State Troops

Every province of the Empire raises its state regiments: halberdiers, swordsmen, and spearmen recruited from farm and workshop, dressed in provincial colors, and drilled on muddy fields until a hundred men can wheel, brace, and hold as one. They are not heroes and are not meant to be. They are something the Old World finds far stranger: ordinary men who stand their ground, because the line is only as strong as the man beside you, and the man beside you is a neighbor.

The Empire's enemies rarely understand what they are charging. Beastmen and greenskins expect the shrieking rout that human militia owe them, and meet instead a hedge of leveled steel and a line that closes over its own dead. The sagas will always belong to the knights and the wizards. The ground itself (every yard of it, hour after bleeding hour) belongs to the state troops.