MG144-RE03 Silmanordo APC

Royal Elven Kingdoms

144th (10 or 12mm)

Platoon of four vehicles supplied.

Size (Bounding Box, assembled): 58.26mm x 38.0mm x 15.4mm

Silmanordo Armoured Personnel Carrier

The Silmanordo (lit. “silver oak”) Armoured Personnel Carrier is an aging design. Designed over a century ago, in the early 2220s, the Silmanordo is a classic example of the stagnation of the elven military. It has received only a few incremental updates in all that time, and remains largely the same as the first production model.

The Silmanordo is an archetypal APC, a battle-taxi, intended only to take troops from a to b with a minimum of combat. The Silmanordo is a full grav tank, capable of suborbital, if cumbersome flight, with a respectable turn of speed. It is only lightly armoured; even with the minimal armour upgrade from the dawn of the 24th century, the frontal armour only reaches Tier 14 rating against energy weapons, and remains rated Tier 11 against kinetic weapons. The rear, more vulnerable because of the engines, is down as far as Tier 7 and Tier 6 respectively.

The Silmanordo is armed only with a single automated point defence lazer turret, rated only to Tier 6 itself.

One of the more unusual features of the Silmanordo is the rear hatches. The group of four does not open quite vertically, but at a slightly offset angle, so that the hatches open more like the petals of a flower. To some extent this was mandated by the curved hull surface, but the reason why some other method was not implemented is unclear – it certainly does not seem to impart any special advantages aside from aesthetics.

Even from inception, the Silmanordo was plagued with the problems of resistance to military spending in the decades of relative quiet proceeding the Strayvian Empire’s collapse. (Forty years was not a long time-span for such a long-lived species.)

With elven culture convinced with the fall of the galaxy’s biggest antagonist and a new age of peace was dawning, it became increasingly difficult for the military to receive the resources to continue to advance.

The Silmanordo was initially conceived to be able to transport 11 soldiers. This remains the official specification, but in practise, this is simply impossible. While technically true that the Silmanordo can physically fit that many people inside it, it ignores that to do so, it requires them to not be carrying any equipment.

There is even evidence that the stated figure of 11 was originally intended to be inclusive of the two-elf crew, not the infantry.

For those in charge of the purse strings, however, that figure became gospel. It meant that the army would be able to supplied with less unit to carry the same number of troops. A platoon of 24 could fit into three vehicles, not four. Indeed, the idea gained more and more traction to increasing dangers to the actual combat performance of the troops that would have to be carried.

First, there was the proposal to have four squads of six divided among the three APCs. The army resisted this idea, all-too well aware the chaos this would cause in actual combat situations when one or more vehicles were lost. The army said that instead, the squads would have to be reformed to work in three squads of eight – which the Silmanordo would just have about coped with for combat troops.

But then the next idea floated by the committee in charge was to change the size of the platoon from 24 to 22 – which would allow a squad of six and a squad of five, and thus reduce the amount of vehicles down to two per platoon.

The kind of disaster this would inevitably result in when one or more over-crowded and under-armoured vehicles was actually hit can only be imagined. However, the army advocates happened on a desperate solution before the situation was somehow made even more untenable.

The proposal was raised that to facilitate lower combat losses, advanced medical stations would need to be fitted to the Silmanordos. This would, they army argued, also make them much more useful in disaster relief scenarios that they were more likely to encounter during peacetime. The medical stations would require some sacrifice of space – the capacity of the vehicle for combat troops would have to be reduced to 6 – but surely, the army argued, that this was a sacrifice worth making?

To the great relief of the serving soldiers, the civilian overseers were very pleased at the suggestion and accepted it immediately.

Thus, the Silmanordo was put into production and thousands were made, including numerous variants. As it transpired, the medical stations did indeed prove very useful, as for the majority of the past century, the Royal Elven Army had few instances where it was called to battle. But this merely reinforced the civilian opinion and the later Aincaala faced even stiffer opposition to being put into production.

It is somewhat ironic that on the one hand, the Silmanordo is among the oldest and least modern AFVs currently serving in the Royal Elven Army; on the other, the medical stations within them are otherwise some of the most advanced, as they have benefitted from all the advances made in the past century in the civilian fields.