The 13th Penal Legion, unusual among the many Penal Legions that serve in the Imperial Guard, was in fact a testing ground. Schaeffer would hand-pick his regiment's troops from Imperial prisons' worst convicts because of some natural talent they displayed or because they possessed an uncanny instinct for survival so that they could serve as part of an elite ad hoc military team intended to achieve some difficult, usually borderline insane military mission objective of the Imperium. These dregs comprise the most vicious, ill-disciplined and unstable group of psychopaths, conspirators, thieves and traitors in the Imperial Guard who would otherwise be destined for the firing squad or the business end of a Commissar's Bolt Pistol. Many of those offered the chance to fight with the "Last Chance