Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

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skepticCS
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Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

Postby skepticCS » Wed Jul 09, 2014 9:58 am

Hi all! I'm completely new to RPing in the FS universe, having only played the PC game for many years, so please excuse my ignorance while I learn these concepts. Here's my question:

I understand psychics form a component of the Phoenix Guard, but is there any precedent for mutants, cyborgs, and aliens to serve? Would there be any non-Hawkwood human troops who are loyal to the emperor, if not to his house (perhaps being from the Stigmata garrison)? As time has gone on, has the emperor actively recruited or initiated new guardsmen or does he only draw from veterans of the Emperor Wars?

I am putting together a campaign in which my players will have to impersonate guardsmen and I know from experience that some members of our group have a weird aversion to playing human characters. I want to place as few constrains on character creation as possible for my players and I would rather change the campaign to fit them rather than the other way around. So do I need to rework the Phoenix Guard part?

Thanks!

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Angelman
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Re: Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

Postby Angelman » Wed Jul 09, 2014 11:15 am

Hi SkepticCS,

I'll have a go at answering this :)

When Alexius was elected Emperor in 4993, he soon began distancing himself from his house so as to advance the image of being everybody's Emperor. Still, House Hawkwood remains one of his major backers, although there are very vocal oposition against him as well (led in part by his brother Alvarex). Another thing he did was establishing a new order of knights, tied to him personally as a sort of huge retinue, called the Questing Knights (the organization is called the Phoenix Company, which upcoming FSR products will elaborate upon). The Questing Knights are drawn from any and all houses, and compose primarily of lesser nobles attracted to the prestige and oportunity of working directly for the Emperor - it is particularly big with the minor houses. The Questing Knights then are kind of Alexius' private retinue of police-knight-texranger-ponyexpress kind of group, although their individual jobs varries greatly. Now, as far as we know from FS canon, all QK are Human knight, although some aliens also have knights so it wouldn't be too great a stretch of the imagination to extend it to them. In any case, QK also tend to have retinues of priests, trophy aliens, other lesser nobles, and guilders, called cohorts.

So then, that was a lot of talk about Questing Knights, although I think we can assume the Phoenix Guard could also draw upon non-Hawkwood nobles. The truth is that we actually don't know that much about the Phoenix Guard. They're basically Emperor's army of badass soldiering elite and bodyguards, blatantly ripped of from the Sardukar in Dune I think, and we don't know that much more about them. (How do they come about in the EotF computer game). Now, I would imagine that a fair number of the more recently recruited Phonix Guards are drawn from the ever expanding body of Questing Knights... But I don't think we have any FS canon to colaborate this at the moment (although we will in the future ;) ). And by the way, I don't remember to have seen any information on psychics in the Phoenix Guard - is that a EotF thing? That is certainly quite interesting information!

So, about your specific campaign, if you're comfortable with having alien knights among the Phoenix Guard (I think only the Ur-Obun and Ur-Ukar have them, although Vorox chieftains and such could perhaps qualify), then I say go for it! In short, you don't actually need to rework the Phoenix Guard at all, as we don't know much about them.
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skepticCS
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Re: Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

Postby skepticCS » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:24 pm

Thanks for the great info, Angelman. I have come across the QK in a few sources but I passed them up as I was focusing overly on the whole guard thing. It seems they are ideally suited to the typical RP group, which would probably be the best for an intro campaign for people (myself included) not used to the FS rules system.

The psychics in the guard thing comes from a very brief reference on the top right of pg 63 in Legions of the Empire. It suggests that while most of the guard are made up of soldiers, the palace guard includes some specialists in different types of counter-espionage, including psychics which form something of an invisible shield around the emperor. The reference provides some decent info on the guard, but not enough to not have to use my own imagination quite a bit to flesh them out, which I certainly don't mind doing.

The bigger challenge is going to be convincing a couple of fantasy-focused Pathfinder players in our group to take a step into space so this campaign can actually happen...

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Angelman
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Re: Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

Postby Angelman » Fri Jul 11, 2014 2:03 pm

I must have forgotten about the psychic Imp Guards. Good stuff :)

I believe the Questing Knights were designed specifically to form a default adventuring party for FS.

I don't think you're players will find a transition to FSR too difficult. The game is advertised as "Space Fantasy", and you could certainly play up the quasi-medieval features in the setting to make it more Fantasy :)
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Re: Mutants/Cyborgs/Aliens in the Phoenix Guard

Postby Leviathan of Maddoc » Mon Sep 01, 2014 9:51 pm

I don't see aliens in the Phoenix guard. They're a dress uniform force on a very human location. I also don't see a lot of Mutants for the same answer and I don't see anyone with visible stigma getting in the same room as the Emperor. I expect that Pheonix Guard are the special forces of the Imperial Army. Very uniformly built and tightly groomed and very very human.


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