The Campaign Builder's Guild

Louis XIV actually had the Latin motto Ultima Ratio Regum engraved on all of his cannons, but yes, that it shows up in Snow Crash (among a million other places) definitely swayed me to reference what is otherwise an incredibly cliche bit of trivia.

QuoteLouis XIV actually had the Latin motto Ultima Ratio Regum engraved on all of his cannons, but yes, that it shows up in Snow Crash (among a million other places) definitely swayed me to reference what is otherwise an incredibly cliche bit of trivia.

I've only heard of it from history and Snow Crash, and knowing you, I thought there was a pretty good chance those two places were what you were referencing. And I do love the reference, so I'm happy to hear that it was to those.

EDIT: however, I was wondering if that reference was also what they were referencing in setting?

Okay, this isn't close to complete, but I've been sitting on it for days without making any progress. Figure I should at least show you guys that I'm not totally dead over here.

1st Battalion: Furious First
Motto: No Finer Foes
Unit Specialization: None
Commander: Lt. Col. Chandi "The Old Soldier" Verghese
Troopship: Regina Apologia

As the oldest and most-storied battalion in the regiment, the Furious First have a well-deserved sense of superiority and prestige that sets them apart from their fellow Bastards. And with that sense of superiority comes only half-facetious accusations that they're nothing but a bunch of gaudily-dressed, kill-stealing "glorywhores" inordinately concerned with their unit records and reputation, quick to boast about the accomplishments of dame who happened to wear the same patch as them but even quicker to lounge on their laurels when there's unpleasantries to be done. While it's certainly true that their colours are often heavy with the weight of their many awards and decorations and that they are extraordinarily-protective of them (if you ever find yourself with an overabundance of teeth, question the validity of one of a Firster's medals and she'll fix that right up for you), assuming that the Furious First is all flash and no thunder, concerned more with vainglory than victory, is a mistake that will kill you quicker than eating your own gun.

Much of the battalion is comprised of veteran soldiers who were fighting alongside (and occasionally even against) Boudicca herself before the Bastards were even a proper outfit and cut their teeth in the sort of nightmare wars that just aren't fought anymore: the Second Invertebrate Jihad, the Castigation of the Voon, the Longsiege of Kidre. As such, they are loathe to accept anyone into their ranks who hasn't already proven themselves, meaning that freshly-recruited "pinkies" are a rare sight unless they have some exceptional skill or made an excellent impression on one of the battalion higher-ups. If you want a lesson in effortless efficiency, watch one of the First's section in action. They ascribe to a brutal sense of arête that holds that a truly effective commando, one worthy of being in the First, can't be merely broadly-competent; she should excel, or at least strive towards excellence, in literally every aspect of warfare, from strategic planning to unarmed fighting. If it sometimes seems like the First has a stick up their collective asses, this would be why. Much of their free time is spent practicing everything from knife throwing and handgun point shooting to grappling and bayonet fencing, earning themselves another badge for their colours to signify their mastery of a particular skill before moving on to another. Other, lazier Bastards like to scoff at their militant over-preparedness but are never caught complaining when some obscure skill a Firster has spent years perfecting ends up making the difference in a pinch. In addition to the martial training, many also devote an unsettling amount of time to studying the likes of poetry, history, and philosophy to really round out the whole "foul-mouthed warrior-poetess" vibe the battalion strives to cultivate. But don't think all that culture and discipline means they're any less of Bastards; the First drink as hard as they fight and fuck even harder.

Subsidiary Units
1st Company: First of the Foremost
Motto: First Into Fire
Unit Insignia: a simple white number one.

2nd Company: Fish Dancers
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

3rd Company: Empress' Own
Motto:
Unit Insignia: the serene crowned visage of Her Excellency the 23rd Azure Empress, stenciled in blue.

4th Company: Worm Soldiers   
Motto: Broken Yet Unbowed
Unit Insignia:

5th Company: Blind Sphinxes
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a dark woman's face with noticeably-feline features, her eyes covered by a braided blindfold.

Armored Company: Cromwell's Companions
Motto:
Unit Insignia: profile of an iron-jawed, hook-nosed woman's face, wearing a filigreed burgonet emblazoned with a cup.

Artillery Battery: Final Argument
Motto: We Are Not Amused
Unit Insignia: two cannons crossed within a royal crown.


2nd Battalion: War Witches
Motto: The Teeth of the Night
Unit Specialization: Airborne Operations
Commander: Lt. Col. Mallorie "The Crone" Kron
Troopship: Slutty Sark

They come like a storm in the night, the Crone's valkyrian terror troopers. Their only heralds are the growling drone of their awful engines and the haunting wisps of their death-chants before the sky spits fire and they are suddenly everywhere at once, screeching terrible curses as they leap from their aircrafts. They are soldiers utterly without pity or mercy for their doomed foes, giving no quarter once the knives have come out. Best to fight to the death with your weapon in hand, because the best that throwing it down in surrender will get you is executed with your own gun. Hide and they'll find you, run and you'll only die tired. Push them back and they'll bomb your position to rubble before they come for you a second time. As old foes of the Bastards well know, the only sure way to escape the evil eye of the War Witches is to make sure it never falls on you to begin with.

The War Witches are airborne specialists who it would be a stretch to describe as honest ground-pounders like the rest of the regiment; when they're in play, the name of the game is "vertical envelopment." The aerial blitzkrieg usually goes like this: pathfinder teams covertly sabotage (or wild weasels simply bomb to shit) any anti-air positions so that flights of siren-equipped fighter-bomber or ground-attack crafts can swoop in and lay some serious harm on the poor ackerless fuckers. Then the Witches deploy in force with nimble Peregrine assault carriers and absurdly over-armed Shrike gunship escorts, either encircling and destroying the targets or else driving them into the waiting jaws of a heavier unit. Witches like to fight light (often carrying only a handful of spare magazines at a time) and so rarely have the endurance for prolonged slugging matches, making speed and terror their greatest weapons: their bloodcurdling battle cries, wailing death-songs, striking war paint, and taste for incendiary weaponry all serve to shatter their enemies' morale and make them that much easier to overwhelm. The Witches love close combat more than any other sort, sometimes deploying almost-literally on top of their targets and firing before their boots have hit the dirt. While the air assault is their play of choice, all members of the battalion are well-versed in a wide variety of other airborne tactics and equipment: grav-chutes, jump-jet rigs, wingsuits, drop-pods, stealth gliders, etc.
As befits their name, the Witches make great use of occult imagery in their traditions and heraldry: virtually all Witch colours sport pentacles, elf-crosses, or images of the Greater Arcana. Sections are just as often called covens, and Hag is a term of respect and admiration for a senior officer rather than an insult. The most lethal close-quarters fighters in the battalion are awarded the coveted title of Redcap and the accompanying blood-colored beret and iron-shod boots, but no Witch worth her wages is without her "broomstick", a high-capacity automatic shotgun so-named for how efficiently it "sweeps up" the enemy, and a black-handled long knife with which scalp and disembowel. Peregrine-mounted sharpshooters are known as Elves. While they don't wallow in meaningless savagery the same way the Carrion Cats do, they make no bones about being an uncompromising, merciless force who give no quarter and take no prisoners.

Subsidiary Units
1st Company: Howling Banshees
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

2nd Company: Strixes
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a red-eyed black owl displayed with its wings elevated.

3rd Company: Hatchetfaces
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

4th Company: Guillotine Gals
Motto: Let Terror be the Order of the Day
Unit Insignia: a powered and wigged noblewoman's severed head over a bloody guillotine blade.

5th Company: Crow Daggers
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

Armored Company: Termagants
Motto:
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1st Airborne Squadron: Abizous
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

2nd Airborne Squadron: Soiled Doves
Motto: Fight Dirty
Unit Insignia: a buxom, scantily-clad angel with far too much makeup on and a heavy machine gun under each arm.

3rd Airborne Squadron: Knight Mares
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a winged black horse in full gothic barding.


3rd Battalion: Greyjacks
Motto: Where Now Are They?
Unit Specialization: Siege and Mechanized Warfare
Commander: Lt. Col.
Troopship: Daughter of Perdition

Dour-eyed death-dealers par excellence, the Greyjacks have the highest kill count of any battalion in the regiment...assuming they're the ones doing the counting. To their peers in other units, tilly-whacking squads of landeswehr fuckboys without the sense or skill to put up a half-decent calliope screen from ten miles away is the sort of unchallenging slaughter that barely rates a tally mark. Then again, most of their peers in other units wouldn't have the faintest idea about what to do with the sort of literally-earthshattering firepower the Greyjacks bring to bear on a regular basis.

The Greyjacks roll heavy and roll hard. They are an almost completely mechanized force, with infantry sections mounted in up-armored Waste Rats only if they can't find space in half-tracks or and Highwayman armored personnel carriers.

Subsidiary Units
1st Company: Warmongers
Motto: Bellum Gratia Belli
Unit Insignia:

2nd Company: Stoneburners
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a shattering globe, wreathed in flames.

3rd Company: Black Mariahs
Motto:
Unit Insignia: the haunting, empty eyes, long nose, and faintly-frowning mouth of Black Mariah Herself.

4th Company: Hungry Ghosts
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

5th Company: Saturnine Knights
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a headless knight clad in black plate, clutching her own severed head in one hand and a sword made from a human spine in the other.

1st Armored Company: Hard Targets
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

2nd Armored Company Landsharks
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

Artillery Battery: Bombadiers
Motto:
Unit Insignia:


4th Battalion: Carrion Cats
Motto: Red in Tooth and Claw
Unit Specialization: Unconventional and Psychological Operations
Commander: Lt. Col. Nataza Charlie
Troopship: Wages of Sin

Like the hairless, disease-ridden battlefield scavenger for which they are named, the Carrion Cats are treated with no small amount of disdain and contempt by the rest of the regiment. Maybe it's because they're the youngest battalion without nearly as many notches in their belts, but more likely than not it's because even in their short history as a unit, the Cats have managed to earn themselves a reputation as an ungovernable bunch of sociopathic war criminals, even by the Bastards' lax standards. They eat the living and violate the dead, put booby-traps in corpses and use civvy children as sniper bait.

Despite their propensity for going completely off the reservation, the Carrion Cats are an undeniably-effective light infantry force. They're significantly less motorized than the rest of the regiment, with most of their Rats stripped down to little more than a frame and an engine and converted into improvised fast-attack vehicles. While other battalions have only a single designated sharpshooter per platoon, the Cats put one in every section and a proper scout sniper team in every platoon, which speaks volumes about their usual style. They never engage in a straight-up fight if they can help it, preferring to pepper their target with precision fire from concealed position, constantly repositioning to avoid any return fire. Like true predators, they are nothing if not patient and will stalk an enemy unit for days on end, slowly whittling down their numbers and picking off commanders until they are too disorganized to resist the final assault, the Cat's setting upon their foes and butchering them in an orgy of extreme violence. But that's the most conventional tactic in their book by far. It's standard procedure for them to first jam enemy frequencies with "catcalls": horrific, distorted screaming and blaring static laced with just the right amount of depression-inducing infrasound. Every Cat radio operator has their own particular mixtapes and whose calls are the most unsettling is a matter of hot debate within the battalion. Enemies who think they've got the Cats' game figured out and try to overwhelm their positions often find that not only are they not there, but they've left a few nasty surprises behind. Land mines and claymores are one thing, but buried blockbuster bombs, monowire webs strung between trees, grenade-filled ration packs, and tripwire canisters of radioactive gas are another altogether. If they attackers are lucky, the Cats won't come back to cut the tongues out of survivors before stuffing remote charges down their throats or up some other orifice. It was they who pioneered the infamous "doc-poppers", low-velocity mass-reactive explosive rounds that armed themselves when they penetrated the target but only detonated when they were removed, usually taking the fingers of an unfortunate medic; all it takes is the knowledge that the enemy has a weapon like that for a unit to quickly start letting its wounded slowly bleed to death rather than risk helping them. Shackling civilians together to form portable cover or using cloud-seeding shells to create acid storms are barely scratching the surface of the atrocity they're willing to engage in, as much for the sport of it as anything else.

The Cats' sociopathy isn't limited to their enemies. They have a reputation for being the least trustworthy battalion in the regiment, and by Astare have they earned it.  

Subsidiary Units
1st Company: Smiling Devils
Motto: She Who Laughs Last Laughs Loudest
Unit Insignia: the leering face of a cackling cacodemoness.

2nd Company: Gundogs
Motto: The Gun is Good
Unit Insignia: a severed dog's head with nearly a dozen various gun barrels protruding from its distended jaws.

3rd Company: Maneaters
Motto: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Eat the Dead
Unit Insignia: a red she-manticore rampant, with a mouthful of needlelike teeth and a many-stinged tail.

4th Company: Resurrectionists
Motto: Death is the Only Dishonor
Unit Insignia: a battered coffin with a wreath of skeletal arms grasping from beneath the lid.

5th Company: Ratcatchers
Motto:
Unit Insignia: a sneering cat holding a dead rat by a noose in one paw and an hourglass in the other.

Armored Company: Hellcats
Motto:
Unit Insignia:

Artillery Battery: Rainmakers
Motto: Nihil Nisi Pluviae
Unit Insignia: a black storm cloud showering artillery shells.