Provincial Legion Auxiliaries: Regner's Rangers

(Excerpt taken from Fighting Forces of Tamriel, Vol I)

As seen with the Imperial Silt Strider legions (see page 27), the Third Empire of Man did not become the continent-spanning power it is today without the utilization of local warriors and specialists. While the Empire's campaigns in Morrowind have proven to be the largest hurdle for the highly-disciplined Imperial Legion, the Mede Empire's current campaign in quelling the Stormcloak Insurrection has proven to be quite the challenge for the Mede legions which are still licking their wounds from the Great War.

Thus, in typical Imperial fashion, the Legion took to recruiting locals; huntsmen, mountaineers, and trappers alike, all familiar with Skyrim's terrain and harsh northern climes. Originally, the local Nord recruits were assigned to standard auxiliary units, trained and fielded essentially as slightly-specialized cohorts.

As the insurrection stretched on, however, tacticians soon realized that Ulfric's army, violently nationalistic in spirit, prided themselves on their knowledge of the Skyrim land and their craftiness in utilizing it to their advantage. Thus, whereas even Morrowind's forces of the Third Era still utilized standard battlefield tactics with guerrilla raids used on occasion, Ulfric's army operated almost exclusively with guerrilla tactics, more often than not catching the highly-regimented Legion unawares and decimating whole convoys and camps with swift hit-and-run strikes.

Thus was born the all-Nord unit known as 'Regner's Rangers'. The Legion eschewed almost all training regimen for these skilled woodsmen, instead teaching them the bare basics required for integration into the Legion and trusting in their skills honed through a lifetime of living off the land.

Soldiers for this unit were subject to a rather brutal selection process. With the rank-and-file auxiliary units almost completely filled, new recruits presenting themselves as preexisting warriors were granted auxiliary status upon application and were assigned an initial mission that may seem to some as suicidal, be it a one-man assault on a fort held by bandits, a raid on a small convoy, or the assassination of a low-ranking Stormcloak officer. However, the recruit could choose to refuse the mission at any time, with the caveat being that the recruit could not choose a different mission or even reapply.

Indeed, many who ran the gauntlet never returned, and the vast majority of Rangers were chosen from preexisting auxiliary units. Most of these men served as the officers within Regner's Rangers, chosen for their proficiency in unconventional battlefield tactics and devotion to the Empire.

Led by Regner Steel-Helm, the unit soon gained notoriety for its clandestine missions, frequently involving some manner of infiltration, guerrilla strikes, and near-suicidal raids on forces much larger than their own. Clad in local Nord Armor, the Rangers were all but indistinguishable for local mercenaries, and with their earthy-colored light armor, the troops were more than able to blend in with their surroundings and maneuver with near-superhuman ease.

While the vast majority of the Rangers' operations are still classified, we do know that detachments were sent on low-profile raids, scouting missions deep behind enemy lines, and even prison-breaks. Some veterans of the insurgency have claimed that Regner's Rangers may even have been behind several false-flag operations, one of which involved an operative posing as a Stormcloak in order to retrieve and plant false orders. More outlandish stories even include a plot to recruit the Dragonborn into their ranks, as well as a raid on the Thalmor Embassy near Solitude, though none of these claims have been substantiated, and of course the Elder Council can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of these stories.

Perhaps the most daring confirmed mission carried out by the Rangers was the retrieval of the Jagged Crown within the ruins of Korvanjund. Fighting back both Stormcloak and Draugr, the unit absconded with the crown, though at the cost of a staggering 90% of the detachment's strength.

Of course, the Rangers' reputation has also been marred by their more questionable operations, arguably conducted at the behest of a Legion Command hesitant to get their own hands dirty. Veterans claim that the Rangers almost never took prisoners during their raids, and their intelligence-gathering methods were more often than not less than savory, such as bribing government officials, breaking in to allied installations and buildings, and even the wanton slaughter of civilians in order to achieve a mission objective.

Whatever the truth may be, Regner's Rangers have nonetheless earned their place in Imperial history. Their sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds, combined with their bravery - and at times unquestioning brutality to achieve their goals - has made Regner himself and the men under him legends in their own rights. Indeed, the Empire have already begun establishing similar scouting units in other provinces modeled after the Rangers, with Regner et al in charge of training these new troops.