Immortal

## Tactical Analysis

* **Unrelenting:** The backbone of the Crescent Pact Desert Corps, the Immortals eschew quantity in exchange of quality; they might not be as numerous as conscripts, but they make up for it with their more extensive weapons training. With their semi-automatic hakim rifle, they can provide better accuracy and suppression for your units against enemy infantry.

* **Unbound:** As a part of their combat training, Immortals can wield their retractable spears that allow them to be dangerous fighters at close range. They can also storm garrisoned building to impale enemies inside.

* **Unliving:** Commanders of the Crescent Pact are reminded that their Immortals are immortal *in name only*, and anti-personnel weapons can quickly subject them to the great equalizer: death. Their spears suffer from a lack of effectiveness against tanks, and attacking aircraft are completely out of their league.

* **Unstoppable:** Immortals who prove their worth in the field are rewarded by RDP light machineguns, increasing their rate of fire and damage. Likewise, they receive anti-material spears that allow them to impale tank pilots through armor, allowing your soldiers to take over their vehicles.

## Background

*"To hell with quantity; what matters is that we have the superior training."*

- Col. Elijah Halabi of the Crescent Pact.
The ancient historian Herodotus once recounted about the Immortals of Persia, elite soldiers who fought for the Achaemenid Empire of old. He claimed that their commanders maintained the Immortals' cohesion and numbers by immediately replacing injured, diseased or deceased members with new ones, keeping a constant number of 10,000 men. Given their history of military victories, apparently this tactic worked for them as they played important roles in numerous battles from the Battle of Opis to the Battle of Thermopylae.

How does this relate to the Crescent Pact of today? When they started mobilizing the Desert Corps for the first time, one of their most significant roadblocks that they encountered was their lack of manpower. While the greater Red Army can amass conscripts as numerous as the sands by the seashore, the ASG had to make do with smaller numbers. This meant that tactics emulating the Soviets' human wave tactics tend to factor in many demotions of personnel. Still relying on conscription of civilians but finding a way to circumvent their manpower issues, their soldiers would undergo more extensive training. Training that includes more advanced tactics such as targetting enemies efficiently and fighting them mano y mano rather than just showing recruits training reels for 90 seconds.

As a result, your typical **Immortal** is a far cry from the typical Soviet conscript. While the latter possesses one of the highest casualty rates in the world's forces, the former possesses superior skill in weapon handling and target spotting. Even if they share their primary loadouts, what differs them from their Soviet counterparts is that their shots are far more accurate and suppressive than those of conscripts who merely fire blindly into the enemy hoping they would keel over from the numbers of rounds flying. When the enemy comes too close for the Immortals, they can even pick them off at melee range thanks to retractable spears donated by the African Socialist Republics. Their secondary weapons allow them to raid GLA-held buildings that typically end in bloodstained rebel corpses adorning every room in them.

Immortals who no longer fit the criteria (they must be in good health, they must be competent enough, they must be of right age) are quickly pulled out of the divisions and sent to lower roles to keep their cohesion, a tradition they kept from the ancient Persians. The common line of reasoning for this rule is that, let's face it, not ever Crescent Pact soldier is able to fight on the field. There's gotta be some that maintain the bases, some that repair the vehicles, some that wash the dishes, you know the drill.