Prokazniki

> *"What do you do when you have to fight a bunch of depraved bastards? You grab your **own** army of depraved bastards, give them second-hand guns, strap power armour upon their ill-deserved hides, and promise them enough hookers and blow to keep them happy for that month if they go and kill the other group of depraved bastards."*
> ~ Ippolyta the Manreaper.
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## Overview

'**Prokazniki'** (English: Hellions) is the unofficial title for a specialised division of the Mecharussian Armed Forces that conscripts wasteland raiders, Gulag inmates and ex-Desolators, among many other groups of miscreants, in the Alternative Canon. They are normally deployed when the MAF requires overwhelming force with plenty of easily-replaceable cannon fodder to impress upon an enemy, or when terror tactics are required to demoralise an enemy. When not deployed, they are based within the former Vorkuta Mining Gulag, which was decommissioned in 2155 along with most other Gulags in the Mechanocracy as part of the Trotskaya Reforms, which relocated hundreds of prison camps along with their inmates to offworld sites.

Controlled by the original Chthonian Ippolyta, along with her personal cadre of Novaya Chthonians and Chernydrakony, the Prokazniki are known for being one of the most brutal and destructive units ever conceived by a national army. The other thing that they are infamous for is their copious improvised weaponry and highly-unorthodox tactics – for instance, using hastily-cobbled trebuchets to catapult a squadron of hammer-swinging orks over a fortress wall to bypass its defences.

Ostensibly a penal battalion, the Prokazniki are comparable more to a huge, roving warband than a professional military force, the many murderous sociopaths composing it kept in check by equally-vicious chaperones and all the plunder that they can get their wretched hands upon. It is also one of the most diverse military units ever created, at least by MAF standards. Its numbers are composed not just from the scum of Russian society, but Ippolyta's recruiters also travel to (among other places) the United Dominion of Asian Peoples, the United European Mechanocracy, the People's Technocratic Federation of Singapore and the African Exclusion Zone, infiltrating slums, prisons and tribes alike to bring more bloodthirsty warriors to fight for the cause.

Baseline humans, Machine Race, ghouls both normal and feral, orks, and (according to some reports) even some aliens all fill the ranks of the Prokazniki, fighting for not so much the glory of the Mechanocratic Ideology as the freedom and opportunity to wreak as much bloodshed as is possible. The only strings are usually that they keep their depravities *on* the battlefield, or else face punishment deemed extreme by any standard. In other words, the rules are few and far between, but what rules exist are enforced with a fist of titanium.

The command structure of the Prokazniki is very loose, and group sizes vary wildly, but generally individuals familiar with one another will be kept together. For example, a raider from one of the clans will be attached to a group with a majority composed of the same clan. Smaller groups will be clumped together to form one larger group. Groups who were rivals with each other before their assimilation are encouraged to divert their rivalries toward the benefit of the entire collective. For instance, three groups may be pressed into a competition to acquire the largest number of kills (measured through heads taken) or the most Imperial Credits' worth of loot, with the winning group receiving, for example, a greater share of cocaine.