Emerald Guard

The Emerald Guard is a secret organization above even the Imperial Warmachine and the IBGV, created by the Imperator himself. While the Emerald Guard may seem small compared to the sheer size of the Warmachine and may not be as perversive as the ever-scheming IBGV, it is just as vital an instrument of the Imperator's righteous wrath - and every bit as deadly. The Guard is the weapon with which the Imperator strikes at enemies unassailable by any other means, for when the raw power of the military and the sinister subterfuge of the IBGV both fail, then it is up to the Imperator's finest to deliver the killing blow.
No enemy of the Imperator, of foreign and alien origin, or even from within the Star Empire itself, can truly be safe from the Emerald Guard. Wherever they may be, whatever they may be, the Emerald Guard will find them and bring unto them the Imperator's harsh mercy - the very last thing they will experience in their artificially shortened lives.
==Organization==
The Emerald Guard's origins predate even that of the establishment of the Bragulan Star Empire. They began as the revolutionary vanguard of Darvyl S. Byzon's movement prior his ascension as Imperator and the consolidation of his beneviolent regime. The original Emerald Guard were handpicked loyalists chosen by Byzon himself, chosen from his innermost circle to be his protection squad. They were the ones trusted to ensure the security of those things which were most important to him, and they were also entrusted with removing anything Byzon deemed to be a threat. Even his closest allies and friends, once their power threatened to be remotely near that of Byzon's, have found themselves summarily executed by the Guard.
It is said that the founder of the IBGV itself, Bragvreyentyi Bearya, was brought before Byzon for summary judgment by the Emerald Guard. To this day, it is the Guard that lurks in the shadows that even the IBGV fear to tread, for it is the blood-green seal of the Imperator that grants the Guard the authority to condemn even the highest ranking members of the Imperial Bureau of Galactic Vigilance - or any other agency of the Imperator and Empire, for that matter - to fates worse than death. Conniving chiefs, over-ambitious admirals, deceitful directors, all those who thought they could get the better of the Imperator have found themselves to be dead wrong.
It is the Emerald Guard who watches over the watchmen. Indeed, such is the great responsibility and privilege bestowed upon them that they remain at the Imperator's side, charged with the greatest duty of protecting Byzon himself. Thus, through this, it is no wonder that it is they, and no one else, can carry out their great duties with the undiluted power and authority of the Eternal Leader of the Glourious Star Empire of Bragule.
==Inconceivable Missions Forces==
The Emerald Guard maintains its own intelligence apparatus that, while not quite as exhaustive as the IBGV's, is nontheless effective in doing what it does - tracking select enemies of Bragulanity marked for termination, and carrying out said termination when the time comes. The key advantage the Guard has over the IBGV is that it can acces the the Bureau's files with its Imperator-given authority, something it can just as easily do to any other agency of the Empire, without fearing any reprecussions. But due to the Guard's secure position above the petty infighting between the IBGV, the Imperial Warmachine, and other government agencies, it doesn't even have to resort to such forceful means of information-acquisition, as it can simply ask for whatever it wants and the agencies will handily give it to them - cooperating willingly to better ingratiate themselves to the ones closest to the Imperator himself. Ironically, this approach has allowed the Emerald Guard to just as easily reach into almost as many facets of the Bragulan bureaucracy as the IBGV has with its more intrusive methods. With its place firmly by the Imperator's side, the Emerald Guard enjoys a productive relationship with not only the IBGV, but also the Imperial military and most of the bureaucracy, and when there is something grave these respective agencies cannot handle, they often do not hesitate to refer matters to the Guard for swift liquidation. They willingly cooperate, because they know the Guard can just as easily liquidate them.
===Unconventional Operators===
These are units charged with the systemic liquidation of targets marked for termination, the feared kill squads of the Emerald Guard. They are the Bragulan elite and come in a wide variety of forms, from the humblest E.W.O.K. to the deadliest of Cybrag Supercommandos. They specialize in active measures, including assassination, demolition, sabotage, special operations wetworks, covert reconnaissance, and deep infiltration of enemy territory, to name a few. They are above and beyond even the special forces ingrained in the Legions of Liberation at the corps or army levels, and are often drawn from those distinguished ranks and further refined into far deadlier operators. These Emerald Guard Unconventional Operators see action in warzones inside and outside the Bragulan Star Empire and are to a bear seasoned veterans of some of the most brutal campaigns in galactic history. They are also the best-equipped fighting forces in the Bragulan Star Empire, orders of magnitude above the standards of the Legions of Liberation and its conscript horde. The Guard has in its disposal not only the most lethal operators known to bear, but also stabbing-edge Bragulan technology and reverse-engineered alienware. They are some of the most efficient killers in the galaxy.
Unconventional Operations are divided into three conventional operations groups, with a fourth group that officially does not exist.
====Storm Brigades====
The Storm Brigades are the closest thing to conventional units fielded by the Emerald Guard. Not quite as ridiculously specialized as Commando Elites and E.W.O.K.S., but nonetheless just as effective in their function - to decisively engage whole enemy formations face to face, up-close and personal, rather than engage in stealth and subterfuge. The Storm Brigades serve as the Emerald Guard's shock troopers in breaching enemy positions, either to facilitate the covert insertion of Commando Elites and E.W.O.K.S. by performing distractions and the like, or to serve as bragup and retrieve them from hot-zones, or come in as the nuclear cavalry and follow the commandos in mopping things up.
Unlike either two branches of the Inconceivable Missions Forces, the Storm Brigades often employ heavy weaponry, not just in terms of personal wargear but in aerospace support and armored cavalry, making them look much more like a Shock Army from the Legions of Liberation than the a stereotypical crack commando outfit. But be that as it may, the Storm Brigades are nonetheless far above the Bragulan conscript trencher or volunteer shock trooper - the Stormers are an elite commando force, drawn from the finest units of the military and trained to fight in a wide variety of environments and conditions against any foe, and employing tactically flexible doctrines from the favored saturation-nuking, to tank and mechanized infantry combined arms advances, to rapid aerospaceborne assaults. The Storm Brigades fill a unique niche between the other Emerald Guard special forces groups and the conventional armies of the Legions of Liberation - not quite as specialized as the former, but still more tactical in nature than the latter's overwhelming strategic scope.
The Storm Brigades typically recruit from the Legions of Liberations' Storm Detachments and also the Legions' perpetual rival, the Space Fleet's Beachhead Excursionary Advanced Reconnaissance Squadrons, the Navy BEARS. Tankers and pilots from the Legions and Fleet are also drawn in for the Brigades' vehicular support. In turn, the best operators in the Brigades are once again recruited into an even higher order: the Commando Elite.
====Commando Elite====
The Commando Elite are the cream of the crop, selected from the best the Imperial Warmachine has to offer, from the special units of the Legions of Liberations' Shock Armies, to the Space Fleet's highly trained naval infantry specialists, to even the IBGV's 'wetworkers'. These agents are each selected for the unique skills they possess and formed into ad-hoc units based on their complementary abilities, with each operator being the best at what they do. As such, each unit can draw on a wide variety of lethal skills and abilities to perform whatever mission they are tasked with. They form the core of the Inconceivable Missions Forces, thus their talents are not wasted in conventional battles and up-front fights. Rather, their missions often see them infiltrating enemy territory to perform objectives that may otherwise take entire armies to achieve - from sabotaging enemy facilities and assassinating key leadership personnel, to hostage rescue or conversely hostage-abduction and even the elimination of the enemy's own infiltrating special forces.
Due to the nature of their operations, the Commando Elite seldom operate with the biggest or the most powerful weapons and hardware - because they don't need to. Instead, to get the job done, these battle-hardened veterans rely on stealth and guile, as well as their superior training, years of battlefield experience and a set of unique talents that make each of them the best of their respective fields.
The usual layout of Commando Elite squads often include demolitions specialists, assassins, scouts, infiltrators, IBGV 'technicians', alientech-hackers, and experts in extreme-environment warfare (zero-g operators, EWOK jungle warriors, arctic warfare polar bears, etc.). Unlike other more conventional outfits, the Commando Elite runs a relatively loose ship with lots of leeway given to the crack commandos since they are the very best operators in the Bragulan military. This makes them a very tight knit group of mavericks whose loyalty to the unit and each other is only matched by their unquestioning dedication to the Imperator. While the unconventional tactics they employ and their roguish behavior may lead more orthodox Bragulan commanders to consider them as loose cannons, the result of their wetworks more than speak for themselves.
====Extreme Warfare Operations Kill Squads====
The E.W.O.K.S. are long-term deep reconnaissance specialists trained to penetrate enemy territory while equipped with only the bear necessities, lacking much in the way of advanced equipment and weapons, but making up for it with sheer intestinal fortitude and rugged wilderness know-how. They are meant to scout and perform prolonged intelligence gathering rather than take direct action or combat roles. They often stay hidden behind enemy lines for periods ranging from weeks to months, sometimes even years. They are armed with only basic weaponry, without any advanced gear to minimize energy emissions and avoid detection. They frequently practice on-site procurement (OSP) for their equipment and even food. To do this, they are trained extensively to operate in a wide variety of environments, from the urban jungle of megacities to the jungle-jungles of deathworlds and other equally harsh conditions, to the point where they can function with minimal hindrance in ecological extremes that would rather inconvenience or even outright kill other less-hardy troopers.
The E.W.O.K.S. mostly recruit from a diminuitive Bragulan subspecies hailing from an inhospitable jungle moon, tribal primitives noted for their physically small stature that belies their incredible strength and ingenuity, and their fierce martial culture. The extreme training these recon operators undergo makes them master guerrilla fighters, and they can (and have repeatedly) successfully take on and take down technologically superior opponents with relatively crude and simple weaponry. Their utter lethality makes them a terror in OpFor and Red Cell exercises, where with their primitive 'special' weapons and tactics have bested many of the Imperator's finest troops.
The very small stature of the E.W.O.K. operators make them very effective in sneaking missions, allowing them to hide in places most cannot manage, while their life-signs are easily mistaken for that of native animal life. Their cute teddy-bear appearances conceal their true nature as violent savages, making their enemies prone to underestimating them, a fatal error to make in an E.W.O.K. ambush where sticks and stones will do more than just break bones.
Game info:
Unconventional Operators
*1600 points for 16 million troops divided into:
**Storm Brigades @ 50,000 per $1, x5 kit modifier
**Commando Elite @ 30,000 per $1, x3 kit modifier
**EWOKS @ 10,000 per $1, x1 kit modifier
==The Universal Bragulan==
When Byzon created the Emerald Guard with his bare bear hands, he ensured that the organization was shrouded in an impenetrable veil of secrecy - but even beyond these paranoiac measures, above and away from the furthest reaching tentacles of even his own own IBGV, the Imperator has made something far greater and more terrific deep within the Emerald Guard, a secret known only to him and a few others. For after the Great Civil War, and in foreseeing the great conflicts against the Apexai and Solarians to come, Byzon knew that for Bragulanity to survive and prevail it had to become something far greater than its constituent parts. It had to embrace Byzonism not only in words, thoughts and deeds, but in body, mind and soul as well.
Thus did he himself select the most loyal of his revolutionary vanguard, the members who caught his eye in their unfaltering dedication to Imperator and Empire. He chose them, gathered them, sifted through them and cast aside those deemed unfit to his most stringent standards. After all this, only those deemed worthy, those who had proven themselves to be true Byzonist Bragulans, became the subject of the Imperator's greatest experiment.
It was Byzon's vision to enbragulate the entire Bragulan species, to ideologically purify them to match his truest Byzonist vision. But while the mind was willing and the soul was strong, the body that held them was all too weak - the flesh was destroyable, the soul corruptible, and even the thoughts of his most stalwart fanatics could betray them. Thus did he seek to make a new Bragulan, a better Bragulan, by replacing their mortal shells with the creations of Bragulanity that had allowed it to transcend its mere physical limitations - trading living flesh for the steel machines of the unending Atomic Age that so invigorated the glourious Star Empire of Bragule. They would forsake the crude biological processes that had shaped their species for the iron techno-forges that would create the Tomorrow Bragulan, sculpting it into an image of the Imperator's own choosing, the Universal Bragulan.
For long did the Coryphaeus of Science, Byzon, envision a bright and Bragulan future, when the entire race would be replaced by cold steel forms with iron fists and atomic hearts, with him, an immortal and undying Imperator, at its very core. He dreamed of this day, when the Tomorrow Bragulans would conquer not just the entire galaxy, but the whole universe, before moving out to bring other dimensions under the heel of his magnificient boot.
The days when the Bragulan Star Empire encompasses all stars is still thankfully far from reality, but the Imperator's great experiment continues on and has already bore fruit - germinating the seed of his grotesque progeny.
====Cybrag Atomic Revengeance Echelon====
Out of the Unibrag prototypes created over the years, the Imperator has ingeniously purposed a legion of one million into atomic-powered cybernetic killing machines - Cybrags. These are the core of the Emerald Guard's Supercommando corps, and one thousand of these one million stand guard at the Byzon's World Throne on Bragule - protecting the Imperator himself, as sons would their father.
The Cybrag is the ultimate Bragulan warrior, each one powered by the mighty atom, given obscene strength with nuclear-powered biceps and servohydraulic musculatures, and enhanced to the point where the mechanical and organic are indistinguishable from one another in a crude, undeniably Bragulan synthesis. The greatest failing of the flesh, its propensity to wither and die under radioactivity, has been long surpassed and the Cybrag can not only withstand radiation, it can thrive in it. This allows them to use the latest and greatest in Bragtech personal weaponry, the KODIAAK mega-armors.
The Cybrags can perform the missions that normal (as far as they can be called 'normal') Bragulan special forces are incapable of. They can storm the most formidable enemy fortifications, up to and including boarding of Apexai war-saucers as seen in the Siege of Bolshaya Chernovyi where the desperate grey alienoids self-destructed their own vessels rather than give up their ultra-xenotech to the boarders. The Cybrag Supercommandos are capable of matching the super-elites of other militaries toe to toe, or butchering whole units of inferior enemies with contemptuous ease. In their armors of contempt, each of them amount to walking tanks, living nuclear engines of war.
The only solace the enemies of the Empire can have is the fact that the Cybrags are deployed very selectively - for their sheer destrucity is only matched by their cost, as each Cybrag is literally worth the lives of thousands of lesser and more easily replaceable Bragulan soldiers.
Game info:
Supercommandos
*1500 points for 1 million troops @ 10,000 per $1, x15 kit modifier
===Techno-Mortuaries===
Where captured alientech artifacts are kept and dissected. TBA
Game info:
*3,100 points spent for total Emerald Guard forces
Category:Bragule
Category:Ground Forces