Warhammer 40k - Savlar Chem Dogs
by BaCgroi
The Savlar Chem-Dogs are Penal Legion regiments that serve within the Astra Militarum. They draw their recruits from the prisons on the inhospitable Penal World of Savlar by the promise that they will be allowed to keep anything they take from the battlefield, as well as the chance to get away from Savlar's highly toxic environment.
Though these Imperial Guard regiments are primarily composed of immoral, desperate cut-throats, criminals and scavengers, they have been forged into an effective fighting force, and are some of the most hard-bitten, tenacious and outright dirty fighters in the Imperium of Man.
These dregs of Humanity have been recruited to serve on the embattled Hive World of Armageddon. Motivated by the loot they might be able to recover, they excel in the cramped, noxious battlefields of that world's hive cities.
Much of their equipment is stolen from other regiments, and much of their courage comes from the use of nitro-chem inhalers, without which they would likely flee in terror from the daemons that now haunt the ash wastes and underhives in the wake of the Great Rift's birth.
Chem-Dogs are highly resourceful and surprisingly enterprising. Rather than waiting for battlefield resupplies, they will often re-purpose old equipment.
They have been known to strip weapons from vehicles and proceed on foot when fuel is low, or replace broken machine parts with similarly-shaped pieces of scrap. Though effective, such practices have seen more than a few Savlar officers executed for heresy by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
