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In brief, the league that I'm in right now has a bunch of soft scores you can get points for, such as painting and written composition. I just drafted this little number to be my comp entry. I think it gives a rather decent brief on my guard army:


Melchoir frowned. Before him lay tens of thousands of documents, most of them written in a secret code he knew nothing about. They had all belonged to his confessor - the priest Sanario. Officially, the ecclesiarch had fallen to a demon prince on the battlefield, but Melchoir wasn't so sure. Something just wasn't right. Now, amongst his other tasks, he now spent his evenings attempting to glean information from the priest's personal effects.

Melchoir had known Sanario for years, and the officer and the priest were inseparable on the field of battle, throwing themselves into wherever the fighting was thickest. Traitor guardsmen and marines, Orks, and even enigmatic Eldar had all fallen victim to their relentless assaults. Not all Imperial Guard regiments had priests down to the company level. Then again, not all guard regiments came from Folera.

Folera is a far-off, relatively insignificant part of the Imperium. It was brought back into the fold during the days of the Emperor not by the power of the chainsword, but by the power of the book. Missionaries of the imperial cult settled into a backwards and barbaric planet constantly embroiled in endless tribal warfare, with eight dominant clans all vying for power. In addition to their many other teachings over the decades and centuries, the missionaries created a new office of power, above that of the eight princes. This first-amongst equals was crowned the first king of Folera.

This new position did little to curb the competitive nature of the ruling houses, but now, rather than randomly fighting with each other, they now fought for ownership (however temporary) of the crown, and had the ability to boss the other princes around while he had it. This was because, with a single ruler of the planet, the Imperium could bring its full bureaucratic structure to the planet. Officially, whoever happens to be the king at any given time, is post-facto declared governor of the planet, and given the full support of the Imperium.

Long ago, the ministorum found that it was pointless to try and force Folerans to accept a permanent ruler, and so now stay out of local politics. So long as there is A single ruler, it doesn't matter WHO that ruler is, or how they happened to ascend to power. The higher-ups are as unwilling as they are uninterested in spending resources to quell the endless usurpations and civil strife. So long as the office of the king is in tact, and the planet continues to pour soldiers into the ranks of the Imperial Guard, they could care less what happens on the planet.

Sanario had been a member of the Ecclesiarchy, one of the priests who preached the divinity of the Emperor, and the sacredness of the office of the king, as, whoever he happens to be, is still divinely appointed by their god.

Melchoir rubbed his temples as he looked down at yet another folio. He was exhausted.

Melchoir Theleos is a commander marshall, second class, of a unit of soldiers roughly equivalent to the strength of a battalion. He had not always been that way, though. He had started his career as a common soldier. The average guardsman is a rough cut. Some are a few pressed into service, but there are also misguided youth, adjuncts and staff officers stripped of rank, and even outright criminals. A vast bulk of them, though, are debtors - Foleran underclass who had found themselves indebted and unable to pay. On Folera, there is no forgiveness. There are no debtor's prisons. Here, life is spent literally as coinage. In short, they are little more than a rabble of scared, hopeless, untrained, unable, and altogether unsoldierly mob.

And this is how Melchoir had started. Son of a low-level tribal official whose great-great grandfather had accrued substantial debts. The Foleran Off-World Army seemed the best place to do his part to relieve the generations-long struggle to free themselves from financial bondage. Through a combination of sheer luck and insane heroism, he had managed to survive, quickly moving up to sergeant, and then a brevet commission as an officer marshall, second class.

As a junior officer, he made a name for himself for his valor, earning both awards possible for personal bravery and aptitude in combat. Later, as a senior officer, he had lost some of the energy of his youth, but had more than made up for it in wisdom, becoming a shrewd and calculating commander with a knack for strategic wisdom. His experience and willingness to personally put himself on the line regardless of danger have on several times won the day for him. At a price, though, of course. His body bears innumerable scars, including a horrific set of gashes where he was raked by a set of lightning claws. His left arm has been shattered and rebuilt more than once, impaired to the point where it is scarcely useful without the aid of the servo motors of his power fist.

During his time as an officer, he has had many units of guardsmen at his command. One such have been stormtroopers. Because it was not conquered by crusade, many indigenous institutions exist on Folera that operate in parallel with more customary ones of the Imperium. One such parallel institution is the Foleran Schola system. Instead of creating stormtroopers, they create what is known as the Kingsguard - an elite military force that protects the monarch and helps keep down the forces of clan warfare and bring some relative degree of peace to the planet. As they are levied and trained by the Foleran government, they are also at call of Foleran forces to be deployed along with its ground forces.

He has also been aided by forces of the 2/2 recon. The name is a result of an unusual series of events and administrative infighting that resulted in survivors from the 2nd recon combining together with survivors of the 2nd recon to make a new mixed unit - the 2/2 recon. The designation has stuck ever since. He has also been aided by tanks from the VII armor corps. Foleran nobles are loathe to spend resources off-world that can be used to vie for power on-world. As such, when members of the Kallisteriate (the official name of the tribal system) tithe vehicles to the imperium, they tend to be of the durable, multi-purpose variety. After all, why invest in specialized equipment or expensive plasma technology just to send it off somewhere else - somewhere you can't even use it for the purpose of domestic usurpations?

Melchoir closed his eyes. He was too tired to continue this work. He wished his priest were here. Sanario would have some big speech he would give about why he should carry on regardless of his fatigue. We are refined by our hard labor in His eyes, after all. Of course, the priest also knew all of the ciphers to his journals and correspondence, which would be rather helpful now.

But the priest wasn't here, and he was at his wit's end. He closed the folder he was staring at, and turned off the tiny light on the desk. It was time for sleep now. He'd pick it all up again in the morning.

Nice intro to your campaign. The only thing I noticed that I would suggest changing is the original history of Folera. You say that it came back to the Imperium back in the day of the Emperor through missionary work. That couldn't have been the case as the Emperor denied his divinity during the time and the Cult of the Emperor did not take hold until after his entombment on the Golden Throne. After that the church was formed and its structure became codified gaining power and missionaries. So perhaps Folera was brought into the fold a few thousand years after the Emperor was felled by Horus?