Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Soak (section)

===Obelisk Sea Dragons===

The fierce and difficult life of the Sea Dragons is a testament to the people of Obelisk.  This is not a compliment, most would admit.  The Sea Dragons need fully twice the disciplinarians and Commissars of most regiments of equivalent size.  The constant inter-city rivalries and gang tribal identity fights the conscripts of the Dragons display require so much oversight that circumstances forces some regiments to practice the ultimate disobedience sanction: Manualis Decimatio.  This is the practice of picking a squad member by lottery, and forcing the squad leader at gunpoint to beat the chosen soldier to death by hand.  Refusal leads to instant death for one full fireteam from each squad in the platoon that contained the objector.  It is the most vicious form of punishment the Imperial Guard can legally inflict on a non-Penal Legion force, the most disgusting to watch, and their Commissars grimly assert in the case of the Sea Dragons: necessary.

When Sea Dragon regiments can be whipped into line, however, they excel in exactly one way: boarding actions.  Their custom speed boats, boarding craft, three-person jet-skis, liberal use of Voss-Pattern Mako-class stealth submarines, and even parasail-launched boarding gliders allow them to take a ship at lightning speed, often before the crew even realizes what’s happening.  Captain Richtein of the Blue Daggers’ First Company Veterans was once heard to note while watching a Sea Dragon company board a ramshackle Ork Karrier that Sea Dragons were the most efficient shipboarding force that he had ever seen.

Preferring the use of serrated short swords for cutting through nets and lines, carbines for their compact size, and suppressed shotguns for cabin-clearing, Sea Dragons are a brutal force in close combat.  Lacking (understandably) in artillery and tanks, they are among the most specialized military forces in the entire Sector, and are among the few that the Cloudburst Munitorum does not earmark for general deployment even in the strapped times of the Age of Ending.  The Sea Dragons are at best mediocre in general infantry duties, but can make passable Rough Riders on snowmobiles and other simple mechanical mounts; they are not so terribly different from the ubiquitous watercraft of their homeworld.