The Button Battalion

Every city needs a ceremonial guard to stand very still at official functions and look impressive doing it. Clockworks has the Button Battalion, who stand very still at official functions and, roughly one time in four, fall over doing it.

A Proud History of Nearly Nothing

The Button Battalion was formed two generations ago to guard ceremonial doorways, escort minor dignitaries, and generally provide the government faction with something impressive-looking for public events that didn't require anyone actually competent at fighting.

This was, in hindsight, a mistake in selection criteria. The Battalion recruits almost entirely on the polish of a candidate's boots and the straightness of their posture, with no meaningful combat testing whatsoever. The results speak for themselves, loudly, usually during weddings.

The Incidents, Briefly Documented

I have personally witnessed three separate Button Battalion members faint mid-ceremony from standing too rigidly for too long, one who saluted so enthusiastically he dislocated his own shoulder, and an entire honor line that collapsed like dominoes when the first man in formation sneezed.

None of this has ever once resulted in disciplinary action, so far as I can determine, because the Battalion's actual function, whatever the founding charter claims, is decorative rather than defensive. A government faction that wanted genuine security would use Centurions. It uses the Button Battalion specifically because they're harmless, and harmless-looking is occasionally the entire point.

I asked a retired Battalion member once whether the constant mockery ever wore on him. He told me, with what I choose to believe was genuine pride, that his boots had been the shiniest in his graduating class for four years running, and that some legacies matter more than others.

I didn't have the heart to argue with him. I'm not certain I disagree, entirely. Somebody has to be the joke a city tells about itself fondly, and the Button Battalion has done that job with more dignity than most competent institutions manage doing theirs.

I attended a Battalion review last spring purely for the entertainment. Four fainted, one saluted a passing pigeon with full ceremonial gravity, and the crowd applauded every single failure like it was the whole point of showing up. I suspect, for most of them, it was.

I've since recommended the Battalion to every visiting dignitary who asks me for something worth seeing in Clockworks. Not despite the incompetence. Because of it. A city confident enough to laugh fondly at its own ceremonial guard is, I'd argue, in considerably better health than one that can't.