Private Military Contractors: Difference between revisions

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In stark contrast, the "''corporate mercenary''" is usually just a [[Red Shirt]] of some kind, and the "character" takes the form of the PMC corporation itself. Corporate mercs are usually depicted as being up to no good, or are the hand-puppets of some shadowy organization which is itself up to no good. They are portrayed -- when anything more than [[Red Shirts]] -- as amoral, ethically-challenged, and professional but [[My Master, Right or Wrong|hardly ever inclined to argue with Corporate Headquarters]]. If former military, many will have been dishonorably discharged. They are almost never the "good guys" in recent years. Their parent company usually has a name based loosely or thematically on "Blackwater" in a [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] [[Expy]] of that real-life PMC -- examples include "Blackriver", "Red River", "Blackthorne", and "Starkwood".

Note that while the trope description uses the terms "PMC" and "mercenaries" interchangeably, in the [[Real Life]] the distinction between them is very much a [[Serious Business]]. This is because the international treaties that establish [[The Laws and Customs of War]] explicitly ''forbid'' the usage of mercenaries in warfare. While true mercs might be tolerated in practice, legally they are neither lawful combatants, nor non-combatants, and thus aren't eligible for the protection and respectable treatment as per Geneva conventions, for example. When captured, they are treated as a criminal gang at best, and at worst as complete outlaws.

Private military contractors are the way that some people [[Rules Lawyer|try to weasel out]] of this ban on mercenaries. Despite largest of these companies employing armor, helicopters, light warships — sometimes just short of the full-fledged (if small) Air Force or Navy, on paper they are just your garden variety mall guards writ large, and they are not authorized to wage war on their own. Officially, these units may be employed only in some duties not involving actively engaging the enemy (though they can do this if forced), such as escorting convoys and guarding some civilian structures. In practice this mandate could be, and often is interpreted ''very'' broadly.

A PMC can provide a villainous [[The Evil Army|Evil Army]] if one doesn't actually want to insult any real country's Armed Forces. If they're too ''much'' of an army, then they are an [[NGO Superpower]].

Mercenaries are the basic, land-based version of this trope; at sea and in space, they're [[Pirates|privateers]] operating under letters of marque.

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* ''[[Berserk]]'' has mercenaries as its primary characters, with its lead character Guts having been trained as one from childhood. The Golden Age arc of the manga, which the anime covers, follows a mercenary company called the Band of the Hawk that Guts was a part of, and in particular the events that would lead to its idealistic leader, Griffith, undergoing a nasty [[Face Heel Turn]] and becoming Guts's number one enemy.

* The Ninja villages of ''[[Naruto]]'' are a fantasy version of this. The villages are answerable to their nation's daimyo due to their role in national security but they can contract missions with employers of other nationalities as well. Though what their lower-level [[Child Soldiers|personnel]] does can be tasks as mundane as finding cats or doing yard work, the higher-ranked missions often include bodyguards for important political figures, working in place of regular military, or assassination ([[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything|not that we see them doing the last two parts very much]]).

** The Grass Country Arc was about gathering info from [[The Mole]] as a prelude to assassinating Orochimaru, and in the course of which a plot to assassinate Sasuke was uncovered. The following arc revolved around a mission to assassinate Akatsuki duo Hidan and Kakuzu before they captured Naruto. We ''do'' see stuff like that, though admittedly these are all security matters and not hired mercenary missions.

** Prior to the founding of the villages, shinobi clans more closely filled this role.

** This is also what Akatsuki did to raise funds when they weren't pursuing their own agenda. Not that we ever got to see it.

* Essentially what Hunters in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' are. The difference is, the Hunters Guild is a looser association. Hunters take their own jobs, but the Guild provides contacts and perks.

* Arqon of ''Viper's Creed'' is a PMC tasked with the elimination of "Mech Bugs", stray war machines from a war that ended eight years prior to the story, and still attack cities at random. It is a notable example since the main characters are a pilot and his operator working for Arqon, plus their companions and the overall staff make up most of the cast. Basically the anime is ''about'' the PMC.

* Although they started out as [[La Résistance]], The Black Knights of [[Code Geass]] eventually became this. They became the military force of half the goddamn world through a contract.

* Trident from [[To Aru Majutsu no Index]].

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** After nearly throttling the island's governor to death, the mercenary commander then leaves him his card.

* All the human soldiers and pilots in ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'', even though they seem to represent the U.S. military, are actually ''ex''-soldiers and [[Semper Fi|Marines]] now working for the [[Mega Corp|RDA corporation]] mining Pandora.

* ''[[The Hurt Locker]]''. The protagonists run across a unit of British PMCs who've captured two Iraq insurgents for the bounty.

* In ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a Team]]'', the bad guys (at first) are from the Blackforest PMC, a thinly disguised [[Expy]] of the [[Real Life]] Blackwater.

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** Aurodium Sword is basically a PMC (of the real-life "non-mercenary" sort) that provides personal security for VIPs.

** The [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Mandalorians]].

** The Mistryl Shadow Guard is this, mixed with ''[[Amazon Brigade]]''.

** There's a mercenary talent tree for the Saga Edition of the [[Star Wars]] RPG.

** The Red Moons (featured in the short story ''Blaze of Glory'') are a group of mercs who became disgruntled with the New Republic. Feeling that the Republic wasn't doing enough, the Red Moons decided to do something it.

* Robert Asprin's ''[[Phule's Company]]'' are part of the Space Legion: technically a branch of the military, but they're often hired by private groups when they're between assignments, which is most of the time. Interestingly, Regular Army units can also occasionally be hired.

* Lord Commander Staffa Kar Therma's Companions in W. Michael Gear's ''Forbidden Borders'' series.

* ''[[The Dogs of War]]'' by Frederick Forsyth, later a film starring [[Christopher Walken]].

* In ''[[Heralds of Valdemar|By The Sword]]'', Kerowyn becomes the the leader of the Skybolts, a mercenary company. {{spoiler|After Kero gets dragooned by a [[Cool Horse|talking white horse]], said Skybolts negotiate a permanent contract with Valdemar rather than lose her}}.

** And before that, Kerowyn's grandmother and her partner sign up with the Sunhawk company in ''Oathbreakers''.

* Joel Rosenberg's ''Metzada'' series has a planet of [[Space Jews]] whose only valuable export is mercenary services; which sucks, because their ancestors were exiled to an un[[Terraform|terraformed]] planet, and they must constantly import food and air, which is rather pricey. So they'll take any work they can get, even if they utterly hate their clients.

* The tie-in novels based on the original ''[[Mutant Chronicles]]'' games had "free-lancers" who performed everything from bounty hunting to corporate espionage. The armies of the [[Mega Corp|Mega Corps]] are technically PMCs, but since corporations are the closest thing to governments left in that universe, they function more like national armies... with [[Executive Meddling]] in the form of company agents who go along on missions to enforce corporate protocol and the bottom line.

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* In ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' novel ''Changes'', the vampiric Red Court makes heavy use of an unidentified South American PMC to guard the Mayan temple where they're having their happy blood sacrifice holiday.

** There's also Kincaid, who is a lone gunman for hire who spends most of his time protecting the Archive but is willing to do side jobs if the pay is right. The Red Court and White Court make use of a number of mortal mercenaries, as does John Marcone's outfit when they need extra firepower. In fact, {{spoiler|Odin's troops, particularly his Valkyries,}} are for sale as hired muscle to people in the know.

* Terran soldiers in ''[[Andre Norton|Star Guard]]'' are described as mercenaries, but in fact they're conscripted by Earth's puppet government on the orders of the extraterrestrial super-government Central Control and hired out to various planetary wars.

* John Dalmas' ''The Regiment'' was made up of the T'swa, troops who didn't really care whether they won or lost -- what was important was "playing" war skillfully. Since they considered reincarnation a proven fact and thus also didn't care if they died, T'swa were very effective soldiers. They were '''not''' motivated by money: advanced psychological placement assigned those children best suited for military training, just as it did for all other facets of T'swa society.

* In P.C. Hodgell's ''[[Chronicles of the Kencyrath]]'', the Kencyr people live in a resource-poor area but are exceedingly good at fighting; they make ends meet by hiring their troops out as mercenaries. Judging by examples in the series, about a quarter of the Kencyr peoples are mercenaries out on contract at any one time. Their rigid honor code makes them sometimes difficult employees, but their skill keeps them hired.

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== Music ==

* ''Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner'' by [[Warren Zevon]]. Roland is a Norwegian mercenary hired to fight in the Congo Crisis of the 1960s. He is betrayed by a fellow mercenary and goes seeking revenge, [[Determinator|despite being dead]]. It's them implied he goes on to become a spirit of conflict, following the major ideological wars across the world and in some cases inciting them ("Patty Hearst/heard the burst/of Roland's Thompson gun/and bought it").

* ''Contractor'' by [[Lamb of God]]

* "Ride Across The River" by [[Dire Straits]].

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** [[BattleTech]] also has both honorable mercs (the Grgy Death Legion, Wolf's Dragoons, The Kell Hounds) and dishonorable ones (the Crater Cobras, Little Richard's Panzer Brigade, the Waco Rangers). Many Pirate groups are failed mercenary units.

** This made a certain amount of sense in the setting back when even owning a rare and semi-irreplaceable [[Humongous Mecha]] made you a military force all by yourself. As the time-line has advanced and 'mech manufacture has become common it doesn't really make sense for governments to rely on mercenary units the way they are depicted to. Then again [[Rule of Cool|playing a mercenary is really awesome]].

*** It makes somewhat more sense when you consider that by that later time many of the larger big name companies that can really influence events control entire planets or even regions of space making them quasi-political entities in their own right.

* ''[[Fading Suns]]'' has the Muster guild, which offers many kinds of muscle for hire, but began as, and is still mostly made of, mercenaries.

* Pretty much the driving force behind ''[[Shadowrun]]''. Only instead of actual PMCs it's a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]] thrown together by circumstance to "run the shadows". Of course there's nothing stopping the DM from ''making'' a PMC for the players to join. True PMCs do exist in the game's backstory--the most prominent are [[MET 2000]], Tsunami, 10,000 Daggers and Combat Inc.

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** The ''[[Eberron]]'' setting has several groups, such as the troops of House Deneith and House Tharashk's ogre/troll contacts in Droaam. For non-House versions, the Red Gauntlet regiment and the Manifest Legion (mercenary ''summoners'') are also up for contracts.

** ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' got a special [[Sourcebook]] "[http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13961 Gold and Glory]" for most known of these, along with inherent adventure hooks. With understanding that small adventuring bands impossible to list due to great numbers and overall turnover rate also do a lot of the small-scale work in this field, and sometimes happen to hire, be hired by or grow into larger mercenary groups.

* The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' has Blackfire, a PMC that's well-connected and clued in to the nature of the supernatural. Whether they're upstanding or bastards depends entirely on the Storyteller, though the sample adventure that comes with them implies that they're not entirely on the up-and-up -- mainly because one of the three heads of the company got possessed by a fragment of an [[Eldritch Abomination|ancient spirit]] that desperately wants out of its current prison.

* The Russian Tabletop RGG ''[[Age of Aquarius]]'' has a heroic PMC called ЗАЩИТНИК ("DEFENDER"). Like the SeeD from [[Final Fantasy VIII]] ([[Expy|by which they are inspired]]), mercenary activities are only a front for their more noble goal.

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* ''[[Army of Two]]''--the player characters work for a PMC.

** The final mission of the game is an assault on the {{spoiler|very same (corrupt) PMC headquarters that the player characters have been working for in most of the game, and at the end they decide to found their own PMC ''that won't plot attacks on American forces in order to build a case for privatizing the U.S. military''}}.

* In ''[[Command ~~and~~ Conquer Red Alert 3]]: Uprising'' it turns out the war-weary Allies are now relying heavily on the PMC/weapons developer Futuretech, who were able to hire large numbers of veteran disenfranchised soldiers following the end of the war, to provide a great deal of their security.

* In ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3]]: Uprising'' it turns out the war-weary Allies are now relying heavily on the PMC/weapons developer Futuretech, who were able to hire large numbers of veteran disenfranchised soldiers following the end of the war, to provide a great deal of their security.

* In ''Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.'' you play as a former Air Force working for a PMC fighting an alliance of anti-American South American states known as Las Trinidad who defects back to the Air Force once the PMC betrays the U.S. because Las Trinidad made them a better offer. To be fair, the immediate flip-flopping of the PMC for the better offer ''is'' mentioned as being against the Reykjavik Accords that legitimized PMCs in the first place, and at the end of the game, {{spoiler|in addition to repealing the Accords, the US carries out a private and probably illegal operation to assassinate the CEO of the PMC after an international manhunt fails to find him.}}

* In ''[[Act of War]]: Direct Action'', powerful mercenaries can be purchased for a limited time with "insurance" money, if the mercenaries survive half of the money is given back to you, if not you don't see a return on your deposit. The mercenaries are tiered as "Official" (Heavy Infantry and Medics), "Unofficial" (AA-Guns and Tanks) and "Illegal" (Fighter Jets and Low Yield Nukes). They also play a minor role in the storyline. When Richter goes rogue and flees the USA, he ends up having to rely on mercenaries for a few missions. The missions contain some debating regarding the morality of using mercenaries during which it is mentioned that a good chunk of the mercenaries were trained by the US even though Richter remains ethically opposed to their use.

* Among other things, the Umbrella Corporation's "Security" in ''[[Resident Evil]]'' seems to have the military strength of a small country. Specifically, the UBCS (Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service) is explicitly staffed with mercenaries.

* Mantel in ''[[Haze]]'' is described as a Private Military Company, though in the game itself it's acting on its own and hasn't been hired. It's a particularly ludicrous example of this trope, since it's stated to have all but ''replaced'' all national armed forces. And Mantel is not just a PMC, but a super-corporation that has, apparently, taken over most of North America.

* ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' has you hiring mercenaries from the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) to complete your missions. A.I.M. seems to work as more of a mercenary union/guild rather than a PMC, as members are hired on an individual basis and bring just themselves plus their starting equipment if you chose to pay for it, leaving you to provide any other equipment, further training and transportation within the area of operations.

** ''Jagged Alliance 2'' would introduce the More Economic Recruiting Center (M.E.R.C.) as an alternate provider with its own membership. The locals who can be recruited for dirt-cheap salaries (with stats to match) and the rebels (who are seconded to your force without pay) are ''not'' mercenaries, however.

* ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' has an excessively large security division of the dataDyne hyper-corporation, which is contracted to an alien race (albeit somewhat unwillingly), as well as the protagonists workplace, Carrington Institute. The sequel and extended universe adds the contractable security sectors of another two hypercorps; Zentek and Core-Mantis Omniglobal.

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* ''[[Ace Combat]] Zero: The Belkan War'' has beleaguered Ustio hire mercenaries to bolster their forces. You, Cipher, are one of them. Admittedly, though, no organizations are outright named. In ''Joint Assault'', player character Antares is a newcomer to Martinez Security, another one of these.

** The Scarface squadron from the first two games seems to be one of these, as well.

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' the world is secretly controlled by two holding companies. Each company has a branch dedicated to this trope, and both of them employ [[Army of Thieves and Whores|the nine playable classes]] to try to destroy the other company.

* In ''[[Air Rivals|Air Rivals/Ace Online]]'', players start as mercenaries under FreeSKA and only decide which of the two sides to join at level 11.

* The GUARDIANS Security Corporation from ''[[Phantasy Star|Phantasy Star Universe]]'' is a combination of this and [[Law Enforcement, Inc.|Law Enforcement Inc.]], but with [[A Lighter Shade of Grey]].

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* This is exactly what the [[wikipedia:Flying Tigers|Flying Tigers]] were, the only true mercenaries of [[World War II]].

** The only true old-school mercenary band perhaps. There were almost certainly individual soldiers fighting in foreign armies under the [[War for Fun and Profit|traditional terms]]. Furthermore it was still known in faraway places to hire locals as ad-hoc security, notably the Mongol cavalry that guarded US weather stations in the area.

** Though in various important ways, this mercenary company was [[Backed by the Pentagon|Backed By The Government]], including most of its members being serving US servicemembers who were permitted to separate from the US military without suffering any of the usual penalties of leaving the military before your term is up. The means by which they were able to procure a sizable number of for-the-time modern warplanes is noteworthy.

** Foreign Legionaires and Gurkhas and so on served in [[World War II]] but they were under permanent contract and an organic component of a regular military force.

** [[George Macdonald Fraser]], in ''Quartered Safe Out Here'', tells of a British officer who recruited local tribesmen to harass the Japanese. Similar types were generally known in the partisan war and espionage game as they always have been.

* In ancient times, mercenaries were actually more common then nationally affiliated professional soldiers. Even most standing armies of the day (few in number, but with some noteable exceptions like the Roman Legions) were sell-swords to an extent, working more for their salary than for national pride. The mercenaries' level of reliability varies greatly depending on a wide range of factors (mostly pay, morale, origin, and the presence of other armed forces), but they were some of the best soldiers around when they did choose to stand and fight--a fellow that made war his career choice is going to be a lot more experienced than some farm boy conscript that knows more about feeding armies than fighting for one.

* Modern standing armies were originally collections of mercenary units under permanent contract to a given ruler(not always mercenaries strictly speaking; most were [[My Master, Right or Wrong|lawful subjects]] of said ruler but they served under the same terms). They were usually raised privately by a local noble often from his neighbors (a [[Proud Warrior Race]] like Highland Scots had advantages in this regard; a clan just became a regiment and a chief became a colonel). The British army still retains memories of this in it's folklore.

* For several hundred years, Swiss mercenaries were considered to be the finest soldiers in Europe. They even wore garish outfits so that everyone on the battlefield would know who they were. This is why the Vatican has the Swiss Guard, and why they wear such funny uniforms.

* Another famous Renaissance-era group of mercenaries were the German Landsknechts, who were modeled after and considered the primary rivals of Swiss mercenaries and arguably the best mercenary group in Europe. While the Swiss used hand-to-hand combat almost exclusively, the Landsknechts used a combination of blades, early firearms and artillery. They were also famous for the ''zweihander'', [[BFS|a sword that could be as long as six feet]] designed for lopping the tips off of long pikes.