The Lunar Expeditionaries
This volunteer force is tasked with supporting the endeavours of those pushing back the frontiers of Lunar knowledge by supplying guards and guides to those needing them. The volunteers are from a minority, who genuinely are interested in exploration, and from a majority who were ‘volunteered’ by other regiments to effectively get rid of them. The Expeditionaries are composed of experienced men who are all capable but not always that motivated till out in the field where their lives depend on their skills and abilities. Leaders need to take a disciplined manner with their troops yet be diplomatic enough to deal with those they are tasked with protecting. Officers often have a wide degree of independent action far from their superiors relying on their own capabilities and on that of their men’s. It is wise to be firm but also fair as many an accident can happen beyond the glowline in terra incognito.
In Western Tarsh the Expeditionaries support the activities of the Ordo Explorator, the Lunar office of explorers and cartographers, and the Lunar College of Magic. One seeks to explore and to map the Hydra Mountains and the other to observe and study the Hydrai tself. Sadly neither occupation is in any way safe nor is the life expectancy of those involved in these tasks very high. Still units of Expeditionaries are often seen tramping off in to the hills and mountains; not all return.
Their commander is Etyergus Galiops, an ex-adventurer and long served veteran of the Lunar Army who rose through the ranks from humble beginnings. By not shirking even the most distasteful tasks he has steadily risen to a position where he is trusted and relied upon by his superiors and evenly hated and respected by his men. Galiops has made it clear to his men that they are to not antagonise the local Tarsh highlanders on whose sufferance, if not co-operation, they depend upon. He knows that it is easy enough for an expedition to simply vanish as it is without making further enemies beyond the broo, bandits and Lunar hating exiles that plagues the Hydra Mountains.