armies of the early modern era started popping up was that your man power was based on men your vassals levied for you. And obviously those men were called up and under command of those vassals and not you (the ruler) personally. Which meant the key to not getting fucked was keeping your vassals either happy or playing them off each other so they could not coalesce against you en-masse. But what it you just got a bunch of kids from outside your culture who were legally your slaves, and then trained them up to be a standing army? You could basically cut out the middle man. These guys would be soldiers, generals, viziers, and military governors. But because they were not nor could ever be landed nobility they could not establish hereditary power-bases to give you or your heirs headaches down the line.
Surprising absolutely no one when the Janissary corps gained enough political clout to force the Ottoman Sultan to actually start giving them the political perks of comparative western nobility a bunch of them started revolting literally every other generation just like the gentry in every other feudal system. And the Mamluks on the other hand just fucking staged a coup and took over the empire in Egypt
Are you asking existing examples or things that we come up with in our settings?
But since someone never already named them..
>huskarls, or housecarls
Viking/saxon elite soldiers who acted as a king's bodyguard. Their sole purpose was fucking shit up with their huge axes and cleaving armored men in twain. In the bayeoux tapestry a huscarl is depicted decapitating a warhorse with a single swing
A setting I have in which, long story short, every color of dragons and dragonborn have a specialty.
Bronze dragonborn are basically the SEALs of the Dragonborn.
They're usually sent to clean areas of undesirables, in squads consisting of several 3-man teams.
Teams consist of one winged-variant mage providing fire-support and buffs, one tank to engage the enemy, and one rogue to control the field.
One team is capable of facing down a well-trained platoon of soldiers, or a whole company of mooks.
A new move made by the council of dragons, is adding eyeless masks to load-outs for civilian eradication missions. The masks magically allow the dragonborn to magically detect their enemies without seeing them. This was done in response to the cost of retiring bronzes early due to PTSD suffered from one too many civilian massacres.
Rate it please
Eh, i'm not particularly fond of dragons when they're not highly intelligent yet goistical and whimsical creatures that dwell in deep caves over hoards of gold, but whatever floats your boat
Free Companies was the generic name for contingents of mercenaries led by captains who were most usually from the lower nobility or bastard sons of higher nobility, they also included some low-ranking clergy, such as Arnaud de Cervole, an infamous mercenary nicknamed “the Archpriest”.
The Free Companies were very professional relative to other military forces of the age: companies had established command structures as well as butiniers to share out the loot and secretaries to record loot and to write out the captain's demands. Some even had uniforms
By the mid-14th century, when the Hundred Years War was in full swing, Englishmen had come to dominate the mercenary companies. The White Company under John Hawkwood became one of the most famous. So prominent were the English that “Les Anglais” and “Inglese” were used as terms for these groups. This fed into a widespread perception on the continent that the English were a violent nation.
The White Company was a coalition of different companies under individual captains. At the top was its captain-general (Hawkwood). He was advised by a council representing the individual companies, and had under him a hierarchy of constables, marshals, sub-marshals, and corporals.
The White Company struck terror into the hearts of Italians. They marched through the night, fighting all year long in a country where war had been restricted to the summer.
What most shocked the Italians was their brutality, which even exceeded that of German mercenaries. They systematically burnt villages and towns-raids designed to destroy the enemy’s economy by burning fields and destroying harvests.. They tortured and murdered prisoners who would not pay ransom. They also excelled at seizing towns by trickery, specializing in night and surprise assaults
>Sidhean Hearthguard
In my setting, elves (who call themselves Sidhe because i'm an unimaginative prick) are a race, as long as the main continent is concerned, of conquerors coming from another continent across the great sea.
After centuries of war, conquest and eventual defeat, the elves who established on the continent carved out a kingdom for themselves after much of their old territory has been reliquished to humans.
The Sidhean Hearthguard are a sort of Knightly order in elf society. All its members are elves who distinguished themselves while serving in the army of prowess in battle, courage and leadership skills. Very few elves are selected every decade to take part in the initiation to the order, a grueling ordeal from which only the best of the best come out victorious. This order is alsoone of the few ways an elf can rais his standing in the rigid elven hierarchy, since all it's memebers are elevated to the rank of nobles upon initiation, even if low-born.
Once called Sidhean Crusaders, this order of elves were once the ellite shock troops of the elven army, but after their defeat they were reorganised as a purely defencive force. Now they work as bodyguards for figures of state, other than roaming the countryside defending the elven civilian population from bandits and monsters. Since after the end of the war, members of the hearthguard are forbidden to cross the border of the elven kingdom, unless they recieve a special task from their grand master or the king himself.
On the battlefield, they can be easily spotted for they wear a very distinctive dark plate and wield elegant, single-edged greatswords
Love these guys. The Medieval Middle East was practically Sci-Fi sometimes.
Also, Baibars the Mamluk Sultann would make a great antagonist. He's almost an anti-Conan (movie version): starts life as a tribal refugee, his people get attacked, he gets sold into slavery, learns to be a supreme warrior, defeats a seemingly invincible army, and eventually topples an empire and becomes a King and Conqueror. He was also incredibly brutal, and he loved cats.
Neat! I like the description of their god.
