Last Chancers

The Last Chancers, formally the 13th Penal Legion of the Astra Militarum, is a penal regiment raised for elite special operations missions. It forges small, hardened strike teams for operations too hazardous or clandestine for conventional Imperial Guard regiments, often at the Inquisition’s request. The regiment has no fixed homeworld or permanent garrison; its personnel are convicted Imperial Guardsmen and other prisoners drawn from across the Imperium, held aboard starships between deployments rather than on any world’s soil.

Command of the Last Chancers has, for an extended span of its recorded history, rested with Colonel Schaeffer, who selects recruits from military prisons for some skill or capacity for survival rather than conventional soldiering. Each convict is offered a ‘last chance’: an Imperial pardon, earned by surviving a set number of operations at Schaeffer’s discretion; those who die in his service are held to be pardoned posthumously. Earlier campaigns saw the regiment operate by attrition, committing large numbers of troops to successive warzones until only a small core of survivors remained; later missions saw Schaeffer instead assemble smaller strike teams directly from selected prisoners, guarded in transit by Commissariat provosts or naval ratings.

The regiment’s most extensively recorded campaign began during the Second Tyrannic War of 993.M41, when some four thousand penal troops were committed across successive warzones, including Ichar IV against the Tyranids, before the survivors, reduced to a small core under Lieutenant Kage, reached Typhos Prime. There, working with Inquisitor Oriel, the Last Chancers destroyed the Genestealer-infiltrated city of Coritanorum by detonating its power reactors. A later mission, involving a Deathwatch Space Marine named Dionis, saw a smaller team infiltrate the compound of the T’au commander Brightsword and assassinate him. Under Schaeffer the regiment was also committed to Armageddon, contributing to the downfall of the traitorous former overlord Herman von Strab and the repulse of a subsequent Khorne invasion.

More than one formation is recorded under the name 13th Penal Legion across the Imperium’s history, each assembled around a single objective and largely forgotten once achieved. Schaeffer’s long association with the unit and his standing within the Inquisition imply a continuity between these successive Last Chancers not otherwise explained. Distrusted by regular Astra Militarum formations for their criminal origins and willingness to requisition equipment by whatever means necessary, the Last Chancers are nonetheless recorded as a consistently effective instrument of last resort, their reputation resting on a record of missions few other formations would have survived.