Orcish Stormtroopers

> "*The officers march in front so that the Stormtroopers stop them retreating.*"
> ― Proverb
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The Stormtroopers are an elite military unit within the Imperial Army of the Nesarian Empire which was first created in 1795 with the creation of the 135th Regiment, titled the Mortian Stormtroopers. The Stormtroopers soon became their own class of regiment and the 135th were rebranded as the 1st Stormtroopers in 1801. To distinguish them from the German military unit of the same name, most Europeans refer to them as the Orcish Stormtroopers, but their official name is simply the Stormtroopers.

The Stormtrooper regiments consist entirely of Orcs from Mortog (in Nesaria), Kuateoha, Keloruela and Aukan (in Rulcaria). Each Stormtrooper regiment consists of only one nation of Orcs; they are not mixed. The ceremonial colours of the Stormtroopers are black as the primary colour and green as the secondary; the black represents warriors and warfare in Orcish tradition and is both the colour of the Great God Morrokh and Lord Geran, whereas the green represents the Orcs (for self-evident reasons).

The Stormtroopers in both their modern and historical incarnations are assault troops, trained for fearless advances and to deliver rapid blows of overwhelming force at the enemy lines to smash them and create a mass rout. Modern Stormtroopers are functionally no different in their doctrine than the rest of the Imperial Army, differing only in their application on the battlefield, but historical Stormtroopers were highly specialised units designed for the specific battlefield purpose of advancing upon the enemy to charge them at close range, breaking the will of those before them and slaughtering any who dared to stand their ground.

Historically, Stormtroopers employed a doctrine they called "terror-mongering" which sought to inspire as much fear in the enemy as possible. These tactics required a great deal of training, not only for the standard reasons of perfecting formations and honing fighting skills, but also because the terror-mongering tactic would be useless if the Stormtroopers themselves showed any fear. For this reason, the Stormtroopers would only have the bravest, most devoted or most insane of soldiers in their ranks. The terror-mongering tactic chiefly consisted of perfecting the art of synchronised war-cries and marches, and building the nerve to steadily march upon the enemy without hesitation despite the casualties the regiment might suffer whilst doing so. Some Stormtrooper regiments would also paint their faces to add to this fear factor, sometimes simply painting them black and in other cases painting skulls. Stormtroopers could also be relied upon for a variety of other specialist battlefield roles such as ambushes and rear-guard actions, as their ferocity and bravery was legendary.

In the First World War, the Stormtroopers began to be used in a manner similar to the German units of the same name; they remained as assault troops but their focus switched from fearless frontal assaults to infiltration tactics. This doctrine was developed in the interwar period and became perfected in the Second World War. It is said that the American soldiers in the pacific in WW2 feared the Stormtroopers on the battlefield more than the zealous Japanese - but they feared the potential fate that awaited them at Japanese hands more than the one the Orcs would deliver them.

It should be noted that the "terror-mongering" differs significantly from the terror tactics which were widely employed amongst both military and paramilitary groups in the War of Independence. "Terror-mongering" does not constitute actual terrorism; the Stormtroopers have never endorsed or practiced the mutilation of enemy corpses, the execution of prisoners or the murder of non-combatants as some groups in the War of Independence were known to do. Terror-mongering as a tactic refers to causing fear and dread amongst enemy soldiers strictly on the battlefield, breaking their morale by appearing as threatening as possible and inducing them to flee the field of battle. The Stormtroopers of course do not shy away from killing, but they restrict their violence towards enemy combatants and treat their dead with respect.