Legion Banners

Born from an aniconic society and yet requiring display for parades and identifiers for command during battle, the Imperial Legions have evolved a system of numbered banners borne by each of their units.

Each Legion unit has a banner: every fang, scale, talon, wing, dragon, and Legion. They are the colour of the Legion uniform, and bear the Realm pentagram followed by the unit's numbers in white, listed in a column. Each number listed will be the same size regardless of which unit it represents (the number of a dragon and a scale on the same banner will be the same size) though the more numbers which must be listed on a banner, the smaller each number will be. Great Houses who sponsored Legions were allowed to provide the banners of sponsored units with small bronze mon medaliions displaying their own symbol. Now that the Great Houses have direct control of the Legions, these are much larger and more gilded.

Legion fortresses, flights, and Campaign-Armies (formations of multiple legions) do not have banners of their own.

Fang Pennants: The smallest banners are the fang pennants, which fly from the spear of each fanglord. They provide a good example of the numbering system in use. The pennant of the 5th fang of the 4th scale of the 2nd talon of the 1st wing of the 3rd Dragon of the 18th Legion would display:

18

3

1

2

4

5

Legion Banner: The most important banner in the Legions is the banner OF a Legion. Each one is personally commissioned by the Scarlet Empress and granted by her hand to the first strategoi of the Legion. It is a large banner of scarlet silk edged in bronze, displaying the Imperial Pentagram and the Legion number in white gold. Atop the banner pole is a white jade copy of the Empress' personal mon, in a mount of five intertwined dragons of gold.

The Legion Banner is a point of pride for the Legion, and allowing its capture is intolerable... while Legion Banners have been lost temporarily, they have never been given up, always recaptured. Even the 4th Imperial Legion, near-destroyed three times by the forces of Lookshy (including one time whwere its own strategoi turned traitor) has kept its banner from being taken by the foe.

In all of Imperial history, only four Legion Banners have been lost... those of the 5th Imperial Legion, 10th Imperial Legion, 11th Imperial Legion, and 25th Imperial Legion. All are now in the hands of the anathema known as the Bull of the North, taken by him in the War with the Bull.

Legion Shields: The tower shield is an iconic symbol of the Imperial Legions, and it too is marked with symbols showing its bearer's place in the order of battle: a large central stud is marked with the pentagram of the Realm, while a small bronze plate is embossed with the specific unit numbers the Legionnaire belongs to.