[MFR] The Terran Guard

Notes :

Sorry for the lack of chapters in the last few days, but as some of you have probably seen in the news, things are a bit hectic over here in France. Hopefully it gets better, but in the meantime it's hard to write.

The next chapter should be an MFR one, chapter 65. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it by friday.

I hope you'll enjoy this lore file in the meantime !

The Terran Guard

While it is not the largest nor the best equipped unit of the Federation Army, the Terran Guard is widely considered to be its most dangerous and prestigious. This comes from a combination of its recruitment method (so to speak), its location and its reserves.

The Terran Guard is a large scale military force under the Federation Army that, at least on paper, has one single objective : protect and preserve humanity's homeworld. By tradition the Terran Guard can only be commanded by a human, and not an AI, though a few digitalized humans were given the honor, usually after the death of their original biological body in the line of duty. Its number of troops vary but generally hovers around fifteen to sixteen billion soldiers, putting it third behind the First Expeditionnary Force and the Coreward Occupation Command in terms of sheer manpower.

Despite its role, the Terran Guard is not exclusively stationed on Terra itself, but rather has elements dispersed throughout the Sol system and much of the Core Worlds. Generally, they serve as a training cadre for the various local military deployments and an emergency backup if things go very, very wrong.

The Terran Guard is not a permanent posting, and rarely recruits individuals. Rather, assignement to the Terran Guard is done on a unit by unit basis, who are then transferred to the Guard for a variable period of time, usually ten years but some have been known to last as short as three. Units chosen for this honor are usually those who have distinguished themselves in the field or have been deployed at the tip of the spear for an extended amount of time. This both ensures them a comfortable downtime to recuperate, rearm and regenerate, but also ensures the homeworld has a steady incoming stream of battle hardened veterans to defend it. It has also been suggested in some quarters that the Federation's Office of Armaments is far more effective thanks to having a great deal many people ready to give feedback on the equipment they were issues and its shortcomings right next to headquarters and the primary R&D labs.

There is one catch to the assignement. Anyone accepting reassignement to the Terran Guard is on its permanent reservist list. That gives a few advantages, but also the obligation to answer a call to arms should the homeworld be threatened. This almost happened once, when the Theocracy's advance during the initial stages of the war threatened to overwhelm the Courage naval defense line and pierce towards the Core Worlds. Not that it would have made much of a difference, as the Federation was already in the process of fully mobilizing its industry and personnel, and every single person on the list was either in service or in the process of re-enlisting. It can also, by mutual agreement, draw forces from Core World planetary militias, including (astonishingly enough) the luddite world AD Leonis-3, that keeps an expeditionnary detachment trained on high tech weapons and tactics specifically for the purpose of answering the call to defend the Homeworld.

Lastly, Sol remains the primary industrial center of the Federation and the single most productive star system in the whole galaxy. The Terran Guard does not get all the new toys as they are unlikely to have to use them under the normal course of operations, but if push comes to shove there are protocols to rearm it from top to bottom and turn it from a training and regeneration unit into quite possibly the single most dangerous ground force in the Federation.