1st Stygian Heavy Infantry Regiment

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History

The First Stygian Heavy Infantry Regiment was a mercenary infantry command employed by the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns during the Fourth Succession War. The First was one of a number of mercenary units deployed in July 3029 for the assault on Wei during the fifth wave of Operation RAT. The invasion was led by the Twelfth Vegan Rangers, who had accepted the contract for the invasion and deployed their Delta Regiment and two battalions from Gamma Regiment.[1]

The invasion of Wei was a high-risk operation, which the AFFS were open about during the contract negotiations. Rumors had been circulating for years that a Star League era stockpile of chemical weapons was present on Wei, and operations by MIIO and the Rabid Foxes had failed to confirm the existance or location of these weapons. The Rangers accepted the contract, at triple normal pay, along with guarantees from the AFFS that the mercenaries would be supported by the best AFFS mobile medical facilities for treating casualties.[1]

The mercenary force that deployed included three armor regiments and four infantry regiments, one of which was the First Stygian. The initial landings caught the defending garrison on Wei off-guard, as the drop sites were scattered across the southern continent on Wei, rather than close to Vandannis Valley and the capital city, Vandannis. Nevertheless, on the 3rd of July the defenders deployed chemical weapons for the first time. Two Transgressor aerospace fighters made a fast pass over the First Stygian, one of them trailing a thick green smoke. This smoke - subsequently determined to be the poison UrbStryc-A - killed a hundred of the First Stygian troopers within moments of the attack, and another hundred would ultimately die from the poisoning. Despite the heavy casualties inflicted on the First Stygian, the attack gave the medical personnel responding to the attack important information on the nature and deployment of the poison, allowing them to determine that the poison could be neutralised with water and didn't disperse far from where it had been deployed. These discoveries subsequently saved lives during the campaign, although the battle for Wei was one of the costliest campaigns of the war for the Federated Suns.[1]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 NAIS The Fourth Succession War Military Atlas Volume 2, p. 42-43, "Wei"

Bibliography