Cataphractuhr / Faith-Sisters

The most precious treasure of the Mother-Church of all Thighs and the final destination for many pilgrims, the Pelvis of Khazula-Zashat.

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Lore / Notable Leggios; part 2

• Praethighrian Guard

The center of the Empire of Hips and Thighs represents the unification of all the Thighological denominations, and every Legate, Thigh Bishop, and the Empress of Meat have agreed that the capital of the True Faith must be guarded by a shared devotion. Each Leggio sends their finest representatives to congregate the Praethighrian Guard – the champions of the Mother-Church of all Thighs, the Gardeners of the Grand Cathedral and its holy relics. Their panoply is polished pitch black bark, and their buttocks are oiled to a near-mirror shine. These are Cataphractuhrs who failed the trial of earning Her Deathly Visage, but through this failure they demonstrated that their faith in the Bottom is stronger, and they would rather remain devoted than be awarded. They obey only to the Praethighrian Constitution and the Matriarch; not even the Thigh Bishops can order them or escape their judgment inside the sacred silent halls of the Grand Cathedral that have been entrusted to them. And silence will certainly reign in these halls. Upon entering the Great Cathedral, you may not speak, whisper, or even breathe loudly. Your feet will be bare, treading on the thickest, softest carpets. The only sound permitted is the slapping of your thighs against each other as you walk. Here, you may only contemplate, communicating with other through spiritual understanding. Break the silence and you will be punished: you will be bent into a pose before you know it, and your Bottom will be spanked for every disturbance of the hush. The Praethighrians slap so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week (believe me, I know this firsthand), but they hit so quietly as if their hands are feathers in the wind, because even their palms are not worthy of making a sound in these corridors. If you scream – they will continue. They will keep spanking you until you learn to keep silence, or until you pass out from the pain in your butt (believe me, I know this firsthand).

However, there is one place that the Praethighrian Guard watches especially closely – the Forbidden Catacombs.

When the first Angel of Love arrived at the ruins of the Golden City, a group of the faithful pilgrims followed her from afar, captivated by the sway of her rear. She walked through the charred streets, ignoring the followers, as she had for months, but when she reached the lavish staircase leading to the opulent basement, her whispering voice echoed through the ruins, forever deafening anyone who stood too close.

Having awakened from the paralyzing shock, the pilgrims remained at the entrance to the dark basement where the Angel had gone, awaiting hers return. They waited for a year, but when news of the birth of the Second Angel of Love reached them, the hearts of the oldest stopped beating, horrified by the realization that the First Angel had never returned. They wanted to know what had happened, but no pilgrim could follow her, not even the newly arrived. Instincts dictated them not to. Whatever was transpiring within the basement, their own bodies forbade them from descending.

After the young Empire of Hips and Thighs began restoring the Golden City, people discovered the history of this district: it was the estate of one of the Hegemony's largest slave trader, and beneath it she kept and sold her goods. She required so much space that the simple basement grew into deep catacombs, the walls of which were lined with the bones of the suffered.

To create a clear separation between the two worlds, a new entrance was built around the staircase: a single crypt in an empty field in the center of the metropolis. The oldest Praethighrians stand guard at the gate into the Forsaken Catacombs, ever ready to stop the horrors lurking beyond, but unable to bring themselves to enter. And yet, sometimes, they open those gates, because, from time to time, pilgrims come to descend the stairs.

Saints?

Sometimes it is a fellow Cataphractuhr, sometimes a shepherd from the other end of the Empire, sometimes an Ardem, who isn't lustful, but berserk. They come and demand to be let inside. And they are never stopped. You can't stop them, and the power of the commandment of the first Angel of Love does not forbid their bodies from doing so. Most never return; the few who do bring only repugnant news of the Cult of the Worm and the “Tortured”, sealed within the Domain created by the first Angel of Love; but once in a while, on saintly days, these pilgrims bring white splinters, of sacred bones, still radiating the holiness of the Aspect.

• 3rd

The Leggio of the Golden City. Fierce in battle, verve in prayer, and insatiable in bed. The Leggio that begot the Gardeners of Death, they remain to this day exemplars of what people call zeal. And to this day, no other Legion can match the 3rd’s passion for the Thighs. After all, they are citizens of the Golden City, raised there hearing the whispers of the Second Angel of Love almost daily. The thirst for the Bottom, its perfection, and carnal sensations is carved on their souls.

But many members of the 3rd have a notorious reputation: they are so ecstatic by the fact their Holy Labor keeps the sacred Thighs of Meora in pristine purity that they become addicted to the danger and thrill of battle. They can’t get erogenously invigorated anymore without Adrenalin rushing through their veins and a massive heavy blade swinging very close to their necks. They need external fire to kindle the internal one.

The problems might have ended there, but these ladies see many of their fellow believers as weak in their flawed devotion. Even a rookie of this Leggio can look you in the eyes and detect a spark of interest in something other than Hips and Thighs that you don't even know about. And when she finds it, she must eradicate it. They don’t ask permission; they consider it their responsibility – someone has to, and they will do it, using their own methods (although it's difficult to say whether they do it out of pleasure or necessity). Seeing others encounter mortal danger for the first time is as exciting to them as being in danger themselves: “she who loves the Bottom, is not afraid to play with flames”, they say. Even the Parish Watch of the Golden City are scared of them. Although, those who experienced a night with one of the 3rd, cant deny that... something stirs up within them at the thought of being pursued by a “crazy wide-eyed bitch” again… but this something is still mixed with fear (does that mean their methods work?). A word originated on the Tail Continent describes this type of relationship well enough – Yandere. A guilty pleasure, so to speak.

It is not rare for conflicts to arise between the 3rd and other Leggios when its members suddenly arrive for examination on behalf of the Church itself. But no one can argue with those who have proven the righteousness of their actions through spiritual strength and superiority. For some reason, the Church considers their methods exceptional for testing the fidelity of Imperial military personnel. After all, many of them are Ardem, so passionately in love with the Bottom and the Aspect of Love that even a regular female Leggionehr of the 3rd can examine a cohort of six hundred futales with her own Bottom and still not be satisfied with the... “experienced results”, while her... “judgment” remains narrow and tight. Meanwhile, a Cataphractuhr can take on entire regiments of thousands.

The armors of the 3rd are decorated with one of the primary symbols of the Thighology – the Peaches of the Hallow Tree on the Golden Isle. But since this Hallow Tree was begotten, let alone bore its first fruit, only two centuries after the Leggio’s founding, some believe this symbol actually represents moth wings, in memory of the Sparada va Caues, the Sanguine Moth, who slew the last Empress of the Hegemony, thus starting the great rebellion that led to the creation of the Empire of Hips and Thighs, restoring freedom to the True Faith.

• 6th

At first, the Lappian Foxes was a congregation of Jagers from the southern Thighlands who, hearing the word of Thighology and awakening their inner love for the Bottom, decided that had come the time to serve the Empire and its people, rather than their own glory. They swore to serve the young city on the western edge of the southern Great Thigh Plateau, protecting its province from the rare Envasions that reach southern cliffs of the Thigh Region across the Lap Seas, and later became an elite regiment of the 6th Leggio.

Over the next nine decades, twenty new Leggios were trained and benefited from the knowledge and experience accumulated by these Jagers. Since then, they didn’t stop contributing to the Imperial military prowess: many regular tactics incorporated into the training of other Leggios were first practiced on a smaller scale by the 6th and then refined for Leggio-wide warfare by the others.

Today, however, The 6th is known as the greatest sniper in the entire Meority. Their eyes are all-seeing, and their bullets never miss. There is no terrain they cannot traverse to find their targets. Two-thirds of all sniper records belong to this Leggio, half of which were set by a single Leggionehr, Lappa Sleppa, who held every model of every long-range weapon in her hands and retains the achievement for the longest lethal headshot: six kilometers with a Gauss Rifle.

• 69th

This is a relatively young Leggio from the province of Garasmor, just five centuries old. For the first couple of centuries, it was an ordinary sedulous Leggio like any other, gallantly defending Her Thighs as it should, but in the Electrification Era it quickly rose to prominence. Garasmor is, after all, the birthplace of the electrical renaissance. When its engineers and scientist uncovered methods for harnessing and storing this energy for quotidian application, some of them begun to wonder if it could also be used in Holy Labor.

From the moment the first Coil Gun successfully exterminated a Jealous Beastiary, the 69th has been arming all of its Leggionehrs with the newest and bestest arsenals the Imperial mind can devise. Almost all of the Leggio’s firearms are the Circuit Weaponry, their stealth suit have been replaced by Volthighic Armor, their marching music is Techno, and their Cataphractuhrs formulated and compiled the Galvanic Doctrine, becoming its masters.

They are the fury of the Empire, incinerating enemies and turning sand into glass. But this doesn’t mean they have abandoned the cunning tactics of the Imperial Leggios. The enemies of Her Light will not even have time to be surprised by the static energies unexpectedly surging around them, after which billions of volts will strike from all directions at once like a mighty storm, reducing the battlefield to piles of ash.