Graphic Thread

Danthefan28

Danthefan28 said:
And Justice For All. The Election of 2060.
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(Feel free to ask me anything about the TL).
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For those of you asking about "Old Man Shapiro" it's just an image of Ray Liotta.
 

Color-Copycat

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After withdrawing from their indefensible outpost picket line in the bamboo thickets beneath Twin Heights Ridge, Company "A" of the Texacoran 5th Provisional Field Regiment ("Frontier Zouaves") forms up in close ranks to repel a frontal attack by a combined division of Red Flag revolutionaries and Kommersant bluejacket privateers during the Hwoonsong Perimeter campaign. Temporarily detached from the other regiments of the Stalwart Brigade to cover the redeployment of the Brigade to a second line of prepared defenses at the crest of the ridge to their rear, the Frontier Zouaves were forced to fight a risky holding action and then a fighting withdrawal over unfavorable jungle terrain and against a numerically superior combination of enemy forces. Their well-timed efforts delayed the main frontal assault of the privateer-revolutionary army long enough for the remaining regiments of the Stalwart Brigade to secure the flanks of their newly occupied defensive line and designate corrected fields of fire for the offshore treadnought batteries of the First Amphibious Division, ensuring that the defensive action which followed was a decisive Texacoran victory. The Battle of Twin Heights Ridge thus broke the resistance of the Red Flag Revolutionary Army, whose rank and file peasant-volunteers mutinied against their Red political leadership and Kommersant military sponsors upon learning of plans to order a second assault on the now-reinforced Texacoran entrenchments.

After handing over their arms, Red commissars, and Kommersant privateer advisers to the Texacoran expeditionary force in exchange for the promise of a general amnesty to all revolutionaries, the sugar cane farmers of the Hwoonsong Peninsula dismantled their jungle encampments and returned to their former labor in the coastal agriplots of the Texacoran Amalgamated Sugar Company. Although lauded by the Texacoran Secretary of War and the common Texacoran soldier-citizenry as a surprisingly brief and bloodless strategic success in the ever unpredictable northern-hemisphere colonial territories, the Hwoonsong Perimeter campaign was poorly perceived of by the Texacoran hereditary officer class, which overwhelmingly regarded the instigating corporate intrigue of the Amalgamated Sugar Company as an alarming sign of growing commercial influence in the strategic calculations of the traditionally autonomous Texacoran General Staff.

The Texacoran Marines in the depicted scene are armed with the "Two Band" variant of the general issue Pattern '57 Port Faulkner rifle, capable of firing both standard breechloaded ball rounds and high-velocity anti-armor muzzleloaded slugs. Superficially distinguished from the common "Single Band" rifle by the eponymous second barrel band and decorative brass furnishing, the "Two Band" rifle is also outfitted with a longer barrel and improved rifling, conferring significantly greater accuracy and boosted muzzle velocity. Issued to the two skirmisher companies fielded by every Texacoran field regiment, the "Two Band" rifle enables Texacoran skirmishers to comfortably outrange and overpenetrate their traditional adversaries in the Kommersant's Kosmodesantniki mobile infantry brigades when employed with muzzleloaded high-velocity munitions. In close-range boarding actions and point-blank coastal ambushes, a "Two Band" rifle with armor-piercing slugs can even penetrate the thinly-layered ceramsteel hull plating of Kommersant gun-clippers to neutralize the crew and drive system inside.

Here, the skirmishers of Company "A" prepare to load and deliver a volley of armor-piercing slugs into an onrushing formation of Red Flag revolutionaries. Although Texacoran Marines are long accustomed by habit and experience to fight and defeat massed formations of lightly equipped Red peasant levies with a rapid and continuous hail of standard breechloaded ball cartridges, recent developments in Red military tactics and equipment have challenged traditional Texacoran practices. Too impoverished to afford the expense of equipping entire fighting units, much less armies, with even the cheapest of mass produced Kommersant ceramsteel breastplate, Red commissar-commanders have taken to parceling out the meager issue of ceramsteel armor among their shock infantry formations, equipping every fifth or sixth conscript with armor. Concealing the ceramsteel plates beneath the quilted folds of their standard khaki battle jackets, these Red shock infantry are visually indistinguishable from their unarmored comrades, and when these armored conscripts are discovered entering the fray, Texacoran Marines must either switch mid-combat to the slow muzzleloaded armor-piercing slugs or else stick with standard breechloaded ball cartridges and run the risk of allowing armored Red shock infantry to close the gap.

Although Texacoran Marines are famed for their rapid adaptability to sudden changes in battlefield threats, a canny and skillful Red commissar can overwhelm muzzleloading Marines with a wave of unarmored conscripts or dispatch a reserve of armored shock infantry to break a firing line of breechloading Marines. Staff Officers and Field Instructors of the Texacoran War College have attempted to amend the Texacoran rifle tactics manual with the addition of a mixed-munitions, company-level fighting formation specifically devised to neutralize the unpredictable threat of Red shock infantry formations. In practice, however, Texacoran field officers on campaign in the northern hemisphere have resorted to the simple expedient of assigning the entire regiment except for the headquarters/support company to providing dedicated anti-armor muzzleloading fire, with the lone breechloading headquarters company held in immediate reserve for rapid deployment should the regimental firing line be threatened at any point by an overwhelming number of unarmored Red peasant-levies. This arrangement has the additional benefit of simplifying the logistics of ammunition resupply for the quartermasters of the Texacoran Armored Brigades and Amphibious Divisions, who can prioritize armor-piercing munitions in the limited cargo allotments available in crowded treadnought storage holds on long expeditionary deployments.

In the illustrated scene, a hereditary captain of the Texacoran officer class commands the skirmisher company, wielding the same "Two Band" rifle as the other ranks in order to set an example in marksmanship for her company. After the Second War Between the Fleets and the subsequent decades of hard colonial campaigning, the closely hoarded stocks of ancient caseless smart munitions in the various Texacoran state arsenals have been gradually depleted to the point that most Texacoran officers of the lower field grades struggle to regularly acquire ammunition for their inherited heirloom weaponry of pre-Collapse vintage, thus obliging many to equip themselves with firearms of modern manufacture.

Visible to the right of the hereditary captain is an ancient combat android assigned to the skirmisher company as a recon sergeant, a true luxury exclusive to those Old Salt regiments fortunate enough to field more than one of the pre-Collapse synthetic soldiers. Typically reserved for special assignment as the regimental color sergeant, these walking relics of interstellar civilization are a force to be reckoned with, especially when embedded in one of the regimental skirmisher companies, and not only on account of their superhuman combat prowess. These so-called recon androids maintain a direct comlink with not only the human company commander but also the regimental commander via the regiment's synthetic color sergeant, who via local datasync can literally see through the eyes of its cybernetic compatriot, drawing insights from the recon sergeant's constant and instantaneous flow of tactical information from halfway across the battlefield and reporting any crucial developments to the regimental commander. Realtime integration and synthetic interpretation of intel and data from one or both skirmisher companies operating on an exposed flank or far in advance of the main line of battle goes a long way towards making the Texacoran Old Salt regiment a fearsome adversary for even the most hardened Kosmodesantnik command-exec.

Drawn from the soldier-citizenry of the frontier territories of the Corriol Sea, just below the uninhabitable zone of the equatorial wastes, the rank and file of the 5th Provisional Field Regiment represent the perfect archetype of the Old Salt Marine and his Field Regiment. Although the Corriol Sea archipelagos and island chains were not settled by Texacoran garrison-reservists until long after the First War Between the Fleets, those agri-steaders and militiamen were largely drawn from across the breadth of the old Texacoran heartlands in the far south. The descendants of those original settlers have carried on the history and traditions of their illustrious forefathers, forever entrenching a transplanted piece of Old Texacor into the borderlands of the near-equatorial frontier. Situated so closely to the hidden lairs and camouflaged anchorages of the savage Freeporter pirate tribes that ravaged the equatorial wastes to their north, the Texacoran garrison-bases and ports of the Corriol Sea were gradually established over a half century of bloody frontier warfare which gave their soldier-citizenry a storied founding history of their own to add to that of their southern ancestors. The common cause against the barbaric Freeporter pirates occasioned informal alliances and military collaboration with the roving Orbitaaler clans and mercantile republics of the equatorial wastes, whose Legionaar tactical officers shared a common profession and passion for tactical matters with the soldier-citizenry of the Corriol Sea. During those bloody years of mutual campaigning against the merciless Freeporter tribes, Orbitaaler-Legionaar style and thinking came to influence the nascent military culture of the Corriol Sea Texacorans, far removed as they were from the dictates of the Secretary of War and General Staff. After the suppression of the Freeporter threat and the opening of the equatorial passages, however, contact with the insular and nomadic Orbitaaler republics naturally diminished and the traditional Texacoran ways in the Corriol Sea were reinforced with the improvement and expansion of shipping and trade routes to the southern heartlands. In the present day, the only outward relic of this historical collaboration with the Orbitaaler clans is to be found in the Legionaar-style gaiters worn by Corriol Sea Marines over their combat boots, a fashion style that has given their 5th Regiment the half-mocking sobriquet of "Frontier Zouaves".

Though the bitter days of the Freeporter Wars are long gone, the Frontier Zouaves have continued to inscribe their feats within the annals of Texacoran military history. Along with the other Provisional Field Regiments of the Corriol Sea and the the single regiment drawn from the scattered Texacoran colonial garrisons of the northern hemisphere, the Frontier Zouaves constitute an inseparable element of the famed and illustrious Stalwart Brigade, whose shrapnel-scarred battle flag is embroidered with battle honors that echo the names of many a battlefield from the Second War Between the Fleets. Indeed it was in this conflict that the Brigade established its reputation as the elite shock formation of the Texacoran Third Amphibious Division. Marines of the Stalwart Brigade in the present day still proudly wear their blanket rolls over their rain cloaks, ostensibly in imitation of the Stalwart Brigade veterans who fought in the blood-soaked trenches at the Battle of Seven Palms. Having been ordered by Brigadier General Archer to prepare for a second daylight assault on the center salient of the Kommersant defensive works, the hardened campaigners of the Stalwart Brigade circulated unofficial instructions for all Marines to wear their blanket rolls over their rain cloaks so that the excess weight of their superfluous kit could be rapidly discarded at a moment's notice before the final decisive charge. Subsequent modifications to the design of the modern Texacoran rain cloak have rendered this celebrated innovation an unnecessary precaution, but the Marines of the latter day Stalwart Brigade continue to practice it as a means of visually distinguishing themselves as an elite formation relative to the other brigades of the Third Amphibious Division.
 
Ongo

Ongo

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A simple diagram of the general political structure of the Confederation of Concordian Republics, as well as featuring the major political figures.

C.A.T.: Concordian Alliance of Trade
 
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