Fear No Darkness

Cornet Jaira Tennerly, 27th Hussars.

If you do not, I will break you in front of your regiments.

Despite being located on nearly opposite ends of the Imperium, Tyrellia Prime and Praetoria have enjoyed a long and amicable relationship, bonded by cultural similarities - While their attitudes toward the lower classes are radically different, their aristocratic norms and customs are similar enough that that their respective officer corps quickly became fast friends, bonding over the strangeness of society on other worlds. Indeed, it was a Praetorian merchant vessel that re-discovered the Tyrellia System, and their cultural compatibility made for an absolute minimum of culture shock, once the Praetorians got over their frustration at failing to snare the natives into unequal treaties.

As the two cultures warmed to each other, the Praetorian Guard became the primary influence on the modernization of Tyrellian military doctrine, from their uniform jackets and helmets to the adoption of socket bayonets and firing lines to replace the pike-and-shot warfare that dominated Tyrellian battlefields at the time.

Little is known of the origin of the bad blood between the Guardsmen of Tyrellia and Krieg, other than the the fact that they were both dispatched to put down a rebellion that grown beyond the local PDF’s ability to suppress, with a Krieger holding overall command.

Records mention heavy door-to-door fighting through the Hive World’s lower levels, where it soon became clear that a Chaos cult was pulling the strings. Whatever happened down there, nearly the entire population of the levels in rebellion was exterminated to expunge the corruption, and a mutual distaste had formed between the two Regiments. There are few enough Regiments that meet Krieg’s standards of discipline and fanaticism, but even among the mindless drones of the Death Korps there are some that find particular scorn for the Tyrellians.

For their part, the Tyrellians believe the Kriegers are over-zealous and stone-hearted - Old news to anyone passingly familiar with the Korps, but the details died with the survivors of that tour of duty, the usual casualties any Guard regiment incurs before it sees home again compounded by the fact that more than half of them committed suicide before returning home and the rest were so severely traumatized that they were deemed unfit for duty. What little is known is largely gleaned from suicide notes begging forgiveness from the dead, and expressing an inability to live with the knowledge of what they did. None of them died of natural causes, and none of them ever talked about the incident while they still lived.

The distance between their homeworlds limits the likelihood that they serve alongside Kriegers, but Commissars are frequently required to keep an eye on the Tyrellians to ensure that they do not try to stir up trouble during joint operations. Commissars must also remain wary of the one-sided rivalry between the Tyrellian horse cavalry and the Krieger Death Riders; their distaste for the Kriegers fuels the competitive nature of the Tyrellian warrior class that dominates the cavalry, often leading to reckless actions to assert their superiority over a rival that sees this as nothing more than another symptom of their lack of discipline.

My first finished models!

Middle is a simple kitbash with a Perry Miniatures Victorian infantryman.

The Tyrellian Guard is divided into 150 regiments of 10,000 guardsmen each, primarily infantry and horse cavalry.

Each Guard regiment recruits from a PDF counterpart, which doubles as a training and reserve unit. Guard service is very prestigious, and selection is highly competitive - the pension of Guard widows and the honored few veterans that return alive is nearly double that of PDF soldiers. Those veterans too old or too injured to return to service live out the rest of their lives as local dignitaries, and veterans’ associations - often consisting primarily of widows speaking on behalf of their fallen spouse - wield significant influence.