Deliverers
GUTS AND GEARS — THE BEASTS AND MACHINES OF THE IRON KINGDOMS
The Brave and the Faithful
A sky filling with the erratic trails of skyhammer rockets announces their arrival and rips their name from their enemies’ throats in a terrified shout — Deliverers! Few can withstand or endure the indiscriminate rain of explosive death launched by these Menites, and only the most disciplined or well-armored foe is willing to do so for very long.
Assembled from devoted volunteers, the Deliverers depart sharply from the Protectorate’s traditional martial orders. These orders, such as the Temple Flameguard, consist of well-trained soldiers with strong religious traditions led directly by the priesthood. Non-traditional orders such as the Deliverers consist of minimally trained followers of Menoth whose unwavering faith drives them to serve.
It was Hierarch Garrick Voyle who recognized the need for a well-organized, modern military as a necessary step on the road to the Protectorate’s emancipation from Cygnar. Since attaining his office, he has relentlessly refined and expanded the Protectorate’s military assets. However, the treaty between Cygnar and the Protectorate that ended the bloody civil war forbade the creation of a standing army.
The success of the Redeemer warjack demonstrated the effectiveness of its skyhammer rocket. Hierarch Voyle saw the value in combining this inexpensive weapon, capable of laying waste to large swathes of enemies in one salvo, with the Protectorate’s most plentiful resource: its people. As he increased the size of the Temple Flameguard and the Knights Exemplar under the auspices of internal defense, Voyle ordered the formation of a hidden militia of zealous volunteers, eventually called Deliverers, that could form up at a moment’s notice but otherwise remain hidden from Cygnar’s prying eyes. These volunteers received minimal training in the use of their simple weaponry and stockpiled the cheaply manufactured rockets in their homes against the day they would bring them to battle. The Deliverers’ faith created a corps of warriors willing to enter battle with the fond hope of killing as many of the enemy as possible before their own weapon killed them.
The size and scope of the Protectorate war machine came to light when the Crusades began. Cygnar’s vigilance had waned for too long, and Voyle had assembled great armies in secret. The offensives conducted by his forces demonstrated to western Immoren that the Protectorate would no longer suffer Cygnaran authority. In the past, the martial orders were highly segregated and fought more or less independently of one another. Voyle brought these diverse elements together and channeled them into cohesive and successful Interdictions against the heretics. This integration allowed lesser orders such as the Deliverers to join a Crusade along side Flameguard and Exemplars and fight with an overall strategy focused on the best method of achieving victory rather than winning glory.
The Deliverers’ service during several Crusades, including the great Northern Crusade, has earned them a grudging respect from the older martial orders. In 606, Deliverer skyhammers fell on Fisherbrook and laid waste a significant portion of the Monastery of Ascendant Angellia in Fellig, an attack that has drawn the ire of devout Morrowans everywhere. More recently, Deliverers have lent their arms to the Crusade to Reclaim Sul by blasting apart infantry lured into killing zones by zealots and raining death down onto Cygnaran transport vessels on the Black River.
Deliverers bear the scars of their occupation — missing digits, and sometimes eyes — with pride. They see these wounds as signs of Menoth’s favor, marking them for great rewards in Urcaen. Deliverer units do not lament the occasional death from a misfiring rocket. Rather, the lost soldier’s compatriots wish him a swift journey to Menoth’s Wall. Each Deliverer arms master achieves his position through service, typically by outliving his comrades, including the previous arms master. The quantity of his scars testifies to the arms master’s seniority and marks him for respect among Deliverers and quiet derision among other orders.
Self-reliance is paramount to the Deliverer ethos. Often tasked with long marches bearing their heavy weaponry and armor, a Deliverer takes these challenges in stride, comfortable in the knowledge Menoth is testing his resolve. Since his life depends on his launcher and rockets, each Deliverer follows fastidious, nearly ritualistic, preparations before a battle. His role on the battlefield has changed little since his order’s inception, but advances in equipment have ensured that his weapon more reliably destroys its target and spares him to train the next generation. Today’s Deliverer marches into battle carrying a supply of the heavy skyhammer rockets on his back and a launcher cradled in his arms. Protective goggles and a heavy scarf guard the Deliverer against the acrid smoke and fumes each rocket produces, while heavy scale armor and his faith in the Creator shield him from his foes.
Years ago, the Deliverers added the Sunburst ballista to their arsenal. This field weapon delivers a larger warhead more accurately at the expense of mobility. Like the skyhammer rocket, the Sunburst ballista requires little training to use effectively, but experience often proves a valuable teacher. Designed to allow Deliverers to destroy heavily armored enemies without the support of a warjack, the Sunburst’s warhead can crack the hardest target and pepper any surrounding troops with smaller secondary explosives. The ballista’s versatility and ability to control a battlefield have made it an invaluable addition to the Protectorate’s arsenal and helped ensure that, when the call comes to Crusade, Deliverers will always be there to answer it with a rain of deadly fire.
Skyhammer Rocket and Launcher
Deliverers carry modified skyhammer rockets designed to fragment on impact and shower the enemy with metal shards.
Originally, Deliverers carried the rockets attached to a length of wood and lit them by hand. After numerous crippling accidents, and at Hierarch Voyle’s order, veteran arms masters developed a sturdy metal tube into which the soldier dropped a lit rocket before pointing it in the general direction of his target. Though these early launchers lacked the venting and flint strikers of the current model, far fewer of Menoth’s faithful were ushered to Urcaen by their own weaponry. The inclusion of a stabilizing brace and then the flint striker have helped to eliminate most of the unfortunate accidents, but to this day the enemy cheers the rare Deliverer that Menoth calls to His armies with a prematurely exploding rocket.
When firing the weapon, a less experienced Deliverer braces the tube by planting the butt into the ground to better aim this inherently inaccurate weapon. A flint striker mounted over a vent near the capped end ignites the fuse of the skyhammer rocket inside the tube. Veteran Deliverers have learned the peculiarities of their weapons well enough to fire the rockets from their arms, though none officially endorse this practice.
Fonte: No Quarter 14
