Hellenic Star Marines(Assault Marines)

As any militaristic Terragenic polity can tell you, the military is the backbone of their economy, and their foreign policy. The Hellenic Star Empire is no exception by any means, with over 40 million service personnel on active duty, between the Navy and Marines, with approximately 10% of that being Assault Marines.

The Assault Marines are a young, and potent component of the Hellenic Star Empire's Combined Arms approach to planetary assault and conquest. Over 500 years ago, the Empire found that it had a desperate need for an enhanced version of its typical Infantry forces, who, while well-trained and equipped, were hardly a match, one on one, for most encountered forces. The Empire found itself in need of updating and upgrading its ground forces, with something actually capable of braving the assaults that were becoming more and more common with their engagements.

Solution: The HM-23 series Assault Suit
Extensive archives exist in the Needle, on the Throneworld, which detailed technologies from the early 21st century, as well as the underpinning technologies from ages before. One such line of development, however, was reexamined in the light of the Empire's needs. For almost a thousand years, light powered armors like the Hoplite were seen as the most effective, economically, industrially, and militarily, using a frame of overpowered servos and supports, moving a composite armor shell around the wearer almost as fast as the wearer can move. Indeed, a world that can produce the standard Biochips and Molecular Displacement Batteries used in Hellenic technology is capable of outfitting most of its adult population with these suits.

It was decent, and even serves its purpose as a general issue suit, however the issue is simply a matter of projection of force. Something much heavier was in the archives, one that was seen as going toe to toe with the precursors to the Schwarzkopf M-82 tank and leaving the tank as wrecked as the tank left the suit. The thought was simple; If those who sent us into the void could make these, then surely we can make them?

And so they did. At over 300 slugs of mass, the Warboar Assault Suit is an example harkening back to Terra's dystopic darkages, when megacorporate rule wasn't a fear, but a fact. Outfitted with a Hydrocarbon Power Extraction unit rated at close to a thousand horsepower, driving a bank of generators and pumps, the Warboar is a loud, terrifying machine for lesser forces, as the arms of the suit spit out high-velocity death, the right shoulder belches out high-explosive gouts, and the left shoulder possesses a quartet of hunter-killer missiles to deal with heavier targets than the anti-materiel suits themselves.

There is a problem, however, one that the Directorate even recognizes in their own Evocatus Battlesuits; Not everyone is cut out for service in them. The prototypes were good, but the personnel assigned to testing were often injured, as the follow-me systems used by Hoplite suits were woefully insufficient for a suit of this mass and capacity. It required actual linking to the wearer's nervous system in order to use it at all, and given the problems face with Hellenic neurotech, it required a superb specimen of Hellenic might.

The Assault Troopers
Troopers, as they're called amongst their own, and by others, are sought by recruiters on Hellenic worlds, as they expect fully a third of all new Recruits to qualify for Assault School. During Boot Camp, all Recruits are subjected to a brutal regiment of physical fitness, muscle memory training, and repeated tasks until those tasks become second nature. Those who respond the best are given no choice but to join Assault School; The Empress owns them for as long as their contract lasts. Those who do make the cut, but aren't immediately selected, often do end up in Assault School, simply because their peers won't let them do otherwise.

The culture of Assault Troopers is one part glory hound, machismo, and even familial warmth among their own. They fight hard, play hard, and tend to live a life of extremes, because too many of them simply don't live to see retirement, despite the months of training--both technical and martial--and the solid two months of coma that every Assault Trooper goes through, just to enter the front door of the school as a Recruit Trooper.

Unlike Terran Evocatii, Assault Troopers are 'volunteer' recruits, most aged seventeen to twenty when they enter training, and lacking in Directorate direct-nano manufacture. Instead, for two months, the Recruit Trooper must lie comatose in a Magnetoscribe chamber, while tailored viral agents thread her central nervous system with conductive interface fibers laced from surgically-implanted ports along their spines. The process is long, requiring near-cryonic suspension and complete paralysis, and as such, is not often seen in civilians. It is in fact this very process that makes the selection process so picky.

Once she's completed this, and the intensive technical and martial training of Assault School, the Assault Trooper is considered Qualified, usually with a suit that she has completely refurbished or finished, allowing her to simply be picked up by a Carrier Fleet in need of replacements, where she can expect the next two months to a year in garrison duty training, before her very first combat drop. After that, roughly three months subjective time is experienced between the end of a campaign and the next drop, maintaining an operation tempo of roughly one year experienced between campaign starts.

To mistake one for an Evocatus is a terrible insult to the Evocatii, as not even their cultures are similar, though the two do serve their respective empires in similar capacities; They are the faces of fear that all young, recalcitrant xenoi are taught to hate, and learn to fear.