Meidua Red Company

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 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 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. 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.

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