Colonel Maximilian Thrax
And the 619th Stalinvast “Last” Regiment
Stalinvast was a hive world of a thousand hives created within sprawling coral like growths and thick treacherous jungles between them. After an insidious Xenos worshipping cult took hold in its heart, it was erroneously condemned to exterminatus, despite being far from unsalvageable.
Guard regiments taken from this world, who had left before the cult was proven to have taken hold, were allowed to remain in service. However commissarial supervision was insisted upon at every level as well as frequent scrutiny by the Ordo Xenos.
As time stretched on, the various armies of Stalinvast were sent to every theatre of was in every sector imaginable. They were whittled down by attrition and many wiped out completely. After ten standard years after the exterminatus perhaps one hundred Stalinvast regiments had reduced to a handful of partial regiments all below fighting force.
The departmento munitorum , under the advise of the Ordo Xenos, made the decision that these final regiments be combined instead of spread out amongst fighters from other planets, still suspect that a taint may lay within them that could be spread to other regiments.
Far from heretics or Xenos sympathisers the Stalinvast regiments had in fact only grown in religious zeal. Their devotion perhaps increasing as a result of being constantly scrutinised and questioned. Many members of the echlesiarchy were drawn to their banner and many squads were now supplemented with raving preachers and firebrand confessors screaming litanies of faith against the horrors of the universe.
The final surviving regiments reformed were the The 319th armoured division The 281st mobile infantry (already a reformed combination of an all male and all female regiment after both had sustained terrible losses at the hands of the orks), The 11th highborn veterans , and the 8th penal legion. Combining their numbers they were rebranded as the 619th Stalinvast “Last” regiment, under the command of colonel Maximilian Thrax.
Thrax was born in the lower classes of Stalinvast society, signing up for the guard as opposed to be being conscripted in a tithe in order to escape his life in the under hive. (A fact many of his highborn veterans either choose to ignore or know better than to voice). Naturally large of build and able to fight he had proven himself over campaigns against the enemy on innumerable worlds and had risen to the position of command partially due to skill and ability and partially because the original leadership of the regiments were slowly being killed off.
He now styles himself as the last planetary governor of Stalinvast, despite having never set foot on the planet for decades and despite the fact it is now an uninhabitable dead world. Wearing the red cape of a governor and styling his facial hair and wargear after the patrician class he now looks and sounds the archetypal blue blooded commander. His troops look to him as their leader not only as a martial figure but a potential political figurehead as well. They fight for the promise that one day, the fighting will be done, a world will be conquered and Stalinvast Secondus will be established.
In truth, and Thrax knows this all too well, it is a luxury they will never be granted. They are tainted by association and will fight until every last man and woman is dead.
These are the tales of the Stalinvast “Last” 619th…
