Junkers have built a grim, authoritarian empire and the mortar that holds together their cities and colonies is irrevocably mingled with the blood of the proletariat. The military seat of government on Ironglass is unkers have built a grim, authoritarian empire and the mortar that ruthlessly expansionist and tends to focus its hostility on small independent colonies, invading them wherever it can get away with it often in blatant defiance of VASA protocols and accords.
This totalitarian ideology is carried on to the battlefield where the Junkers use more penal legions than any other government. They have the largest combined land army of any of the Tripartite powers, due in part to overpopulation and the large percentage of Junker society that take a military career after Planetary Service, but mostly to the size of their penal legions. Service in a penal legion is the most common punishment for Junker criminals, or indeed anyone convicted of an offence in Junker territory, and the draconian legal system ensures that there is no shortage of recruits. Junker battlefield strategy is crude but effective and revolves around overwhelming an enemy with the sheer force of numbers, usually with a screen of hapless convicts and suicide bombers spearheading the assault.
For all their seeming flaws in terms of discipline and troop quality, Junkers are accomplished fighters and natural survivors, and they boast some of the galaxy’s better antiarmour close assault troops in the shape of ExoSuits and Sandrunners. Junker squad support weapons also tend to be chosen for closein fighting capabilities, and the overall onus of their army is on hand to hand fighting and short-range firefights. The Junkers have also produced more than a few famous, or indeed infamous, military commanders who are destined to go down in the history books. The most likely candidates for this are the tyrannical Enforcer Gracchus, and the extraordinary Centurion Aurelian.
The Junkers have suffered more than most, perhaps with the exception of a few independent colonies, from Koralon incursions. This is because they are the Tripartite power most actively involved in expanding the boundaries of human space. Aside from the constant war of attrition with the aliens, Junkers are involved in literally hundreds of civil wars and invasions of minor independent colonies. Also due to the harsh administration, their colonies tend to be more prone to revolution and defection. The overall result seems to be a constant seesawing of the Junker population as colonies alternately break away or are absorbed by the Ironglass government.
