Vulpis Canem

This article is about an Imperial Army formation from the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe.

Vulpis Canem
Homeworld	Vulpis
Doctrine	Flexible Multi-purpose warfare
Signature Equipment	Carapace Armour, High-powered Las weapons
Colors	Black, Grey, Blue
Associated Legion	Fifteenth Legion

The Vulpis Canem were a formation in the Imperial Army noted for their excellence in arms, superior armour, equipment, and training. Though the title "Canem" normally infers purely the front line troops, it was the title of the united planetary military forces of Vulpis, to include all combatants, from infantry troops, to tankers, and even pilots and naval crews.

Organization

The Armies of the Canem (a total of some several dozen million troops) focus on flexibility, maneuvering, and adaptability. As such, the numerous divisions of the Armies and fleets of Naval forces have a fluid command structure, with several built-in redundancies. Troops are trained not only in their chosen position and those around them, but several ranks higher than themselves. Officers normally have multiple assistant and executive officers tasked to replace them should they fall in combat. Most divisions maintained a unique specialization, be it armored, mountain, light, or airborne warfare. These specializations should not be taken for granted, as all troops are trained to fight in any given situation, using any given style of warfare. As such, a heavy mechanized force can just as easily fight in an airborne assault, or vice versa, should there be an immediate need for such an adjustment.

Doctrine

Troops of the Vulpis Canem are trained from birth. In addition to genetic and physical screening from infancy, whole families are devoted to increasing child output. Those who make the cut as children are immediately placed into a specialized training regimen where they will grow up learning only to fight and die in the name of their planet. Training is harsh, with some considering it psychologically damaging to the youths. As a result, those who fail as teenagers must be lobotomized and placed in menial positions where they cannot harm other persons. Once they graduate after 18 years of training, they are assigned a particular job. Most will perform in this job field until death. Some members will transfer into other career options based on needs of the greater forces.

Officers are often selected from those who perform above the others in academics during their growth. Potential officer candidates are marked and monitored early. After spending time in the lesser ranks to understand the harshness of direct combat and its effects on the psyche of individual solders, they are promoted to Junior officer candidates, and sent back to strategic and tactical officer training. Eventually, they will be assigned to a Lieutenant to assist them in their duties, to be promoted to a Lieutenant after their command deems them worthy of the title. While some other Imperial Army units scoff at the idea of an Officer serving as enlisted first, it has proven effective. Most Canem Officers also look down on their extra-planetary counterparts as weak for not serving in such a capacity. They hold the outspoken belief Officers should never be members of nobility as well.

Wargear

Carapace Armor is the sign of the Vulpis Canem. While nowhere near as advanced, powerful, or impervious as Astartes Power Armor, it imbues the user with numerous technological advantages, including enhanced senses and the ability to fight in NBC environments and the void. With their advanced armor comes advanced weaponry. They utilize a unique las-rifle which fires at a higher temperature. Though not necessarily more powerful or destructive than a standard Imperial lasgun, they are significantly better at piercing armor. It was developed during the Long Night as an effective defense against the higher-technology based xenos they fought against.

Homeworld

In the year M.40, Vulpis is a Dead World, incapable of supporting life. In M.31, it was a planet bordering the Industrial and Hive classifications. Though it did not have hives in the traditional sense, it featured defenses and technological superiority significantly higher than an Industrial Planet. Civilians lived mostly in underground bunkers, which stretched several kilometers into the crust. Within these defensive structures lay innumerable laboratories, factories, living complexes, and training grounds for the Canem. Prior to this development, many considered it a paradise and a jewel of humanity. It was the devoted capital of the Vulpis Confederacy, and utilized only as a collection of knowledge and location for major political parties, ambassadors from the various planets and systems, and dictator of the Confederacy.

History

The Vulpis Confederacy

Before the Long Night, the Vulpis Confederacy was a loosely tied organisation of planets and systems filling a moderately-sized subsector. Its members were considered some of the jewels of humanity, with geoengineered surfaces and habitats designed to be ideal grounds for any human to live. They were widely considered bastions of science and technology. Each planet housed millions of laboratories and research facilities. The Asteroids and habitable moons throughout were themselves converted to massive testing grounds. The people lived and died in the pursuit of knowledge and furthering mankind's advancement.

The Confederacy itself was an extremely loose government. Each planet was left largely alone, as were the nations inside of them. The population was lax and peaceful, generally spending more time and effort discovering new ideas than going to war. Essentially the Confederacy was only there to protect interstellar trade and speak in the best interests of the planets within to outsiders. It was not much of a government, but it worked for the peoples involved.

At the heart of it all was the planet Vulpis. Boasting one of the lowest populations of the Confederacy, it was named for its' central location rather than any truly diplomatic reasons. With the idea of creating a seat of government, the ideal planet in the central system's habitable zone was terraformed to the extreme. The end result was a beautiful marble of a planet. Pristine seas gave way to endless rolling hills of the purest green. Cliffs and mountains were carefully engineered to wondrous designs so as to be appealing to the eye. Its' buildings were either low and minimalist on the exterior, so as not to spoil the sights of the planet, or massive towering feats of architecture and engineering. Even the cattle ranches and crop areas were designed to be aesthetically pleasing. The people of the Confederacy as a whole were content and lived out their lives in blissful comfort.

The Long Night

As the Long Night began, the Vulpis Confederacy started to break apart. The beginnings of this were minor footnotes which only created a clear picture centuries later. As the lights of humanity outside the Confederacy dimmed and extinguished, the planetary bodies became less willing to venture beyond their borders. This new-found xenophobia eventually found its way into interplanetary disputes within the Confederacy itself. Planets were less and less willing to trade with each other. Asteroids and research stations soon found themselves the center of territory disputes that had not occurred in the recorded history of the subsector. Nations within the planets themselves began to break apart and strengthen their borders as protection from each other. Defense satellites once aimed towards the stars began to aim inwardly, targeting rival nations. Wars and armed conflicts began to arise and spread. Vulpis found itself almost completely helpless to stop the madness. Years of ruling symbolically more than practically gave them no real power or authority to prevent conflicts or reignite open trading. This lack of authority also protected it from the majority of the problems the Confederacy faced. With no real power, the various groups and nations fighting for power and dominance largely ignored it.

Their infighting did not go unnoticed by the galaxy around them. Their scientific advancement and largely noncombatant population made them prime targets for various xenos pirates and raiders. Vulpis attempted to move planets towards unity by galvanizing them against a common threat, but it was to no avail. Years of squabbling between nations and planets created an atmosphere of distrust. No one moved to assist their neighbors who were becoming increasingly wracked by raids and attacks from xenos threats. Some went so far as to use xenos attacks on their enemies as distractions for quick territorial gains, only to find themselves the next target for the alien threat. Refugees scrambled towards anywhere deemed "safe." The population of the outer borders dwindled to nothing as the people, government, and equipment retreated to safer lands within the borders of the Confederacy. As the cycle continued, various governing bodies only found more reasons to abandon the more outlying or easier-attacked neighbors. The most common was the idea that so long as the xenos were raiding the outer planets and nations, they were safe. Over a few centuries, far too many planets fell. The remaining planets found themselves horribly overcrowded. Disease and dissent became rampant. Former governing officials would often try to throw their weight around. Some would attempt a coup. Less would succeed. More and more, the Confederacy's members slowly destabilized themselves.

After losing significant outer territory and civilian unrest started to reach critical mass, the green tide hit the Confederacy's Southern planets. The militaries were prepared for fighting among themselves, or defending civilians from xenos raiding, but they were not prepared for a large-scale Ork invasion. They swept the defenses, meant for short engagements against hit-and-run attacks or to protect during border disputes, like a sledgehammer swung at a sheet of paper. Untold billions were lost in the first waves of the attack. The remainder of the Confederacy were wise enough to reform their defenses for the new threat. But it was too little, too late. The best they could do was to slow the enemy down. The humans of the Confederacy learned from each planet, continent, and battle lost to the greenskins. Every attack was slowed down. Few were actually stopped. Every battle won was Pyrrhic as the humans fighting for their lives would find themselves fighting against another group of Orks coming from everywhere mere weeks or months after their victory. After a few short wars over systems the Confederacy finally galvanized against its opponents. They came to find that the only solution to a new invasion was to evacuate the civilians to another planet or system and make the Orks bleed for every meter they took. It was no longer a war for borders, it was a war for survival. Failing that, it was to bloody the enemy one last time before all was lost.

Birth of the Canem

Vulpis itself realized the dangers of xenos and what was required of them fairly early in the fall of the Confederacy. Its first instinct was to devote what scientific resources it commanded to researching xenos armor, equipment, abilities, and strategies. In addition to their futile attempts to unite the planets, they also pushed numerous manifestos, guides, and research papers towards the outer systems to assist them in their defenses. These worked as well as their unification attempts. Despite having every battle, xenos cadaver, and their equipment moved to the capital and examined for potential weaknesses and ways to improve on their own abilities, the majority of the planets viewed the material with disdain. It was a commonly held belief that a planet that was being untouched by the wars would have no idea what was actually happening in combat.

Seeing their attempts to aid the Confederacy were going unanswered or ignored outright, several members of the Confederacy Senate decided to push forward a radical idea called the Canem Initiative. Though interstellar law forbade Vulpis itself of raising a military force, many believed it necessary for survival. The project started small. Volunteers were secretly trained and sent to fight on other planets. They would then fight with the planetary military to gain firsthand knowledge of their enemies' capabilities and tactics. Though most died, some returned with extremely valuable xenos technology to study. Solid doctrine was developed from what was learned. As planets would fall, Vulpis itself would reach out to gain anyone with military experience and firsthand knowledge of xenos. These would be the core instructors for future generations of soldiers.

Shortly before the Orks descended upon the Confederacy, the knowledge of this secret military became public. This would have brought catastrophe had it been revealed any sooner. As luck would have it, the sudden realization that the Confederacy must unite to survive overrode the various planetary objections to the practice. The coming of the green tide also marked a shift in overall strategic planning. No longer was the plan to deny entry to planets. The goal was to slow them down as much as possible and draw out the fight until the Canem forces could be brought up to proper numbers. Across every remaining free planet, drives to collect whatever infants could enter the Canem were created. The Confederacy spared nothing, realizing far too late this was a fight to the death.

The Counter-Attack

Eventually, the Orks found their way to the Vulpine System. Expecting more of the same treatment they had been receiving, they were surprised to find the Canem waiting in defensive outposts across the system. As they attacked en masse, they found their weapons had significantly less effect. The humans also brought weapons whose firepower could burn through several Orks in a single shot. Ground and air would be torched as soon as a victory was won against the greenskins. Sites of major losses were often either the target of nuclear or incendiary attacks. The Orkish advance had slowed to a crawl. Over the next 5 years, the Orks pushed the Humans ever inward. Eventually, they found themselves in an unusual predicament. Though they had taken hundreds, possibly thousands of human planets before this, they could not so much as claim a foothold on Vulpis. The surface crawled with Canem, and the planet's upper atmosphere bristled with defensive satellites. Every orbiting body that could support weapons had been repurposed to do so. After 3 long years of fighting, the Orks were finally and definitively pushed out of orbit.

As one, the people of Vulpis let out the briefest sigh of relief before the immediate counterattack. They knew it was a mere matter of time before the Orks attacked again, and they still had to reclaim their lost systems. The next century saw a dragged-out fight as the Canem pressed forward in an exhaustive planet-hopping campaign. They focused on one body at a time, eradicating the Orks on the planet, asteroid, or moon and setting reconquered areas alight. The Orkish settlements were destroyed, burned, and the building materials melted down and recycled into more weapons and vehicles for the war effort. After a hundred years of war, the system was cleansed.

Vulpis was not content sitting on its laurels. They began building an interstellar fleet using the records they had as soon the landing started on the last planetoid of the system. Within a few years, they were almost ready to begin reclaiming their lost planets. The fighting never truly ended. The greenskins continuously launched invasion fleets. Some were utterly destroyed in the void. Others made planetfall and had to be eradicated. Xenos raiders managed to find ways around the Orkish territory to attack the Vulpis system. The planet, once a paragon of beauty and reason, became little more than a war factory. Paranoia was bred into the civilization. They believed they were the only humans left in the Galaxy, and were going to reclaim the glory they once held.

First Contact

Alexandri and the XV Legion had been tasked with clearing out a particularly bothersome Orkish Empire. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was one island of humanity within the green sea. Though they were undoubtedly contaminated beyond Imperial standards, he believed that an attempt should be made to reignite contact and bring them into the compliance. The only problem was that his Legion was tied up in the fight. He assumed they would either be grateful for the assistance of other humans or be destroyed.

They were surprised when they moved into the system to find a fully functional and militarized force. Supreme Commander Dalask sent a brief message, inviting the civilization to join the Imperium. It was met with silence and the new-found humans maneuvering into defensive formations. So he sent a second message. This time he clearly stated his name, a history of the Imperium's conquests, details of his commander and Legion, and instructions that they were to either surrender and join peacefully into compliance or be taken by force. This time, he received an answer.

"We are the Vulpis Confederacy, chaired by the planet Vulpis, protected by the Canem. We have endured the Long Night through strength and strength alone. We have weathered the storm of untold species of alien. We have sacrificed all for survival. You come to us as conquerors, but know you will leave us empty handed. We will not sell our independence. Should you attack us, we shall retaliate. We shall fight to the last. Should you succeed, you will rule only ash."

With that message, their fleets began to advance. The short naval battle that followed showed the Strelky that they were true to their words. Neither side claimed victory in the void, and both left the field severely damaged. Dalask was undeterred and moved to attempt a planetary invasion of one of their bodies. For the first few hours, it was a disaster. Almost all of his landing craft were shot from the sky. Those who did land were quickly decimated. Then, something remarkable happened. The entire body of the defending Canem became utterly confused. In the confusion, the Strelky managed to create a foothold and begin advancing their forces on the planet. This advance was halted almost as soon as it started. His military advancements only managed to shake the Canem out of their shock of meeting other human beings. The Canem regrouped and attacked in force. Dalask found his ground troops to be utterly outgunned and outarmored. The fatalist determination of his troops was faltering in the face of a will of combat rarely seen outside of Astartes. With a second and larger fleet heading towards him, he decided to regroup and retreat to the fleets of the XV Legion.