Iron Hands - Post-Heresy: In the late 41st Millennium, the hatred the Iron Hands feel towards weakness and corruption has an effect on the Chapter's doctrine and operations, a belief that even extends to their own bodies. As an organic form, even the superhuman flesh of the Astartes, can be injured, broken, or led into the temptations or corruptions of the flesh caused by Chaos, the Iron Hands seek to eliminate any perceived fault or weakness within themselves through any means possible, usually cybernetic replacement of the body part.In the minds of many Iron Hands, the machine is the ideal. This hatred of all Human weaknesses is harnessed and focused by the Iron Fathers for use in battle, where the Chapter will fight with renowned intensity and determination, regardless of the opponent. These bitter Astartes will advance in a machine-like and relentless fashion, throwing themselves violently at the enemy.Other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes go into battle differently than the Iron Hands. Each of those other Chapters launch themselves into combat with cries of rage ringing from their Vox-casters, invoking the names of the Emperor and their Primarch to stoke their battle-fury. The Iron Hands are different. In truth, all Medusans are different, raised as they are on a world so choked with scouring winds that opening one's mouth to shout anything in battle results in nothing more than a mouthful of grit.So the Iron Hands always prepare and train for combat in silence. When the moment comes, they will disembark from their transports in silence, keeping their communications channels free for essential battle signals. When the Iron Hands go to war, the only sound to be heard is the low machine hum of each battle-brother's power armour. When the Iron Hands advance, they stride forwards in silence, progressing steadily, soundlessly, moving methodically like the red-eyed golems of ancient Terran legend, laying down bolter volleys in careful, disciplined bursts.The Iron Hands always advance like automata, never speeding up nor slowing down. They storm across each defensive perimeter they come to, cutting down any who stand in their way. Losing themselves in their hate, an Iron Hands warrior's thoughts in battle are only focused on efficiency and slaughter in the pursuit of perfection.Despite the appearance of moving slowly and methodically in battle, the Iron Hands have the ability to instantly switch to different styles of fighting, as if a switch had been thrown somewhere deep within their black-armoured shells. When the situation warrants it, the Iron Hands have the ability to cast-off their fetters and abandon control.Only rarely do the Sons of Ferrus Manus abandon their meticulous way of war and adopt the ancient rage that lies deep in the gene-heritage of all the Adeptus Astartes. When that happens, there are few forces in the galaxy capable of resisting it: ten thousand years of anger, of rage, of bitterness, all concentrated into a single, machine-augmented storm of vengeance.Despite the massive size of their Power Armour, the rate of acceleration of these deadly warriors during an assault charge is often extraordinary, as the Iron Hands tear across the short distance to their enemies' barricades, swerving with uncanny accuracy around the lines of incoming fire. Once they reach the obstructions erected by their foes, bedlam is unleashed.Still in complete vox-silence, they rip up ferrocrete barriers with thundering blasts of Bolter fire. They crack open their foes' armour with vicious, sweeping blade movements, lashing out with bionic fists, crunching down with armoured boots and unleashing hurricanes of heavy weapons fire. The Iron Hands rip through enemy resistance like a swollen storm wave crashing into an unprepared coast.Dreadnoughts and Terminators are rarely used by the Iron Hands because many of these Veteran cybernetic combat walkers and the ancient suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour used by Terminators were lost in the Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan V at the start of the Horus Heresy. Due to their combination of the organic and the mechanic, the suits of Terminator Armour that remain are treated with great respect.Entire squads of the Iron Hands' elite Terminators will rarely be fielded, but the inspirational feeling they create among the rank-and-file is harnessed by allowing Veterans equipped with Terminator Armour to lead squads of Tactical Marines. For similar reasons, Dreadnoughts will lead forces when the occasion demands, and several of the Clan Companies' leaders are contained within the armoured sarcophagus of a Dreadnought.Needless to say, the Iron Hands' reclusiveness, obsession with replacing their flesh with bionics and their unusually close relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus are often viewed as unhealthy by other Astartes Chapters and other Imperial Adepta like the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy.When the Iron Hands march into battle, they do so alongside a profusion of war machines and main battle tanks. The Chapter boasts a great number of armoured vehicles and Dreadnoughts -- so many, in fact, that each Clan Company maintains its own revered armoury of battle tanks and Centurion warsuits. Iron Hands Battle-Brothers consider it a great honour to crew one of their Chapter's venerated war machines and interface directly with their vehicles through bionic implants, their heartbeat becoming the thrum of powerful engines and their war cries the roar of heavy gunfire.All Iron Hands brethren are bionically enhanced in some way, for even the most recently initiated Battle-Brother has had his left hand replaced with the iron-sheathed cybernetic gauntlet that marks his acceptance into the ranks of the Chapter. Within a few years of their initiation, most Battle-Brothers sport a burgeoning array of cybernetic augmentations, many of which stay hidden under their Power Armour.In many instances, these enhancements bolster the Battle-Brother's combat effectiveness in some manner, influencing the tactics he utilises on the battlefield. At the very least, replacing organic flesh with steel and ceramics increases the body's resistance to physical trauma.Individual Iron Hands brethren utilise a wide range of bionics that afford them capabilities beyond that of even the already superhuman Space Marines, including highly esoteric Augur receivers bonded directly to the nervous system, inbuilt weaponry, and even, in some cases, additional limbs granting the Battle-Brother the ability to carry especially cumbersome weaponry.The exact nature of the enhancements an Iron Hands Battle-Brother undergoes is unique to himself, a lifelong program coordinated according to the arcane counsel of the Iron Fathers. Even within the ranks of a single squad of Battle-Brothers initiated at around the same time, there is little cohesiveness.On very few recorded occasions, Battle-Brothers with a complementary range of enhancements have been grouped together into a single squad, or else squadmates have undertaken to coordinate their surgeries. Such squads rarely adhere to any particular pattern or standard doctrine and their composition may never be repeated again.