Jantine Patricians
The Jantine Patricians were an Imperial Guard Regiment hailing from Jant Normanidus.
Contents
History
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This page contains spoilers for: | First and Only (Novel) |
Both officers and guardsmen of the Jantine were graduates of a prestigious military academy on Jant, which gave them great pride in their martial abilities and inclined them to think themselves superior to other Guard regiments.[Needs Citation]
At the time of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, the Patricians' regimental history went back fifteen generations, but all Patricians brooded over the single black mark on their otherwise illustrious history: the fact that one of their former commanding officers, General Aldo Dercius, had been executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy, by Commissar Ibram Gaunt.[1a][1b]
In fact, the feud was much more personal; although Gaunt's official reason for executing Dercius was accepted, Gaunt was actually taking revenge for the death of his father, who had been left to be slaughtered by Orks when Dercius fled the planet Kentaur.[1b] On the other side, the Patricians' colonel, Draker Flense, was Dercius's own son, whose family had been disgraced and stripped of its land, honour, and wealth after his disgrace. Flense was forced to adopt a new name and work his way up to command rank from the bottom.[1c]
During the later years of the Crusade, the Patricians were deployed in several of the same theatres as the Tanith First and Only regiment, now commanded by Gaunt. In addition to their loathing for Gaunt, the Patricians were inclined to look down on the Tanith "Ghosts" as rough, uncultured "savages."[Needs Citation]
This feud only increased after the battle on Fortis Binary. The Patricians were ordered to storm the enemy positions when it appeared that the Tanith's advance had stalled[1d], but before the Patricians got underway, a strike team led by Gaunt destroyed the enemy's ammunition stores and destroyed their morale.[1e] Feeling cheated of glory, the Patricians ambushed several Ghosts on Pyrites, but were forced to back off when they were outnumbered.[1f]
Flense's hatred of Gaunt made him and the Patricians an easy tool for General Hechtor Dravere, who was secretly plotting against Warmaster Macaroth. During the warp transit to Menazoid Epsilon, during which the Patricians and the Ghosts were aboard the same ship, Flense and several Patricians ambushed the Ghosts and kidnapped Major Elim Rawne, to be tortured by Dravere's ally, Inquisitor Heldane.[1g]
On Menazoid Epsilon, Dravere ordered the Patricians to follow behind the Taniths and wipe them out once they had engaged the Chaos forces. Falsely declaring Gaunt's Ghosts to be corrupt, Flense led his Patricians straight at the rear of Gaunt's men, who were fighting inside the caves of the Chaos stronghold.[1h]
Anticipating this betrayal, Gaunt had stationed a small detachment of Ghosts at the rear. This detachment numbered only fifty men - the most men Gaunt could spare - and were killed to the last man, but not before inflicting heavy casualties on the Patricians.[1i] From a regiment numbering roughly a thousand heavy shock troopers, more than three hundred were killed or incapacitated, by a force of only fifty lightly armed scout-class infantry. Flense's fury at this humiliation was so great that he insisted on pressing forward to envelop and eradicate the remaining Ghosts.[1j] The Patricians were poised to do just that, when the Vitrian Dragoons, whose commander the Ghosts had aided on Fortis Binary, attacked the Patricians in a flanking maneuver. Focusing on a single weak point of their line, the Dragoons wiped out the Patricians nearly to a man, although Flense and his security detail managed to escape into the caves where they met Gaunt.[1k]
Not realizing Flense was Dercius's son, Gaunt pleaded with him to stop and fight the true enemy. Flense ignored Gaunt's attempts to make peace and attacked him. Gaunt and Flense fought furiously but in the end Flense went down with all of his Patricians.[1c] Since General Dravere and his command Leviathan were destroyed earlier in the battle, there was no record of any "official" sanction for the Patricians' actions in attacking a fellow Guard regiment.
Due to their heretical actions, all records of the Patrician's honors and victories were destroyed and the regiment was never reformed.[1k]
Uniforms
The Jantine Patricians sported purple uniforms with many decorative gold markers to denote rank. They wore heavy metal cuirasses and other ornate armour, to denote their role as heavy shock troopers.[1a]
See also
Sources
- 1: First and Only (Novel) - Gaunt's Ghosts: The Founding (Omnibus) by Dan Abnett
- 1a: Part Two: Fortis Binary Forge World, Chapter Eleven, pgs. 47-48
- 1b: A Memory: Khedd 1173, Seventeen Years Earlier, pgs. 162-164
- 1c: Part Six: Menazoid Epsilon, Chapter Twenty-Eight, pgs. 228-229
- 1d: Part Three: Fortis Binary Forge World, Chapter Five, pgs. 64-65
- 1e: Part Three: Fortis Binary Forge World, Chapter Eleven, pg. 83
- 1f: Part Four: Cracia City, Pyrites, Chapters Seven and Eight, pgs. 103-106
- 1g: Part Five: The Empyrean, Chapters Eight and Nine, pgs. 135-140
- 1h: Part Six: Menazoid Epsilon, Chapter Nine, pgs. 184-185
- 1i: Part Six: Menazoid Epsilon, Chapter Sixteen, pgs.198-202
- 1j: Part Six: Menazoid Epsilon, Chapter Nineteen, pg. 204
- 1k: Part Six: Menazoid Epsilon, Chapter Twenty-One, pg. 208-210
