Sangrails
Sangrails is a common name for the was the Office of Response, Relief and Recovery, otherwise known as R3 or R-cubed by its initials. The corps combines specially trained paramilitary units with teams of engineers, scientists, scholars, medics and educators to immediately stabilize stricken communities.
History[edit]
During the Crucible War, both sides made massive use of weapons of mass destruction, or methods of mass extermination. This was more true of the Zhodani Dawn Heralders and their secular allies in the early parts of the war, but Commonwealth forces used them during the last campaigns into Tienspevnekr and Zhodane sectors in an effort to break fanatical holdouts in the cults main strongholds. At least two of these latter occasions saw the use of a Star Trigger built from specifications provided by remnants of the Darrian Special Branch. The amount of damage inflicted in some cases equaled or exceeded the extermination campaigns carried out by Emperor Lucan's forces during the Black War phase of the Imperial Civil War.
The Regency of Deneb had already encountered massive destruction dating from the Collapse during their reexpansion into Corridor Sector. And the aftermath of the Rape of Trin had already resulted in the creation of a permanent corps of disaster response and recovery personnel under the joint auspices of the Regency Quarantine Service, and the Ministries of Interior/Welfare and Public Information. This organization was the Office of Response, Relief and Recovery, otherwise known as R3 or R-cubed by its initials. The service was really little more than a clearinghouse and disaster management office in its earlier incarnation. In the aftermath of the Crucible War, the amount of rebuilding that had to be done, both in the former Regency and among newly integrated or occupied territories was far away and above what R3 could have accomplished with its available resources. Much of the difficultly was bureaucratic, as the demise of RQS and the massive priority given to the military and homeworld recovery agencies stifled its initiative. Because the MoI had its own seat on the new National Defense Council, it could operate independently of military interference and obtain enough resources to succeed at its mission.
The office was transferred entirely to the new Ministry of Interior, and was issued personnel on a permanent basis from units that were merely affiliated with it before. These units were known as Sangrails, after the legend of Arthur and the Holy Grail. As the story went, Arthur had been stricken by the treachery of his enemies, and the land reflected this corruption by withering and dying. Only when Bedivere brought him the Holy Grail did the corruption pass from both. The name reflected the double duty of the corps: ecological and disaster recovery on one hand, and cultural and political education on the other hand to prevent a recurrence of these disasters. In the aftermath of the Crucible War, the Sangrails were the first in to devastated worlds on the heels of the military. The corps combines specially trained paramilitary units with teams of engineers, scientists, scholars, medics and educators to immediately stabilize stricken communities.
Sangrail units consist of two types: civil affairs and planetary rescue. Civil affair units handle civil recovery, providing a modicum of order and services to communities as the first step in recovery, and assisting in the redevelopment and repair of local institutions and infrastructure. Unlike past "world building" missions, the CA units usually adapt Commonwealth political institutions and assumptions to fit the local culture, instead of the other way around. Every CA unit includes a small group of armed police units, or affiliated military forces, to provide security to a mixture of governmental and medical units. Much more famous are the planetary rescue unit. Where CA units are long term focus, PR units are gung-ho "lifeguards" who are usually the first response to a disaster beyond the military or the Astrogation Patrol, and are meant to abate or contain a crisis right in the bud. These include many technicians, engineers, medics and scientists crosstrained with military or paramilitary methods, who can immediately triage a world or community while under fire or in the thick of the fan. The stereotype of PR units is usually of a beefy guy leaping down a gravity well in a jump pod, hitting the ground running, and breaking out his tool belt and handcomp with a prominent pair of coke-bottle spectacles on his face. Despite this image, the have very good management (simply because their high profile does not permit embarrassment), plausible expectations and a high success rate.
R3 has its own fleet of lightly armed starships, mainly transports supplemented by jump-mobile medical or factory units. Because the economics of starflight constrains the amount of resources that can be carried by these ships, Sangrail construction units are trained to make do with whatever resources are available, which has the bonus of accelerating local reconstruction. R3 recruits mainly young college or vocational school graduates in the early twenties, who are physically fit as well as technically proficient in construction, social work and instruction, rescue and triage, transportation, security and even more mundane fields like agriculture and biology.