The Isranian Guard

The Isranian Guard is a group with a wonderfully self-descriptive name, as it is their responsibility to guard Isra, The Free City. Rather than simply being dime-a-dozen, identical, faceless meatbags, The Guard is a reputable organization, with character and values. Many unemployed men and women in Isra consider joining The Guard at some point, as there are many skills to be learned in doing so, such as knowing how to handle a weapon, how to spot danger, how to act in an emergency and other similar skills. It’s common for citizens to join the guard, stay for a year or two, and leave, with the intention of doing something else for a living having bettered themselves. Some Guardsmen intend to do similar things, after a “just a few more years.”

It is worth noting that The Isranian Guard is an entirely separate entity from the Army of the Free States. Both are based in Isra, and the army is often referred to as Isran due to the staggering majority of its soldiers having come from the now disbanded Military of The Free City and having their homes in Isra, but they are technically not Isra’s army, and they are not at all related to The Guard. The Guard is responsible only for the city. They do not leave The Free Plains, and their only concern is the safety of Isra itself. The Army goes elsewhere and has more politically minded goals.

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The structure of the Isranian Guard is rather simple. At the top, you have the Captain of the Guard, who is responsible for all of the Guard. It is their responsibility to see to it that all of the guarding that needs to be done gets done in the best, most efficient manner, with minimal loss of life, at the lowest cost, and so on. The Captain can appoint Officers. Officers are responsible for managing a specified group of Guardsmen, usually to perform a particular task.

For example, The Captain of the Guard might assign an Officer to take twenty Guardsmen to go man a particular lookout tower, and either list which Guardsmen to take, or leave it to the Officer to choose. The Officer would then go and do that, including all of the secondary tasks involved with that, and his group would function autonomously at the watchtower until ordered otherwise.

The Captain of the Guard is answerable primarily to The Chancellor, as it is The Chancellor’s responsibility to ensure that Isra’s Guard is functioning well.

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As things have turned out, The Isranian Guard has access to the entirety of the military surplus left by the disbanding of the Free City’s Military, and this has turned out to be quite suitable for them. After a bit of refurbishment, and supplemented with some newly forged items, The Guard has accrued an impressively large and perhaps surprisingly wide armory from which to draw, given that they’re “only” a city guard.

Their philosophy for choosing which gear to use is to select the very best based on the situation in which you’ll be needing the gear, and try to figure out how it works as you go. Odds are, someone you’ll be going with someone who knows how, so you’ll learn, and be well equipped. Exceptions made when one does not know or physically cannot use a particular sort of weapon.

As such, the guards you might see around Isra and out on the Plains will often vary in their chosen equipment drastically. Sometimes due to choice, as some helmets are preferable to some people and such, but more often due to viability in the present locale.

However, barring extraordinary situations, all Guards are clearly marked with Isra’s Sun Insignia and the distinctive crimson color, and all of their equipment is clearly marked, with the shape of the sun pressed into the metal.

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In any sufficiently large society with laws, there will be criminals. It is the task of The Isranian guard to apprehend criminals as they are in the process of committing crimes or to track them down with the assistance of skilled trackers, and arrest them. For light crimes, there is a prison in the eastern portion of the city, where detainees will be taken to serve their sentences. There, detainees are held in perhaps surprisingly comfortable conditions until the end of their sentence.

(If a sufficiently large crime takes place, or a detainee is particularly dangerous, other holding locations are available and will probably be used instead of the nice prison.)

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Everyone in Isra, barring unrelated conditions, sleeps soundly at night. They sleep soundly because out of out of all the people of the world sleeping that night; they are the least likely to be woken by a threat to the city. This is due to the extensive network of guard towers, patrols, lookouts, and other associated forms of watchfulness spread all across the Free Plains, and beyond.

A fair portion of this can be attributed to The Dawn Riders, as their aerial patrols are invaluable, but the rest is The Isranian Guard. Many guards are tasked with walking the city walls; this is often regarded as one of the most boring jobs, but at least one gets to move around some. Some others are placed in watchtowers and forts out in the Free Plains, usually for stays of about thirty days at a time.

Additionally, it is the Isranian Guard who is responsible for standing at the gates. All who pass in and out of Isra’s gates pass the eyes of the Isranian guard. Seeing as how doing so otherwise is most often, barring a select few exceptions, illegal, this ensures that even with Isra’s highly lenient border policies, the majority of dangerous individuals are filtered out. Though it may not seem to be the case by speaking with the men standing on the ground, the Officer in charge of each gate is always highly competent and has some tools at his disposal to do his job effectively.

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In addition to their primary responsibilities, it is also the task of the Isranian guard to “Keep the peace” in Isra. The phrase has not been defined definitively but has been known to include breaking up fights among citizens, serving as a third-party arbiter in disputes, discouraging children from committing petty crime, assisting the elderly, and other such tasks.

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