M41: Purging of Contqual — The Iron Hands eliminated Chaos forces from twelve planets in the Contqual subsector. [4] At the height of the battle Chief Librarian Telach sacrificed himself to stop Julius Kaesoron, former First Captain of the Emperor's Children, now a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. [53g] The brotherhood shared by the Primarchs Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus, the Phoenician and the Gorgon, was well known in the Imperium at the time of the Great Crusade, as the two superhuman leaders formed an instant connection upon their first meeting. This initial encounter occurred on Terra, beneath Mount Narodnya, the greatest forge of the Urals, where Ferrus Manus was busy toiling with the forge-masters who had once served the Terrawatt Clan during the Unification Wars soon after his arrival from Medusa. The Primarch of the Iron Hands had been demonstrating his phenomenal skill and the miraculous powers of his liquid metal hands when Fulgrim, the Primarch of the III rd Legion, the Emperor's Children, and his elite Phoenix Guard, had descended upon the sprawling forge complex. Iron Hands Chapter Colour Scheme as displayed by Primaris Marine Vangaar, an Intercessor. The icon on his right pauldron shows that he belongs to Clan Borrgos, while the Low Gothic numeral on his right knee plate shows that he is part of 2nd Squad. The Horus Heresy - Book Two: Massacre by Alan Bligh, pp. 23, 26, 33, 35, 41-42, 64, 66-68, 71-73, 89-91, 234-235 Manus finds himself in a cavern system, assaulted by various visions and other sensory perceptions of death; that of his legion, his colleagues and even his own. He also comes across metaphorical representations of his brothers, and is momentarily puzzled by the feelings of betrayal looking at the statue of Fulgrim engenders. Combined with all this, he feels pursued by a malignant, serpentine entity. Irritated by such witchery, he presses onwards in exploring the caverns.

Clans in the Iron Hands are more than simple companies, they are each distinct not only culturally but also in how they wage war and view their service to the Emperor: Clan Garrsak for instance values collective unity while Clan Vurgaan hordes captured enemy weaponry. [37b] [37c] Smyth readily embraced the change that came upon the legion when Ferrus Manus, their Primarch, was discovered and placed in command. He cast aside his Terran surname (as did many of the original Terran legionaries) and took up the name Meduson to demonstrate his firm allegiance to his new homeworld. [1] Drawing Because of this compulsive drive, many of the Chapter's leaders are entombed within the form of a Dreadnought. These form the Chapter council, the so-called " Iron Council," for the Iron Hands have no individual Chapter Master. Each company is an all-but independent body called a "clan company," which maintains its own mobile fortress-monastery that trawls the endless wastes of Medusa guarding against weakness in the people and recruiting the strongest encountered into its ranks. M41: Siege of the Fenris System — The Iron Hands send forces to aid the Dark Angels-led coalition. [Needs Citation] The Emperor's Children claimed that Fulgrim was gifted by Slaanesh with a hidden world of unlimited pleasure for him to rule. [1] Several centuries after the Heresy, he was said to be asleep on this world and not active in guiding the Emperor's Children. [15f] Warbands of Emperor's Children, other Slaanesh-worshiping Chaos Space Marines and Cultists, and the Imperial Inquisition have sought out this world, but none have returned. [1] Abaddon the Despoiler was also able to somehow find Fulgrim and was able to gain the favor of Slaanesh by trading an unblemished Pythosian Psyker with the Primarch. [7]

Rogal Dorn vs Alpharius

At the height of the Great Crusade, Ferrus Manus leads his Iron Hands in battle alongside the Salamanders and Death Guard on an alien-held world. But when he is cut off from his brothers and sons and lost in the darkness, can Ferrus Manus reign in his aggression long enough to heed a warning that could change his dark destiny? No sightings of Meduson can be confirmed for the period immediately after the Battle of Dwell and the launching of Marr's hunter-killer force. The 'shadow network' used by the Shattered Legions became filled with conflicting tales, either that he fought on still, or that he had died either on Dwell or someplace else, caught by the Sons of Horus. [7] The battlefield of Isstvan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions. Treacherous warriors twisted by hatred fought their former brothers-in-arms in a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness. The mighty Titan war engines of the Machine God walked the planet’s surface, and death followed in their wake. The blood of heroes and traitors flowed in rivers, and the hooded Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum unleashed perversions of ancient technology stolen from the Auretian Technocracy to wreak bloody havoc amongst the Loyalists. All across the Urgall Depression, hundreds died with every passing second, the promise of inevitable death a pall of darkness that hung over every warrior. The Traitor forces held, but their line was bending beneath the fury of the first Loyalist assault. It would take only the smallest twists of fate for it to break. Following the aftermath of the campaign fought against a massive Ork WAAAGH! dubbed the Weirdwaaagh!, upon the Forge World of Columnus in 249.M41, questions arose in the Iron Council regarding Iron Father Kristos' questionable conduct. In 260.M41, sufficient dissent continued to arise amongst the Iron Fathers in regards to Kristos' behaviour. Only an entire Iron Council could resolve the wider issues raised. Though a fair and logical process, it was not a swift one; the years turned to decades as the Kristosian Conclave ground on over the next couple of centuries. Each Clan Company chooses a member to serve in the ruling body of the Chapter, the Great Clan Council (also called the Iron Council. [19a]) The organizational structure of the Iron Hands changed after the Horus Heresy and the death of Ferrus Manus; it was decided that no single warrior should be the leader of the Iron Hands. Instead, the Clan Captains and most revered warriors of the Legion formed the Iron Council. Those who sit on the Council are known as Iron Fathers, and the body has guided the Iron Hands ever since. [19a] Due to the reverence for the mechanical amongst Iron Hands, the council members are often Venerable Dreadnoughts. [10] Precisely forty-one Iron Fathers sit on the Iron Council. [22a]

The Iron Hands are infamous for their extensive use of bionics, which has helped bring them into a close relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus. [9a] After the Horus Heresy, when the Legions were reorganized into Chapters, the Iron Hands became recluses, attempting to find ways to make themselves even stronger so that they would be fit for serving under Ferrus Manus again at the end of times. Many within the Chapter consider flesh to be a sign of weakness, and seek to expunge it from themselves through mechanical enhancement. [63b] To this end, they have made it a practice to make extensive use of bionic modifications, going so far that there are rumours of some battle brothers being wholly mechanical. Iron Hands consider the greatest honour they can receive is to be interred in Dreadnought armour. [9a] It is in the so-called Blessing of Iron ritual that the Iron Hands replace parts of their bodies with Bionics. [Needs Citation]

Before the Heresy, Fulgrim was a warrior that enjoyed the finer arts of civilisation and culture of his people such as art, music and celebration. He believed that there was little point in conquering the galaxy if they did not indulge in these civilised traits. Fulgrim himself also engaged in the arts and created marble statues of his two three first captains though he felt that his work was not perfect. [Needs Citation] When Horus was defeated by the Emperor, the Emperor's Children left a trail of depopulated worlds in their wake as they fled towards the Eye of Terror. As their supply of slaves was exhausted, they resorted to raiding the other Traitor Legions for fresh meat, leading to a series of conflicts known as the Legion War. [1] Fulgrim was seen in combat a century after the Heresy at the Battle of Thessala with Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines, where he slashed his brother's throat and laid him low with a fatal poison, before disappearing from records for many centuries. Ferrus Manus also led the bravest warriors of the clans to delve into the frozen realms below, breaking open long-sealed vaults and intruding into ice-buried fragments of the great machine-works that had plunged from the skies in ancient days in search of salvage and strong metal. In the depths, the warrior-bands and the silver-eyed giant who led them fought degenerate mutants, living-dead cyborgs whose decayed flesh hung in tatters from corroded metal bodies, and subdued the dark-engines of the nightmare ages that had gone before to take their plunder. By the time the Emperor had come to claim him for the Great Crusade, Ferrus Manus was warlord, demi-god and sage to the people of Medusa, and it is said that he was waiting, and that he more than half-suspected the true purpose of his creation. Confessing his unease to Santar, Manus reveals that he has had strange dreams of late. What he does not reveal is that the sooner he gets the campaign finished and off the world, the better he'll feel. Deciding to abandon the Army if they cannot keep up, Ferrus Manus leads his forces deeper into the desert. Bion Henricos, acting as a liason between the legion and the soldiery, communicates this intention to their colonel, feeling a surprising twinge of remorse as he does so.