211th Tamrath
“We fall first. We hit what we see. We hear what the enemy whispers. We have no home, so we hold every one.”
Core Data
| Regiment type | Drop Troops (grav-chutes, Valkyrie insertion, operates behind enemy lines) |
|---|---|
| Munitorum designation | MR-TAM-211/734-DT |
| Homeworld | Tamrath |
| Tithe grade | Solutio Tertius |
| Establishment strength | 4,800 |
| Current strength | 1,312 |
| Allegiance | Loyal |
| Origin | Original regiment |
The pillars
The Fall
A Glassfaller jumps before he thinks. The instructors on Tamrath threw recruits from the dune crests into soft sand until their stomachs no longer rose. The regiment believes that hesitation at the hatch kills more men than any flak, and it is right. Whoever stops at the ramp gets a kick. Whoever stops again the second time gets a place right at the front. No one considers this cruel. It is considered the kindest form of education the regiment knows.
The Eye
On Tamrath one hit a desert rat at three hundred metres or did not eat. The regiment carries long-las rifles in a ratio that contradicts the Munitorum table, and it wastes no shot. Scarcely a Glassfaller would recognise an officer in close combat, yet every one recognises an enemy vox-bearer at 800 metres by his antenna. Kill first the one who gives orders, then the one who passes them on. The men with the weapons come last, for without orders they scatter of their own accord.
The Ear
Behind the lines a regiment without artillery is blind and mute unless it steals. The Glassfallers jam the enemy's signals, listen in on them and send false orders in borrowed voices. The vox platoons are held to be consecrated, and their sets are maintained with holy oil and litanies. The regiment believes that a well-tended machine spirit is more honest than most men. It is a belief best not argued out of a Glassfaller.
The Debt
The regiment confirmed the target coordinates for the death of its own world. Since then it believes it owes the Emperor lives, and more lives than it possesses itself. That is why the Kessin replacements jump in the first wave. The officers call it building experience. The old Tamrathers say it more openly in the tents: the debt is Tamrathi, it is paid in others' blood. None of them is ashamed enough to change anything about it.
Further core facts
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Militarum Regimentum | Tamrath Rifles |
| Byname | The Glassfallers |
| Origin of the name | Earned in battle: on their first drop onto the vitrified plain of Veyr, the soldiers broke through the glass crust on landing. |
| Regiment type | Drop troops (grav-chutes, Valkyrie deployment, operations behind enemy lines) |
| Founding | 734.M41 |
| Battle cry | "No ground beneath us!" |
Raising, Homeworld & Culture
Raising & Tithe
The 211th did not arise from the regular tithe. In the year 734.M41 a war zone opened in the neighbouring Veyr system, and the Munitorum demanded a drop-troop regiment within nine weeks. Planetary Governor Ashur Qelm knew what an incomplete delivery would mean for him: shortfalls, poor training, missing uniforms or genetic defects are punished by death. He therefore sent his desert hunters and his well-guards and kept the devoted at home.
Selection was by lot. On every well-square each man between seventeen and forty drew a pebble from a clay jar, and whoever drew a black one went. This method breeds a particular kind of rage. No one had volunteered, no one had done any wrong, and none could blame another. The recruits hated the jar. After nine weeks of training instead of the usual two years, they jumped angry, ill-prepared and yet precise. Each man wears the black pebble on a cord around his neck to this day.
What the Homeworld Lost
With the 211th went 312 well-borers, almost the entire year's intake of the guild of Qasr Tamm. Afterwards no new well was sunk in the south, and three settlements died of thirst before Tamrath itself perished. Also lost was the whistling of the dune-herders, a language of two-tone calls that no child learned any longer, because the teachers were gone. The spring caravan consecration requires forty voices singing the names of the watering places in alternation. In the year 740.M41 it was held with eleven singers, and the missing names were simply left out. The maps of those watering places existed only in that song.
The Homeworld
Tamrath was a desert world of salt pans, gravel plains and wandering dunes, with a well lying between them every forty kilometres. By day the temperature rose to 60 degrees; by night it fell below freezing. In the dust season the sky stood ochre for weeks, and visibility dropped to ten paces. The people lived in caravans and well-towns, each clan bound to a watering place. The law was simple: whoever wasted water lost it.
This life made good drop troops. The Tamrathi navigated by stars and shadows rather than maps. They carried their own water and rationed it without orders, and they could endure alone for days. From the storm winds of the dunes they knew how to let themselves fall, curl up and rise again. Their hunters shot at shimmering targets over great distances, for a missed shot scattered the herd for a week. In the dust seasons they communicated by whistle signals and mirrors, and so the vox-platoons were later raised with an ease that surprised the Munitorum.
The Disadvantage They Carry
A Tamrather does not leave a well before it is empty. To abandon water is held to be a sin, worse than a retreat. On wet worlds this rule becomes a death trap, because every cistern, every tank and every pumping station is held as if the life of the clan depended on it.
On Aurek Tiefe in the year 761.M41, the 3rd Platoon of the Third Company held a water purification plant, although the order to withdraw had already come twice. The plant had no tactical value whatsoever, for on Aurek it rains two hundred days a year. Lieutenant Ghaza Tuhm reported that the tank was still half full. The platoon was encircled, and 51 men died. The well-faith shows itself in small things too: Glassfallers hoard water where it flows everywhere, and jump with canteens that are too heavy. The Kessin replacements consider this madness. After the Sulmar Trench, some of them nevertheless began doing it themselves.
Regimental Culture
The Glassfallers drill hard, but without parade step. They practise jumps, rapid fire and curling up. They are poor at saluting, good at holding still under fire. While fitting their grav-chutes they sing "The Jug", a work song with endless verses. Each verse names a man who drew a black pebble, and ends with the line "and the sky took him, because the sand no longer could". One custom demands that no one leaves the hatch seventh on a jump, for the seventh supposedly draws death. The officers have given up fighting it. The jump plan therefore lists an ammunition crate in position seven.
The transport decks smell of weapon oil, sweat and the resin smoke the priest burns. One hears the clicking of pebbles as the men turn them between their fingers. They save their spirit ration and drink it only after a jump, together from a single canteen, so that no one gets more than another. If there is time for a burial, the dead man is laid in dry sand, his face towards the star beneath which Tamrath is said to lie. If there is no time, his black pebble is taken from him and thrown out of the hatch on the next jump.
The Commissariat
The regiment uses its commissars. On Tamrath one does not avoid a commissar; one employs him like a compass. Whoever lands behind the lines needs someone whose order still stands when the colonel is dead and the vox is jammed. The Glassfallers have grasped that a commissar who shoots also creates order. They deliberately bring the new men to him, so that he shouts at them before the enemy does. None of the six commissars is loved. Two of them, however, are considered reliable enough to be granted the place beside the hatch.
Ranks & Organisation
Ranks
Rank Bearer
Description
Munitorum rank: Trooper · Form of address: "Bearer"
Rank Tent Elder
Description
Munitorum rank: Sergeant · Form of address: "Elder"
Rank Well-Keeper
Description
Munitorum rank: Lieutenant · Form of address: "Keeper"
Rank Wayguide
Description
Munitorum rank: Captain · Form of address: "Guide"
Rank Dune Master
Description
Munitorum rank: Major · Form of address: "Master"
Rank Lord of the Pebbles
Description
Munitorum rank: Colonel · Form of address: "Pebble Lord"
Structure
By establishment strength the regiment consists of eight companies of 600 men each, 4,800 in total. Each company is divided into a command squad of ten men and five platoons of 118 each. A platoon comprises a Lieutenant with a command squad of eight men, seven squads of ten, two sniper squads, a special weapons squad with meltaguns against bunkers, and a vox-jamming squad. The regiment fields scarcely any heavy weapons, because a Valkyrie carries no mortar battery and the Munitorum wills it so. Artillery and tanks it receives only on loan.
Actual strength stands at 1,312 men, of whom 571 are Tamrathers and 741 Kessiners. Of eight companies, four remain, each with three merged platoons and an average of 328 men. The number of vox-jamming squads, by contrast, is complete. This was deliberately maintained, at the expense of the riflemen.
Constituent regiments
Name 211th Tamrath, "The Glassfallers"
Role / notes
Drop troops. Colonel Seraun Maddach, who no longer has an outer right ear. Destroyed on Veyr in 741.M41, re-raised in 742.M41. Along with the number, the new levy took over the standard, the roll of names and 189 survivors, as well as the oath of the dead never to lose a pebble on any retreat. Currently deployed, with 1,312 men.
Name Tamrath 198th, "The Wellwardens"
Role / notes
Light infantry, specialised in garrison duty. Colonel Hanni Sayd, with a glass eye of polished salt crystal. The regiment has been considered lost since 776.M41, after its transport ceased all contact in the warp. The Munitorum continues to supply it regardless.
Name Tamrath 204th, "The Dustriders"
Role / notes
Mechanised reconnaissance in Chimeras. Colonel Idrah Kavun, who is missing two fingers of his left hand. After the loss of the home world it was merged with a regiment from Voruun in 764.M41 and today bears the number only on paper.
Command Staff
Command staff
Name Colonel Seraun Maddach
Titel / Rolle Lord of the Pebbles
Beschreibung
Gaunt, 61 years old, with a deeply furrowed face and no outer right ear, which was torn off on Veyr. Around his neck he wears two black pebbles, his own and his brother's. Maddach does not believe the regiment will survive, and he plans every operation as if it were the last. At the Sulmar Trench he deliberately had an entire company jump into the middle of an enemy position so that the rest could land behind it. He jumped with that company, though his staff forbade it. He came back; of 312 men, 41 did.
Zitat
"We die anyway. The only question is whether it is worth it."
Name Senior Commissar Tovan Reisch
Beschreibung
Short and broad-shouldered, raised by the Schola Progenium on Hethys. He wears a faded cap whose cockade he has sewn on with wire. Reisch is not Tamrathi, and it was he who signed the report on the confirmation of the target coordinates in 761.M41. He writes down the name of every man he shoots, and reads them aloud every year on the anniversary. In the Sulmar Trench he pushed a frozen Kessiner out of the hatch instead of shooting him. In the report he recorded cowardice, executed by gravity.
Zitat
"I am not here so that you like me. I am here so that you jump."
Name Enginseer Oriel Dask
Beschreibung
Dask is tall and stooped; half his face consists of a brass grille behind which a vox-receiver hums. He carries a censer of consecrated oil from which he anoints the jammers before every jump. The Machine Cult has bound the regiment to itself: Dask demands that every vox-bearer know the Litany of Reception by heart, and the Glassfallers do so without grumbling. On Aurek Deep he intercepted the enemy command channel and listened for three hours without transmitting. Afterwards the regiment knew where the artillery stood.
Zitat
"The machine does not lie. It only repeats what men have told it."
Attached Personnel
| Specialists | Number | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Commissar and Commissars | 1 + 6 | Commissariat |
| Priest, preachers, servants | 1 + 4 + 9 | Ecclesiarchy |
| Enginseers | 3 | Adeptus Mechanicus |
| Sanctioned Psykers | 2 | Scholastica Psykana |
| Ogryn squads | 2 (18 Ogryns) | Auxilia |
| Ratling snipers | 1 squad (8) | Auxilia |
The friction shows most clearly with the Ogryns. No approved grav-chutes exist for them, and the Glassfellers are reluctant to let them fly with the first wave. The Ratlings, by contrast, are respected as marksmen, but where water is concerned they are mistrusted.
The Regimental Standard
The standard is a cloth of ochre caravan felt, framed by indigo-blue borders. In the centre stands the regimental insignia, a downward-pointing triangle above a horizontal bar. Sewn to the lower edge are 189 black pebbles, one for each survivor of Veyr. The battle honours read Veyr Glassplain, Aurek Tiefe and Sulmar Trench. In the year 741.M41 the regiment almost lost it, when the standard-bearer fell with a shattered chute. He was found in the glass of the plain, his arms still wrapped around the staff. He was dead, the cloth was unharmed, and his fingers had to be broken to free it.
The Flaw
The flaw
Tamrath no longer exists, and the Glassfallers saw to that themselves. Commissar Tovan Reisch signed the report on the 14th day of the Aurek campaign: the confirmation of the target coordinates was transmitted without hesitation. Later, indications surfaced that the cult had controlled only two of the eleven well-towns. No one has officially examined this suspicion. The regiment obeyed, and therefore it is loyal.
In daily life this shows in small things. On every world the Glassfallers fill a small pouch with sand and carry it with them until another pouch replaces it. They do not speak of Tamrath. Whoever speaks the name of the world aloud must stand watch for a night. In battle they hold every position too long, as if they wished, at least once, not to give up a place.
They tell themselves that the Emperor drew them out of the sand like a pebble, and that they are now His home. One hears it in the sermons, and one hears it in the tents.
Wherever the regiment is quartered alongside others, the latrines and water points do not stay shared for long. Other regiments call them "Wellmurderers" as soon as they are out of earshot, and keep their command codes well locked away.
A Munitorum Failure
For the first drop over Sulmar the regiment received reserve cartridges for its grav-chutes. The bill of lading showed the correct quantity and the correct serial number. The cartridges, however, were calibrated for a world of 0.7 standard gravity, a figure that a scribe in the reconciliation office of Kessin had copied from an old list. Sulmar has 1.3. The chutes braked only half as hard as required. In the first wave 212 men struck the floor of the gorge unbraked, the majority of them Kessiners. The regiment's complaint was answered in 794.M41, with the note that the parts delivered had matched the order.
Known Campaigns
Campaigns
Name Veyr Glassfield (seven months)
Epoche 741.M41
Erzählung
Theatre: Veyr, neighbouring system of Tamrath. Enemy: Insurgent cults, supported by the crew of a space hulk.
The regiment jumped onto a plain that an earlier bombardment had melted to glass. The crust would not bear a man with kit. Hundreds broke through on landing and cut their legs open on the underside. The cults had chosen the spot deliberately. For seven months the survivors fought behind the lines, destroying vox-nodes and killing leaders. The Carvassi 17th Armoured finally broke through and dug the last Glassfallers out of their glass holes.
Outcome: Veyr was pacified, but abandoned again four decades later. Losses: 4,611 of 4,800. Allies: Carvassi 17th Armoured, Nhal 5th Artillery. The Glassfallers owe the Carvassi their lives. The battle group was disbanded two months later, and the Carvassi went to the Segmentum Tempestus. Every year the regiment drinks a sip for them and does not even know whether they still exist.
Name Aurek Deep (eleven months)
Epoche 761.M41
Erzählung
Theatre: Aurek, a rain-soaked industrial world. Enemy: A renegade planetary defence force.
Behind the lines the Glassfallers waged a signals war: jamming, false orders, intercepted channels. In the middle of the campaign an astropathic order reached them. Tamrath had fallen to a cult, the regiment's planetary codes were the only ones still valid, and confirmation of the target points was demanded for the fleet. Major Maddach confirmed. The vox-platoons transmitted the codes, and the fleet destroyed the well-towns. On Aurek the regiment fought on afterwards, because it had no other place left. The Vessik 40th Mortars withdrew without warning during a jump, and the regiment landed without covering fire.
Outcome: Stalemate; Aurek was later partitioned. Losses: 1,210 of 3,940. Allies: Vessik 40th Mortars, Kessin 9th Hive Infantry. The regiment bears a grudge against the Vessiki that will never lapse. The Vessiki were redeployed before anyone could call them to account.
Name Sulmar Trench (two years)
Epoche 788.M41–790.M41
Erzählung
Theatre: Sulmar, a high-gravity world of deep trench-gorges. Enemy: A fortified uprising in the gorge-cities.
Without a home world, the regiment could no longer draw replacements of its own. The Munitorum supplied 1,100 replacements from the hive world Kessin, people from the deep levels of a hive who had never seen an open sky. On the first drop with them, half the wave vomited at the hatch. The Tamrathers despised them until the Kessiners took the lead in the gorge-cities, which they read like their own hive passages. Today both sides respect one another, but they do not drink together.
Outcome: Attrition; Sulmar was handed over to the Planetary Defence Force after the regiment's withdrawal. Losses: 2,518 of 3,830 (2,730 at the outset, 1,100 supplied). Allies: Kessin 9th Hive Infantry, Orsk 2nd Armoured Grenadiers. Both formations were dispersed after the campaign.
Vehicle livery
How the regiment’s vehicles are painted: base colour, camouflage for the theatre, turret band and markings, derived from the regimental colours.
| Theatre | Desert and steppe · Wave camouflage |
|---|---|
| Base colour | #988E56 · Zandri Dust (Uniform ochre) |
| Camouflage | #ABA173 · Ushabti Bone (Insignia bone-coloured)#8A6A3F · XV-88 (theatre standard) |
| Turret band | #02134E · Kantor Blue (Cloths and trim) |
| Markings | #000000 · Abaddon Black (Black pebbles) |
| Hull recipe | Zandri Dust (Base) · Agrax Earthshade (Shade) · Ushabti Bone (Layer) · Pallid Wych Flesh (Edge) |
Company bands on the turret
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Derived from the regimental colours; the silhouettes are our own sketches, not copies of any Games Workshop model.
On the core data
The high ordinal number betrays a young levy from a world that gave up many regiments: in four centuries Tamrath raised over two hundred formations, most of them in haste. The 211th was destroyed once, on Veyr in 741.M41, and was raised anew the very next year from the last drawings of lots. There can be no third time, for since 761.M41 no world has existed that could raise it anew. The 189 survivors of Veyr told the new soldiers the names of the dead back then, and the new soldiers learned them like prayers. Today hardly anyone still knows the faces behind those names. The Kessiner replacements recite the names nonetheless, though they have never been to Tamrath.
A scene
The Valkyrie shuddered, and Pell Odran from the third deep level of Kessin held on to the bar with both hands. The Tamrathers beside him did not even look up.
Outside lay Sulmar. Through the side window he saw only blackness and beneath it a gorge so deep that the deep levels of his hive would have vanished into it. He had never seen a sky, least of all from above.
"Pebbles," said the tent elder. His name was Qarun, and his hands were so scarred that the fingers looked like ropes.
The Tamrathers drew out their cords, each with a black stone. They turned them between their fingers, and the clicking filled the cabin like rain on tin.
Pell had no pebble. The Kessiners had not been chosen by lot; they had simply been delivered, a number on a freight manifest.
"You jump fourth," said Qarun.
"I thought the new ones jump first."
Pell did not understand. He had been with the regiment for nine days.
Place seven was empty. An ammunition crate stood there, lashed down. He had asked why, and no one had answered.
The red light came on. The ramp opened, and the wind roared in, cold and smelling of metal. Beneath him lay nothing.
The first Tamrather jumped and shouted "No ground beneath us!", then the second, then the third.
Pell stood at the edge and could not move. His legs had stopped belonging to him.
Behind him stood the commissar, Reisch, the small one with the patched cap. Pell waited for the pistol and found that he was almost relieved.
Instead Qarun stepped beside him, pressed something into his hand and closed his fingers around it. Smooth and cool.
"Belonged to Brenn," he shouted against the wind. "Last week. Now it belongs to you. Now you have to jump, or he loses it twice."
Pell knew no Brenn. He knew only that a Tamrather of that name stood on the grave list, and that the Tamrathers had said his name at supper as though he were still there.
He looked at the stone in his hand. Black. Somewhere, on a world that no longer existed, a man had drawn it from a jug and grown angry over it.
"He didn't want to jump either," said Qarun. "None of us wanted to."
Then he did not push him. He waited.
Pell jumped.
The wind tore the air from his lungs. The gorge rushed towards him, black, red, then grey, and he heard himself screaming until he realised that he was screaming the same words as the others.
The chute wrenched him upwards, too late, far too late, and his knees nearly broke on landing, but he lay in the dust and was alive.
Beside him Qarun landed and rolled.
"Water," he said, and handed him the canteen.
Pell drank. Then he tied the pebble to the cord he did not have, and took his bootlace instead.