The Imperial Army

"Give me a squad of marines first. But second, give me army troops and a solid wall."

- Commander Ashton Grimes, 17th Camarssian Reds

The Imperial Army, known formally in High Gothic as the Excertus Imperialis and the Imperialis Auxilia, respectively, (the hosts of the Imperial Army and its auxiliaries) is the Imperial military force comprised of normal men and women that serve the Emperor and the Great Crusade.

The Imperial Army during the 30th and 31st Millennia comprise of ground, air, and space assets across all sectors of the Imperium, from newly conquered territories, to policing actions, and active fronts.

The origins of the Imperial army can date its creation to the time of the Unification Wars, in the late 30th Millennium when the Emperor of Mankind conquered a large swathes of humanity's homeworld, Terra.

As the Great Crusade progressed and more worlds needed to be liberated, the Imperium's need for more troops increased dramatically. Even the mighty transhuman armies of the Legiones Astartes could not alone complete the task at hand.

It was therefore decreed that each of the liberated worlds would supply men-at-arms to bolster the war effort. Although not as powerful as the Space Marine Legions under the various Primarchs' command, the Imperial Army regiments were nevertheless useful additions to the Astartes' fighting strength.

During this period, the Imperial Army was never anything more than a reserve force for the Imperium during the Great Crusade, and its troops were usually tasked with garrison duty or mopping-up operations. However, as the Schism began, Imperial regiments saw front-line armed campaigns across Imperial space in the defense of the Emperor's realm.

Only in the last decades of that great campaign have Imperial Army troops finally fight directly alongside the forces of one of the ancient Space Marine Legions on campaign.

Wars of Unification
During the turbulent era known as the Age of Strife, the Sol System and the nearby star systems that had been colonised by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology were effectively cut off from interstellar travel or communication with each other due to the massive Warp Storms that swept the galaxy.

Little remained of the once-sophisticated civilisation of Old Earth's glorious past as the centre of a growing human interstellar society marked by advanced science, high culture and wondrous technologies. Techno-barbarian warlords and their warrior hordes continuously fought over the planet, which had become little more than a massive battleground for their wars of attrition.

They made use of chemical, biological and even thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction, and slowly transformed the cradle of Mankind into a battered, post-apocalyptic wasteland across most of its scarred surface.

It was against this backdrop of oppression, violence and casual brutality that the Emperor of Mankind first revealed Himself to the people of Terra. In secret, He had been planning for this moment in history for millennia, ever since the Age of Strife had fractured what remained of the ancient human federation which had once stretched across a part of the galaxy. The Emperor moved to create the military organisations He would need to begin the reunification of Mankind, and He used the raw materials at hand after millennia of savage conflict between the techno-barbarian nation-states of Old Earth. Formed during the savage continental wars that had engulfed Terra in the Age of Strife, the genetically-enhanced warriors known as "Genos" comprised the first units of the force that would become the Imperial Army and would serve as the prototypes for the later development of the proto-Space Marines called the Thunder Warriors.

Among the most well-known of the regiments composed of Genos were the so-called Strife Epoch regiments raised by the Emperor to initiate the Unification Wars intended to reunite all the warring peoples of Terra beneath His benevolent rule.

The genetically-enhanced Strife Epoch regiments came to form the nucleus of the armed forces that would later support the even more genetically advanced Space Marine Legions during their reconquest of the human-settled galaxy.

The Emperor began His conquest of Terra with the intent to reunite the warring techno-barbarian nations into a unified planetary government and then use Terra as the springboard from which to begin his reconquest of the galaxy under the aegis of an Imperium of Man dedicated to the Imperial Truth of progress and reason.

The Old Hundred
The Old Hundred, or formally known as Genos, were the one hundred original Imperial Army regiments that comprised the mortal wing of the Emperor's military arm during the Unification Wars in the late 30th Millennia.

In the opening stages of the Unification Wars, the Emperor revealed himself on the scarred and twisted earth that was humanity's birth place. Years of chemical, biological and even thermonuclear mass destruction slowly transformed the cradle of Mankind into a battered, post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Still, the Techno-Barbarians of the old Terran states stood with powerful armies of mortal men and woman, armed with basic and rudimentary weapons of war. When the Emperor began his war to unite Terra, his Thunder Warriors marched on city after city, claiming it in the name of the Lighting Lord.

However, the Emperor did not destroy his enemies, instead he brought them into the fold. Once advisories, the old armies of the Techno-Barbarian states now served the Emperor and his legions as they brought the Imperial Truth across Terra.

Many of these regiments operated as the first genetically engineered warriors of the Emperor, with the one of the most famed being the Geno five-two chiliad, who operated by breeding most of their manpower through historic blood lines. The Chiliad, like many of the Old Hundred, continued to see service during the Great Crusade, with many becoming highly respected and honored alongside their Astartes expeditionary fleets.

Imperial Expedition Fleet
The expeditionary fleet was the basic military unit of the Great Crusade.

According to the Imperium's ancient War Council logs, at its peak in the early 31st Millennium, some 203 standard years after it began in ca. 800.M30, there were 4,287 primary expedition fleets engaged upon the business of enforcing Imperial Compliance and extending the Imperial aegis across the galaxy as well as 60,000+ secondary deployment groups involved in Compliance or occupation endeavours.

A further 372 primary expeditions were in the midst of regroup and refitting actions, or resupplying as they awaited new tasking orders.

Imperial Expeditionary Fleet Rank Structure

 * Lord Commander - A Lord Commander was a senior position within the Imperial Army hierarchy, charged with commanding an entire expeditionary fleet, unless a Primarch was attached to it, who would take overall command of any expedition where he was present. Under these circumstances, a Primarch took precedence as commander of the expeditionary fleet while the Lord Commander was relegated to being temporarily placed in charge of the only the elements of the Imperial Army assigned to the fleet.
 * Master of the Fleet - Subordinate to the Lord Commander or the senior Astartes officer in the expeditionary fleet, the next highest rank was the Master of the Fleet.
 * Captain - A Captain was the commanding officer of a given warship, regardless of class or tonnage, within an Imperial expeditionary fleet.
 * Executive Officer - The executive officer was the second-in-charge of an Imperial warship, and subordinate commander in the absence of a vessel's captain.
 * Shipmaster - The shipmaster was generally the senior-most Warrant Officer and most experienced voidsman onboard a given starship. Often the shipmaster was tasked with critical responsibilities, such as stellar navigation and the keeping of the starship's log. In addition, he or she might oversee the keeping of the ship's attitude jets, hangar decks, and stores and supplies.
 * First Master - Ship's officer.
 * Master - Ship's officer.

Imperial Army Regiments
The indentured troops of the Imperial Army were assimilated into the command structure of the Space Marine Legions, and fell under the direct authority of the Primarchs of each Imperial expeditionary fleet and his subordinate Space Marine officers.

Space Marine transports would arrive at each world and carry the regiments of the Imperial Army raised there as part of the Imperial tithe away to fight on distant battlefields throughout the galaxy.

During this bygone era, the Imperial Army and its subset formation, known as the Imperial Fleet or Armada Imperialis, functioned as a single entity, with army commanders exercising overall command of both elements.

The regimental formation and overall structure of the ground-based units of the Imperial Army was very similar to that of the present-day Astra Militarum.

Many sources from the Great Crusade era concur that the size and organisation of an Imperial Army regiment was dictated by what would fit into the interstellar ships available at the time. This meant that most Imperial Army regiments numbered approximately 3,000 troops who would be carried to their destinations by a single dedicated troop transport vessel or one of the many available classes of Imperial Cruiser.

This approach ensured that an individual regiment was deployed with each warship in an expeditionary fleet. It was doubtless a brutal but necessary equation; the losses of ships in the Warp or through enemy action did not result in remnants of a given regiment being left scattered among other vessels, and no longer being combat capable.

Each regiment maintains its own infantry, armour and support troops, making it capable of both assaulting and defending varied terrain against most types of opposition. Imperial Army regimental commanders were free to train and equip their regiments as they wished, only being limited by the resources readily available.

Keeping warriors from individual worlds together to form the natural bond of brothers-in-arms was also an important element in creating cohesive fighting formations. In many cases, troops from different worlds could barely understand each other's languages, let alone the nuances of different social mores, customs, tactics or planetary-specific special equipment.

Such difficulties in cross-cultural communication could all degrade a formation's efficiency in combat, so it became the rule in the Imperial Army that each regiment was composed of troops raised from the same world, and they all traveled together on the same transport or warship of the Imperial Fleet.

Equipment
The sheer size of the Imperium, the unpredictable nature of Warp travel and the vast numbers of liberated worlds defeated any attempt to standardise the Imperial Army, and there was wide disparity in the wargear, drill and discipline of the various regiments.

Each of the tithed worlds supplied troops to the Imperial Army as best they could. Those from developed Industrial Worlds were kitted out with sturdy Flak Armour and newly-minted, standard-issue Autoguns and Lasguns (the Autogun was the standard weapon for the Astra Militarum until the opening of the 32nd Millennium).

Soldiers from primitive worlds were fortunate if they had a pair of boots and a gun. Some worlds supplied troops that were well-drilled and organised into squads, companies and regiments. Others supplied what amounted to little more than loosely ordered mobs or warbands. Despite this, the soldiers of the Imperial Army proved their value in hundreds of campaigns and across thousands of battlefields.

In the earliest days of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, the Imperial expeditionary fleets that set out from Terra only carried with them the means to fulfill a portion of their supply needs, and simply took what they needed from the worlds they conquered in their travels.

Upon the completion of a successful Imperial Compliance action on a world, the expeditionary fleet would move on, leaving the assimilation of the planet into the Imperial fold to fleets of pioneers and Terran colonists. Each world, in time, would become fully capable of supporting itself and contributing to the needs of the growing number of Imperial expeditionary fleets.

Such a state of affairs could not continue, for eventually each fleet would exhaust its supplies and be too far from a Compliant world capable of resupply. In these times, the resources necessary to fight a campaign were organised by the Lord Commander of each individual expeditionary fleet, a necessity of the times, but one that was wholly unsuited to the growing size and complexity of the Imperium.

Oft times a Lord Commander fulfilled multiple roles; war leader, diplomat, exactor, mediator and logistician. Leaders who could fulfill all of these roles adequately and still have time for the strategic demands of a long campaign were few and far between and, as such, the newly formed Council of Terra recruited those whose minds could function in such a manner, empowering these administrators with the duty of maintaining the Emperor's armies in perpetuity as part of the Corps Logisticae. This was the earliest incarnation of the Departmento Munitorum.