Meidua Red Company

Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution

NEVER FORMALLY A MERCENARY company, the Meidua Red Company was concocted as a front by Hadrian Marlowe and Dame Raine Smythe of the 437th Centaurine Legion at Monmara in ISD 16179 with the express purpose of locating the Extrasolarian kingdom of Vorgossos. Joined by a contingent of Jaddian soldiers at the behest of the Satrap Kalima di Sayyiph, they posed as a mercenary outfit, and traveled among the Norman Freeholds for decades. During this period, they built a reputation as mercenaries in the hopes of finding a lead to Vorgossos, most notably their first engagement toppling the military dictatorship of Admiral Marius Whent on the planet Pharos, during which time they acquired two new ships and several hundred recruits. During this period, the company numbered perhaps two thousand strong (Lord Marlowe is vague in this account) spread across three vessels. The first was the Balmung, an antique Punisher-class destroyer kept in the holds of the supercarrier Obdurate. The other two vessels, the Mistral and the Pharaoh, were acquired during their campaign against Whent’s government on Pharos.

Lord Marlowe was the nominal head of the company, but that position was a facade. The official commander in this period was then-Captain Bassander Lin, and the rivalry between the two men led to tension within the company. This tension worsened following the addition of the Norman troops after Whent’s defeat, as they were more loyal to Lord Marlowe than to Captain Lin. Much of that tension and more is detailed in Marlowe’s account.

Following the induction of Hadrian Marlowe in to the Royal Knights Victorian, the Meidua Red Company was reformed into the Imperial Red Company. Hadrian is given the great battleship, Tamerlane for his command.

Formally constituted as an Imperial special company after Hadrian Marlowe’s defeat of the Cielcin Prince Aranata Otiolo in ISD 16227, the Meidua Red Company would serve in more than a dozen major engagements during the Cielcin Wars, first at Thagura, where their arrival broke the ten-year siege carried out by the Prince Inumjazi Muzugara, then at Arae, Aptucca, and the fmaous Battle of the Beast on the road to Nemavand and the legendary Battle of Berenike. After a sojourn to the Demarchy of Tavros on a private mission, the Red Company returned to battle several times, most notably at the horrific siege of Senuessa, and later at Sybaris, where Lord Hadrian Marlowe was arrested by the Holy Office of the Inquisition and taken to Thermon for trial. Marlowe’s famous trial was inconclusive, and after twelve years the Chantry simply tried to assassinate the man, but Marlowe survived, and the Emperor—intervening to save the life of his servant—had Hadrian put under guard in a country manor on Nessus, where Lord Marlowe served as advisor to the Magnarch Karol Venantian on all things relating to the Cielcin. Lord Marlowe remained on Nessus until ISD 17006, when an attack on the fuelworks at Eikana prompted the Emperor to order the Red Company back into combat for the first time in over century.

At its height, the Red Company numbered nearly 100,000 men, mostly plebeian soldiers kept in cryonic fugue aboard the ISV Tamerlane, an Eriel-class battleship. Though the bulk of its members were Imperial legionnaires given to Marlowe’s command by the Emperor himself, the Red Company’s officer corps comprised a motley collection of Norman mercenaries and former coliseum myrmidons personally loyal to Lord Marlowe himself. After Thagura, legends of their exploits—and of the exploits of their apparently deathless commandant, Hadrian Halfmortal himself—would become legendary across the galaxy.

While it was never formally dissolved, the Red Company effectively met its end at the Battle of Akterumu in ISD 17061, when the ISV Tamerlane was destroyed with nearly all hands. Of the ninety thousand men and women that crewed the Eriel-class battleship, only three people escaped: Commander Lorian Aristedes, Doctor Valka Onderra Vhad Edda, and Lord Hadrian Marlowe himself. While Lord Marlowe would participate in several more battles—most notably at Perfugium and Gododdin—he would never again do so as a great captain of men. The Red Company died on Eue, at Akterumu, its defeat a crushing blow for the Imperium, and for Lord Marlowe personally.

Ships:

ISV Balmung
Pharaoh
Mistral
ISV Tamerlane
ISV Ascalon

Members:

Lord Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe

—His paramour, Valka Onderra Vhad Edda

—His myrmidons, friends and former coliseum fighters from Emesh:

William of Danu ("Switch")

Ghen of Emesh

Siran of Emesh

Pallino of Trieste

—His paramour, Elara of Emesh

Bassander Lin