Is your flesh weak and feeble? Do you crave the strength and certainty of steel? Are you ready to prove you’re better, bolder, and harder than anyone else – friend or foe? There’s no room for messing around with poetry and gilded armour, not if you’re going to rise to the top of your game. Hard times and harder discipline break all but the toughest of Space Marines – and that’s the Iron Hands.
Still here? You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and it’s earned you a rare privilege – getting cosy with the galaxy’s most indomitable warriors in the latest entry of our neutral and even-handed coverage of the Legiones Astartes. Let’s hope you can keep up – there are no medals for second place.*
Hailing from the soot-choked sprawl of Old Albia, the loyal Qavitine Plate cities, and all over Ancient Terra, the early X Legion was already known for the warrior discipline and ironclad determination that would serve them well in battles to come. The Imperial Army’s human troops were a little less appreciative of the Legion’s low regard for their capabilities – there’s no time for the little people when you’re on that Great Crusade grindset.
The X Legion became known as the Storm Walkers – luring out the enemy, weathering the storm, then striking back with an armoured spearhead of tanks, Dreadnoughts, and Legionaries. The craft of war is easy when you’re tough enough to be the hammer and the anvil. Their Primarch’s arrival only made his Legion better, stronger, angrier – with even more technology.
In fact, the Iron Tenth grew so obsessed with the idea of personal invulnerability that many elected to replace their soft, fleshy parts with bionics – appropriate, given their Primarch’s living metal hands. And his name. And his Legion’s name. The trauma of Isstvan V only alloyed this hatred of weakness and failure further into their spirit, and soon the indefatigable supporters of #TeamMetal ruled the Iron Hands.
On the battlefield, the Iron Hands are built different – they don’t need to hide behind walls like their yellow-clad cousins, or dash away from a head-on collision like the flighty Fifth Legion. No, the X Legion take their licks on the (steel-capped) chin. Tough as The Medusa’s Scales, these Space Marines power through grievous injuries with nothing more than stubborn grit and a steady supply of replacement body parts.
The Gorgon’s uncompromising attitude would terrify lesser men – but to his sons, that backbreaking work ethic is a source of true inspiration. His most ambitious Warlords share the unflinching Silver-iron Will needed to shrug off all hardship.
Refusing to admit defeat makes it tricky to back off, however – bloody-minded stubbornness often plunged the Iron Hands into sticky situations…
Like his most hirsute brother, the Tenth Primarch found himself cast onto a deadly iceball. Unlike Fenris, however, Medusa had no lupine families looking to adopt. Ferrus Manus pulled himself up by his genetically-engineered bootstraps, questing into the planet’s frozen vaults to loot techno-treasures and slay machine-monsters. Legends claim that’s how he earned his eponymous living metal hands** – throttling a quicksilver serpent to death in a river of lava, which is the most metal way to kill something we can imagine.Ferrus soon became overlord of Medusa’s nomad clans, and brought peace to his world. Oh, wait, no, he encouraged warfare between its people as a means to test their strength, with bigger and better guns. This harsh-but-fair attitude didn’t stop when he joined his Legion, with fierce internal rivalries over glory and resources. Didn’t meet your objectives? Better try harder, lads – you have to earn those bolt shells.
Aside from his legendary strength and durability, Manus also had a keen head for technology matched only by his grumbling sibling Perturabo. His Legion’s Clans were a testbed for all sorts of shiny new toys, from Terminator Armour to thunder hammers, and the Primarch himself had the skill to forge items both beautiful and deadly, even gifting the matchless sword Fireblade to his favourite brother Fulgrim.**
With thousands of worlds falling beneath his advance and a devoted Legion of Space Marines who revered his every example, everything was coming up Ferrus Manus. And then… Isstvan.
Few Legions learned the lessons of the Horus Heresy as harshly and abruptly as the Iron Hands – but then, no other Legion saw their Primarch cut down by his best mate. Horus’s switch infuriated Ferrus – and when Fulgrim tried to bring him on side, the two former friends came to blows.
Later, as the treachery of the Drop Site Massacre laid hundreds of thousands of Loyalists low, the two erstwhile comrades enjoyed a polite conversation by way of a duel to the death. The Gorgon had the Phoenix right where he wanted him – but Fulgrim’s corrupted sword yearned for blood, and lopped poor Ferrus’ head right off at the neck. Alas, he was only the first of the gang to die.
You might think that the loss of a Primarch would drive a Legion to maddened despair – but not so the Iron Hands. No, they were driven to maddened rage. Their stubborn, iron-hard will would not countenance retreat even as their gene-sire lay dead, and surviving pockets of the X Legion proved a vicious thorn in Horus’ side throughout the rest of the Heresy.
Some even refused to admit that Ferrus had died at all. Decapitation? That’s just a flesh wound! He’s fine! Even Fulgrim agrees! You’d think Vulkan would be more understanding, of all people…
Did you know that, like another of his overachieving black-clad brothers, Ferrus Manus harboured the ambition to be declared Warmaster himself? Determined to set an example even the Emperor couldn’t ignore, Ferrus set off on campaign in Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, not long before destiny came knocking.
After the events of Isstvan V, the battered remnants of the Iron Hands came together with the Salamanders and Raven Guard to form the Shattered Legions – a band of whom faced the newly-emergent horrors of the warp in The Damnation of Pythos.
Find out if the Iron Hands are the Legion for you by taking the Discover Your Legion quiz now. If you decide you like them, the Warhammer painting team have prepared a video showing you exactly how to paint them.
Stay tuned for more incredibly impartial exposées of the Legiones Astartes coming soon to the Warhammer Community website.
* We’ve just been informed that a ‘silver medal’ exists specifically for second place. You don’t want that. You want the first place medal, which is probably made of iron.
** Did the name come first, or the hands? The answer is lost to time… Oh, wait, no, it was the hands.
*** This did not pay off.