2nd Defenders of Andurien

History

Reunification War

By the time of the Reunification War the Second Defenders of Andurien were a unit with no home; Andurien itself and a number of other worlds had been ceded to the Capellan Confederation as a part of the Confederation's Andurien Commonality as a part of the peace agreement between the Confederation and the Free Worlds League that precipitated the end of the Age of War and the formation of the Star League.

The Second Defenders of Andurien was one of six regiments chosen to serve in the 2nd Marik Auxiliary Corps formed in 2581 to support the Star League Defense Force when the Star League decided to intervene in the civil war that had been raging inside the Rim Worlds Republic since 2575.

The 2nd Marik Auxiliary Corps incorporated the Second Defenders of Andurien along with the Second Regulan Hussars, the Second and Sixth Marik Militias and the First and Second Brigades of the Fusiliers of Oriente. The 2nd Marik Auxiliary Corps was one of a number of Corps that made up Task Force MAILED FIST, the military component of Operation MAILED FIST, the Star League operation within the Rim Worlds Republic between 2581 and 2596 and would serve alongside the Draconis Auxiliary Corps, the Lyran Auxiliary Corps and the SLDF IV Corps, VI Corps and VIII Corps.

The Second Defenders saw their participation against the Rift Republican Army and the Rim Provisional Government as an opportunity to prove that the reduced Duchy of Andurien remained a strong and vital part of the Free Worlds League. The Second Defenders spent the bulk of Operation MAILED FIST operating alongside the Regulan Hussars and the Second Brigade of the Fusiliers of Oriente. Together, the three regiments would fight campaigns on Urjala in 2583, Kitopler in 2586, New India in 2587, Slewis in 2590 and Toland in 2593. The Defenders of Andurien and the Hussars went on to fight on Apollo in 2596, but the Fusiliers remained on Toland.

Urjala

The campaign to secure Urjala saw the Defenders of Andurien fighting against the same battalion from the Fourth Amaris Fusiliers that had successfully conducted a very damaging raid on at the main spaceport facility on Alarion in 2581, and while the Free worlds League forces quickly crushed the Amaris Fusiliers they rapidly found themselves experiencing similar problems to Task Force MAILED FIST units on other worlds - they lacked the numbers to exercise sufficient control over the ground, and as a result found their hold on Urjala slipping away in the face of a rebellious population. Eventually, a portion of the garrison on the nearby world of Bolan was dispatched to Urjala to help secure the Star League grip on the world, but the Defenders of Andurien would remain on Urjala for another two years.

New India

The Defenders of Andurien fought the Fourth Amaris Fusiliers for a second time on New India, which was the garrison posting of the other half of the Fourth; in contrast to many of the other planetary campaigns being fought at the time, the fight on New India was actually a stand-up fight, with the Fourth Amaris Fusiliers fighting hard and selling themselves dearly, but without resorting to the more desperate or savage guerilla and resistance tactics the SLDF was facing on other worlds.

Slewis

In contrast with the difficult occupation of Urjala and the fierce battle for New India, the campaign for Slewis was remarkably easy; an agricultural world with a large timber industry, Slewis was targeted by the Fusiliers, Defenders of Andurien and Regulan Hussars in May 2590 and was the last world in the Timbuktu Province to be captured, but the occupation consisted largely of the leaders of Slewis calmly acknowledging the arrival of the Free Worlds League forces before simply continuing their farming and logging operations.

Toland

The Defenders of Andurien and their companion units from the 2nd Marik Auxiliary Corps operated largely independently of the other units within Task Force MAILED FIST; other than the large-scale operation to secure Apollo, the only exception to this was the campaign to secure Toland, where they fought alongside the SLDF Eighteenth Division against the local militia forces.

Apollo

Duke Narinder Selaj, the overall commander of the 2nd Marik Auxiliary Corps and the second-in-command of the ground component of the operation to secure Apollo led the Regulan Hussars and the Defenders of Andurien personally to liberate First Consul Gregory Amaris from the Rim Provisional Government forces besieging his island estates. Duke Selaj managed to easily defeat the forces besieging the Amaris' estates, only to find Amaris himself to be unpleasant, hostile, and thoroughly ungrateful for his rescue; Amaris regarded Selaj as a provincial minor lordling from the Free Worlds League, despite the far greater wealth and and population of the Principality of Regulus, and bitterly resented the time taken to rescue him and the poor conditions he considered himself to have lived in... conditions far more opulent than most of his citizens or the soldiers of the Task Force had endured. Despite the difficulties in dealing with Amaris, Duke Selaj was able to send his troops and liberated Amaris loyalists to join the forces outside Terra Prime.

Following the injuries taken by Archon Viola Steiner-Dinesen in an attempted ambush that went wrong and saw the Lyran Fourth Royal Guards mauled by the Seventh Amaris Legionnaires and the Eighth Amaris Fusiliers command of the ground operations on Apollo passed to General Nathan Isaacson of the SLDF. Ignoring calls from Gregory Amaris for a highly destructive campaign to destroy the rebel forces, Isaacson directed the Defenders of Andurien and the other Task Force MAILED FIST units on Apollo to lay siege to the Rift Republican Army and RPG forces on Apollo, resulting in a campaign that limited the loss of life on both sides and saw the Provisional Government and their supporting forces surrender in September 2596.

Rules

Game Rules

Bibliography

• Historical: Reunification War