Apollonian Guards of the Eastern Imperium

History

Descended from the regiments of the Apollonian Guard sundered from the remainder of the Palatini Corps by the Revolution of 1617, Kaiser Gaelen IV's Apollonian Guard remained in Kildare and was reorganised and tasked with the defence of the Imperial Household and the Heavenly Light in Daocheng. In spite of fulfilling this role diligently and without incident for the greater part of its history, there were occasions where the reputation of the Guard had been called in to question. The first lapse was the loss of Daocheng to the Jexit rebels during the early stages of the Geming War, the next occurred sixty-years later with the unexplained circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Chidao Emperor, which set in train the host of troubles that would follow an afflict the empire. The final disgrace occurred in 1704 AN when the officers of the Guard sought to hide the truth of the widespread rebellion from the Heavenly Light and the Imperial Household until the very moment when the capital was on the point of being overwhelmed.

From the depths of the disgrace into which they had been cast, the Apollonian Guard was recalled to its sense of duty and honour by the marshal Li Suyi, then in exile in the International Mandate. Given an opportunity to redeem themselves for their failures, the guardsmen were readily recruited into the conspiracy that would make them unlikely allies of the Tegong and the Humanist exiles in Arboria. Coordinated by Tegong intermediaries, the guardsmen, disguised as mutinous troops from the People's Revolutionary Army, staged the sudden assault upon the Congress of the Nokarodo Faction held in Daocheng during the sixth month of 1707 AN. The conflagration that would claim the life of General Secretary Wang Wei and the principle leadership cadres of the syndicalist movement was replicated at the regional level with coordinated assaults carried out by the Tegong, Talons of the Archon, and desperate bands of dispossessed youths from the nobility and burgesses - the latter recruited in the days prior to the assault on their neighbourhood prefectures and fortified with stirring patriotic speeches, the promise of pay, and generously poured cups of rice-wine.