Naught Brigade
Scavengers of war
T
he Naught Brigade was a group of faux troops - impersonating the Exterminators - who would trail the main military unit and try to fool local peasants into believing that they were part of the real Exterminator force. The Naught Brigade arose from two main conditions: A) the 5th Trial of Syrus was causing massive hardship across all Charian lands and the citizenry was desperate to find any way to ensure their own survival, and B) General Berrion Bellion's Exterminator force had garnered its own unsavory reputation as a troop of marauders that spent more time plundering the wares of their own citizens than fighting the (supposed) Noctern enemy during the Nomadic Wars.
For most of the time when the Exterminators dominated the campaign, they roamed throughout the countryside, ostensibly seeking out Noctern enemies. But the Nocterns rarely made themselves seen and they almost never engaged the Charian forces in anything approximating boot-to-boot combat. This left Bellion's troops to wander the countryside - often, for months on end - doing nothing more than travelling from village-to-village and fruitlessly hunting for their enemy.
Pillagers
As the 5th Trial grew in intensity and became ever-more-dire, and as Bellion's troops spent a greater proportion of their time fruitlessly chasing the Noctern ghosts, they inevitably resorted to the looting of their own people as a desperate means by which to maintain their putative military objectives. Rather than rail against this injustice, a smattering of wily Charian opportunists decided to use this development to their advantage.
Opportunists
The Naught Brigade made every effort to look as though they were regular members of the Exterminators. They marched near Bellion's troops (but not so near as to be called out), and when the Exterminators began looting a village, the Naught Brigade tried to slide alongside them, acting as though they were army regulars and leaning upon their implied military might to facilitate their own low-level theft.
In some cases, this impersonation could last for months. But the ultimate test of a "real" Exterminator vs. a Naught Brigade impostor occurred during those rare times when they were faced with real combat. The Naught Brigade never fought. They never made any plausible attempt to fight. Whenever faced with any possible threat, they ran for their lives. The Naught Brigade only existed as a facade to facilitate the looting of one set of "normal folks" at the hands of another set of "normal folks".
Overall training Level
Untrained
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