Fish Speaker

The Fish Speakers are an army composed entirely of women, and they are more than an army. They staff the Imperium as pages, courtiers, archivists and teachers, some of them priestesses who serve as judge, jury and executioner at once, some as agents and assassins, alongside the official Fish Speaker Guard and the elite units of the Imperial Guard. Men are shut out of the combat forces altogether, and the one role open to a man in a Fish Speaker's life is husband. The uniform is skintight one-piece or robes in a rich dark blue with a hawk at the left breast, worn with cloaks and high boots. Commanders wear heavy black armour and face masks, and acolytes and trainees short green robes. By worlds held and years served no other military force in the known universe compares, and apart from the Amazons of old Earth legend there has never been another effective all-female army.