Representing projects set in the Ion Age by Alternative Armies and featuring the 81st Prydian Infantry Regiment.
Not all nobles of Prydia are born equal.
This was a lesson learned by Severian Drake at a very early age, born into a house in decline at the periphery of the Prydian Precinct. Severian grew up seeing his drunkard of a father frittering away the family’s limited fortune in sordid gambling dens and back alley brothels, as his mother, an inveterate liar and manipulator, made more enemies than allies in her eternal and misbegotten quest to further the family’s standing amongst the dregs of noble society. Even Severian’s younger brother, born just two scant years after him, was no solace; an irredeemable sociopath, whose life and career as a brutal corsair was cut short at the wrong end of a Starvaulter’s rifle. Faced with this miasma of corruption and failure, as soon as he was of age, Severian left his homeworld behind, becoming a professional mercenary amongst the more honourable Condot companies plying their trade among the Precinct’s stars.
The later death of Severian’s mother and father (in dubious and murky circumstances) coincided with the attempted assassination of King Cyon III and the founding of the Prydian Army. In the creation of this new, unified force, Severian at last saw a way to escape his heritage. Bartering the last of his family’s assets, trading on what remained of the Drake name, and leveraging his considerable experience as a mercenary, he manage to secure command of the newly founded 81st Prydian Infantry Regiment. Marching under Severian’s personal motto, “I prevail”, the regiment would cut its teeth at Sutton VII, as part of the larger Prydian Army notionally controlled by Reckhart Nevall.
As the Kingmaker’s power grew in the aftermath of Cyon III’s death, and the Starvaulters were increasingly deployed to seek out and quell dissent, the 81st found themselves performing duties in some of the darkest corners of the Precinct. Whether it was facing machine-born horrors whilst boarding Gurtan blockade-runners, purging seething nests of voracious Gyre, or skirting the edges of the MOR homeworlds and the Dolo Clouds; from the Dragon’s Vale to the Florian Incursion, at the ragged edges of human dominion, the 81st saw things out beyond the void horizon that left no doubt as to the hostile nature of the universe beyond the Precinct’s borders.
These experiences had a lasting impact on Severian, convincing him of the urgent need for the unity represented by the Prydian Army. Whilst the tangled web of alliances within which House Drake had rotted would have had him swear allegiance to the Yordist cause, when the Kingmaker plunged the Precinct into civil war, the 81st remained loyal to the Prydian ideal. When asked by Lord Thomas De Lancey if he would have any qualms about dirtying his hands with Yordist blood in defence of Prydia, Severian is said to have retorted, “Up to the armpits”, disgusted at the hubris of both Yordan and Canlaster alike.
When the regiment next took to the field of battle, the arms of their armour had indeed been repainted a deep, Prydia red, and “Up to the armpits!” has been heard the length and breadth of the Precinct’s battle fields as the unofficial warcry of the 81st. Such adherence to the Prydian ideal, has also become a locus for Yordist and Canlasterian units who remained loyal to the ideal of a unified Precinct, the regiment becoming a haven for those appalled at the havoc wreaked by their supposed liege-lords’ collective hubris, and determined to fight for a brigher future.
Consequently, the regiment has earned the derogatory nickname, “the Magpies of Prydia” amongst both Yordist and Canlastrian troops alike. This is further compounded by Severian’s habit of stripping his vanguished opponents of war materiel as part of the terms of surrender. Thus the 81st now blurs the lines between Prydian Army regiment and Condot mercenary company, its ranks swelled by both Retained Knights, and the men and women of the Muster, able to field a diverse array of units, with a plethora of heraldries, united under the White and Red of the Prydian Army, and welcomed into the bloodied arms of the regiment.
Whatever the slights heaped upon them by others however, their loyalty to Prydia remains unquestionable, having most recently fought in the liberation of Bosworth IV in 4330IC as part of the forces led by Princess Daphne Cyon herself. As it stands, they are currently making ready for transit to the Greater Camarthen Cluster, at the behest of the Council, determined to prevail against whatever foes await them…