Iron Warriors - Iron Warriors: The Iron Warriors are one of the nine First Founding Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines that turned to the service of Chaos during the Horus Heresy and now fight to overthrow the Imperium of Man.The Iron Warriors, who were originally the IVth Legion of Space Marines, specialised in the breaking of sieges and assaults on static fortifications, which made them great rivals of the Imperial Fists Legion, said to construct the greatest static defences in the Imperium. It was this rivalry between the Legions, and between their primarchs Perturabo and the Imperial Fists' Rogal Dorn, that helped turn the Iron Warriors to Chaos.Like the members of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Loyalist Iron Hands Chapter, the Iron Warriors have a strong predilection for replacing parts of their body with cybernetic enhancements. When struck with a mutational "gift" from the Ruinous Powers, most Iron Warriors simply cut off the mutated appendage, if possible, and replace it with a mechanical one.The Iron Warriors were the Emperor's finest siege troops and their primarch, Perturabo, was the equal of Rogal Dorn in the arts of fortification and strategy. Yet, Perturabo felt himself side-lined by his brother primarch, whose every proud boast was, to the master of the Iron Warriors, a barbed insult. When the Horus Heresy came, it was perhaps inevitable that the two primarchs should find themselves on opposite sides of the galactic civil war.Perturabo grew up upon the world of Olympia, a mountainous planet divided into constantly warring city-states. The infant was found by the servants of Dammekos, the so-called "Tyrant of Lochos," and raised by him as his own. The young primarch never fully accepted his lot, and became cold and mistrustful of others. Despite his aloof demeanour, Perturabo learned from the culture in which he found himself the arts of the siege, for Olympia's warring city-states afforded plenty of opportunity to study both the theory and the practise of this highly specialised branch of warfare.When the Great Crusade finally reached Olympia in 849.M30 and the Emperor told Perturabo of his place in the wider galaxy, the primarch pledged his devotion to the ﬂedgling Imperium, and assumed the mantle of the primarch of the Iron Warriors Legion. According to established Imperial practise, the primarch was declared lord of the world on which he had been raised, effectively deposing his adopted father, and the IV Legion began the process of inducting new recruits from the most able candidates amongst its peoples.In the campaigns that followed, the Iron Warriors proved themselves amongst the most able siege troops in the Emperor's armies. Perturabo was possessed of a keen, cold, and calculating mind well-suited to the highly technical aspects of such a style of warfare. Furthermore, he was gifted with an affinity with advanced technology, and able to debate the finer points of the most esoteric arts with the highest placed adepts of the ancient Mechanicum. The Iron Warriors received cross training on Mars, further refining this specialisation, until only the Imperial Fists of Rogal Dorn could equal their expertise. World after world that rejected the future espoused by the Emperor's Iterators capitulated when confronted with the prospect of a protracted siege by the Iron Warriors, and countless worlds were brought to Imperial Compliance that would otherwise have been devastated in bitter, and ultimately pointless wars.Yet, Perturabo appears to have grown ever more resentful of his role within the Great Crusade, and perhaps in an effort to prove his superiority over Dorn and others amongst his brother primarchs, he accepted ever more arduous missions on behalf of his Legion. Worlds considered by others as unbreakable were cracked open by the methodical application of overwhelming force, yet this approach to war took a remorseless toll even on the transhuman Space Marines.Gruelling preparation culminated in brief but extreme violence, and soon the Iron Warriors came to prefer a besieged defender to defy them rather than to surrender, so that the pent-up pressure of siege warfare could be released in the moment of their total defeat. To make matters worse, the Iron Warriors came to be utilised as garrison troops, small forces detached from the Legion and tasked with guarding the worlds they had worked so hard to bring to Compliance. While other primarchs refused point-blank to see their Legions used in such a way, Perturabo acceded, though with ever-poorer grace.As the tragic outbreak of the Horus Heresy grew closer, it appears that Perturabo was put under ever increasing pressure, and as a result the fires of his bitterness were stoked to a raging inferno. Some have postulated that it was the Warmaster Horus himself who, time after time, engineered events and adjusted deployments to the primarch's detriment and further stoked his sense of tremendous grievance. Whatever the truth, events came to a head when, following the death of the Tyrant of Lochos, the people of Olympia rebelled against the rule of the Iron Warriors.Perturabo's anger was finally unleashed, and upon his return to his homeworld, the primarch enacted such fearsome vengeance that countless innocents were slaughtered and entire cities burned. In the aftermath of his vengeance, Perturabo knew utter despair, barely able to comprehend the crimes he had committed in his rage. But before he could set about righting his terrible deed, word came of the Warmaster's virus-bombing of Isstvan III, and the Iron Warriors were ordered to confront the rebels and bring them to justice. History records little of the machinations Horus must surely have enacted in order to turn the bitter Perturabo to the cause of the Traitors, but whatever the truth, the Iron Warriors turned upon their brothers at the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V, and in so doing sealed their damnation for all time.At last freed of the constraints that had bound him, Perturabo gave free reign to his most destructive urges, laying waste to world after world in the Warmaster's service. While one part of the IV Legion turned Olympia and its surrounding star systems into an "Empire of Iron," another lent its expertise to the Siege of Terra, and at last, the gene-sons of Perturabo could test themselves against those of Rogal Dorn. It cannot be known whether Dorn's masterfully-constructed defences would have proved the undoing of the Iron Warriors, for the Warmaster was slain before the matter could be fully determined. Those Iron Warriors that had taken part in the Siege of Terra ﬂed to the Eye of Terror with the remainder of the Traitors, while those that had established their own empire around Olympia prepared themselves for the inevitable assault by the Loyalist Legions in what became known as the campaigns of the Great Scouring.In a reversal of fortune typical of the grim epoch that ushered in the Age of the Imperium, the Imperial Fists were amongst those who laid siege to these Iron Warriors, and while the Traitors were eventually dislodged, it was only after a solar-decade-long campaign that culminated in them detonating their nucleonic stockpiles and reducing Olympia to a blasted waste.Perhaps the most infamous of all of Perturabo's campaigns, and, so it is said, the deed that earned him the dark blessing of apotheosis to a Daemon Primarch, took place upon the world of Sebastus IV. Here, the primarch constructed the most fearsome of fortifications, a mighty fastness ringed all about with kilometre after kilometre of trenches, redoubts, minefelds and razor wire. While most fortresses serve the purpose of defending something, and are thus limited in their utility, the so-called "Eternal Fortress" had been constructed with but one purpose in mind -- to defy the proud boasts of Rogal Dorn and to lure him into a trap from which he could not escape.Despite the protestations of his brother the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman, Dorn succumbed to Perturabo's boast that none could take his fortress, and led the entire Imperial Fists Legion into what would later become known as the "Iron Cage." What followed was death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Not since the height of the Horus Heresy had a Space Marine Legion suffered such losses as the Imperial Fists incurred as they dropped straight into the midst of a grand entrapment. As more of his warriors fell to the stratagems and rouses of the well-prepared Iron Warriors, Dorn's captains counselled the Legion should fall back and regroup, for they could accept what he could not -- the Imperial Fists had been bested, and in a siege no less.At length, Rogal Dorn could not, and did not, give the order to withdraw. Rather, Roboute Guilliman decided that he could not stand by as his brother brought about his own defeat and that of his Legion, and so he deployed the Ultramarines to relieve the Imperial Fists. Faced with two entire Legions, Perturabo evacuated his own, knowing that he had achieved what he had set out to do. By the end of the battle, the Imperial Fists had lost an incredible four hundred battle-brothers, with many more wounded. Perturabo offered up the precious, uncorrupted gene-seed his Legion had taken from the Imperial Fists to the Chaos Gods for the use of the Traitor Legions, and apotheosis was his reward.In the 41st Millennium, the Iron Warriors remain a constant thorn in the side of the Emperor's realm. From their Daemon World of Medrengard in the Eye of Terror, Iron Warriors warbands under the command of various Warsmiths often strike out in search of new spoils and technology to enhance their own capabilities. The Iron Warriors work closely with the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum and have proven capable of unleashing fiendishly potent new Daemon Engines upon the servants of the Imperium.