History

“Complete loyalty, blind obedience, total sacrifice”…

These were the words of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus that instilled life into our Order.

This was our creed in the beginning, our very souls…

more than that, it replaced our souls.

Although our creation was completed during the Pax Romana, a period of relative calm in the bloody Roman Empire, our existance proved it to be the calm before the storm…

the storm of our destiny, the storm of our concience.

We began our life as a brotherhood as an elite unit of bodyguards,

the best of the best…

the pride of the Roman Army,

they called us “heroes” of the Empire…

Hell, we were even permitted to enter Rome,
while every other legion was forbidden to set foot in the Immortal City.

Like a young child s innocence fades away as he grows older, our hearts were corrupted…

slowly but surely.

It is a silent thing to fall…

it comes to you when it is already too late,then you realise that you have lost something…

We laid our lives before the Emperors, asked nothing in return.

Then his time came and he turned his back on us,

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus…

We did some things back then, in the name of the Emperor…

in the name of the Empire…

The whims of a madman that condemned a whole Empire, thousands of both culpable and innocent people suffered by our blades and we didn t ask as single question.

The Empire was falling apart under his childish and brutal reign, we had to do something, something for the good of the millions of souls that looked to the Ethernal City for guidance…

something for the Empire, something for Rome.

All we did was to stop his madness.

We turned our back at him and he was consumed by the madness and desperation that he created in an instant.

The Emperor was dead, The Empire was saved…

our faith was sealed.

Across the centuries, we died before Emperors and barbarians alike, protecting the Empire and serving its peoples.

We were also betrayed and changed by the corrupted hearts of the men eager for power…

died side by side with courageous Emperors that wanted to change the world…

needless to say, politics won every time.

As the decades went by our power started to fade away…

untill Emperor Constantine the Ist came to power.

All of us were disbanded and destroyed all of our barracks across the Empire, the Castra Praetoria…

All but one, which we destroyed ourselves hearing of our orders demise…

Out of 16 Praetorian Cohorts, only one remained…

Cohors X Praetoriae, attached to Legio VI Ferrata…

We had been attached for some time to Legio VI Ferrata, that was stationed at the very edge of the Empire, in the Judea Province.

We had heard the stories about the carpenter s son and His disciples…

the stories he preached on hilltops and near rivers 60 years before…

the ones about love and peace…

the ones told to the parents of the people we fought in the Jewish revolts…

and there was no peace there, only bloodshed and more fatherless children…

but we cannot blame them or the Empire for this…

this is how it was meant to be.

Being so far out, the official news of the dispachment of our order reached us after the rumours did.

By that time almost all of us were dispached across the Province on various operations against the local insurgent population.

All the men from the three centuriae that remained stationed at the garrison were slaughteres on orders arrived by ship from the Emperor himself.

We regrouped and the remaining 7 praetorian centuriae were surrounded near the village of Umm al-Fahm.

The whole Legio VI Ferrata started to charge from all directions…

10 Cohorts numbering 1000 soldiers each against 700. We were slaughtered…

steel struck steel, brother killed brother…

at the end the desert was red from our joined blood…

we were one for the beginning, one throughout our existance…

it made sense that we would perish as one…

As the tamed afternoon Sun set over Umm al-Fahm, a courious and courageous little girl joined the eagles and the scavengers looking for valuables among the dead…

This little girl found something priceless, something that she would not dream of finding…

she found us…

She found PX…

She found Gaius, with a deep gladius wound across his back, together they found Lucius, with his feet crushed under his dead horse…

then they found Marcus lying on his back, gazing at the orange sky, with a pillum stuck in his chest,

they went on to find Quintus lying uncounciouss in a pool of blood with his body pierced by 4 arrows.

They continued to search and found Publius, Titus, Tiberius, Sextus, Aulus, Decimus, Aurelius and Appius and pulled them out from the pile of bodies that rested on them.

And so out of our own blood from our own ashes, like the Phoenix bird, we emerged from this baptism of blood and death.

Twelve of us found with the help and out of the mercy of a little girl…

it seemed innocence was again by our side at this new beginning…

we would keep that innocence in our hearts and struggle to never lose it again.

Now we had a will of our own and became masters of our destiny but paradoxally our destine was not altered so much…

but we were the masters of our own hearts and minds.

From these 12 survivors…we, PX, rose as agents of free will and fate.

We were the instruments of the hands of the ones who respected, apreciated and had the resources to employ us.

That little girl that found us was the whole key to our new found destiny.

She was the daughter of a Hashashim, a member of a clan of assassins commanded by “the old man of the mountain”.

This old man of the mountain took us in and taught us the way of the mercenary.

We grew and grew and the little girl grew along with us into a woman and a formidable assassin.

During our time fulfilling contracts for the Hashashim Guild we were employed to an order of Knights stationed in Acre untill the end of the 12th Century.

The Order of Teutonic Knights was controlling the ports of Acre and were one of the best christian clients of the day, besides the Templars of course.

After the fall of Alamut, the headquarters of the guild or as they reffered to it “The Place of The Eagles Teachings” or “The Eagles Nest” followed the destruction of the Hashishim Guild by the mongol warlord Hulagu Khan in 1256.

The destabilisation of peace in the region forced our Council to decide to tag along with the remaining forces of The Order of Teutonic Knights as they were retreating to Western Europe.

We became a separate client regiment under Teutonic souveragnity.

Not long after we joined them in their holy cause they asked us how would our order be called…

We hesitated a little…

We wanted to say Legio X Praetoriae, but we were not only that…

we were not only the old Praetorian Legion…

something was different…

something in our hearts, something in our souls and in our minds…

and for a second we stood silent but then we answered with determination, remembering our second birth

“The Knights of Mercy”.

We followed them for a while but as they were getting more and more used to our services we risked being swallowed by the Teotonic Order so we said our goodbyes and we parted ways…

not without leaving behind quite a few dead bodies that belonged to Teutonic Knights and Papal representatives that didn t think much of our Council s decision to leave the religious order.

After our experience with the Teutonic Order we decided to lay low for a while and resorted to the “teachings of The Eagle” to generate a sustainable income.

As those times were violent and uncertain, we avoided the attention of the Imperial powers by only fulfilling contracts other than political assassinations.

This did generate some income but as we grew we reqired more and more resources. That was when the Bounty Hunter detachment was created, specialised in policing, escort, couriers, transporting of valuable goods and much more.

This was a very wise decision as we started making alot of money and we managed to stay out of Imperial attention by carefully placed bribes and threats.

One notable PX contract was carried out in 1814 when Nathan Mayer Rotschild commisioned one of the biggest PX contracts of all time.

The contract was carried out from 1814 to the end of 1915 when payment was made.

It consisted of the joint operations of the PX branches, Bounty Hunters, Assassins and the Diplomatic Corps in order to secure realations in both French and British sides for the Rotschild family.

The Diplomatic Corps placed bribes and threats making contacts in both French and British sides, the PX Assassins eliminated opposition and the Bounty Hunters provided couriers, escorts and transport of valuable resources where needded.

During the war the only people that were able to move freely between English and French lines were the PX couriers that kept our clients informed and transported resources on demand.

They were part of the Cohors VII Frumentarii, consisting of 2 Speculatores Centuriae on each side of the front line (Cent. II and III Spec. On the French side and Cent IV and V Spec. on the British side), doing reconaissance and gathering information about troop moovements, 3 Mixed Centuriae consisting of PX Assassins with Bounty Hunter escort that were travelling between sides (Cent VI and I Frum. mixed with escorts from Cent. VIII Supranumerarii) 2 more Bounty Hunter Centuriae were doing guard duties at our clients estates (Cent. VIII � IX Numerii) and the last one being scattered on the Prussian side (Cent. X spec.).

The outcome was that the Rotschild family knew in advance (20th of June 1915) the outcome of the battle and announced each side that they have lost it. As a result real estate prices plummetet and people went into pannic and began to sell for fear of the opposing armies coming and destroying and confiscating all property. The Rotschilds bought everything that they could lay their hand on…

When the information reached British and French communities with a carefully planned delay on the 25th of june 1915, this family was owning part of Britain and France. Needless to say…

we got quite a handsome sum of money out of this…

too bad we left alot of gold and resources that remained out of this payment on Earth due to the celerity of the evacuation…

The times evolved and so did we, changing again and again as the art of war and subterfuge suffered transformations of the most perverse nature.

We learned the ways of the modern warfare on the battlefields of World War I and World War II.

Our brethren shed their blood in the trenches of Verdun and Somme on both sides of no mans land, as we kept our allegiances to our neutrality.

There were PX units engaged in escort, transport and intelligence operations sanctioned by both sides but never our brethren fought one another.

In World War 2 it was the same, supplying Himmlers personal collection of mistical trinkets, providing escort for high ranking SS generals and selling Allied intelligence reports on one hand and on the other missinformation of the Reich on Allied troop displacements, issuing information reports about certain territories and social movements to Allied Intelligence and reporting back on the activity of deeply infiltrated OSS operatives on the other.

Even though we regarded political assassination with some degree of schepticism, we even had 2 assassinstion attempts on Hitlers life planned and executed. In this case the only thing that stood before completing the contracts was bad luck and ourselves. The first one was on 13 March 1943, as Hitler was leaving by plane for Berlin. At the PX Diplomatic Corps initiative, Major General Henning Tresckow instructs Fabian von Schlabrendorff to hand over a package to Colonel Heinz Brandt who was flying back with Hitler. The package, containing two bottles of brandy, was a gift for Major-General Helmuth Stieff in Berlin. Concealed in the package was a time bomb but it failed to explode owing to the high altitude cold air freezing the acid in the detonator cap. The cold air was the result of a draft of air that formed in the plane after it was attacked by Allied fighters. When news of Hitler s safe arrival reached the plotters, Schlabrendorf immediately flew to Berlin with the regular courier plane and retrieved the package from Colonel Brandt with the help of an aquila member of the Cohors IX Frumentarii, replacing it with two genuine bottles.

The second one was on March 20, 1943 when we supplied Colonel Rudolf von Gertsdorff which was General Kluge”s chief of intelligence and the German Resistance liaison to the PX Diplomatic Corps, tried to kill Hitler in the Zeughaus with a bomb that was to be detonated by acid while he stood close to Hitler in the exhibit hall. Unfortunately Hitler left the building before the acid could act and Gertsdorff immediately entered the men”s room where an Aquila member of Coh. XIV Frum. quickly defused and disposed of it.

The PX Bounty Hunter Guild was commisioned to fulfill an escort operation on the 20th of November 1943 by the Schutzstaffel. The contract was extended untill the 25th of July 1944. On July the 20th 1944 at 12.00 pm, Oberst (Colonel) Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and General Fromm reported to Field Marshal Keitel s office for a briefing before entering the conference room. At 12.37 pm, von Stauffenberg places his briefcase containing the bomb under the map table, then leaves the room on the pretext of making a telephone call. A member of Cohors II Numerii, dressed in german Wehrmacht Oberst uniform who performed surveillance of the conference room noticed the briefcase and with his foot and acting on a hunch pushed it further under the table as bomb experts of the Coh. IINum. rush to the bunker conference room in order to defuse a possible bomb, alerted by the attached Speculatores of the Coh. VI Speculatorii which were acting independently and iddentified a potential threat. At 12.42pm, the bomb explodes. The heavy oak table support protected Hitler from the full force of the explosion. By this time Stauffenberg is on his way back to Berlin. At 6.28pm a radio broadcast from Wolf s Lair reports that Hitler is alive but only slightly wounded. Later that night, at 12.30am, Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators, Haeften, Olbricht and Mertz, are arrested and executed by firing squad in the inner courtyard of the Bendlerstrasse Headquarters. Sometimes the outcome is not a moral nor a just one, but a contract is a contract…

After World War II PX scattered throughout the world, fulfilling contracts in the most remote parts of the planets. Alot of people did alot of bad things during the war…

and they ran away, so PX had alot of work to do…

especially for the jewish communities from within the United States but also from other victims of the cruel measures of the fallen regime.

The Cold war was an interesting period of time in PX history. By some reason this period of time coincides with the period when the average weight of a PX member was the highest because during this period of time we were paid alot of money for simply shutting up. On a more serious tone, we came very close to total extinction of the human species. So, then the PX Diplomatic Coprs started to censureship of Speculatores intelligence reports before selling them to our clients. So instead of let s say…3 nukes our reports said that there was the posibility of the existence of 2 nukes and so on. As you can observe, it ended well.

As the cold war heated up and became more small, ferocious and hotter wars, PX followed along adapting to the conflicts it entered and the contracts it fulfilled.

From the 21st to the 22nd Century, PX learned the art of the economic wars.

We mantained the traditional formations and the essence of our order but we learned new things, like stock dumping, hostile takeovers and other means of economic warfare…

We won a little, we lost a lot but we still had alot of money left since the 1815 job.

At the End of the 22nd Century, as the Alliance and the Coalition, originally formed for economic purpouses, were approaching relative maturity as international partnerships, the Great Economic Crissis struck the world.

Almost all the oil reserves were depleated prematurely and almost all good things came to a bitter end.

The world needed time to get up from this fall. We had plenty of energy but we had no means of using it like we used oil…

transport, manufacturing, distribution, public transport, public order and the authority of the governments all over the world were brought to a stand still. Meanwhile, the people got hungry…

thirsty for water at first…

then, thirsty for violence. The Knights of Mercy then allocated all its resources to rebuilding and instilling public order, patrolled schools…initiated social assistence programs, concentrated all our efforts on collaborating with the Red Cross and non governmental agencies. The world was in pain…it was enraged by what they had and lost whitout explanation.

The political leaders that had forseen this but didn t talk about it for fear of losing their votes or their economic support were either on their private properties surrounded by their private army of bodyguards or dead on the streets, with their heads in a pool of mudd. The big corporations were powerless…

but they had to exist so as the world was divided into 2 economical regions, one had to survide…

It was this, among many…many other things that which fueled the beginning of The War.

The two factions jumped at each other s throat like vampires on a bloodlust…

We were, sadly to say…

in our element once again.

We decided to keep being neutral, like we did in all the wars before this one.

It didn t work this time…

Our neutrality ended when Viator Danica Dragomir of the Diplomatic Corps and liaison to the Coalition was tortured and executed in video conference between the PX High Council and Coalition HQ. Those were tough times…

but we managed…

4 out of 5 Coalition generals were found dead 2 days later in their beds. The last one commited suicide by cutting both of his ankles with a rusty saw…

he died of massive self induced hemoragy. No one understood why he chose such a painful way to die…

or why he was found lying in 35 liters of blood, except the guys of Cohortae VII Frumentarii and the attached members of Cohortae IV Supranumerarii…who had a preety good ideea about what happened there, especially the speculatores with medical training who supervised the blood transfusions and kept the general conciouss and aware during the whole operation. One reason for the generals overly sado-masochist suicide choice was probably the fact that he ordered the torture and execution of the PX member as a response to the PX Councils refuse to share certain Alliance intelligence reports…

but nobody knows for sure…

As the conflict between the Coalition and the Alliance escalated, we fought with more and more determination despite the huge losses.

Amongst other factions efforts PX Intelligence efforts assured the launch of the 5 Sleeper ships, leaving behind the volunteers of Cohors II and V Supranumerii, IV Frumentarii, III and IX Numerii and VII Speculatorii to cover our flight…

these people were more than half of the remaining forces of Legio X Praetoriae.

Now we arrived in Sirius,

or what is left of us…

Across the milleniae of our existance we have been the intrument of fate.

Our hands commited unspeakable atrocities but at the same time displayed self sacrifice in order to help others.

We are neutral, a tool in the hands of destiny…

a tool in the hands of a patron, but do not be mistaken…

We have a will of our own and our hearts beat in the rythm of our march…

You are probably wondering who I am by now…

and why do I tell the story of our existence like I was there when it happened. Well, I was…

and I am still here.

I am the voice of every member of the Cohort X Praetoria that fell at Umm al-Fahm,

I am the voice of Gaius, Lucius, Marcus, Quintus, Publius, Titus, Tiberius, Sextus, Aulus, Decimus, Aulus, Appius…

I am the voice of and all that have lived and died under the PX flag…

ultimus Romanorum, vinculum unitas…

The last of the Romans, bonded by unity.