>How about we're the *surviving* members of a private vexilla? The common
>requirement was "take this suicide mission and you get to retire early
>with oodles of cash". The other requirement was "be sucker enough to
>believe that".
A couple of similar alternatives:
Some Time Earlier...
The Lunar Expeditionary Force has suffered terrible losses out in the Redlands, fighting against the nomads. Desperate bands of survivors are struggling to get back to friendly territory. Unit cohesion has been lost; you don't know where the rest of your comrades have got to, or even if they're still alive. But you have met up with three or four other survivors, from several different regiments. You've banded together despite your differences (and previous unit rivalries) in order to fight your way through the nomad patrols back to safety.
Once you get home, you find that your regiments have been officially disbanded and stricken from the Lunar rolls, to hide the shame of defeat. Your sudden (and public) re-appearance is something of an embarrassment to the Lunar authorities... They decide to give you 'honourable retirement' to get you out of the way and keep you quiet. You even get some nice land, down in Dragon Pass [hundreds of miles from Glamour, and next to a vampire-infested swamp, but they didn't tell you that part. Hey, if the undead *do* eat your brains, won't that be _convenient_ for certain senior Lunar nobles?].
A less dark alternative could be: the Lunar army has suffered a defeat as above, and the garrison commander back at the border has to muster up a defensive force quickly. (Call this the "Rorke's Drift" scenario...) As well as regular soldiers, she drafts clerks, cooks and bottlewashers into the fighting line, along with any soldiers from other regiments who happen to be in the area on leave, acting as messengers, recovering from wounds, etc. This ad hoc unit serves with distinction until regular army reinforcements arrive to relieve it. The defenders are hailed as Imperial heroes, since a propaganda coup is urgently needed in the wake of the previous defeat - but the only land available to reward them with is down in Dragon Pass...
Stephen
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