Uniforms of the Imperial Zahavan Army

The uniforms of the Imperial Zahavan Army are broken up into a number of categories, ceremonial uniforms to combat dress. In the Zahavan army, many regiments, and even corps have long and rich histories with several formations among the oldest active military formations in the world. As a means to honoring this lineage Zahavan army uniforms consist of elements that are specific to the regiment (or corps) to which a soldier belongs. The distinctions between units is most noticeable in full dress uniforms, and less noticeable in barracks dress and combat dress, though a level of regimental distinction runs throughout.

The exception being Senior officers, who do not wear regimental uniforms, and instead wear what is officially referred to as the "Staff Uniform", and more commonly called the "Imperial Uniform".Typically the same basic design and color of uniform is worn by all ranks of the same regiment while higher ranking members have greater levels of embellishment. There are also several significant uniform differences between those regiments designated as infantry, those designated as cavalry regiments, and those designated as Artillery with features from both the infantry and cavalry regiment uniforms being extended to those artillery regiments that were considered either "unmounted" or "mounted". Further uniform differences exist between those formations considered to be part of the Imperial Guard, or other elite regiments, as opposed to normal line formations.

Facings
Each regiment in the Imperial Zahavan Army, and even some corps have their own approved. Not all regiments have facings, those of special forces commands, electronic warfare, and related intelligence branches are distringuished by their insignia, and particularly in the case of special forces commands headgear style and color.

Barracks Dress
Barracks dress is the typical day to day duty uniform for units not undergoing field training exercises, for those in administrative duties, or the standard peace time informal uniform.

Red Tunics
For hundreds of years the Imperial army went through a cycle of having a large standing professional force, to a smaller standing force with royal guards, and other retinue formations forming the army. These specialty units often wore distinguishing uniforms, as a matter of pride and as a means of identifying friendly forces on the battlefield.

Beginning with Reighden the Magnus' personal bodyguard, who wore red cloaks over their armor, and often painted the fronts of their shields red the color red on military uniforms began to be associated with the Emperor, and thus the Imperium as a whole. As the Imperial government became more and more centralized many of this professional body guard and retinue formations began to come under the direct authority of the Emperor, and while many would retain elements of their native insignia, markings, or colors, a practice which continues through today many would adopt varying shades of red as their primary tunic colors.

As time progressed throughout the sixteen and eighteen hundreds the red tunic was the standard issue uniform for all Imperial army personnel, with facings, headgear, insignia, and trouser colors being used to denote specific regiments. By the early 1900s the red tunic uniforms had been replaced for field wear by khaki, and olive uniforms. This was due largely to the advances made in weapons technology, and the need to be concealed on the battlefield became crucial to ones survival.

The red tunic, typically with black, white, or grey trousers is now used primarily for ceremonial displays, or for off duty travel dress.

Not all formations adopted the red tunic, artillery formations for example kept a light powder blue tunic with red trousers, while special cavalry formations adopted black tunics and black trousers, or yellow tunics with black or white trousers. Light infantry too did not adopt the red tunics and instead adopted a green, or brown tunic and often closely matching trousers.