Which fictional warriors undergo the most brutal training?

[jackdavinci]

Not that they really showed in on screen, but by reputation I’d say the Klingons. I mean given how grueling their bachelor parties are…

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@jackdavinci

Not that they really showed in on screen, but by reputation I’d say the Klingons. I mean given how grueling their bachelor parties are…

To say nothing of their weddings.

[SunSandSuffering]

Roman centurions - Sparticus style.

[elfkin477]

Battle School isn’t on par with a lot of those already mentioned, but piting kids against each other at the age of six is pretty brutal.

[DigitalC]

No mention of the Mord-Sith yet?

A Mord-Sith is selected from the gentlest and kindest girls in D’Hara and is trained from a young age on three levels. Each time, she must be “broken.” The first breaking is a time during which she is tortured to the point of obedience so strong that she would do absolutely anything her master/mistress tells her, without question or hesitation. This part of the training breaks her of her sense of self and personal desires. During the second breaking, she is forced to watch as her teacher slowly and brutally tortures her mother to death. This is to break her of compassion. The third, and arguably the most difficult, breaking is when she is given the instrument of torture and must inflict pain and suffering upon her own father until she finally kills him.

[Xan]

@DigitalC

No mention of the Mord-Sith yet?

That doesn’t even mention that the agiel (that’s the instrument of torture mentioned) causes the Mord-Sith constant pain while wielding it.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

The Spartans from Frank Miller’s 300, especially King Leonidas, make all of them look like pussies.

[Kobal2]

@smiling_bandit

While the Space Marines were pretty tough, the Catachan Jungle Fighters were probably far better trained.

Describing the two:

Space Marines are given lots of augmentations and power armor, are effectively immortal (let’s just say they are known to live for eons… and still don’t die of old age). They often have centuries of training in frozen ice-worlds, desert wastes, or dead space before encountering serious combat, and are expected to be able to use almost any weapon handed to them under any conditions.

The Catachan have it worse. They are born on a hellish world so filled with killer creatures that they suffer a ridiculous mortality rate. Every creature big enough to see is aggressive, vicious, carnivorous or omnivorous and eager to eat you, and most are toxic. The plants are even worse, and the insect life is more dangerous than the killer animals. The people there learn to use knives before they can walk, and frequently look upon service with the Imperial guard in suicide squads as a step up in life. They don’t have power armor, just a flashlight and a t-shirt, ad they can quite effectively take down demons, tanks, and so forth.

Yeah. Uh uh. Uh uh. Chaos Marines live and train inside the Eye of Terror (which is a black hole leading into Hell itself). I win

[_cc]

@runcible_spoon

I’ll toss in the Patryns from the Death Gate Cycle.

Drat, beat me to it. As mentioned, the Patryns are trapped in a magical prison world bent on destroying them. They survive only by moving slowly and painfully to the exit through successive generations (over at least a millenia, according to one appendix). Their enemies wanted to rehabilitate them and instead accidentally enforced brutal natural selection on them, ensuring that those descendants who finally escaped would be the most powerful (and angry) of them all.

[Grumman]

@Kobal2

Yeah. Uh uh. Uh uh. Chaos Marines live and train inside the Eye of Terror (which is a black hole leading into Hell itself). I win

Chaos Space Marine training is what happens when a mad doctor decides “Sure, a 1-in-100 success rate is a good start, but how about we kick it up a notch?”

@Fabius Bile

Each of the Legions has now nominated aspirants seeking to throw themselves upon our mercy in the vain hope that we may deem them worthy to join our ranks. Those loyal to the shrunken corpse on Terra still cling to their own processes by which perhaps one in a hundred neophytes may survive to become a battle brother. The methods I have developed over the last millennia are more stringent, for we must be pure in our hatred and hard of heart, body and soul. Fewer than one in every thousand survive, and I strive each day to lengthen these odds still further.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@jackdavinci

Not that they really showed in on screen, but by reputation I’d say the Klingons. I mean given how grueling their bachelor parties are…

@Elendil_s_Heir

To say nothing of their weddings.

And trust me, you never want to see a Klingon bris. Oy gevalt!

[jackdavinci]

@Tom_Tildrum

And trust me, you never want to see a Klingon bris. Oy gevalt!

Does that involve clipping of the penile spikes?

[Tapioca_Dextrin]

How about boot camp for Universal Soldier - you only graduauted if you died.

[Moirai]

@elfkin477

Battle School isn’t on par with a lot of those already mentioned, but piting kids against each other at the age of six is pretty brutal.

Yeah, I thought of that first. Except that for Ender, it began while he was still in “regular” school, with the powers-that-be allowing him to be tortured by both his brother and his classmates, just to see how he would handle it.

[smiling_bandit]

@Grumman

Chaos Space Marine training is what happens when a mad doctor decides “Sure, a 1-in-100 success rate is a good start, but how about we kick it up a notch?”

To note, this is why I didn’t put it in. Strictly speaking, the Chaos Space Marines don’t have anything we’d call training. It’s more of a “Here’s a gun, go kill things, if you don’t die you keep fighting.” With the exception of the Alpha Marines, really. Chaos Marines do have lots of skill, but living in a freaky time-warp and wanting nothing except more power, well… I don’t think they qualify.

[mj_2]

chuck norris. Oh, wait he’s real. But he would still kick ass vs. all the other people on this list.

[wintertime]

@JSexton

They’re also given a puppy at age 2 and told to kill it at age 6.

It’s obvious that Martin added the puppies to switch for yet another moment into a burlesque; and I wonder how many authors mentioned here added such excesses to their descriptions to make the irony plain?

[Kobal2]

@smiling_bandit

To note, this is why I didn’t put it in. Strictly speaking, the Chaos Space Marines don’t have anything we’d call training. It’s more of a “Here’s a gun, go kill things, if you don’t die you keep fighting.” With the exception of the Alpha Marines, really. Chaos Marines do have lots of skill, but living in a freaky time-warp and wanting nothing except more power, well… I don’t think they qualify.

I think they do - for what the OP requested. Chaos Marines are not soldiers, that’s for sure. But they are very good warriors/killing machines.

[muldoonthief]

No love for the Mobile Infantry? 2000+ recruits report to boot camp, 187 graduate, 14 dead (1 executed and his name stricken), the rest resigned, washed out, or transferred.

[smiling_bandit]

@Kobal2

I think they do - for what the OP requested. Chaos Marines are not soldiers, that’s for sure. But they are very good warriors/killing machines.

No, I meant they were basically the “send them out to kill and the survivors are stronger:” routine. I don’t knwo if you can really call that “brutal training.” It’s brutal… in a way, and it’s training… in a way. But given that they start out as psychotic killers with little-to-no self-regard, I dunno. I just don’t think they count.

I guess it’s the difference between human warriors and a horde of rabid tigers. The tigers might be very good at what they do, but they can’t really be compared.