88th Dorrmark Line Regiment
“What is reported is held.”
Core Data
| Regiment type | Line infantry on garrison duty – lasgun, flak armour, one flamer and one meltagun per platoon; boiler garrison of the hive world Firnhalde. |
|---|---|
| Munitorum designation | DMK-88-LI – garrison regiment of the planetary governor of Firnhalde, Nordkaserne Hartenfels |
| Homeworld | Dorrmark (arid plateau world of the garrison towns) |
| Tithe grade | Decuma Particular – one regiment per generation, refilled from the garrison towns. |
| Establishment strength | around 1,000 (three companies of around three hundred each, plus staff, quartermaster's department, pioneers and listening post) |
| Current strength | 120 soldiers of the regiment's remnants on the north wall of the citadel of Hartenfels, plus 40 survivors brought back from the Hall (ninth day after the opening); with city guards and civilians, 212 armed men on the north wall. The rest are dead, burned or lost in the warming rooms. |
| Allegiance | Loyal |
| Origin | Original regiment |
The pillars
The watch
The 88th conquers nothing. It is posted to a place and stays there, and its strength is that it still stands there in the third winter, with weapons that work and heads that do too. The duty roster is the regiment's holiest document: it says who stands where, and a man who knows where he stands need not ask what for.
The form
What is not written down has not happened, and what is written down is at least held. Every Dorrmark regiment keeps its book and the 88th keeps it with pride: notes, counter-notes, resubmissions. Captain Brandt's remark that the paper would keep them both warm was half mockery and half faith.
The room
Nine cots, nine men. The squad of nine is the unit in which a Dorrmarker lives, eats and hears the others breathe. A man who knows his neighbour's cough in his sleep notices when it changes. That is the regiment's strength and the road by which it was lost.
The frost
Anyone born in the Dry Marches knows how cold kills: quietly, at night, in huts with no fuel. No Dorrmarker takes cold for a test. It makes him hard against complaint and soft toward warmth.
Further core facts
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Founding | M40.3 (levied in the barracks of Dorrmark-South) |
Raising, Homeworld & Culture
Raising & Tithe
Dorrmark raises its line regiments by a count that has never been broken off since the garrison towns were founded. The 88th carries the eighty-eighth number and was formed in the barracks of Dorrmark-South from the sons and daughters of the landless whom the night frost had not taken. The recruiters promised pay, and the pay goes home: whoever enlists signs that his family receives the monthly sum.
The regiment served on several worlds, among them an ice world whose name is blacked out in the regimental book, and came to Firnhalde two winters before the opening of the Nordkaserne as boiler garrison, at the request of the planetary governor, who needed soldiers for the lower tiers of Hartenfels. It was to catch pipe thieves and walk patrols. No war was foreseen.
What the Homeworld Lost
Nothing, which is what makes it hard. Dorrmark stands, the garrison towns stand, and the pay goes home, only the post is slow. Sergeant Karst enlisted at sixteen so that rations would reach his family; the money arrived in spring, and his little brother had been dead for weeks. The regiment lost no world it could mourn, and almost every Dorrmarker carries something he cannot show.
The Homeworld
Dorrmark is a plateau world, dry to the bone. By day the heat stands over the granaries; by night the temperature falls so fast that water in the buckets of the landless turns to ice before morning. Between the granaries lie the garrison towns, the Marches, built of brick and armoured concrete around a central yard with arcades on three sides and a lamp mast under which the regiment falls in for muster. The Nordkaserne of Hartenfels follows this pattern, built for a warmer world than Firnhalde ever knew.
The Disadvantage They Carry
Dorrmarkers distrust hardness and trust care, because in the Marches care always came from above and hardness from the cold. A man who has lived all his life on forms, allotments and quotas takes whoever hands out the allotment to mean well. An enemy dressed as an allotment is recognised only once he is sitting inside it. On top of this, a regiment whose life hangs on the duty roster does not ask who writes the roster.
Regimental Culture
Polite and written. The notices of the Intendancy all begin with the words “I beg your indulgence”, and the men pin them up beside their cots although nobody reads them. Muster begins in the dark. The enlisted men eat their soup in silence. On the longest evening of the year the colonel gives the officers' dinner in the mess, and the enlisted men get their soup the next morning; that has been tradition as long as the barracks has existed. The gate bell at the North Gate, a century-old bronze body on a thumb-thick hemp rope, has never been rung because the siren is used instead.
Since the second winter the people on the lower tiers have greeted each other with “Stay warm.” The regiment took up the greeting without knowing where it came from.
The Commissariat
One commissar, Edda Marsch, mid-fifties, gaunt, thirty years in service. She wears no gloves; her split knuckles are coated with wax from the medic's stores. Her office, the windowless closet of a former paymaster, is unheated. It holds a table, a chair and a second chair on which nobody has ever sat longer than a quarter of an hour. Her saying is: cold is honesty.
The regiment first took her bare hands for an eccentricity, then for a pose, and today no longer talks about it, the way one stops talking about the weather. She is right most of the time. The colonel tells her so, kindly, and does not listen to her anyway.
Ranks & Organisation
Ranks
Rank Trooper
Description
Enlisted. The squad numbers nine; whoever knows his neighbour's cough belongs to it.
Rank Lance corporal
Description
Sentries and guards: gatehouse, rampart, North Gate.
Rank Non-commissioned officer
Description
Leads a weapons squad (chainsword, flamer, meltagun).
Rank Sergeant
Description
Leads the squad of nine. Address: Sergeant.
Rank Captain
Description
Leads a company. Address: Captain.
Rank Major
Description
Staff; the regiment fields two.
Rank Colonel
Description
Regimental commander. Address: Colonel.
Rank Intendant
Description
Munitorum official of the barracks, ranking above sergeants, outside the chain of command. Writes the duty rosters, allots heating, fuel and ammunition, keeps the armoury.
Structure
Garrison establishment: three companies in the Nordkaserne of Hartenfels (First, Second, Third), each divided into platoons and squads of nine. Also the staff, a pioneer platoon with welding gear, the medical room, the Intendancy on the ground floor of the administration block and the listening post at the foot of the citadel. The enlisted quarters lie two levels below the yard; administration and mess form the east wing. The citadel above the barracks, cut into the rock, is the governor's fortress and the regiment's fall-back position; its roof carries the anti-air battery and its listening post is the city's astropathic relay.
After the night of the opening the regiment consists of the remnants on the citadel. The company structure now exists only in the regimental book.
Constituent regiments
# 1.
Name First Company
Role / notes
Quarters in the west wing of the Nordkaserne; here the explosion tore open the floor at midnight. The men came out in their shirts, with lasguns, into a yard full of people they knew.
# 2.
Name Second Company
Role / notes
Supplies the drivers of the tracked haulers. That night someone gathered remnants of the company into a column and led them through the east wall to the citadel.
# 3.
Name Third Company
Role / notes
Captain Oskar Brandt; among them Squad Karst. Five men under strength, tied to the boiler; the Munitorum schedules replacements behind the boiler. Eight soldiers of the Third died on the ramp of Depot Seven, Brandt in the east corridor of the administration block.
Command Staff
Command staff
Name Colonel Hendrik Lobe
Titel / Rolle Colonel, regimental commander – fallen
Beschreibung
Sixty-two, big, heavy, with the eyes of a man who has not slept properly for years and does not complain about it. Sits behind his desk in his greatcoat drinking tea from a tin mug. He does not want his regiment to make war on the hungry, reads the commissar's reports and the planetary governor's, and takes the mutations of the deep layers to be old. Dies at the dinner of the longest night, legs crushed under a beam, at the hand of his intendant.
Zitat
“You are always right and nobody listens to you. That is a hard fate.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
To Kuhl's “Stay warm, Colonel” he answered without looking up, “Thank you, Kuhl. You too,” the way one answers a proverb.
Name Commissar Edda Marsch
Titel / Rolle Commissar of the regiment – alive
Beschreibung
Mid-fifties, gaunt, a face made of edges. Never speaks loudly, so the men must strain to understand her. Used to wear gloves and explains that a glove is an intermediate space: you reach for something, no longer know how it feels, and decide a little wrong. On a world whose name she will not give she once saw a winter in which everyone was friendly. Sets the ambush for the Warmth Congregation at Depot Seven, holds the citadel and leads the thrust to the boiler.
Zitat
“Cold is honesty.”
Schlachtanekdote
Shot Piet Kuhl from ten paces in the middle of a word and said afterwards: “I had him in my sights for a while. He talked too much.”
Name Captain Oskar Brandt
Titel / Rolle Captain, Third Company – fallen
Beschreibung
Has led the Third for two years and looks like a man who has slept too little for two years. Has five men fewer than he should and no replacements. Not unfriendly, only out of means for friendliness. Reads Karst's note about the sick Yannik Brey standing, hands held over a heater small enough to fit inside a helmet. On the night of the opening he holds the east corridor of the administration block with thirty men and a barricade of tables, filing cabinets and overturned cots. Odo Kettel's flamer clears the corridor, and Brandt stands upright in the fire.
Zitat
“Write it down, I'll write it down too, and the paper will keep us both warm.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
Stood upright in the flames, pistol still in hand, and looked at Karst. There was not even time to say something.
Name Sergeant Tomas Karst
Titel / Rolle Sergeant, Third Company, squad of nine – alive
Beschreibung
Thirty-eight, enlisted at sixteen, twenty-two years a soldier. The ring and little finger of his left hand are missing, lost in a winter on an ice world; in the cold they hurt the most. Goes over to the Warmth Congregation because it takes the pain away, carries the plan for Depot Seven to it, shoots Wiebke Lund on the rampart, opens the North Gate, shoots Ruvo Hesse in the listening post and Yannik Brey in the boiler passage at the boy's own request, and kills the Patriarch with the meltagun. Marsch told him she would shoot him after the boiler. She has not, because she needs him on the wall.
Zitat
“It did not hold me. It used me.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
On the night the snow falls he wears dead Wiebke's grey wool gloves, too big, fingertips empty. A flake lands on one and does not melt.
Name Intendant Piet Kuhl
Titel / Rolle Intendant of the Nordkaserne, Primus of the Warmth Congregation – fallen
Beschreibung
Gaunt, early fifties, with very clean cuffs and a narrow face. Interlaces his fingers when he speaks and stands when a sergeant enters, although he outranks him. His office is the only room in the Nordkaserne where one can take off one's coat. Cuts the heating allowance in writing and with regret, writes the duty rosters and writes the uprising with them. In the congregation since the winter before. In the mess he kills the wounded colonel and closes his eyes.
Zitat
“One asks and is asked, and no one is ordered.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
His last words, mid-sentence: “I beg your indul…” He fell without his cuffs shifting and looked very polite.
Name Astropath Oswin
Titel / Rolle Astropath of the listening post – alive
Beschreibung
Blind, very old, a cloth with embroidered signs over the empty sockets. Sits in a chair of blackened iron among cables that converge in the middle of the round tower room, fingers spread, mouth moving without pause. Broadcasts a single sentence for thirty hours and hears Karst and his fifteen as a very loud light. After the destruction of the hall he hears that someone has answered: no word, only a direction.
Zitat
“The cult is the door.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
Said to Karst after he had shot Ruvo: “One can be both.” He meant the friend and the one who would have killed him.
Name Wiebke Lund
Titel / Rolle Sniper, Squad Karst – fallen
Beschreibung
Twenty-seven. In four years in the squad she has said perhaps two hundred sentences, and Karst has kept every one. On boring evenings she draws her comrades in the muster ranks through her scope and watches them breathe; on six there was nothing in front of the mouth. Wears grey wool gloves, too big, a birthday present from Karst in the camp on the ice world. On the night of the opening she lies in her nest above the North Gate, hand on the rope of the gate bell.
Zitat
“I waited for you.” (No. 80)
Schlachtanekdote
Had the first truck of the convoy in her crosshairs from the moment it was in the valley and did not fire, because she had been waiting for Karst. Her last words: “So? Was the soup good?”
Attached Personnel
| Position | Number |
|---|---|
| Commissar | 1 (Edda Marsch) |
| Munitorum intendant of the Nordkaserne | 1 (Piet Kuhl); duty rosters, heating allowance, armoury |
| Astropath, citadel listening post | 1 (Oswin), plus 6 guards |
| Medical room | one small grey medic who warms his stethoscope under his shirt between treatments, and orderlies |
| Pioneers | 1 platoon, welding gear for the pipe maintenance |
| Field chaplain | 0 (post vacant since the second winter) |
The Intendancy writes the duty rosters. Whoever writes the rosters decides who stands at the North Gate, and the commissar was the only one in the regiment who never took that for a formality. The chaplain's post stayed open because the Munitorum did not fill it; what it should have filled was filled by the warmth rooms.
The Regimental Standard
The regimental standard hangs in the mess of the Nordkaserne above the head of the table: a banner in dust ochre bearing a bronze bell under a round arch. It was never carried on campaign. When the chandelier crashed across the table on the night of the opening, it stayed hanging. Nobody has taken it down, and the citadel carries no standard.
The Flaw
The flaw
The 88th takes friendliness for safety. A regiment whose life hangs on allotments, forms and duty rosters is led by whoever writes them, and whoever writes them can post the regiment to any place he likes. There were warnings: the commissar, the medic, the planetary governor's report, the note about the sick soldier. Every warning was written down, and the writing-down replaced acting, because the regiment's maxim says reported is as good as held.
A Munitorum Failure
The tier allotment. The Munitorum schedules replacements for the garrison behind the boiler instead of in front of it, and the boiler is the point where the city stops getting warmer. The Third reported five men short and got the paper back. The heating of the enlisted quarters was cut piece by piece by the Intendancy, and the Munitorum approved every cut because each one was small. So the rooms got two hours in the morning and two in the evening, and whoever needed more looked for it elsewhere.
Known Campaigns
Campaigns
Name The tiers
Epoche 960.M41 – 961.M41, second and third winter on Firnhalde
Gegner Cold, heat theft
Dauer over two years
Ausgang Eleven taps in four days, no thieves; the holes are welded shut
Erzählung
The garrison walks tiers sixteen to twenty, looking for pipe thieves, because the planetary governor has put heat theft on a level with the theft of ammunition. The taps are old, smeared with grease, made by hands that knew what they were doing. The people lie beside them in blankets and watch a pioneer platoon weld their warmth shut. Warmth tokens of grey paper, non-transferable, two hours a day in the hall, regulate the rest. Whoever stands behind the twelfth in the queue stays outside.
Name Depot Seven
Epoche 961.M41, nine nights before the longest night
Gegner Warmth Congregation (genestealer cult), hybrids
Dauer one night
Ausgang Thirty-one hybrids dead, eight soldiers of the Third dead; the bodies are burned that night on the Intendancy's order
Erzählung
Commissar Marsch has Karst lead a convoy of three tracked haulers with sixteen men to the depot in the rock as bait, and posts thirty lasguns on the galleries above the ramp. The congregation's ambush comes out of all three hall gates, stooped, in coats of boiler wool, with drills, chisels and homemade weapons. The fire from above sweeps the ramp. Karst shoots a hybrid with two extra arms who is tearing a young driver down, and recognises the private from the North Gate. In the morning Marsch lays the report before the colonel. Lobe answers that people who freeze steal, and asks the intendant about the bodies.
Name The opening of the Nordkaserne
Epoche 961.M41, the longest night
Gegner Warmth Congregation, turncoat soldiers of the regiment
Dauer one night
Ausgang North Gate opened, west wing blown up, Colonel Lobe and Captain Brandt dead; about 140 men reach the citadel through the east wall
Erzählung
The Intendancy's duty roster puts only men of the hall at the North Gate. At midnight seven lorries arrive with the Intendancy's crest and the legend Barracks Heat Supply, the drivers without breath clouds, many heads on the loading beds. Wiebke Lund warns; Karst shoots her and opens the gate. Then an explosion tears open the west wing, and the men come out in their shirts into a yard full of people they know. The second of hesitation costs more lives than anything else that night. In the mess the colonel dies. A meltagun eats a hole through the east wall, through which Marsch and the remnants of a company go out into the night.
Name The citadel
Epoche 961.M41, the days after the opening
Gegner Warmth Congregation
Dauer three days of assault, then siege
Ausgang The citadel holds; one hundred and forty men on the battlements; the listening post keeps transmitting
Erzählung
For three days the congregation throws itself against the walls, and Kuhl apologises for the losses in every report as if they were delays. On the fourth morning he asks Karst, in the Father's name, to silence the listening post. Karst leads fifteen men up through an old boiler passage; the six guards of the station die in two minutes. Above sits Oswin, transmitting his one sentence. Ruvo Hesse transforms and leaps; Karst shoots him. He lets the astropath go on transmitting.
Name The boiler
Epoche 961.M41, fifth day of the siege
Gegner Genestealer Patriarch, hybrids
Dauer one morning
Ausgang The hall under the boiler burned, Sister Wenke, Yannik Brey and Intendant Kuhl dead, the Patriarch killed by Karst
Erzählung
Karst walks up the ascent road with raised hands and offers to lead Marsch to the Patriarch. Fourteen men descend: a meltagun bearer, a non-commissioned officer with a chainsword, two flamers, ten lasguns. In the steam of the boiler passages the hybrids attack them and do not touch Karst. He shoots Yannik Brey at the boy's own request. Before the boiler bulkhead stands Sister Wenke in her apron; the meltagun hits her. In the hall the rings burn sitting and offering no resistance. Marsch shoots Kuhl mid-word, Karst the Father. What the congregation kept warm ends at the Sixteenth Tier, and in the first week more people freeze on the lower tiers than in the whole winter before.
Name The snow
Epoche 961.M41, ninth day after the opening
Gegner Hive fleet (Tyranids)
Dauer ongoing
Ausgang open; 212 armed defenders on the north wall
Erzählung
Oswin reports that someone has answered: a ship, a fleet, weeks away. Marsch counts the north wall: one hundred and twenty regimental remnants, forty from the hall, the rest city watch and civilians with lasguns. Too few, and there are no others. That night the stars go out one by one in the north over the glacier, the old sirens of Hartenfels howl, and white snow falls out of the dark. What comes after is not in the regimental book.
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 (dust ochre)) |
| Camouflage | #B89A63 · Morghast Bone (theatre standard)#8A6A3F · XV-88 (theatre standard) |
| Turret band | #960C09 · Mephiston Red (Rank stripes (service red)) |
| Markings | #1B1B1B · Dryad Bark (standard colour) |
| Hull recipe | Zandri Dust (Base) · Agrax Earthshade (Shade) · Ushabti Bone (Layer) · Pallid Wych Flesh (Edge) |
Company bands on the turret
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Derived from the regimental colours; the silhouettes are our own sketches, not copies of any Games Workshop model.
Images
