MgT 2E - Referees Briefing 4 - Mercenary Forces.pdf
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REFEREE'S BRIEFING 4: MERCENARY FORCES
CRED
Marc Miller
S
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE MERCENARY TRADE
TYPES OF MERCENARY FORCE
RECRUITMENT AND ORGANISATION
MERCENARY PERSONNEL
MERCENARY COMPANIES
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
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CLASSIC TRAVELLER
Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, Frank Chadwick, Darryl Hany,
Winston Hamilton, Tony Svajlenka, Scott Renner, Doug Poe,
David MacDonald, Wayne Roth, Paul R. Banner.
MONGOOSE TRAVELLER
Author
Editor
Martin J. Dougherty
Matthew Sprange
Layout and Graphic Design
Will Chapman, Hannah Neads
Interior Illustrations
Amy Perrett, Carlos Nu, Carlos Nuñez de Castro Torres,
Biaglo D'Alessandro, Bruno Romanos
3D Model Design
Sandrine Thirache
Special Thanks
Marc Miller, Robert Eaglestone, Loren Wiseman
Traveller
©2016 Mongoose Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this work by any means without the
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text herein are copyrighted by Mongoose Publishing.
This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without
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This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and of the United States. This product is
a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organisations, places or events is purely coincidental.
Traveller is a trademark of Far Future Enterprises and is used under licence.
Printed in China
INTRODUCTION
Violence can and does solve problems, if properly
applied. Of course, the application of violence can result
in new or additional problems, but the original issue is
solved at least. Mercenaries offer a short-term solution
to the question of where to obtain and how to deliver the
necessary violence, and can also solve other problems by
being officially deniable. Referee’s Briefing 4: Mercenary
Forces is a guide to local mercenary outfits and how
they operate, letting you know who is for hire, who is
recruiting… or who will be storming through
your own defences.
Travellers might interact with mercenary forces in a
variety of ways. They may be the opposition or backup
for a mission, or simply there as part of the scenery
whilst the Travellers are passing through a starport.
It may be unlikely that the Travellers will join a
mercenary unit as full-time members but mercenaries
are specialists who sometimes need capabilities
beyond their own. On such occasions they may decide
that working with a band of competent (or at least
expendable) outsiders is in their interests.
Travellers might find themselves as co-belligerents to
a mercenary force, serving the same patron or cause
but not directly connected. This might bring them
into conflict with the mercenaries, especially if there
is mutual disapproval of methods. Alternatively, the
Travellers might be given a mission that coincides or
conflicts with that of the mercenaries. They may, for
example, be trying to obtain information from someone
the mercenaries have been hired to eliminate, or
attempting to sneak into an area the mercenary force
is about to storm. The Travellers might even be tasked
with ‘opening the door’ for the mercenaries, perhaps by
disabling defences or finding a route through them.
Mercenaries may even hire or temporarily recruit the
Travellers directly. A short-handed mercenary force
might be satisfied with a few extra warm bodies
holding guns, or might need a task completed they
cannot handle themselves. This might be for reasons of
deniability or simple lack of capability. For example, the
Travellers might be sent to obtain advanced weaponry
or restricted items the mercenaries do not have licenses
for, or sent to cause a ‘trigger incident’ that will allow
mercenaries restricted by the terms of contract
to take action.
In short, there are many ways a mercenary force can be
part of a Traveller game. It may be an ally, opponent,
patron, facilitator or deus ex machina when things go
very badly wrong. The mercenary units presented in
this book can be used as large-scale characters in the
same manner as corporate bodies or world governments,
putting an identity on the otherwise generic badasses
the Travellers encounter.
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THE MERCENARY TRADE
In some societies, the term ‘mercenary’ carries
unpleasant connotations. Someone who is primarily
motivated by financial gain, and whose allegiance
or morality can be shifted by fiscal means, might be
described as ‘mercenary’. This is an accepted use of the
word, and there are some professional mercenaries who
deserve these connotations, but for the most part this
usage is quite inaccurate.
A mercenary, properly defined, is a soldier who fights for
some organisation other than his national government.
Corporate security teams, ex-service personnel hired to
guard humanitarian aid workers in a war zone, and
even members of a national military’s regiments who
have been recruited from outside that nation are
technically mercenaries. It is true that there are bands
of armed yahoos for hire in some areas, and some units
do have a reputation for being more flexible than others
in regard to whether a change of allegiance can be
bought. Most, however, are professional, loyal to their
employer, and dependable.
There are various reasons for this. In part it is a
matter of discipline and good soldiering. Drop-of-a-hat
switches of allegiance run contrary to the psyche of
the career soldier, and can harm morale in a unit even
if they result in a big payment. Personnel whose job
involves going into danger prefer to know where they
stand and who they can depend on, and knowing that
circumstances can change in a moment undermines
confidence. It is also hard to trust superiors and
colleagues who you know are willing to
sell out their employer.
There is also the factor of employability to consider. A
mercenary unit that intends to take just one job then
disband need not be concerned with what people think
of it, but one that wants to survive and prosper needs
to build a reputation for reliability. Established units,
or formations set up by personnel previously associated
with a ‘solid’ mercenary outfit, are far more likely to find
work than unknown or ‘flighty’ units. A dependable force
can command a better fee and work for more reliable
clients than one that has a bad reputation. The sort
of client willing to hire just about anyone will often be
desperate or untrustworthy, or else will likely be offering
a job that no wise mercenary would touch.
Thus, as a rule, mercenaries (both individually and as
units) tend to be professional and dependable. A unit
entrusts its reputation to its personnel, so will tend
to place new and unproven recruits in a supervised
position with veterans until they have demonstrated they
can be trusted not to do something stupid. Protecting
the unit’s reputation may at times call for some
otherwise questionable decisions, such as taking
losses to take or hold a position that is not
really of much value.
However, for the most part mercenaries are pragmatic
about their trade. They are typically willing to fight
hard whilst there is a real chance of winning, but will
surrender or retreat when the risks greatly outweigh
the gains. This can actually reduce the horror of
warfare to some extent; ‘true believers’ will often fight
on and cause unnecessary casualties to both sides
where a mercenary formation would declare
its job done and quit the field.
Some clients are prone to making unreasonable
demands on mercenary forces, or treating them as
expendable cannon fodder. A well organised mercenary
unit takes as much care with its contracts as its
weapons, ensuring there are clear conditions under
which it can retire, surrender or refuse an order.
Mercenaries make a deal with their employer, which
comes down to fighting and taking the risk of being
killed or injured in return for payment, but that deal is
a two-way street. How much the employer can expect
is agreed in the contract, and a client who suddenly
demands more may find that his mercenaries refuse
combat or even leave his service.
Mercenaries are also, by and large, civilised in their
treatment of prisoners and enemy wounded. This
is not always the case, especially where a less than
professional unit is concerned, but career mercenaries
know that one day their personal survival may rest upon
fair treatment by captors. They may also find themselves
working alongside someone from another mercenary unit
or a national force who has been captured by their outfit
at one point. Civilised behaviour is often seen as a form
of life insurance.
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MERCENARY FORCE
There are five main segments to the mercenary
marketplace. Significant overlap exists between some,
and many units can function in more than one sector.
However, most formations specialise in
one area or at most two.
Equipment varies considerably. High-end, high-tech
weaponry is very expensive to obtain and operate, and
may place a unit beyond the budget of its prospective
clients. Thus many mercenary units have fairly modest
equipment ranging from TL8-10 or so, unless they need
a specialist capability that requires high-tech gear.
are transports for the troops, but some are warships in
their own right. These typically provide protection to
the client government’s commerce or defend the world
itself against offworld threats, but may also be hired
to carry out a strike against a hostile power or some
other organisation such as a pirate group. A world or
nation may make war on another by seizing its assets
or by attacking its merchant traffic to inflict economic
damage. The line between a legitimate commerce-raid
by mercenary forces and a pirate attack can be a fine
one, so starmercenaries are particularly careful about
their contract clauses when undertaking this sort of
mission.
TYPES OF
SECURITY
Security formations range from bodyguards through
paramilitary corporate security formations to law-
enforcers-for-hire. The latter is a highly specialised area,
requiring personnel to quickly become familiar with
whatever set of laws they are upholding plus procedures
for arrest, documentation, storage of evidence and so
forth. Most security formations operate in the simpler
world of guarding people or assets. Depending on the
situation this can mean covert close protection, armed
security in the form of static guards and monitor-
watchers, or units equipped to military standards but
tailored to a defensive/protective role.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
Special operations units tend to be small and
composed of extremely skilled personnel with very good
equipment. Some special operations teams specialise in
areas such as hostage-rescue, underwater operations or
urban warfare, whilst others are quite flexible. Assault
formations, such as troops skilled in meteoric assault
from orbit or other situations requiring special training,
fall somewhere on the line between military and special
operations formations, whereas a four-man team
specialising in assassination and sabotage would be very
much a SpecOps unit.
MILITARY
The military sector is also referred to as ‘mainstream’
or ‘warfighting’ and is the broadest of all mercenary
fields. Units are optimised for combat operations,
though these can range from combined-arms battle
situations to low-intensity counterinsurgency warfare.
Most mercenary formations are ‘teeth’ of one kind or
another, such as armoured forces, artillery, infantry or
a combined arms force, though larger units often have
their own support formations.
SUPPORT AND SPECIALIST
Mercenary support units (e.g. medical, electronic
warfare, logistics and the like) are less common than
‘teeth’ formations but are often hired to round out a
mercenary force – often supporting other mercenary
units – or to provide capabilities that local forces do not
possess. These ‘tail’ units are highly efficient and can
prove more cost-effective than raising a local formation
if the situation does not require them for a great length
of time. Specialist mercenary units include formations
that should never engage the enemy directly, such as
drone operators. These formations may not fit the typical
soldier model; they may dress in jeans and t-shirts,
carry only sidearms for self-defence, and behave in a
generally unmilitary-like manner. However, even these
rather cavalier units will be skilled at working with more
conventional soldiers and can at least comprehend
military protocol, even if they do not use it.
STARMERC
Mercenaries capable of operating off-planet are
usually termed ‘starmercenaries’. Off-planet in this
case generally means functioning as ship’s troops,
operating on airless or hostile worlds, or crewing a
spacecraft or starship. Most starmercenary vessels
4
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