I'm sure most of us have run across, or been guilty of, PCs in games using the ex-military back story to easily explain away how the character learned the different and varied skills they'd picked up. And invariably they always seem to be ex-SEALS/SAS/KSK or some form of special forces soldier in similar vein, and often min-maxed to the limit.

So I was looking for some interesting or unusual alternatives to the usual suspects, be it special forces types like the Air Force Pararescuemen - who just scream DocWagon/CrashCart recruits - to regular troops like the Seabees that combine soldiering with engineering skills or units that just make you go, wow that's a bit odd/different. This line of thought got started when I ran across some references to the Danish Slaedepatruljen Sirius, long range dog sled patrols in northern/north-eastern Greenland that were just kind of surprising and yet also fairly relevant for Shadowrun in places like the Athabaskan or Algonkian-Manitou Council.

Edit: Ah, accidentally clicked the wrong button.

Project Sun Streak (Stargate) would probably fit the bill for unusual, I don't know what the name of the actual unit was - if it had one. Sun Streak was a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) program researching remote viewing - in reaction to suspected Soviet Programs with a similar goal. The program screened personnel (mostly military) who possessed, (or believed they possessed) psychic ability. The goal being to create a new intelligence collection discipline.

This kind of program would explain away the background of most any combat-oriented magic user or other paranormally-inclined character.


This is a reference from the Federation of American Scientists web-site.

http://ftp.fas.org/irp/program/collect/stargate.htm

If not just looking for real world fighters, there's always the Desert Wars teams and guerrilla groups in conflict zones around the world.

Being a former guerrilla wouldn't explain high speed gear, but would explain skills and also has potential for an interesting background.

Operation Blue Fly.

They were (are?) trained to locate and recover fallen "foreign space vehicles"

In the non-tinfoil-hat world, this of course means Soviet and Chinese satellites. But who knows in _your_ campaign world.

Well in addition to USAF Pararescue which you already mentioned there are USAF Combat Controllers and USAF Tactical Air Control Parties (TAC-P).

Combat Control teams travel into hostile territory and provide air traffic control, fire support, and C3 support. They also provide "austere airfield support", in other words they set up airfields in combat zones.

TAC-Ps are two man air control and fire support teams attached to army ground units.

I met some of these guys in survival school and they are pretty hardcore guys.

I forget the names, but its like Spec boat services, the guys that run the seals around... The Army has that Helicopter Unit the Nighthunters? For Spec force insertion. can't forget the 10th Mnt. Division, Air Assult Troopers, Underwater salvage (The old Frogmen), DOD, Water Reclmation units, Down Pilot recovery, Medical service corp, Marine corp martching band =)

Don't forget, there's also always 'hard-core survivalist'. Sure, he might not have the most SOTA gear, but someone whose been shooting since he was 2 can certainly justify having a 6 in firearms.

If he happens to be 'hard-core survivalist who hit oil', he would have all of that plus the cyber as well.

Edit: Also gives a good excuse for having military-grade training and still being batshit insane. Special ops, by and large, avoid hiring sociopaths. Survivialists make no such distinction.

There's also regular units. OK, so he isn't SpecOps, but he might have been the best in his unit.

And some regular units train specifically in Urban Combat that Shadowrunners specialize at, like the Metroplex Guard and the Army Units there from the Arcology "Incident".

And the "Black Devils" I keep mentioning, The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, which are "Light Infantry", the decendants of Skirmishers. They are trained to move quickly on the flanks of units and harry units, forcing them to divide their forces. They're also trained in Urban Combat, for similar reasons (Fast strikes in close combat. Light Infantry can't carry much in the way of heavy artillery, of course.).

Dont forget about SWAT or the Department of Corrections S.O. unit. SWAT would be a perfect background for a runner with the urban combat training.

Or the cook. We all know from watching Steven Seagel movies that the cook is generally the most deadly member of a unit.

(And since in the Marine Corp, ALL members are basically riflemen first and whatever else second, there's no reason you couldn't be a cook with Assault Rifles 6/Handguns 6/Intimidation 5/Ass-kicking 6.)

All the ridiculously skilled people I know picked up there array of skills in different epochs of there life. I knew a guy in Austin TX, who was network admin (one skill set) who lost his job and decided to use his savings launch well equipped life without a house rather than look for a new job. This taught him a whole new skill set. Eventually he got an in with a start-up and "got back on his feet". I met him at a gun range where he was trying to port zen archery technique to hand guns. This guy could have just about anything on his sheet.

Dictator-turned-pimp Muammar Qaddafi travels the world with his all-female bodyguard unit. Don't know if they actually serve any purpose other than eye-candy but it's definitely unusual.

Hmm... My next character should be a deposed dictator-turned-pimp.

It'd be interesting to have a PC with a background in one of the antiterrorist units (as opposed to counterterror units like Delta) like the Air Force's Phoenix Ravens or the USMC Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams. since they'd come at the job with a background in knowing how places are, or are supposed to be, defended and where there are weaknesses.

"Every Marine a Rifleman." - Commandant Alfred M. Gray, Jr.

Intelligence Support Activity

mostly field sigint, but some humint as well.

also, don't forget EOD technicians. they are very similar to SEALS, but defuse IEDs in addition to being shot at.

wow, that definatly makes top 10 of all shitty jobs.

I think any job in The Sandbox is 9-out-of-the-10 shitty jobs in the world.

The last being Tech Support, of course.

Alamos 20k. The same with other policlubs, like Sons of Sauron etc. While the teams you hear about are just unskilled racist rabbles, they all have their own crack strike teams, well trained and rivalling a lot of special forces teams. An example is the Human Nation's Flaming Sword.

Docwagon and Crashcart have well trained personnel that can move into the shadows. They're physically fit, trained with equipment, and most of them can fire weapons, not to mention they're trained in rescue and field medicine. If you want to go less corp and more... Shadowrunner - The Anarchist Black Crescent is a another medical organisation with an Anarchist bent.

Speaking of anarchists. Black Star recruits, trains and maintains anarachist spec ops teams, and fluff dictates that they make some of the top shadowrunners.

If you want a Tir Native, but not a fascist/racist pseudo-monarchist, then you could play an ex Rinelle Ke'Tesrae operative. They managed to pull off subversive strikes in Tir Tairngire, with opposition like the Tir Ghosts (who incidentally, could be a good background group for a spec ops style shadowrunner.

The United Nations still exists, too. UNATCO seems like the most obvious choice for special ops types, but they could also come out of the UNAF. The blue hats can't usually compete with the size of other military forces, so they could certainly operate like special forces teams, not to mention that with the scope of their operations, they probably have many complimentary skillsets. Fluff also states that they often discreetly hire mercenaries, and even cross-train, so they could easily filter into Shadowrunners.

I could go on for ages. Mainly on the back of Threats, Threats 2, and Loose Alliances. But don't forget that nearly every corp has it's own security forces, such as ARES' Firewatch, Renraku's Red Samurai, Aztechnology's Leopard/Jaguar guards - I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember the other ones.

If you want to revive an old idea for awesome military units you could use the Turkish Jannisaries. At the very least they would be a cool character concept:

"Yeah I was there when Istanbul fell the first time. And I helped liberate it the second time."

A friend of mine suggested the book "The Men That Stare At Goats". Haven't gotten around to it yet, but it looked interesting.

SWC - Shallow Water Craft. The Brown Water Navy - as seen in Apocalypse now.

I wonder what the Gurkhas are like in 2070....

Where does the axe wielding troll get gainfully employed? The local fire department. Usually spec ops forces do not focus so much on melee weapons such as axes, but the fire department has lots of fire axes and people who are trained to use them. Beware the troll fireman.

...I've written up the Serbian SSID which is basically a secret police bureau with several different divisions including Magical Threats Directive, and the nefarious Blacksuits (special agents who had nearly carte Blanche authority).

I also had the Nezavisnost Brigada (Croatian resistance) which was actually a fairly well organised operation.

Gurkha Adepts with Kukri Weapon Focuses, and Magician Support!

IDF "Minorities Unit" Druze
Or a IDF soldier that has completed the "Officer" Training Courses.

One note a college degree does not gain one an officer rank in the IDF, one has to be a distinguished NCO to entrance into the Officer Training Programs.

To me that makes the entire IDF Officer Corps a Interesting/Unusual Military Organization ie no College Degree "Strap Hangers" or "Ring Bangers".

WMS

With the advent of simsense and virtual trainers, there is very little that you couldn't justify to some extent.

Military backgrounds are catchalls for a reason - even if your specific MOS doesn't pertain to the skill set, you can get attached to/deploy with/work for all sorts of people. Additionally, the Army (and I assume the other branches) are big on schools - virtual and otherwise - in an attempt to develop "well rounded Soldiers."

As for where your Troll picked up his mad combat axe skills - I can only assume the SCA is still going strong. Come to think of it, Renn Fairs must be a riot.

-Siege

There's always the Foreign Legion. You could go one further and speculate that some country (not going to say Japan) would create military units based around undesirable metatypes and then send them on suicide missions for the sake of the principle of Economy of Forces.

Hard to go wrong with NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Team). They're combo and cross-agency teams that search for and defuse potential nuclear incidents by any means necessary. Lots of leeway there and I can imagine that they would open pretty wide with stuff like Bugs, crazy magical artifacts, and all sorts of new weirdness to worry about.

Think Indiana Jones with smartguns and mages. Be kind of fun now that I think about it...

That's assuming that Nepal has a higher than average number of magically active citizens of course. And to be quite honest I've never really been all that fond of race X or tribe Y have access to cool/unique powers or are more likely to be macically active type Y or a certain metatype. Just seemed a bit off to me is the best way I can descibe it. But aside from a very brief mention in YotC that the comet cause naturally occurring orichalcum for a time I don't think Nepal has ever been covered in any of the sourcebooks so do what you like with the place.

As for what they're up to I'd guess that the British and Indian armies are still hiring, from what I recall the British army are still the first choice option. After they've done their stint I could see them transfering over to PMCs to cash in on their skills. There are already a number of PMCs offering ex-gurkhas nowadays like Gurkha International Group or Gurkha Security Guards and I'm sure I've read of others operating in places like Iraq, Sierra Leone or other parts of Africa. Interestingly Singapore also recruits Gurkhas for their Gurkha Contingent that acts as a special guard/counter-terrorism force.

Sorry, was just giving an example of what they'd be like.

Cyber-Gurkhas would be just as scary!

And Magician Gurkhas with the same physical training!

Bio-Gurkhas!

Genetically Modified Gurkhas!

Stock Gurkhas!

Hell, these guys are considered the most leathal human beings on Earth WITHOUT any modifications at all. Anything adding onto their natural abilities would just be making them all the more deadly!

And expensive.

I'm going to make a Gurkha shadowrunner now. You should go the the Gurkha regiment museum if you can when if your in the UK very interesting.

Oh don't take it the wrong way, if you want to have them that way in your game world it's totally just as valid as anyone else's way of doing things. Hell it's fairly common in canon that certain peoples seem to be more magically active or slanted more one way or a certain metatype than the general average. I was just saying that for some reason it always just struck me as a bit odd.

Dude, you have people able to throw fireballs with their bare hands, randomly turn into 3 metre+ tall monsters with honrs, and dragons...

And the fact that some of them are more inclined to Magic or Metatype strikes you as weird?

Personally, I'd explain that that's HOW the warrior tradition of Gurhkas might have started in Shadowrun. They were a group of Warrior Adepts that bred themselves for battle and magic.

Same with the Berserkers and the like.

They might have the Magus Gene that everyone is still hunting for.

kind of surprised that no one has yet to bring up the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. sure, its not a real group, but in the 6th world, corps and governments alike would need these guys. i doubt that many of them would have fishmen or beasts of the apocalypse on staff, though.

I don't know. Some of my teachers in High School could count as either of those...

With extra-territoriality and the balkanization of so many nations, not to mention the co-operative use of magic in threats (such as winternight), all major law enforcement and intelligence agencies would have integrated mages, not separate bodies.

On the other hand, there are many groups that fulfill similar work, government, corporate, or freelance, such as the Atlantean Foundation, the DIMR/Draco Foundation, Mitsuhama Research Unit 13, The Society of Ogoun, etc.

And speaking of the DIMR, I bet they DO have a few beasts on staff.

I think it's canon that they do. isn't one of their board a centaur?

My addition to this is Airforce Engineers. These guys get dropped into hell, and told to build an airfield. That's a skillset.

Although not a military unit per se, having a background in the sport of Urban Brawl makes it easy to add combat skills to just about any profession. I assume those in the minor leagues have to have a day job to support themselves.

Hilarious Gurkha story (A little off topic, but goes with my idea that most of them might be adepts without magic.)...

A Canadian Combat Engineer was attached to a squad of Gurkhas to assault a stronghold. Now, he's a Corn Fed Country Boy, very big, and decked out in demo charges galore for taking down secured doors and the occasional wall (And whatever else a Combat Engineer can figure out what to do with a DetCharge. Which is a hell of a lot!). So this large fellow is surrounded by short, scrawny Gurhkas all offering to take some of his charges to lighten his load, "Hell no, I got this, these things weigh more than you do."

The whistle goes off, and they fly into combat, "Like monkeys" to use the guy's exact words, leaping and crawling over rubble and walls as if they weren't even there, while he's struggling to get over them at all. They hit the bunker and yell back, "Don't worry Canadian, we wait here!"

After a lot of cursing, "Next time, they can damn well carry the charges."

Didn't find out what happened inside said bunker, or cave, or whatever it was. But, well, we're talking about a Canadian Combat Engineer and a squad of Gurhkas. Math is pretty easy after that.

You wanted an unusual military unit? Perhaps something to explain SURGE?

The Foreign Legion no longer is a "suicide mission" unit (well, not much more than any other units in the French Army...). When there was a compulsory military service, the Foreign Legion and Marine (ex- Colonial) units were the only one that could be sent abroad without further notice. They built some specific expertise as "first-on-scene" units ; that is, upon arriving in say, a small town somewhere in a war-torn African country, finding where to install headquarters, living quarters and checkpoints, and find electricity and water supplies if possible (for added value, in ex-Yugoslavia the warring factions made an habit of booby-trapping houses and other potential shelters).
However, this expertise have spread to other units since. What remains a Foreign Legion specificity is the presence in nearly every regiment of two guys that speak the local language, no matter where on Earth you're sent to. Some legionnaires take the time to learn an impressive array of basic vocabularies from their teammates over the years.

The most unusual unit I can think of in the French army is the 17e Regiment du Genie Parachutiste (17th Parachute Engineer Regiment). They do the usual combat engineer stuff. And they must do the same thing when airdropped without bulldozer and other heavy gear, in particular the opening of a landing zone. Their other specific field of expertise is sewer control. They have a team trained in underground diving as well as setting and disabling sewer traps.

Also, the 13e Regiment de Dragons Parachutistes (13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment), which are special forces, and the artillery forward observation teams train at sneaking behind the enemy lines as well as building caches. The usual definition of a good cache is that an enemy soldier could be walking on its roof without noticing it. A four-man team must be able to build one overnight, with the hatch being the only manufactured part they brought with them.

The Canadian Armed Forces (We amalgamated Army, Navy, and Air Force to try and make things more efficient.) has a training manual for boot camp written by the British SAS. People who wash out and are still gung-ho on military service are told to go to the US Army, and try the Rangers. One of a friend's training group that washed out passed Ranger Training with flying colours.

Anyhow, there's "Joint Task Force 2", Canada's Special Forces. And possibly Black Ops. I'm surprised that Canadians even know the name of the unit, which also might be misinformation and they actually operate under a different name, if named at all.

A little while ago, a group of Canada's highest ranking members of the Armed Forces were brought together for a Court Marshal of a JTF-2 soldier. Who was he, "Classified, even at your levels, Sirs." What did he do, "Classified, with respect, Sirs." Where did he do it, "Cannot say Sirs, operational security." The forms they got were literally more black marker than words, the word "it" was probably redacted.

They found him/her ("Sorry, cannot reveal the sex of the soldier in question, Sirs.") innocent due to lack of evidence.

DEA is a good agency to go with, along with the ATF. Remember ORO, the drug cartels that got together to form Aztechnology? They're based on the guys that the DEA deals with. And the cartels are definitely better armed than the police and arguably as well armed as the military.

The ATF regulates bootleggers and people with arsenals. Their job is to go into hostile territory and take ALIVE people who make moonshine in the back woods and survivalist groups who are getting their hands on scarier and scarier munitions. And that hostile territory is most likely grounds that these people grew up in.

If you're wanting to do a wastelands or smuggler game, FEMA and Coast Guard are both good choices as FEMA's job is to go into hellholes where a natural disaster just struck complete with diseases, unsafe conditions, people looting like mad, and possibly martial law. The Coast Guard FLIES into a weather where experienced sailors weren't able to keep it together.

I'd have to do research to find the Shadowrun equivalents for various countries, but it should give you a place to start.

Israel is renowned for their wide array of special-purpose Special Forces. Some of the funner ones (these skills in addition to being highly skilled light infantry):

Unit 669: helicopter medevac
Duvdevan: dress like enemy civilians
Yahalom: engineering (mostly demolitions)
Moran: specialize in artillery spotting

Might be a stretch to call them such (They're actually paramilitary, but have served in a few wars as regular military) the infamous Royal Canadian Mounted Police. With a Marine and Air Force, and were formerly being in charge of intelligence and counterintelligence during the Cold War (A job now done by a organization called CSIS.).

The RCMP seems to have disappeared from the Sixth World. I found that disappointing, so when I was running a game set in Toronto, I resurrected them as the North East Mounted Police (NEMP) of the UCAS, set up as both an armed service and a law-enforcement agency akin to the US Coast Guard. Only they covered the ground and the air instead of the water; taking over counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence from the FBI (who were pissed about it), and absorbing the paramilitary elements of the DEA, Border Patrol and other federal agencies.

Also, CanRay, while JTF-2 is quite secret, it's not so secret. JTF-2 is also now part of CANSOFCOM along with a few other units, though JTF-2 is probably the only one that would have a chance to survive the UCAS merger (most of it got folded into NEMP in my version).


Pathfinders are an interesting elite among the regular military forces that work well for SR backgrounds. They're not flashy, but they're used to working independently in small teams, good at reconnaissance and staying low.

The CIA's Special Activities Division are prototypical shadowrunners and always a good choice for a background, or a similar equivalent.

Lone Star folded a lot of RCMP into it's forces in former Canadian cities. They had special icons they had permission to use, which tells you how stubborn Canucks can be, considering that Lone Star is based out of Texas!

But that culture is probably nearly gone by 2070, as, well, there's no more Canada.

Canadians in my version of Shadowrun are still quite stubbornly Canadian despite everything around them to the contrary.

Any of our German friends know if GSG-9 still exists in The Sixth World? And, if so, in what form?