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The Spartan Way: Difference between revisions
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Warhammer 40000|Warhammer 40K]]'' universe, as can be expected from something built around "[[grimdark]]", has a lot of this.
** The training of [[Super Soldier|Space Marines]]
*** A good example would be the recruitment procedures of the Blood Angels Chapter: The barely post-pubescent aspirants must first cross the barren desert of their monster-inhabited world with only primitive tools before ascending a mountain. At the peak, they then take part in a massive [[Gladiator Games|gladiatorial tournament]] to the death. When fifty recruits remain, they are taken to the chapter's Fortress-Monastery and forced to meditate for three days without food or water, and if they fall asleep they are ''killed''. Note that there has been no rest period between the trials. After ''that'', they take a very powerful sedative that places them in a coma for one year, during which they are entombed in a massive golden sarcophagus that sustains them and initiates the physical and genetic changes required to become a Space Marine. A majority of the applicants will have their bodies reject the implants, killing them or mutating them beyond recognition, and still more will awaken and lie imprisoned in the tomb while their bodies painfully change for the rest of the year, often driving them insane. Then, their ''training'' begins. Another reason they go crazy is due to them awaking inside a sealed coffin filled with blood (or at least a blood-like substance) and have to endure it for however long he has left in there. Think claustrophobia combined with being submerged in blood. Yikes.
*** Did we mention this all happens on a planet so irradiated that they must wear bulky rad-suits that look like diving suits, and jump canyons with only a pair of crude mechanical wings? Life on Baal has left all these aspirants stunted and unhealthy, not to mention more than likely cancerous.
*** Note, that portion of the training will only yield about 10% of the chapter's members (the 10th Company's Scouts). To be promoted to full fledged Space Marine you have to endure a few more years of actual live combat. Even after that, the daily training is also brutal. Live fire is always used and you are expected to fight in every single possible condition, not to mention your daily lunch will consist of whatever you kill in the morning (which is fatally poisonous to normal humans due to where the Fortress-Monastaries are located).
*** The Space Wolves' homeworld is deliberately kept in a primitive technological state, analogous to real-world viking culture. Inter-tribal warfare is encouraged. Those who demonstrate their bravery by valiantly dying in battle are recovered, healed, and inducted. That's right, ''death'' is a prerequisite for joining. Then begins the usual battery of physical tests, psychic examinations, extensive training, exposure to the elements, and combat against vicious monsters. The final exam is having the Space Wolf geneseed implant. As the Marine adapts to his new organs, they are engaged in a psychic struggle against their bestial inner nature. Those who fail transform into a canine abomination. Then they become Blood Claws, assault troops whose sole purpose is to charge the enemy in close combat and seize enough glory to be promoted.
*** [[Mad Scientist|Fabius Bile]]
*** Grey Knights training, on the other hand, would make even him proud. Grey Knights basically have to go through all the things a regular Space Marine must, plus endure a nonstop gauntlet of 666 different physical, mental and spiritual tortures and other trials. The survival rate is rather slim, to put it mildly.▼
▲** [[Mad Scientist|Fabius Bile]], quoted above, originally the Apothecary of Emperor's Children legion of Chaos [[Super Soldier|Space Marines]], is now responsible for devising training and recruitment "programs" of most Chaos legions, and despises Loyalist Marines for their "sissiness"—that is, that their novice-to-aspirant ratio is about 1%, and not 0.1% like he does.
** The [[Death World]]s, like Catachan, are tithed primarily or exclusively in recruits for Imperial Guard. Their method of training is quite simple: survive to adulthood on Catachan. [[HAD to Be Sharp|After that]], they need only to be given basics of being part of a military organization, and they are ready to go fight in another hellhole - it's very unlikely to be any worse.
▲** Grey Knights training, on the other hand, would make even him proud. Grey Knights basically have to go through all the things a regular Space Marine must, plus endure a nonstop gauntlet of 666 different physical, mental and spiritual tortures and other trials. The survival rate is rather slim, to put it mildly.
** By the same token, Penal units. The Imperium for most part isn't a particularly nice place, and it follows that prisoners from hard labour camps had it worse than most.
*** ''[[The Last Chancers]]'' has training that could compare to the Space Marines, significant in that it's the only penal legion described to do it such. Colonel Schaeffer takes the best of the best from the worst of the worst (thousands upon thousands of military criminals who he thinks might be useful for whatever mission might be handed him) and this would, in any other setting already give you [[Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder]], but here he takes them through one hellish battlefield after another to separate the "elite" from the "fodder", and the survivors get to join him in undertaking really important suicide missions given by the Inquisition which any sane commander would have sent Death Watch or Grey Knights to do instead.
** Many orphans are taken to the Schola Progenium run by the Ecclesiarchy, which are not nice places either. The Progena make particularly tough and unflinchingly loyal servants of the Imperium - the Stormtroopers (elite units used in, naturally, particularly nasty fights) and [[Political Officer|Commissars]] (who should show an example of courage to the recruits and Cadet-Commissars are given field practice in Stormtrooper units) all come from there, and the rest are recruited into many other Imperial organizations, from Orders of the Adepta Sororitas to Assassin Temples.
* This trope applies to the Black Guard of the [[Our Elves Are Better|Dark Elves]] in [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. They are taken from their mothers at birth so they don't form any attachment to their families, then as soon as they are old enough, they are forced to fight each other to the death so that only the strongest survive. Those who live are somewhat prone to [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|murdering one another]], this being [[Klingon Promotion|a recognised way of rising through the ranks]]. If they make it through two hundred years of service - and it is implied many don't - they can look forward to a high position at the Witch King's court, not that such a position [[Deadly Decadent Court|increases one's life expectancy]]. They're an interesting lot.
* The Clan Warriors in ''[[BattleTech]]'': eugenically selected, 'birthed' in artificial wombs, raised for their specific missions from childhood, then pitted against each other in live-fire conflicts to determine their fitness, and any who don't earn a "Bloodname" before the age of 35 are considered washed up.
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* The ''[[GURPS]]'' Black Ops sourcebook has the Academy, the hidden training center where the Company sends it's recruits to make Black Ops out of them. The training program is ridiculously intensive, requires the equivalent of ''at least'' two doctorate degrees in book learning, learning ''at least'' two additional languages, mastery of martial arts, qualification with virtually every known weapon (the combat specialists are required to learn everything up to and including nuclear weapons engineering) as well as expert social and infiltration skills. The physical drills include the standard "dropped naked in the wilderness" test (nicknamed "Summer Camp"), exercises (simulated torture, and occasionally not-so-simulated torture) to test a cadet's resistance to mental stress, and a team-building exercise in which a squad of cadets are attached to a six-foot log via a steel chain, which they must learn to maneuver around hallway corners, through doorways, and up and down stairwells ''while being fired at with live ammo''. There's also things like spending six days escorting around a poorly-sealed box full of poisonous spiders while dodging robot snipers, or being forced to stage a firefight with live ammo in a warehouse, without being told that all the crates are full of glass bottles full of benzene and rolled-up newspapers. (And you're ''not allowed to leave the warehouse until you've finished the exercise''... even if it ''is'' on fire.) Usually, only about half of the recruits make it through all five years of training with their lives and sanity intact. The general effect of this is that most Black Ops can face impossible challenges and unspeakable horrors, and go "I've been through worse."
* The Get of Fenris in Werewolf the Apocalypse are this trope to a T. They actively terrorize young cubs and deliberately push them past their breaking point to force them to overcome their weaknesses. Very notably it is the tribe that probably has the most washouts who fail and join another tribe. The Blood Talons in ''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]'' aren't ''quite'' as bad, but their initiation rites are deliberately designed to leave you badly scarred.
* [[Dark Sun]], a setting for [[Dungeons and Dragons]], is so ridiculously harsh that simply living there has effectively indoctrinated every living creature on the planet, sentient and otherwise, in The Spartan Way. Drained of life by the native version of magic, something like 90% of the planet is desert- even the seas have been boiled dry and their beds filled with silt, and a given locale is lucky to see a meagre shower of rain once a year. Metal is so rare that bone, rock and chitin are the accepted standard for weapons and armor. The temperature is extreme, going from 110 degrees in the morning to 150 degrees by late afternoon. Just about everything smarter than a rock has some degree of psychic power, and every plant and animal, even the ones that don't eat flesh, is capable of killing you. An army of Githyanki, [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]]s basically defined as xenophobic, militaristic, egotistical, psychic martial artists who routinely cross blades with demons, elementals, and every other monster that the multiverse has to offer, tried to invade Athas... and promptly ran away with their tails between their legs, sealed up the portal and told their entire race to stay the ''hell'' away from this crazy place. It's like ''[[Dune]]'', only with [[More Predators Than Prey]].
** More seriously, starting characters in Dark Sun began at 3rd level, at a time when no other published D&D setting in the universe would even remotely contemplate the idea of starting a new character at anything other than 1st level. And you're encouraged (read: all but ''ordered'') to have back-up characters.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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