Eternal Battalion

the Iron Skull of the Legion with illuminating glowing eyes

a warrior of the Battalion. The warband scorns unnecessary boons and mutations, replacing them with bionic replicas.

## Chaos Warband

### **Numbers**

around 2600 Astartes, cultists unaccounted for

### **Noteworthy Domains**

Iron Fortress "Spite's End" on Medrengard

### **Specialty**

Siege and Attrition warfare, use of daemon engines and corrupted automata

### **Battle Cry**

Champion: "Iron!" Warriors: "Iron in All!"

## Pre-Heresy

### **Colours**

standard Legion scheme

The 74th Grand Battalion, better known as the '***Eternal Battalion***', is a merciless Chaos warband originating from the bitter stock of the Daemon Primarch Perturabo. They specialize in siege warfare and the use of automata. The warriors can be considered an orderly warband, overseen by Warsmith Shah.

## Warband History

### Great Crusade and Horus Heresy

Originally the 74th Grand Battalion of the IVth Legion before the time of the Primrch, the Eternals were among the forces of the Legiones Astartes that were equipped with the finest of wargear available in that era. After the siege of Incaladion, they were subjected to decimation much the same. The company eventually decided to put the captain to decimation, replacing him with a younger, more capable commander by the name of Homai. Not much is known about the grand company after that, as it's likely that they simply splintered into garrison forces like other Iron Warrior forces, but reunited at the onset of the Horus Heresy. The warband was present in various campaigns during the Heresy. Including the Siege of Terra, Siege of Inwit, and Battle of Phall, splitting the now enlarged warband into three smaller grand companies. Homai himself managed to slay a Dreadnought of the Imperial Fists. He claimed its siege drill and fashioned a hammer from the weapon.

### Great Scouring

As the bulk of the Company served as a pioneer formation during the scouring, they were among the first forces of Perturabo to land on Medrengard, and as such, suffered heavy losses culling the daemonic forces present.

For their services, Perturabo allowed them to lay claim to a defensible tract of land upon the hellforge, which over the millenia, they turned into a massive Iron Fortress. During the shattering of the Legion in M34, the Eternals took in refugees from destroyed warbands like the shattered tower, swelling their numbers with vengeful brethren and becoming a powerful warband in its own right.

### Wars of the Iron & the Dead

The Warband would set out of Medrengard and continued reaving and pillaging in Segmentum Obscurus, eventually coming to contact with the awakening Kharg'as Dynasty of the Necrons. The two forces would engage in a bitter conflict that would last for a good portion of half a decade, and the war of attrition would drag on, slowly whittling down the Warriors. The saving grace was the invention of two-stage cyclonic torpedoes by the Imperium, which the Eternals managed to acquire through raids. This turned the tide of battle. Eventually cracking most worlds of the systems and eventually reaching the core tomb world. A massive battle ensued, which resulted in the victory for the Iron Warriors, with the skull of the Phaeron being taken by Warsmith Homai. Some Necron hulls were recovered, and over the years, they were converted into automata, and other technologies that could be salvaged were reverse-engineered to the best of their ability.

Another massive war of the Warband was against a vast coalition of Iron Hands and their successors over a massive armament cache belonging to Horus Heresy eras, which was displaced during the great crusade to the Macharian Reach during a miscalculated warp jump. What transpired was a conflict that neither side had anticipated to be so brutal, as both were too stubborn to give up and retreat. The result of the large battle was over one thousand immediate casualties among Astartes, more in the aftermath, resulting in close to nearly 3000 heretics and loyalist lives being lost, the majority of which being from the traitor side (due to a strange phenomenon observed by the Iron Warriors where the spawn of Ferrus thought dead would simply rise from lethal injuries and continue fighting with lethal precision, partially the source of the Warsmith's obsession with cyber resurrection). However, they did manage to secure the cache.

After observing Necrons resurrecting their dead, and having witnessed a much similar process with the Iron Hands during the Horus Heresy, the Warband leaders grew interested in unlocking the methods of cyber resurrection to bring back their fallen brethren. So far, they've made a slow and unremarkable process, but Homai believes that should they manage to acquire the secrets of the Iron Hands, and/or capture a cryptek to extort the information, he would unlock the secret to this breakthrough.

### The Long War

The Warband also participated in the 10th Black Crusade, pledged by their Primarch to the war. They were known for displaying immense contempt towards Word Bearers and often getting into fights with Slaaneshi warriors over spoils. They made up for their hatred with brutal efficiency, unleashing their daemon androids upon the loyalist dogs.

During the 13th Black Crusade, the Eternals got to unleash their hatred against the Death Guard during the War of Rust and Ruin. Although the Iron Warriors eventually lost the war, they claimed many Death Guard lives in the name of the Lord of Iron. Homai himself engaged in an epic duel against his former friend, Taifa Ghorbal, atomizing him with a single blast of his beamer. During the campaign against the loyalists, the Warlord lost a leg to the Greyshield Captain of the Imperial Fists, but he also managed to claim his skull as a trophy, which now lies on his hip.

## Notable Campaigns

### Horus Heresy

* **Dropsite Massacre of Istvaan V (566.006.M31)**
* **Battle of Phall (007.M31)**
* **Battle of Tallarn (010-012.M31)**
* **Siege of Terra (014.M31)**

### Great Scouring

* **Claiming of Medrengard (Unknown Date.M31)**
* **Legion Civil War (Unknown Date.M31)**
* **War of the Iron and the Dead (Unknown Date.M31)**

### The Long War

* **10th Black Crusade (001.M39)**
* **13th Black Crusade (999.M41)**
* **War of Iron (Unknown Date.M42)**
* **War of Rust and Ruin (Unknown Date.M42)**

## Homeworld

Information gained from reconnaissance within the Eye of Terror describes the world as a bleak jail world where slaves are worked to death, with great Chaos warships tethered to its tallest towers, in which reside the Iron Warriors themselves. Warsmiths occupy their own imposing fortresses on the daemon world, each commanding their own Grand Company and sometimes battling one another in power struggles. The grandest fortress on the planet is the personal lair of Perturabo. Other descriptions of Medrengard depict it as a huge fortress world with slave pits and towering pillars. In the white sky a black sun pours smoky threads down onto the surface of the corrupted world.

### Warband Headquarters

"Spite's End" is a massive labyrinthine complex located in the northern mountains of the daemon world. Thousands, if not millions of slaves toil to appease their infernal masters, manufacturing munition and wargear for the Warband. Exceptionally gifted slaves and thralls may be promoted to cultist leaders or taken in to join the New Mechanicum contingent as researchers or even be trained in their esoteric ways.

## Combat Doctrine

Largely disciplined, the Eternals follow a structured form of combat, seeing war as an equation to be solved. Raptors plunge and scale the walls of fortresses, covered by the fires of havocs, while their cultists & covert forces crash the gates open from the inside. Finally, the main bulk of the force breaches the defenses from all sides, leveling even the most formidable of fortresses. If the war turns desperate, the Dark 300 are unleashed, three cohorts of daemonic robots that are outfitted to turn the tide of battle in favor of their traitorous masters. Daemonic Automata dubbed "Chaos Androids" are also used in places where marine forces cannot be applied or the environmemt is too hazardous for them.

## Warband Beliefs

Chaos worship is generally disfavored, as it's seen as a tool below reverence and only to be used for one's personal gain. That is not to say that chaos worship isn't performed. Many of the lower warriors and cultists may pay homage to many individual patrons ranging from the Dark Powers, figures such as Horus to powerful entities such as Malice and Vashtorr. But the main focus of their identity is paying homage to their Primarch, and seeing strength in every being, and wanting to make it their own. The Warband is known to reject the blessings of flesh, replacing mutations and chaos enhancements with bionic replicas, always distasteful of the gods. Possession is also seen as a sin against the Legion, therefore met with immediate execution, therefore, the Warband has no possessed units especially among Astartes. The usual role of possessed falls to their hordes of mechanical abominations instead.

## Recruitment

The Battalion recruits promising cultists and may take away children from raided worlds. When short on geneseed, other methods of genetic enhancements and bionic replacement may be performed. The warband, while largely Astartes-elitist, doesn't seem to care about performing such heretical enhancements to bolster its power.

## Gene-Seed

Due to proximity to the warp and existing upon a daemon world, geneseed can degrade fast, therefore the 74th Grand Battalion is prone to raids for Geneseed and precious material used in the creation of space marines. They have a preference for taking Ultramarine geneseed, as the psychological idiosyncrasies shown by the XIII is quite similar to the old IV Legion, making it an apt source of Geneseed. The Battalion has no qualms about raising Half-breeds to prominent positions, such as Raptor Lord Czarnos who originates from the Doom Eagles chapter. Recruits may be shared with other warbands as per non-aggression and trade deals.

### Gene-Flaw

Since turning to Chaos, the Iron Warriors have been subject to varying degrees of mutation and have been known to replace mutated limbs with cybernetic ones. The Iron Warriors' gene-seed produced a marked tendency towards suspicion and paranoia within the Astartes of the IVth Legion but also was known to create Space Marines who were extremely intelligent and possessed naturally well-developed problem-solving abilities.

## Notable Members

* Warsmith Homai: Chaos Lord & Captain of the Ironblooded Child
* Yngol the Red Handed: Lord Executioner
* Ulric Thargos: Lord of the Chosen
* Warsmith Hareld: Lord Wapsmith
* Gallard Ironbearer: Sorcerer Lord
* Bartimus Czarnos: Raptor Lord

## Warband Fleet

* ***Ironblooded Child* (Unknown Class Battleship)**: Battleship serving as main vessel
* ***Bitter Blade* (Strike Cruiser)**
* ***Grey Hammer* (Cruiser)**
* ***Bleeding Edge* (Unknown Class Vessel): Xenos ship, formerly a Khrave battleship.**

## Relics of War

* ***Decimator***: Taken from a dead Imperial Fist dreadnought, the Decimator is a massive hammer that was fashioned from a siege drill during the Horus Heresy. Decimator is the main weapon of Wasmith Homai.
* ***Iron Sceptre***: A chain Trident that belongs to Warsmith Hareld, the head of the destroyed Necron Dynasty is mounted on its hilt, given to Hareld as a token of goodwill and solidifying his loyalty to the Warband.
* ***Armor of Doom***: Worn by Bartimus Czarnos, this suit of artificer armor was fashioned to replace the loss of his legs, sus-an membrane and give him much better control over aerial maneuvers.
* **Chaos Android**: The process of creating a chaos android is a hard and aruous one indeed, as it's very difficult to salvage necron hulls and insert daemons into them. Therefore, Chaos Andoids serve as elite units.

## Appearance

The Warband Sports similar color scheme to the Legion before shattering (dark iron, black pauldrons and hazard stripes, with bronze metallics.) with two notable differences: the eye lenses of the warriors is not consistent, ranging from red to pale, bright white. This can be due to salvaging and looting loyalist assets, or personal preferences. Another interesting detail is the glowing eyes on the Legion symbol. This phenomenon can be observed among the warriors regardless of their rank, bar the Warsmith himself. Whether or not this is some form of mutation, the result of some infernal chaos machination.

## Relations

### Allies

*Feel free to add your own*

 Red Corsairs |  | While seeing Red Corsairs below the actual Legions, The Battalion’s conduct shows otherwise, as they’re known to trade materials, loot and slaves with Huron’s men in exchange for their needed resources.

### Enemies

*Feel free to add your own*

 Necrons |  | A surprising merit among the warriors of 74th is how proficient they are in dealing with the Necron menace. Be it releasing metal phage viruses, system scramblers, daemonic kill agents solely designed for disabling world engine shields or even using two-stage torpedoes to destroy tomb worlds, the Eternals hunt for the metallic undead to learn about cyber resurrection.

### About the Eternal Battalion

 Tzeentch Warbands
 Nurgle Warbands
 Slaanesh Warbands
 Chaos Undivided Warbands
 Malice Warbands
 Minor Chaos God-Aligned Warbands

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