Penal One

The Imperium's largest and most savage penal legion where the expendable go to be devalued.

### Battles

The Great Scouring (Flojetzen Campaign), 1st-3rd Balgovian Massacres, Crixan Revolt.

“Penal One” is a “mega legion” of the Astra Militarum; a unit so large that the uncounted penal soldiers it contains dwarf that of many planets. It is comprised of convicts from various worlds and it is regularly used for amoral human wave attacks on a scale that even the Astra Militarum finds unpalatable.

## Organization

Penal One is broken down into two aspects: the enforcer legion and the penal legion. The enforcer legion is about 1/100th the size of the penal legion and is composed of officers, commissars, and guardsmen tasked with tending to, shepherding, killing, and otherwise corralling the mass of human filth that is the penal legion.

### Enforcer Legion

The enforcer legion comprises 3 branches: the Commissariat, the command regiment, and the 86 enforcer regiments. These branches are integrated into the penal legion, though they exist on their own as organizations on paper.

#### The Commissariat Regiment

This represents the forces of the Officio Prefectus who maintain order and doctrine within the wild penal legions. Executions are so common that each Commissar is required to meet a certain quota each month (if only to keep their numbers down).

#### The Command Regiment

This represents the Astra Militarum’s officers and forms the backbone of the command structure of Penal One. Officers in Penal One are either disgraced officers who took the position as penance (either as a formal punishment or voluntarily) or junior officers getting some experience commanding troops (as it doesn’t matter if they mess up with the penal legions).

#### The Enforcer Regiments

These regiments are full strength infantry regiments assigned to work with the penal legion. There are typically anywhere between 86-202 enforcer regiments at any given time. Most members rotate through these regiments and get special training from the Adeptus Arbites. Many go on to serve as military police in other Astra Militarum regiments or even in the Arbites themselves.

##### Penal Legion

The penal legion is the unwashed, unruly, and bloodthirsty soldiers serving time in Penal One. It is comprised of a number of penal regiments and each penal regiment is comprised of between 5,000-10,000 convicts. The Penal One mega legion fluctuates in size but can be between 10,000 and 50,000 penal regiments. Each regiment typically has about 50-200 “cell blocks” in them- rough company equivalents of about 50-100 convicts. Each cell block is broken down into squads of about 10 soldiers. Enforcers and political officers are generally only present on the cell block or regimental levels and squads are kind of left to their own devices in terms of leaderships. Squad often just become gangs and abuse and criminal activities are rife in their ranks. Outright “squad wars” occur regularly over resources, sleeping space, and stupid matters of bravado.

##### Equipment

To say the average convict in Penal One is underwhelming is the understatement of the 41st millennium. A Penal One convict is to a guardsman what a guardsman is to a space marine in terms of equipment. Most don’t have clothing outside of their standard issue high visibility orange jumpsuit, weapons are vanishingly rare, and ammunition is in such short supply convicts often rely on throwing things more often than they actually shoot at things. For “serious” engagements they are issued 1 Mollusk Pattern Lasgun per 2 soldiers as well as a single knife, shiv, or other improvised melee weapon to each member of the mega legion. No heavy weapons are ever issued to members of Penal One’s penal legions.

The enforcer legions are equipped as per the standard loadout of infantry regiments of the Astra Militarum. They have additional flamethrowers to ward off the ravenous hive of humanity that they find themselves

###### Mollusk Pattern Lasgun

A special pattern lasgun called the “P1 Standard Pattern Lasgun” aka the “Mollusk Pattern Lasgun” was devised for the conscripts of Penal One. They are made cheaply, are designed to be mass-producible, and are non-reusable. They are able to be remote-controlled; they can be turned on and off by enforcer legions and told to detonate with a remote signal. They contain no way to recharge the lasgun and contain exactly enough energy in its power cell to fire 100 lasgun shots. The gun is so flimsy and cheaply made that they are unable to affix bayonets to them as they’d break before doing damage.

###### Combat Buses (Dedicated Transports)

There exist dedicated transports for the penal legions but these unarmed vehicles are not as fancy as a “chimera”. No, they are effectively box trucks with soldiers inside- lightly armored and mostly salvaged from civilian uses. These store up to a cell block in their thinly armored walls and their occupants frequently pad the walls with whatever scrap or cloth they can find to protect them from enemy fire as they enter the battlefield. Tougher convicts get spots in the center of these transports as the bodies of their comrades absorb the incoming fire first.

There are many slang names for them including: “Ice Boxes”, “Human Garbage Trucks”, “Meat Packing Trucks” (or just “Meat Packers”).

## “Recruitment”

One is not “recruited” to Penal One, they are “assigned”, “sentenced”, or “demoted to” Penal One. Convicts are pulled from all across the Imperium and several dozen hive worlds simply deposit all their criminals into Penal One rather than maintain their own prisons (which would be very expensive). These planets actually have a tithe of criminals they must export to Penal One in lieu of other goods. Because of this not every member of the penal legion is actually a criminal (it’s theorized that up to 80% are not) but in the Imperium- no one cares; bodies are bodies. The absurd cruelty on display is gut wrenching and even by the perverse standards of the Imperium they have been condemned time and time again. Still... the imperium needs bodies and despite formal protests and superficial attempts to reform it, Penal One persists.

## Deployment

Transporting Penal One is often a difficult task that requires dozens or hundreds of massive transport ships (normally used for hauling cargo) so they regularly leave “splinter legions” behind if it’s not convenient or expedient to transport them. These unruly mobs often wreak havoc on the local population either through armed attack or simply by eating all available food and stealing all the supplies they can get their hands on. The best case scenarios for these splinter legions is to be inducted into a local PDF or a Guard (entire regiments of the Guard have been formed of splinter legions) regiment but this is not often the case. Because they are just abandoned and are just trying to survive they will often become a worse threat than whatever Penal One was fighting.

Penal One itself decimates whatever area it is on, stripping whatever area they occupy of all food, valuables, and life as the roiling mass of humanity tries desperately to survive. It is effectively the population of a hiveworld dropped on a single spot with limited supplies and told to make do. This blighting of all supplies is a major reason most places will refuse help from Penal One (though they don’t always get a say in the matter). Because deploying Penal One is such a labor intensive task it can take months or even years to fully deploy it and it cannot be stopped once it is started. Even if a battle ended months ago, new troops may still be arriving even as old troops may be transported to the next battlefield due to the mega legion’s poor logistics and communications network.

## History

### Foundation

The origins of Penal One are obscure, even by Imperial standards, as they find their roots in many large penal legions used before even the rise of the Emperor of Mankind. The precursors to Penal One was used during the Emperor’s early crusades and later solidified into a single “penal mega legion” under various names. The first mention of “Penal One” during the Flojetzen Campaign of the Great Scouring where it was deployed against traitor legions. It suffered 70% casualties but achieved its goal of delaying enemies and absorbing incoming fire for the heroic loyalist legions.

### The 1st-3rd Balgovian Massacres

During the Balgovian Campaign Penal One was deployed to the front lines against the Tyranids. So many convicts were killed that the officers joked, “The ‘nids actually ate their fill of biomass for once and went home full”. Three times Penal One fought the swarm and eventually managed to repel the invasion, though Penal One suffered 90% casualties. The battle only ended with orbital bombardment occurred due to poor communication with naval forces. A significant (but redacted) % of the casualties suffered by Penal One were a result of the orbital bombardment.

### Crixan Revolt

Penal One has had regular revolts since its inception. It is judged that there are at least 3 ongoing revolts of varying size at any time and a percentage of the legion’s enforcers regiments are dedicated to suppressing it. The Crixan Revolt however was the largest revolt ever to occur within Penal One and some 60-100 penal regiments openly attacked the enforcer legion. They succeeded in toppling Penal One’s command structure and several splinter legions escaped Imperial control. Having stolen significant military supplies from the enforcer regiments they made a break for it and the convicts that escaped became major pirate fleets, traitor regiments, and gangs that still plague the Imperium to this day.

#### St. Crixus

The Crixan Revolt was led by a man named Crixus who was wrongfully convicted of murder on Holy Terra and it is reported that Crixus was guided by the light of the Emperor himself. The Ecclesiarchy investigated his supposed miracles and found them to be valid but quashed them in fear of it insighting more revolts. Still, others had witnessed his miracles with their own eyes and there exists “Crixan Cults” within Penal One to this day. Their priesthood, who play not only to the Emperor but also to “his chosen revolutionary, St. Crixus” are a constant source of trouble for the enforcers.

## Trivia & Notes

* The name of this legion is based on the Imperial Guard's 1st Regiment from old lore of 40k. It's nickname was "The Big One".
* St. Crixus is named after the often overlooked other leader of the Third Servile War, Crixus of Gaul. This is also called the "War of Spartacus" as the gladiator Spartacus initiated it with fellow gladiator Crixus.
* This article was partially inspired by PGV prison (aka the General Penitentiary of Venezuela) and the culture that has developed there.
* The prison–industrial complex is fucked. I used this article to explore the unholy marriage of the military and prisons (like what's happening in Russia right now) and take it to the illogical extremes. 40k has always have "penal conscripts" but this cranks it up to 11.