Royal Hapan Marines

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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 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 division to be able to conduct counter-offensives, boarding actions, smoother integration with the naval detachments. This led to the name of the branch to be changed to the Royal Hapan Marines, though it still retained the role 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 worlds of the Cluster has returned to the forefront of the military agenda once more.

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Mission

The Royal Hapan Marines are known as a breed of its own, neither like their spacefaring colleagues in the Navy, nor like their brethren of the Army. They are the mobile mechanized infantry and armoured planetary assault forces of the Hapan military. They train in the hostile environments of exotic and beautiful planets, as well as in the vacuum of space, to stand ready to carry out boarding actions on hostile capital class warships, or to rapidly deploy and retaliate against foreign invasion forces landing on Hapan soil.

At their disposal are the most advanced and heavily armed armoured brigades and mechanized infantry and 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.