​Battlefield Role: Expendable Light Infantry
Weapons: The cheapest bludgeon one can find.
Outfit: Nothing but tattered rags.
Skill level: Absolutely none.
Affiliation: Salacia
Doctrine: none
Strengths: Why send your precious heavy infantry to a kill zone, if you can send some low cost meat shields to die as a decoy while your real soldiers attack the enemy from elsewhere?
Weaknesses: They are pretty useless on their own, so they won't ever accomplish much as a main fighting force.
Salacian Cannon Fodder
It's not uncomon for the Salacian Generals to use their lower class as human shields on the battlefield against foreign powers. The Salacian Matricians value their own lives too much to put their own necks at risk, and the mighty soldiers of the Salacian Warrior Caste are too expensive of a military asset to be thrown straight into danger either. So they round up a fair number of starved plebeians from the slums of Salacia's industrious districts, arming them up with any improvised weapons they can find and sending the poor bastards to do all the dying in battle.
Without any kind of armour or training, their survavability is utterly ridiculous. They receive a bare minimum wage and are fed with a disgusting ration made of leftovers, but at least they have something to eat and a paying job, which is somewhat better than starving as an unemployed homeless woman out on the streets of Salacia.
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No so much better actually. For they aren't blatantly called cannon fodder just for show. Those expendable troops are often sent to attack the enemy in the most direct and tacticless ways possible, serving as nothing more than decoys for the enemy units to shoot and charge at while the Salacian Heavy Infantry advance from the flanks in a deadly pincer movement.
They all know they are being sent to their probable deaths, but they never had any choice in the matter, because they are all conscripted against their will into the military to begin with. Running away isn't an option either, as deserters are sentenced to death and insubordination is subject to torture. Few are those who ever defy the orders of the Salacian Generals, no matter how unconceivable they might be. In the end they will die anyway, so better to die with a quick blow from the enemy weapons, than to die flayed alive publicly for dishonouring Salacia's unforgiving might.
