Patriot Guard: Jeremiad for a Bulldozer

++THOUGHT OF THE DAY: IT IS BETTER FOR A MAN TO BE AFRAID THAN HAPPY++

Inquisitor [REDACTED],

Pursuant to your request for background materials on the belligerents during the most recent troubles on Durance, I humbly submit the following documents.

First, a brief overview of the Patriot Guard's indigenous vehicle designs with regard to their effect on the organization's war-making capabilities as a whole. It is unclear how our inquiry staff sourced the document or who authored it; the tone switches between a dry recitation of technical and historical facts and conversational, overly bold, even. It has been edited to omit irrelevant data, such as several digressions consisting primarily of complaints concerning the author's deployment to Durance.

Secondly, an unofficial memorandum regarding overall Patriot Guard effectiveness from an outside perspective, specifically that of Sub-Castellan Jesenia Okowiscz of Kasr Skala. The missive is addressed to Acting Castellan Oswaldo Hausgaard, with whom you are already familiar.

Attachment of relevant items follows.

Faithful unto death,

Archivist-Prime Kleftogiannis

+ENTRY PRIMUS+

TYPE 41M/7 "ZELEA"

Forgeworld of Origin: N/A

Designer: Marshal-General Constantius Zelea, Mezizo Engineworks, Durance Institute for Military Applications

Designed: Between 646.M41 to 690.M41, exact date unknown

Produced: ~670.M41 to current

No. built: 5000+

Variants: Too numerous to list

Designed during the first greenskin incursion by the now-legendary Marshal-General Constantius Zelea as a stopgap measure for the Durance PDF, the first Zeleas were originally Hedera construction tractors with armored plates and weaponry added by hand under Mechanicus supervision. Though thoroughly unimpressive when compared to purpose built war machines, the Zelea performed admirably in checking the advance of orkoid light vehicle formations and proved to be especially cost effective infantry support. 

With Zeleas deployed with Patriot Guard rifle sections to serve as light anti-tank and infantry suppression, heavier tanks were made available in sufficient numbers for tactical concentration, allowing for effective strategic offensives against the greenskin menace. Marshal-General Zelea's Patriot Guard, alongside Mordian Iron Guard and Savlar Chem-dog regiments, succeeded in their goal of forcing the bulk of the ork warbands into the Barad-Nen peninsula*.

Given that the field alterations were made with Mechanicus oversight, the new design was judged an appropriate use of Administratum materiel and production continued. Zeleas soon came to supplant more traditional vehicles within the Patriot Guard, primarily due to their exemption from tithing (as they were considered construction equipment and not war machines). Use of the Zelea is widespread throughout Durance and immaterially proximal inhabited systems.

So overall, we're looking at what is essentially an up-armored bulldozer with some surplus crew-served weapons bolted to it and a grossly overpowered drive system, thanks to the involvement of Mezizo Engineworks. The Zelea has a lot of problems, but the things can haul ass when they need to. They're also, big boy power plant aside, preposterously inexpensive to manufacture; the original Hedera chassis has been simplified and streamlined to the point of absurdity and the weaponry is all stuff gathering dust in the arsenal complexes anyway.

That's not to say it's a particularly good fighting vehicle. It's not. It's hopelessly undergunned. The original design only accounted for a single turret-mounted autocannon and the intervening decades haven't seen much improvement on that front. The crew compartment is notoriously cramped, to the point that Zelea crews are selected with a height maximum, and even then the two-man crew is basically sitting on top of, and surrounded by, their ammo reserves. If anything punches through the armor, which is not terribly difficult, the crew is almost guaranteed to either take an anti-tank munition to the face, or get atomized when their ammo cooks off.

Even riddled with problems, the Zelea is still intensely popular on Durance. The Patriot Guard is fucking lousy with them; we're talking a one to one ratio Zelea platoon to infantry company, which is completely absurd. The PG has so many Zeleas that they actually loan them out to almost anyone; Zelea operators include the Grenport jandarmerie, Civil Security, the governor's Armata Praefectus, private security for several noble houses, and even a handful of the larger factory complexes keep a few on hand to deal with labor unrest.

In my estimation, they're not much good for more than shoving adventurous ork warbands back into the Burning Fields and gunning down labor menials. Not worth our time, but we should be glad to see them deployed against us.

-MB

*Currently known as the Campus Ignis, or the Burning Fields.


+ENTRY SECUNDUS+

Oswaldo,

The Patriot Guard is a mess. 

Their troops are undisciplined and unmotivated, unfit to lace the boots of our whiteshields. 

Their officers are corrupt idiots. 

The homemade tanks they're so proud of seem like a joke the Mechanicus played on them. 

Their liaison officer is a boorish lech. 

If anything ever kicks off on this rock before we get picked up, the 1080 can rely on them to waste the enemy's ammunition and not much else.

You owe me a drink,

Jesenia

xxx

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

9-1 BYRGENWERTH: Reunion

Provost-Biologis Willem, Archmagos of Xenos Acquisition Fleet 9-1 BYRGENWERTH, xenarite radical and future arch-heretek, was excited. Such emotion rarely broke through Willem's carefully cultivated logical detachment and the chemical suppressants pumping through what was left of their organic body, but this was a momentous opportunity. Outwardly, the only sign of this was an occasional twitch of a mechadendrite and increasingly frequent glances between the SANGUIS VETERIS PRUDENTIA's isolation vault's surgical tools and the vault's content. A curt noospheric command sent his attendants and their attendants from the observation chamber in an orderly procession, leaving only Willem and a handful of servitors, slaved to monitoring conditions inside the vault, deaf and blind. The vault's sole occupant, bound to an operating slab by dozens of Inquisition-rated restraints, did not move. If Willem didn't have access to constantly updating medical readouts, they could e...
Read more

Patriot Guard: Debut

FORTUL FRONTIERA DECEBAL CAMPUS IGNIS LINA DEFENSIVA 549.019.M42 Decebal  marked the end of human control of Durance. Built centuries ago, during the initial ork invasion, Decebal  started as a simple improvised defensive position, little more than a collection of hastily assembled barricades and shallow trenches. In the time since, it had been feverishly expanded; barricades became walls, trenches became hardened bunkers, command tents became a sprawling ferrocrete redoubt. But the years had not been kind to Decebal . Greenskin incursions and seismic disturbances caused by regular orbital bombardments had slowly but surely ruined the fortress. Past its crumbling walls, the cratered and lifeless expanse of the Campus Ignis stretched for kilometers, bracketed on either side by the deeply polluted waters of the Mare Talionis. Patriot Guard Rifle Section 320-Rho was, technically, "garrisoning" the old fort. In practice, this meant that 320-Rho halfheartedly dispersed themselves ...
Read more

9-1 BYRGENWERTH: Questions and Demands

Image
"Yeah, but we won though, didn't we?" "No, Pyotr, we did not win," Djura said. "The aeldari were after something , and they got their weird, spindly hands on it." Pyotr laughed and jumped down from his gunner's nest. "Sure, camarada, but does that look like winning to you?" Pyotr gestured with a wave of an arm at the dozens of figures sprawled about the district's Strada Primara, their strange armor cracked and leaking. The battle for the Strada had been a vicious knife fight, one of the worst Djura had been a part of; ungainly Mechanicus crawler-tanks firing their rockets danger close into aeldari shock troops, swarms of aeldari projectiles that shifted mid-flight to track their targets, the blessed Orphan itself bursting through a weakened wall to mince some unfortunate aeldari in ridiculous crested helms before disappearing again almost as fast. The aeldari had taken the worst of it, by far, but Djura couldn't shake the feeling...
Read more