Royal Hapan Marines

The Royal Hapan Marines (RHMC) as a branch traces its origins back to the creation of the Royal Hapan Army in Hapan Year 13 during the Foundation Era, when the Consortium consisted only of Lorell and Hapes Prime. During the Phoenix Age and later Golden Age, the Royal Hapan Army was reformed on several occasions to become a more effective and versatile fighting force in line with the Consortium's needs in modern times, reaching closer to the role and form of the present day Royal Hapan Marines.

In the years after the reunification, when the focus of the Consortium's ground forces begun to shift further and further towards the infantry and armoured divisions to be able to conduct counter-offensives and boarding actions, beyond their original remit as a purely defensive ground garrison based force, smoother integration with the naval detachments became a priority. This, along with the relatively light armaments and equipment available to the ground forces led to the name of the branch to be changed to the Royal Hapan Marines, though it still retained its overarching purpose and ethos as the stalwart defenders of the Consortium's many worlds.

The shift produced a more flexible, mobile and effective ground fighting force, but it came at the expense of the focus and resources allocated to local defensive planning and maintenance of the planetary defences. This led to the eventual reinstatement of the Army as its own branch during the reign of Zayth I, with the functions of the Marines and Army separated to their own service arms, as the fortification of the many worlds of the Cluster returned to the forefront of the military agenda once more.

With the formal force structure separation concluded, the newly reformed Royal Hapan Army and its Engineering Corps begun its work on local system and ground defence infrastructure projects that awaited them. The Marines, in turn, retained the majority of the officers that espoused the more forward driven, adaptive and derring-do attitudes and thinking among the ground forces of the Consortium.

The new leaner Marine Corps would not be able to rely on heavy naval firepower of its own, or on impenetrable bunkers and warship downing artillery guns, just as it would not be their primary purpose to take and hold ground, to stand and attrite hostile forces with indirect fire and take it in return.

Their mission and purpose, instead, would be to act as the mobile elite force of mechanized infantry and armoured brigades of the Royal Hapan Armed Forces; To be the unstoppable Hammer to the Army's unmovable Anvil, striking hard and heavy at whatever would become bogged down between them and the unflinching local defence forces.

Mission

The Royal Hapan Marines, called also the Marine Corps, are known as a breed of its own, neither like their spacefaring colleagues in the Navy, nor quite like their brethren of the Royal Hapan Army. For they are the mobile mechanized infantry and armoured planetary assault forces of the Hapan armed forces, and they continuously train in the hostile environments of exotic and beautiful planets, be they barren or teeming with life, as they do in the deteriorating wrecks of collapsing superstructures drifting in space.

Modern training increasingly can take place under simulated environments within mobile garrisons when in transit between worlds or stationed on space installations. While such training methods are a welcome addition to the selection, such convenience cannot truly replace the value of the experiences gained in precarious conditions on the field, where health and lives are continuously at stake, and their minds put under as much strain as their bodies.

In the modern era, with many more different races present amongst the peoples of the Consortium than in the centuries before, there has been a marked increase in training figures for non-hapans into infantry roles. While hapans are known as natural and competent space farers, it is indisputable that there exist races within the galaxy with beneficial traits more suited for brutal close-range melee and ranged combat, greatly increasing the performance envelope possible for an infantry squad. In conditions where even the most advanced military droid models available to the Royal Hapan Armed Forces cannot compare favourably with highly trained and experienced elite shock troops, the battlefield of now still calls upon exceptional individuals who can display daring skill and committed aggression to deter and repel hostile powers.

Thus, to be either hesitant in the face of danger or reckless with the lives of others is to have failed as a Marine, as it is their solemn purpose to train as hard as they can while they can, and carry out their missions not with only relentless advance and aggression, but with ingenuity, precision and speed too; Ever adapting to their circumstances as a necessity, given their relatively lighter arsenal and unforgiving deployment conditions. They must do so to stand prepared to carry out boarding actions on hostile capital class warships closing in on Hapan worlds, to rapidly deploy and retaliate against foreign invasion forces landing on its soil, or to be among the chosen few selected for missions far beyond the Cluster's comforting borders.

At their disposal are the heaviest armoured brigades, the best armed mechanized infantry and most advanced droid platoons that the Consortium can muster, as well as the numerous delivery systems ranging from the massive Lucrehulk-class Battleships capable of deploying entire armies at a time, down to the classical Atlas-class Troop transport shuttles best suited for deploying independently operating infantry units to combat.

To be a Marine is to never relent in preparing one's mind and body, training shoulder to shoulder with others, enduring hardship so that the terrors on the battlefields of tomorrow, would be theirs to instil rather than face.