Imperial Bragulan Army

The Imperial People's Legions of Liberation are the physical manifestation of the might of the Imperator, the Bragulan People and the Bragulan Star Empire. Formed of endless hordes of tanks and disciplined soldiers, they are the warriors that venture out into the galaxy in order to bring new worlds and systems to heel for the greater glory of mighty Bragule. Ferried across the gulf of space by mighty troopships capable of carrying millions of troops each, the Legions of Liberation are a force to be reckoned with... Perhaps not because their equipment is up to par with the finest weapons of war of the surrounding nations (it is not), but because of the ferocity of the Bragulan soldier and the sheer numbers of the Legions. An attack will almost invariably consist of millions upon millions of troops who will stop at nothing to achieve their objective. Indeed, the Bragulans are infamous for being one of the most nuke-happy of all states in their quadrant of the galaxy...
==History of the Four Billion Bear Army==
At the end of the Great Civil War, the Imperator Darvyl S. Byzon I led his people to glourious victory in what was called the March of the Imperator. This was when he gained a great many of his innumerable titles, coming to be known as the Generalissimo of the Revolution, the Supreme-Commissar of the Patriotic People's Force, and more simply as the Liberator. Thus, the March of the Imperator came to be known to his followers as the March of Liberty, and they themselves became his Legions of Liberation. This is the true origin of the Imperial Legions of Liberation.
In the aftermath of the Apexai War, and the succeeding Solarian Wars, and the Imperium Wars that came after that, and then the Scron War, the Bragulan Star Empire and the combined Imperial Warmachine survived, battered but intact, resolute and as strong as ever. They had weathered the storm of devastation and withstood everything Bragulanity's enemies could throw at them, and in the end they had achieved something few others had done before: the complete extermination, or at least the utter decimation of not one alien enemy species, but two alien enemy species - namely the emasculated Apexai and the eradicated Scron.
The victories and defeats experienced by the Legion have taught it valuable, and often painful, lessons. To this day the Legion continues to learn, adapt and evolve in the neverending pursuit to be better able to destroy its enemies.
Originally, at its peak, the Legion was four billion Bragulans strong, but the vast majority of these bears were poorly-trained conscripts, inadequately armed and considerably more inferior to the soldiers of other star nations, barely amounting to even a rabble - formidable only in their sheer numbers when performing what was known as Bragulan Attack Wave Legions (BAWLs) that saw enemies drowned in mountains of conscript-corpses. While this archaic technique was acceptable in the old days when the beargeoise carelessly threw away the lives of working-class proletarians to fight their wars, and even in the time of the Great Civil War where in sheer desperation countless lives were wasted out of sheer necessity, in the modern bragegalitarian era it was simply barbaric. Thus, under the merciful and loving guidance of Byzon - the Great Generalissimo and Supreme Commissar himself - was the Legion gradually transformed to become a more efficient fighting force. A full two billion conscripts were sent back to their homes, to form the core of what would become the Proletarian Defense Forces for system defense. Accordingly, hundreds of generals and officers displeased of these developments, or otherwise unhappy at the downsizing of the Legions, were purged, sent to the Bragulags for de-education, or just shot in the back of the head for the sake of convenience. All according to Byzon's great plan.
==Organization==
Today, while the Legions of Liberation may still not be the most modern or technologically advanced force in the galaxy, it nonetheless retains its edge as a great Bragulan bear-behemoth numbering in the billions, still more than capable of drowning its enemies in sheer mass, while also having modernized enough to remain formidable in its nuclear weapons, nuclear tactics and nuclear doctrine - the nuclear triage fundamental to maintaining Bragulan military supremacy in an ever-changing battlefield. Thus it can be said that the Legions of the Liberator has indeed persevered against what may be the greatest enemy it has ever faced - obsolescence.
The modern Legions are split into three divisions that, in an entire front or strategic theatre of war, are designed to work as a cohesive whole, in Byzonist unison, to bring about the wholesale defeat of the enemy in a broad strategic level - not just in a single 'tactical' battlefield, but over an entire planet, or even several worlds, for such is the magnitude of Bragulan deep warfare. These are the three arms of the Imperial Legions of Liberation:
===Imperial Legionnaires===
The conscript horde of the Imperial armies, the Legionnaires are composed of draftees gathered from all over the Empire to form the hulking brute mass of the Legions. They are the ones who make up the Trencher Regiments, the Penal Divisions, the occupation forces and the garrisons, partaking in the protracted sieges and the last-ditch defenses. They are the ones sent by the millions to fight and die against the enemies of the Imperator and Empire - and it is their blood that lubricates the ever grinding gears of the Imperial Warmachine, playing a cruicial role in the achievement of Byzonic victory and great justice by annointing it with their own blood.
The Legionnaires make do with the bare essentials in terms of equipment and have to match the enemy through brutal Bragulan ferocity and patriotic hatred, overwhelming the enemy's technological advantage by sheer numbers. Needless to say, the Legionnaires are not meant for quick or decisive battles, the one and a half billion conscripts fighting and dying today are hardly different from the original four billion strong Legion of old. They are meant to fight in grueling wars of attrition, brutal occupations of entire enemy worlds, and even outright trench warfare. Grinding campaigns that would wear down more technologically sophisticated armies often see the Legionnaires prevail with perverse perseverance. Underarmed, undertrained, underfed, and completely unglamorous - yet vital to the Bragulan war effort as a rock to weigh down the enemy, or to smash his face in. This is the true spirit of the Legionnaires.
While sheer numerosity of the Legionnaire conscript hordes, and the fact that the vast majority of them are little more than just fodder, may lead some to think that the Bragulan armies are lacking in artillery and warmachines, the situation is anything but. There is a disproportionate overabundance of warm bodies, and formerly warm bodies that have gone cold, but for every unwashed mass of thousands is a supporting element of unyielding Bragulan Steel in the form of Dredka overtanks and siege tanks, kilometers-long formations of atomic artillery, and the infamous Spud missiles, as well as Stalag gunships, SNT fighters, and other aerospace support. Particularly patriotic divisions are even awarded with extra caches of precious micro/macro-nuclear warheads, distributed as seen fit to the most deserving of pentomic squads by the Commissariat. When the Legionnaires do advance, it is often at a painful and bone-grinding pace, with warpaths that are either under the cool shade of mushroom clouds, or lit by the blazing light of artificial suns raining down on their enemies.
Game Info:
*Points spent: 7,500
*1,500,000,000 troops @ 200,000/$1 x kit modifier 1
===Shock Armies===
If the Legionnaires are the hammers that break the enemy's head open, then the Shock Armies are the scythes that rip off his face. Whereas the Legionnaires are designed to fight arduous campaigns of attrition and exhaustion, the Shock Armies are the ones that wage the lightning war, the quick strikes and fast attacks. They are the ones that lead the charge to take the enemy by storm, assaulting his positions head-on quickly and viciously. If the Bragstavka wishes to invade a world, then the Shock Armies are the ones charged with that aspect of planetary warfare - rapid global assault.
Their speciality lies in the violence of action, and this is most evident in the weapons and warmachines they employ - specialized Dredkas modified to be orbital drop tanks; large numbers of Stalag gunships, SNT-fighters and the like to provide aerospace superiority, close air support for combined arms assaults, precision nuclear bombing, and aerospace cavalry; and the shock troopers themselves, a professional volunteer force well-trained, well-armed and aggressive in the persecution of lightning war. The Shock Army often works with the Space Fleet, which usually provides orbital nuking to support planetary invasions in the critical early phases when atomic artillery pieces have yet landed. In independent operations, the Shock Armies do not shy from using their own organic atomics to vaporize the enemy in all phases of the assault. Their doctrine is to overwhelm the enemies through superior speed and combined arms firepower over a front composed of not just a single battlefield, but a much wider strategic theatre of war in line with the Byzonist school of deep battle.
The Shock Armies are the face of modern Bragulan warfare, an evolutionary advancement over the Legionnaire conscript horde in terms of weapons, training and doctrine. However, in the eyes of the Supreme Generalissimo Byzon, the two forces are of equal import to his Warmachine. They are in fact designed to complement one another, as the Shock Armies are the ones that take enemy territories while the Legionnaires are the ones who hold the them, with the Shock Armies employed for the rapid offense to strike the enemy down and the Legionnaires for the protracted and arduous defense to bleed the enemy dry.
Game Info:
*Points spent: 10,000
*500,000,000 troops @ 100,000/$1 x kit modifier 2
===Storm Detachments===
The Storm Detachments are the elite special operations units of the Legions of Liberation. Unlike other special forces, they are attached to the Legionnaires and the Shock Armies at the corps or army level and function very closely with conventional units. This is because Byzonist doctrine specifies that rather than being regarded separately, Bragulan special forces must be considered as an integral part of the armies employing them, to be used like any other instrument to aid in attaining mission objectives.
To fulfill their role in complementing the standard corps and army units, Storm Detachment commandos specialize in a wide variety of unconventional missions, including deep intrusion and aggressive reconnaissance, forward observation and strike control, organic intelligence gathering, abducting enemy personnel for in-field interrogations, enemy rear-echelon disruption, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, direct action and assassination, long range patrols, foreign internal attack, hostile environment special operations, airborne assault and psychological warfare.
The detachments have several dedicated specialist units, like the Storm Snipers who are trained in 'schools of sniperism'. There is a great deal of cross-training between these specialist units and their superior training is matched by their superior gear, which can be customized according to mission particulars.
The prevailing attitude in the Storm Detachment is not one of the exceptionalism or entitlement as seen in other special ops groups, like the 'glory bears' in the Navy BEARS, but a sense of dedication to duties that are even more difficult and lethal than that faced by mainline troops - an extreme risk they accept willingly, for Imperator and Empire.
Game Info:
*Points spent: 2,100
*42,000,000 troops @ 60,000/$1 x kit modifier 3
==Infantry Equipment==
For the last five hundred years, the standard Bragulan battle rifle has been the B-11 K-bolt assault rifle (KAR), a gauss rifle that shoots solid slugs at hypersonic velocities. The Bragnum grenade-pistol is the standard officer's pistol, while the B-NET K-cannon and the Slutsyin gatling cannon provide oppressive fire to the infantry squads. Nuclear flamethrowers with incendiary isotopes are also popular Bragulan anti-personnel weapons. For anti-material and anti-vehicular purposes, Bragulans use a wide variety of rocket and missile weaponry, ranging from simple dumbfire RPGs to guided missiles with BIF-5 micro-nuclear warheads.
The standard Legionnaire armor is BHEARS Biochemical Hostile Environment Atomic Radiation Survival suit, a simple armorweave flaksuit with Bragsteel inserts and additional hostile environment protection kit, while Shock Army troopers have access to far superior articulated combat armor, and Storm Commandos can have gear up to and including chameleonic camouflage sneaking suits and carapace armor that either incorporates bragsteel hyperalloys with powered servohydraulics or even actual treated Karlack carapaces (hence the name) for superior protection.
==Weapons of War==
: Main Article: Imperial Legion Warmachines
===Engines of Destruction===
The lumbering Dredkaflauvisk main battle tank is the principal warmachine of the Legions of Liberation, it is the culmination of Bragulan tank warfare and forms the center of any all-out combined arms assault to crush the Imperator's enemies, see them driven before him, and hear the lamentations of their inappropriate little tiny tankskis.
The Chornyb All-Terrain Urban Pacifier is the standard armored fighting vehicle of the Legions, supporting the half-tracks used as the primary infantry transports and utility vehicles. For scouting and recon purposes, the Legions use a wide variety of fast attack vehicles, bragbuggies, and even motorbikes with machinegun-mounting sidecars. Fire-support is provided for by an uncountable arsenal of artillery pieces. The Legions' cannon corps have everything from mule-drawn relic howitzers dating from before the Great Civil War, to enormous self-propelled artillery platforms and the infamous Spud nuclear missiles. Fully entrenched and fortified Legionnaire positions can even engage orbiting warships by using surface-to-space weapons including 'grand cannon' anti-orbit railguns with massive rounds manually loaded by press-ganged conscripts, standard surface-to-space Spuds, and even larger interplanetary nuclear missiles the size of skyscrapers.
===Aerospace Support===
The Imperial Legions come equipped with their own PVO and VVS aerospace forces independent of the Space Fleet, as the planetary battlefield has different needs from that of space, and the Fleet hardly cares about operations in worlds they want to nuke from orbit just to be sure. 
The face of the Legions air forces is definitely the Stalag gunship, its chrome silhouette often seen menacingly patrolling post-apocalyptic wastelands and transporting Bragulan occupation troops from one warzone to another. 
Other support craft include planetary variants of the SNT-series aerospace multifighter, and other aerospacecraft ranging from antiquated museum pieces from the Great Civil War, to massive modernized missile-mounting mesobombers and inter-orbital ekranodropships. The air forces of the Imperial Legions is an anachronistic mix of old and new killing machines that strike a balance between precision destruction and indiscriminate violence.
===The Great Leap Spacewards===
The soldiers of the Imperial Legions of Liberation are primarily transported by massive troopships capable of carrying thousands upon thousands of Bragulan soldiers in their cavernous holds, and hundreds of landing vessels and barges to better aid the armies of Bragulanity in stomping the faces of entire planets with their boots - forever. These troopships are just as venerable as the storied paleocruisers of the Space Fleet, though they are not as glamorous as they are often in even more decrepit conditions than the fossil-warships.
Aside from these vessels, the Legions can requisition other means of transports, such as Friend of Bragule-class cruisers in invasion-ship configuration, if the Space Fleet is feeling particularly generous; if not, Legions can commandeer civilian bulk transports and make the best out of it. There have been occasions where Bragulan armies have invaded unexpecting planets merely by coming in civilian cargo ships (and other occasions where whole invasions had to be cancelled when the transport broke down in the middle of deep space). This has had the unintended consequence of causing Solarian USSF warship captains to adopt a shoot on sight policy hostile approach towards suspicious Bragulan civilian ships traveling too close to Solarian space.
Category:Bragule
Category:Ground Forces