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Jaysh al-Sathrati/The Old Guard (1650–1720)

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Jaysh al-Sathrati
Jaysh al-Sathrati Emblem.png
Active: In Goldshire: 23 Fasmas 1639 - 1650;
In Jadid Khaz Modan: 31 Qinamu, 1650–
Motto: عدالت قبل از رحمت
("Justice before Mercy")
In use by: Emir of Sathrati
Allegiance: Sathrati / ESB Group
Type: Territorial Defence Force
Role Combined Arms
Size:
  • 226,253 personnel
    • Officers: 3,512
    • NCO's: 16,209
    • Jaysh: 102,371
    • Contractors: 104,161
Nickname: Noor's Dogs
Current Commander: Lors Bakker-Kalirion
Allies
Opponents
Conflicts & Deployments

The personal bodyguard of the Emira of Sathrati and the House of Ayreon-Kalirion, formed after the disgrace of the Leonid Guard. Heavily implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity alleged to have occurred during the Civil War in Goldshire.

History

Formation and early years in Goldshire

With the Leonid Guard deemed to be unreliable and subsequently purged, a new personal force was recruited by Queen Noor in her capacity as Emira of Sathrati. This force, known as the Jaysh al-Sathrati, was brought into being on 23 Fasmas 1639.

Queen Noor intended that the recruitment process for this new force was so stringent than only the most loyal would be chosen for the more advanced programme to become guardsmen. More than half of the volunteers in the initial batches died in training. This had an impact on the recruitment and retention rate so a new policy was implemented whereby Doctors Ernst Cryptsinger and Tokaray al-Osman initiated selection procedures for the psychological and behavioural conditioning of the most suitable candidates for Queen Noor's personal guard. The washouts from this process, rather than being wasted through ill-considered brutality, were assigned to a new militia under the banner of the Jaysh al-Sathrati, and it was this force that was unleashed on Lunaris when the Queen ordered their deployment to flush out Assayers she believed were hiding amongst the villages and clans of that unusual county.

The Jaysh al-Sathrati, the core of whom were recruited from the Babkhi communities of Alalehzamin and Utasia and Agnesia and Wintergleam, became a militantly racist and Imperialist organization which stressed the 'Elwynnese' character of the Kingdom. A kingdom which, it held, had been donated to Elwynn in the previous century by Duke Leo Dine. Accordingly they had neither sympathy nor mercy for those Lunatics the Royal Government had sent them to police when they were first deployed on the 17th of Rugaall, 1640. Such indeed was Queen Noor's intention for she wanted Assayers being so fearful of capture that they would rather kill themselves on the spot[1].

The well armed Jaysh al-Sathrati quickly gained made their mark on a dumbstruck Lunaris. Several thousand people had been killed and as many as a million more had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis. Over 100,000 refugees poured towards Lune Villa, pursued by militiamen who clashed with detachments of the Lunatic Legion who were trying to direct the displaced into the Eth Lune Forest and away from the fighting. More than 70 Sathrati militiamen and 10 Legionnaires were killed in one gun battle in late Rugaall. An Imperial Army observer team reported that Lunatic villages and Octalune encampments were singled out, while the homes of migrant families were left untouched.

Now, with all the southern counties openly in revolt, the last pretence of restraint was cast aside and the Jayash al-Sathrati was unleashed to vent its full fury upon the people of Lunaris. With Imperial Forces advancing into the county to secure an area identified as the 'Southern Martial Law Zone', the Jaysh al-Sathrati had the task of holding open the rear, the so-called 'Feudal Zone' under the notional rule of the Khan of Cabbagefall, to allow lines of communication to be established and held. The Growth of partisan bands in Elsenar, Lunaris and Ran, the defection of the County Militias and threatened disintegration of the Goldshire Regulars, complicated the task and stretched the deployed forces of the Jaysh and the Imperial Army over a vastly increased area and to breaking point.

To protect the rear therefore, the Jaysh al-Sathrati was to crush the gangs of bandits it encountered with a singular brutality in order to annihilate them. One of the orders issued in the name of the Khan of Cabbagefall specified: "It may be necessary to seize the entire male population of a ward, insofar as their immediate liquidation is not an operational imperative on account of their participation in or support of the insurgency, and insofar as they are capable of work, to bring them to the ESB Rehabilitation Facilities of Meadowhall, Trafford and Arndale, for reassignment to areas where their labour can be utilised and their actions properly monitored and supervised." In short, if it proved too difficult to distinguish between a partisan and a lunatic, and the commander on the ground didn't feel sufficiently able to execute them on the spot, the answer of the Royal Government was to have the Jaysh al-Sathrati empty the county completely, creating a dead zone and calling it pacified.


The Jaysh al-Sathrati, lacking heavy weapons, artillery and air support, nonetheless served as a buffer between the Imperial Forces, which were paralysed by the so-called Triskelschrecken or Triskelion Terror.

After the Civil War in Goldshire concluded, the Jaysh al-Sathrati, after just about surviving long enough to be counted amongst the victors, received the equipment and banners of the disgraced Goldshire Regulars.

The Jaysh al-Sathrati further disgraced itself by remaining loyal to the Enemy of Humanity during the Year of the Four Kaisers. It was however, by an amendment to the Codex Aureus Regni, to remain a publicly funded organisation tasked with the defence of the Ayreon-Kalirion dynasty, the cost of which was to be borne by the defeated Kingdom of Goldshire as a mark of its shame.

In 1650, the newly elevated King, Ryker Everstone, chaffing at the cost of maintaining 120,000 men at arms, sought to defund and disarm the organisation. After being defeated in his early attempts to achieve this by Royal Decree, subsequently amended the Codex, effectively terminating the Jaysh al-Sathrati's existence as an active organisation garrisoned in Goldshire.

Reactivation in Jadid Khaz Modan

In reaction to this, Isabella Simrani-Kalirion, the great-aunt to Kaiser Ayreon IV, promulgated a farmân, effectively refounding the Jaysh al-Sathrati on the islands of Jadid Khaz Modan. She encouraged the Jaysh to quit the Kingdom and travel to her citadel of Arg-e Ardashir, promising one hundred grams of gold for each severed head of an Octalune brought into her audience chamber.

With the eclipse of the fortunes of the House of Osman in the isles following a hurried evacuation prompted by the White Plague, the Jaysh al-Sathrati returned to focusing on their primary mission, service as a guards corps in the service of the Emir of Sathrati.

Kalirion Fracture

With the Kalirion Fracture of 1671 and the death of their Emir, thousands of miles distant in Shirekeep the Jaysh were momentarily thrown into the utmost confusion, alongside their Imperial counterparts stationed in the isles. During the midst of a popular uprising against the Kalirion dynasty, which hopped island to island, spreading as a contagion or wildfire would, the Jaysh were wrong-footed, preoccupied by their own survival, and in no position to oppose neither the raids of the Black Legions nor the attempt by Yardistani nationalists to exploit the chaos and establish a hegemony over the islands. Obliged by adverse circumstances, the Jaysh retired in some considerable haste to the island of Zy-Rodun, the sole feudal holding owned outright by the Emirate of Sathrati in its own right without a convoluted and now ruptured chain of vassalage linking back to the Golden Mango Throne. On this island they expected to make their last stand, however that moment never came and instead, by some ideological quirk which had obliged them to forswear the measures necessary to preserve their newly acquired power, the Yardistani revolutionary movement began to unravel almost from the moment it had established itself. In their place a host of baronial, communal, and ethnic militias warred unceasingly to become the paramount powers, both in their islands and across the wider archipelago, checked only by the interventions of the Black Legions and Drak-Modan.

Shireroth, in an advanced state of collapse, barely holding on to the hinterland surrounding Shirekeep itself, had managed to lose the entirety of its coastline to the so-called Vulture States who had, in its stead, usurped authority over the provinces. Unable to restore order in the islands, even if it had wanted to, the Imperial Regency delegated the task to the Emirate of Sathrati. That the Jaysh were to prove unequal to the task of reconquering the islands for the Imperial Republic would in due course see that task subcontracted still further to the ESB Group in return for a series of unequal treaties known as the Protocols of Erudition. One consequence of these agreements would be that the Jaysh would now be effectively little more than hired mercenaries engaged in the service of the "Honourable Company"; for a palace guard corps that had prided itself upon its loyalty to their Emir, this was a bitter drop to swallow, even when sugared by incentivisation payments doled out by the ESB appointed Board of Control. The habitual grumbles of the soldiery, common to garrisoned troops the world over, soon began to acquire a singularly ominous tone.

Duties, Functions, and Responsibilities

The first duty of the Jaysh al-Sathrati was to serve as a palace guard for the House of Ayreon-Kalirion, for which the first regiment of the Jaysh continues to serve in this function. The force subsequently developed over time, adapting to the varying circumstances in which it found itself - from participating in the Goldshirian Civil War in the early 1640's to shouldering the burden of a campaign of pacification in Amity and Yardistan during the 1670's. In any event, the modern Jaysh has become - to all intents and purposes - a substantial Combined Arms Corps, albeit one built around obsolete equipment cast off by the former Imperial Forces. The Jaysh operates today as a professional standing military, a land-warfare orientated force but one obliged by its thirty-year residency in the Khaz Modanian archipelago to acquire maritime and aviation assets.

As agents of the (faltering) sovereign power across the range of islands claimed by Sathrati, the Jaysh are obliged to fulfil the range of responsibilities once upheld by the Imperial Forces and the Marshalcy, that is to say - in addition to territorial defence - the collection of overdue taxes, the intimidation of negligent feudatories, and the carrying on of the cycle of systematic repression and specifically targeted reprisals against recalcitrant local communities that formed the cornerstone of policing in the High Benacian and Neo-Babkhan traditions to which the Jaysh is an inheritor.

Administration, culture & doctrine

Originally comprised of Babkhi mercenaries drawn from Alalehzamin, Eura, and Babkhi enclaves in Natopia, the Jaysh, particularly after their resettlement in the islands of the Khaz Modan archipelago began to recruit locally. Every five years, from 1650 onwards, specially briefed commissioners of the Emir of Sathrati set out from Zy-Rodun and scoured the islands to find recruits to the Emir's vast network of slaves. The recruiting officials sought out unmarried boys between the ages of ten and fifteen. From these, they chose the fittest, the most handsome and the most intelligent to be elevated through servitude to a status exalted above those of most loyal subjects and denizens.

With education and special training, these new recruits would be inducted into the Schools of the Jaysh so as to form, in theory at least, an aristocracy of merit and service from which the soldiers and administrators of the Emirate would be drawn.

The recruiting drives were, understandably, regarded with mixed feelings by those conscripts destined to become the Emir's bondsmen. Many had no desire to leave behind their insular homes and Cedrist way of life and be brought up on Zy-Rodun as Zurvanites. As many, if not more perhaps, however welcomed the chance of escaping the hardships of plantation life and having the chance to rise to positions of power and privilege in the Emirati service.

Upon their arrival in the recruitment pens of Zy-Rodun the initiates to the Jaysh were first subjected to the Zurvanite ritual of purification, consisting of a triple cleansing, with gōmēz (cow’s urine), dust, and water, followed by nine nights’ seclusion, during which three simpler cleansings take place. The brightest and most promising youths were then put into the Palace Service, mirroring the court in Shirekeep, where they were enrolled into specialist schools that again mirrored the imperial equivalent.

Note should also be made of the reliance that the Jaysh places upon contractors, whether provided via subcontractors, directly hired, or in some cases impressed into service, to provide the totality of its administrative, logistical, and support needs. The variety of professions swept up under the umbrella of "contractor" is quite vast and includes:

  • signallers
  • cryptographers
  • communications officers
  • civil engineering officers
  • clerks
  • provisioners
  • officer companions
  • pain technicians
  • cudgellers
  • surveillance officers
  • analysts
  • logisticians
  • overseers
  • porters
  • labourers
  • support drivers
  • technicians
  • mechanical engineers
  • marine engineers
  • aviation & aerospace engineers

It should be noted that since 1689 AN the Victualling Board of the Jaysh al-Sathrati, established in that year, had awarded the contract for the provision of food, drink and supplies to the Transegale Trading Company of the Emirate of Sathrati, Inc. with the primary depot and magazines housed on the island of Zy-Rodun.

Order of Battle

  • 1st Division - Area Defence
    (inc Palace Guard & Royal Protection)
  • 2nd Division - Armoured Cavalry
    • 21st Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 22nd–40th & 124th Regiments - x19 Armoured Regiments
  • 3rd Division - Armoured Cavalry
    • 41st Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 42nd–60th & 123rd Regiments - x19 Armoured Regiments
  • 4th Division - Light Infantry
    • 61st Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 62nd–80th & 122nd Regiments - x19 Infantry Regiments
  • 5th Division - Light Infantry
    • 81st Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 82nd–100th & 121st Regiments - x19 Infantry Regiments
  • 6th (Naval) Division - Littoral Defence
    • 101st Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 102nd–120th Regiments - Minelaying Flotilla, Scouting Flotilla, Training Flotilla, Transport Flotilla
  • 7th (Air Support) Division - Army Cooperation / Air Support
    • 126th Regiment - x1 Command Squadron, x1 Military Police Squadron, x8 Logistics Squadrons
    • 127th–145th Regiments - Air Transport Wing, Army Cooperation Wing, Maritime Patrol Wing, Training Wing

Manpower

Unit Type Officers NCOs Jaysh Contractors
Command & Control 40 186 1,176 4,991
Military Police 29 133 840 1,883
Logistical Support 231 1,064 6,720 43,960
Area Defence 478 2,205 13,927 8,873
Armour 956 4,410 27,854 17,746
Infantry 956 4,410 27,854 17,746
Maritime Forces 412 1,900 12,000 8,962
Aviation 412 1,900 12,000 -
Total: 3,512 16,209 102,371 104,161

Equipment

Air

Land

  • Horjin CV36 (various configurations) – 7,061
  • Support Vehicles (various types) – 14,069
  • Trump 75mm SPAAG – 665
  • 80mm field gun – 1,140

Maritime

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