Penitent Legion

Introduction

Also known as the Legion of the Mad, and perhaps less affectionate names among certain circles, the Penitent Legion walks a fine line between balance and total chaos under the banner of The Laughing Lady. Its members consist of those driven to death by madness and their victims. The mother who drowned her child because voices told her to and then hung herself, the old man who watched his life slowly fade behind a curtain of dementia, the woman who bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself eternally young... these are all members. On the other side of the coin there are soldiers who died during the insane military actions of their commanders, the woman who walked down the wrong road by herself, and the bastard child culled to keep his father’s honor in tact; they are also members. Anyone touched by madness is a viable applicant for the Penitent.

Members are watched over by militant and almost omniscient Keepers who are charged with keeping the peace among their own Legion, along with combating the Shadow of all Wraiths and quashing Oblivion feeding activity wherever it may be. This Legion carries the weight of the world on its shoulders and they wouldn’t have it any other way. This is not to say that the Legion is full of howling lunatics running wild; quite the opposite, in fact. Every member is made to control themselves, or they are whisked away to the Seat of Succor for re-education. Some return, but most do not. It is this rigid control that also gives this Legion an advantage in war, and the Penitent have some of the frightening corps in the Stygian military. After all, war is madness, and the Penitent are right at home in both.

History

No one is quite sure of the actual origination of the Penitent. Some speculate that The Laughing Lady is just as old, if not older than, Charon himself and while he was tasked with leading the dead, she was tasked with keeping the peace among its unruly members. What is known is that as long as there has been madness there has been a Penitent Legion. The headquarters of the Legion and home of The Laughing Lady, the Seat of Succor, has been around for countless eons in Stygia, as old as the foundation of the city itself. For millennia they have gone about their business, often ruffling feathers among the other Legions over claiming enfants. Madness is not a tangible death and makes adding new members difficult, so the Penitent Reapers are an aggressive, calculating bunch that will take any enfant they feel they can moderately justify getting away with.

Leadership

The head of the Penitent Legion is The Laughing Lady. Her origin is a bit of a mystery and it is speculated that perhaps she has some relation to Charon, but no one can say for certain one way or the other. She makes her home with the Seat of Succor in Stygia. Constantly surrounded by her retinue of Keepers, the Lady is never seen without her mask on; a huge thing with a massive toothy grin splashed across the front. For someone named The Laughing Lady, she laughs very little and remains an enigma even to her own followers.

The military leader of the Legion is a wraith named Liamh. Once a warrior who fought the Romans on their first invasion of England (Albion, at the time), he was said to hear the voices of the gods every night that helped him come up with battle strategies. Some of them worked, but obviously not all of them, and he was eventually cut down. As it turns out the voices speaking to Liamh were not speaking of the Roman invasion, but were instead speaking of a far greater war to come in the Shadowlands. Even as the Romans swept across Albion, Liamh was busy training for another war in Stygia. He is said to be charismatic, brilliant, twisted, and cruel, not to mention his funny accent.

Purpose

One of the few things the Legion has been able to agree on is that madness is a manifestation of Oblivion in the Skinlands. In this, the members of the Penitent Legion are largely responsible for the feeding of Oblivion in life, and feel it is their duty in afterlife to atone for their crimes. To this end they have, as a whole, focused their efforts on the Shadow. Keepers monitor the well-being of the Legion as a whole so that those showing signs of a Shadow outburst can be dealt with swiftly. Castigate is not an uncommon Arcanoi among more seasoned members, especially those who have made a trip to the Seat of Succor to learn to control themselves and cope with their own madness, or death. Specters are especially hated among the Legion and most members will go out of their way to stop them. In fact, any Oblivion feeding activity is despised and put out swiftly. In a nutshell, the Legion is concerned with controlling the Shadow (and not just their own), keeping themselves in check, and waging war on Oblivion and any who seek to aid it.

Military

The Legion’s military is divided into corps with varying purposes. A standard rank-and-file infantry is maintained, but in reality it’s a glorified hunting ground for the other corps who may need extra bodies for some horrific machination or another. Anyone with any prospect is usually snatched up quickly and rarely does a wraith spend more than a handful of years, perhaps a decade or two, in the infantry. They are either eventually tapped for service or used for spare parts.

The Skirmisher Corps: The Storm of Night

The Storm is proud of its long history in the Legion. Its members were among the first few corps in the Legion and their barracks is decorated in tapestries that depict hundreds of battles fought by the corps and their banners carry their sigil with honor. They are the first line of attack, relying on swords and shields and bows and arrows as their main weapons. They meet the enemy head on, disrupt the line, and pull out before the enemy can make a concentrated response to the assault. If all fares well for them they break off into smaller platoons to further break the line, hunting down key targets while the rest of the Legion takes advantage of the enemy's broken defense.

The members still wear black light armor, only updating as advances allow. Their banners are a dark grey field with a storm gathering on the horizon: a single black lightning bolt that ends in a spearhead arcs across the sky.

The Phalanx Corps: The Wall of Skulls

Originally this corps was the only corps in the Penitent Legion with the others as minor supporters, but times have changed and the Legion has learned from its losses. A majority of the members tapped out of the infantry are taken into the Phalanx, and it contains half of the actual wraiths tapped into service in the Legion. When time to regroup or numbers are called for, it’s the Phalanx answers. Their purpose is to provide structure to the normally chaotic attacks of the other corps. They are the front line and all other groups wheel around them. They are the ones who move in after the Skirmishers and pin the enemy down so that they cannot retreat or advance. These two corps work in tandem. The Phalanx is not particularly mobile and depends upon the Skirmishers to guard their flanks, while the Skirmishers depend upon them to not let the enemy pass.

Phalanx members carry a heavy shield with a skull emblazoned on the front, and wear heavy armor decorated with bone motifs. A small contingent of musicians and drummers is also a part of the corps, used to drum out the steady advance or sound out orders. These members are lightly armored for mobility, but usually wear tabards with the Phalanx sigil. Their banners and tabards are decorated with their sigil: a black field with a white skull in the center that sprouts white spears in the form of leg bones, ending in metal points.

The Beast Corps: The Razor’s Song

In most Legions, barghests are used to hunt down convicts and other unpleasant members of society. The barghests of the Penitent Legion are called upon for war, either voluntarily or not, from the most violently criminally insane that the Legion has to offer. The corps is divided into small groups of six, five barghests and one beastmaster. The barghests are Moliated beyond the normal parameters for their creation into beasts that bear almost no resemblance to what they once were. The beastmaster is covered head to toe in armor that can only be described as chitinous and insect-like in nature. Only the bravest (or most insane) are chosen to be beastmasters. After the Skirmishers have broken the line, and the Phalanx has the enemy pinned, the Beast is deployed into fractures of the enemy back line and the barghests are let loose. If all goes well, chaos ensues. Days ahead of time the beastmaster whips his hounds into a murderous frenzy, which they are happy to unleash on anyone they find first, thus the need for heavy armor from the beastmaster. The master is commanded to stay out of battle, since their job is simply to transport the barghests in and out of combat.

The uniform of the Beast Corps is impressive: and entire suit of soulforged armor with a stylized helmet in the shape of a snarling hound’s head. No banners are used by this corps, but in the war kennels, pennants with their sigil is hung: a muzzled dog skull on a blood red field, with the leash leading to a spiked gauntlet clenched into a fist below.

The Flesh Corps: The Tide of Horror

The heavy warbeasts of the Legion, this corps is the product if Liamh’s twisted imagination. One is not a member of the Flesh Corps, they are simply part of its creations. Using a perverse mix of Moliate and soulforging, gargantuan Leviathans are created from dozens, and in some cases hundreds of souls that aren’t fit for regular duty. These “lucky” souls are those who are rendered useless by some means or another, those who live afterlives of unmitigated violence, and those who aren’t worth taking to the Seat of Succor. On the backs of these beasts, which vary in appearance depending on the artistic flair of their particular creator, are howdahs filled with archers, who are actually members from the Phalanx selected for special duty. These monsters crash through the broken lines and destroy whatever remaining semblance of order is left among the enemy lines.

The banner of the Flesh Corps that adorn the howdahs is a red Leviathan rampant on a black field standing on a rocky outcropping. There is no standing uniform among its “members”.

Ranks

The Skirmishers and Phalanx have the same ranking system. From lowest to highest:

Conscript: Base infantry/civilians

Soldier or Legionnaire: Private

Centurion: Captain – Commands up to 80

Primus Pilus: Major – Commands up to 400

Above these were the tribunes that command up to 5,000 in the Legion, but there are no more than 6 (4 from the Skirmishers and Phalanx, and one each from the Beast and Flesh) who report to Liamh.

The Beast Corps rank are as follows:

Beastmaster

Pack Leader: Commands up to 5 Beastmasters

Kennel Master: Commands up to 15 Pack Leaders. Kennel Masters report to the highest ranking field commander.

The Flesh Corps has no real ranking system. Usually the person at the reins is either a Phalanx or Beast member with the howdahs populated by Phalanx members with bows.

Civilian Life

Not much is asked of those who live civilian lives among the Legion, whether they are retired military or not suitable for war. They are encouraged to take up a trade, join a Guild, or lead something as close to a normal afterlife as they can. The Laughing Lady does demand that her civilians keep an eye out for suspicious Shadow and Oblivion activity, to keep themselves in check and seek help at the Seat if they cannot, and to aid the Keepers when necessary.

Opinions

The Penitent Legion has no real opinions concerning supernatural beings. They are far too busy dealing with their own problems. However, should they catch wind of anyone alive or dead sowing chaos and feeding Oblivion they sweep in, take care of the issue, and disappear as if nothing was amiss. There is no mercy in the Legion for these kinds of indiscretions.