Iron Fiends

Shoulder artwork of the Iron Fiends, the molten shackles of hell

Colour scheme of the Iron Fiends, displayed by Aspirant Champion Caltos Dark-eyes, 3rd Sword Horde, 2nd Circle

## Space Marine Legion

### Primogenitor

The Lord of Iron (name erased from Imperial records)

### Legion Size

160,000 chaos space marinesCountless vassal warbands

### Noteworthy Domains

Azazel's Eye (Majoris)Azazel's Eye (Minoris)

### Observed Strategic Tendencies

Experts in void warfare, piracy and boarding actionsForces employed in small wolfpacks to cause as much havoc as possible with little effort

### Unique Organisations

Abyss Heralds (one for each chaos god)The Colossi (Titan legions and knightly houses that sided with the Iron Fiends)

### Warcry

"For the true Warmaster! For the conquest of the Galaxy! For the Legion!"

"*We serve under the true Warmaster. Not a false inheritor of a dead man's wishes or the puppet of uncaring gods. The Iron Fiends will, one day, rule this galaxy, and only under his steel gaze shall we prosper.*"
—Gharmath, the Grim, chaos lord of the Void Raiders warband of chaos space marines.
Perhaps no legion among the Emperor's mighty armies embraced damnation as fervently as the **Iron Fiends**, the heralds of doom to a million worlds and the reapers of countless lives. There is no doubt that these traitors are anathema to all the the Imperium once represented, and that they seek only to destroy what little was preserved from that glorious time to the prosperity of humanity.

The VIII legion was initially called the Grey Smiths, a name that praised their incredible affinity towards technology. They were used primarily as shock troopers by the Emperor against enemies he did not wish to absorb in his growing empire, but rather to simply see exterminated. For this reason, they soon aquired a particular fame as morbid and dark figures among other Imperial forces, simply called forth when all other measures had utterly failed.

The legionaires of the Grey Smiths, due to their task as terminators, rapidly got used to biochemichal weaponry, nuclear devices, incineration bombs and other tools of destruction required to eliminate quickly and efficiently any opposing force. Honour was a joke, and close combat was only trained by the highest commanding officers, much more as a formality rather than a necessity. In those days past, the legionaires were death incarnate, and seeked not for glory or recognition, but simply to fulfill their futy. All that changed when the legion was reunited with their primarch, the Lord of Iron, whose name has all but been erased from records in the present time.

When the scattering of the primarchs ocurred, the Lord of Iron came to land on the Cult Mechanicum's forgeworld of Dite, located at the farthest regions of the Segmentum Pacificus. At the planet, he was fostered by one of the *Archmagos Veneratus* who were in charge of the world's manufactorum. The venerable techpriest teached the young primarch in the ways of the cult and, by the time the son of the Emperor grew to maturity, he already mastered all fields of knowledge that were held in great respect by the priesthood of the forgeworld, becoming their fabricator-general.

Eventually the mighty fleets of the Emperor came to Dite, reunitng not only the planet with the dictates of Mars, but also the Lord of Iron with his forlorn sons. The primarch had to abdicate from his position as leader of Dite and assume his mantle as legion commander of the Grey Smiths, which was passed to him by the previous leadr of the VIIIth, Isaiah Azazel. As a sign of trust and gratitude for the previous commander, the Iron Lord named Azazel as first captain, leader of the elite veterans and terminators of the Smiths.

The Grey Smiths were reformed, forged into what their gene-father believed as perfection made manifest. Mechanical implants runned freely across the legion, new technological patterns and classes were developed in Dite solely to serve the newborn Iron Knights, including armour, weapons and vehicles. They truly were what the Iron Lord dreamt as the perfect army, one that could erase any civiliation from history, and with it, he would conquer the galaxy for his father's hopes to come true.

Throughout the Great Crusade, though, it would be proven that the VIII legion was all but expandable, since, with each new victory, the need fot total anihilation of Mankind's enemies was becoming less and less common, conquest or defeat by the other, non specialized forces, being much more preferable, saving precious resources that would be used elsewhere much more advantegeously. This saw the Grey Smiths slowly fade into oblivion, their numbers being stratched and used primarily as garison squads in peaceful planets. Only the legion's first company continued a cohesive fighting force, and even so, not nearly as proeminent as during the birth of the Imperium of Man.

This, coupled with the negligence of his father towards Dite, made a feeling of unease and, eventually, blatant rebellion grow inside the Lord of Iron's chest, and he started plotting against the Emperor's dominion. The primarch ordered his first captain to reunite all his legion in the world of Khalia-IV, from where he would launch a massive crusade against Terra itself, slaying the Master of Mankind and taking his place as the supreme leader of humanity.

Before any of those events could happen, however, the Dark Gods of Chaos, plotting against the growing power of the Anathema, united their powers to create a massive warp storm. So grandeous was the ensuing chaos that the galaxy was nearly thrown back into the Age of Strife, doomed to rot like they did for millenia before the galactic conquest of the *Legiones Astartes*. During this terrible ocurrance that saw the whole galaxy cut in half, the primarch of the Iron Knights would come in contact with the foul deities of the Chaotic pantheon, swearing oaths of allegiance to which one of them and becoming a vessel of their divine will.

The legion was mutated once again in a matter of days, giving fully to the veneration of Chaos. Daemonic possession, mutations and dark rituals now were common among the VIII legion's ranks, and quickly they were more akin to primitive beasts than to the legendary warriors they once were. At the eye of this storm of corruption sat the Lord of Iron himself, commanding hordes of daemons and dark apostles with the same vigour he once dictated the production rates of Dite's manufactoria. Their numbers were rapidly dwidilling and soon, the legion would be wiped out by the temptations and fickle gifts of the gods.

One man among them, however, kept his memories intact, memories of a time when they were killers and tyrants instead of puppets and servants, first captain Isaiah Azazel. Uniting those that, like him, grew tired of the power that the denizens of the Warp held over their brothers, the captain marched against the hosts of the Iron Lord, butchering all in their path. In an attempt to sway the marines, the daemons and devilish priests offered to bestow blessings and gifts onto them, turn them into gods or whatever foul wishes passed through their minds. One by one, the legionaires fell, temptation consuming their very soul, until only Azazel remained, facing his father in his throne room.

The battle that followed was said to be something of myth. The Lord of Iron, with his Chaos-given gifts, threw attack after attack at Isaiah, the astartes only surviving by sheer determination and strength of spirit. Eventually, during the fight, perhaps the Gods laughed at Azazel of at their champion, because what seemed like an obvious victory for the primarch became what is now known as the greatest feat of martial prowess ever demonstrated by an astartes. The VIII primarch stopped for but a second, contorting in pain, perhaps caused by his body falling apart due to the many mutations his flesh went through. A second was all Azazel needed to approach his father, using his talons to reap through the Iron Lord's chest and shoot a salvo of bullets, widening the hole.

As the Lord of Iron, the beacon of all his legion's corruption, fell, the members of the Iron Knights were slowly freed from their state as servants of the gods, realising what had happened to them, and being ashamed. Throughout the whole planet of Khalia-IV, where the legion was concentrated, cheers of joy could be heard, as daemons and possessed were butchered by the marines. The legion now was united in a sole purpose once more, under a sole leader, and they would once more plunge the stars as the reapers of past.

Since that distant past, the reformed Iron Fiends, led by the self-proclaimed Warmaster Azazel, the Desecrator, have destroyed countless enemies, pillaged millions of star systems and waged havoc across the universe with an iron determination to destroy any who oppose them.

To this day, this story is told by the oldest marines and the dreadnoughts that have not gone mad by the contact of the warp energies that surround them, of how their legion was thrown in the brink of destruction and returned by the hands of one of their own to become legends among the galaxy's denizens, not as glorious saviors or as foul servants of the gods. Simply as death.

## Iron Fiends History

### The Unification Wars

The long and tragical history of the Iron Fiends' eternal damnation has its roots stretched deep and entertwined with the history of the Imperium of Man itself. Back in those old days, when the Emperor and his forces were still fighting against the warords of Old Terra's techno-barbarian nations, the astartes were still just a far dream of possibility, and the Thunder Warriors composed the bulk of the Imperial armies. Despot after despot fell in bloody conflicts that raged across the world's barren wastelands, and the basis for the interstellar dominion of humanity were firmly settled.

One of these mighty nations that dared to defy the grandeous army of the Master of Mankind was Hy Brazil, a vast expanse of land located in the equatorial portions of the eastern Atlantic trench border. Filled with forests that spammed kilometers wide and centered around a great industrial complex that suplanted their armies with military technology that were comparable to that of the growing Imperium itself, they were a threat to be reckoned, and a force to be explored after their total conquest by the Thunder Warriors.

The details of the ensuing conflict had been lost to time, altogether with Terra itself during the Fracturing, but what is known is that it was considered one of the mightiest of the time, years of guerilla warfare combats waging across the jungles of Amazonia. Eventually, though, the Imperials marched over Sao Paol, Hy Brazil's hive-capital, ending the war by putting down the industrial nobles that did not surrender to the Emperor's cause. As part of the treaties for the defeat, all citizens that lived and worked in the industrial complexes of Sao Paol and its neighbor cities, including the nobility, had to give away their first son to compose the armies of the VIIIth *Legiones Astartes*, the to be founded Grey Smiths.

Throughout the remaining years of the Unification Wars, the VIII legion specialized in invading the radioactive areas that plunged Old Terra, eliminating mutants and cleaning the foundaries of the Emperor's newborn empire, setting free the direst regions of humanity's birthplace and allowing the many citizens to live in those previously inhospitable environments. The foundaries of the Imperial Palace's complexes would supply the troops of the VIIIth with the tools of war that best suited their warrant of duty, especially heavy weaponry and the first completely sealed patterns of power armour, from modified mkI to the first prototypes of mkII and terminator suits.

For these reasons they believed themselves to have been chosen by the Emperor to epythomize what the space marine legions would become one day, and they dispatched the Emperor's will without remorse or boastering, simply following orders. This belief would even be furthered during the final battle of the Unification Wars at Mount Areat, when the Grey Smiths were picked to rain death above the Thunder Warriors, eliminating the obsolete soldiers who were to, most likely, become traitorous rebels in an empire that had no more place to them.