Lore Masters! Is There A Possible Garlean Special Forces Op?

[Anonymoose]

The force that Nero mentioned were the Frumentarii. Frumentarium is essentially a spy network - the intelligence services and secret service. (The word comes from collecting wheat, the ostensible role of the officers who were in charge of such services in the Roman Empire).

As for your main question, there are a few ways to take it. Little has been confirmed in-game, but just looking at Rome itself has yet to steer me wrong on an inference. But even then, going around the Legion without stepping from Imperial forces into local forces is tricky, if I recall right.

In each legion, the 1st Cohort is generally larger and made up of the best they have to offer. Rather than "special forces", it's more or less just "the elite". Cavalry also played a large role in operating behind enemy lines, but back then that was more or less harassing villages, interrupting supply chains, etc.

Outside of a legion you can expect units of personal bodyguards (the Praetorian Guard) to be elite in their own right.

But if you want something akin to like, today's literal Special Forces, you have to make some assumptions. There were units in the Roman army that gained this kind of consideration in retrospect, such as the Germanic Batavi, a unit that was able to cross rivers - in armor, with weapons - without breaking formation. Garlemald has conquered so much land and absorbed so many conscripts that I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few units outside of the standard Legion that fulfilled "special forces" type work ... but we're wanting for specifics.

There's also a weird title called the Optio. Usually, each century's second-in-command is the Optio, but you can give someone this title ad hoc and throw them into a specialized role. They usually show up en masse in FFXIV for some reason, implying that perhaps they're "special forces" picked for talents in a specific area. Examples include: The swordsmen guarding Rhitahtyn, or the lockdown of Castrum Centri, or the unit that hunts down Drest, Aulus rem Vulso's retinue in the east Shroud. (But maybe they just rounded up all the century second-in-commands and sent them off as a group, right?)

[Griffey]

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