IV Legion 'Iron Warriors': Origins & History (Warhammer & Horus Heresy Lore)

every war in human history has had its iconic imagery each has had tales of mighty heroes committing mighty deeds in the face of overwhelming odds in stories in songs in paintings in recordings their accounts echo through the ages however far removed from reality they may be yet each of these wars has been fought upon the backs and upon the bones of the common soldier the man slogging through the filth rarely thanked oft overlooked yet always fighting for the cause through the annals of the Great Crusade the names and victories of the Legion is a start his ring loudest of all yet even amongst the transhuman near gods of the starties are those for whom the crusade was a grim unrewarding necessity committed on behalf of those they would never know and who would never hear of their suffering and struggles know then that this is a record of the brutal battering ram of the great crusade of a legion of bitter men who spent the 200 years of the greatest of humanity's endeavors fighting in the trenches in the mud of unnamed worlds under indifferent skies the fourth Legion iron warriors the origin of the fourth Legion lies in the ashes of the destruction of the recidivist whole debts of the or oklet owe of Seck am wrack upon ancient era the local tribes and tech enclaves were renowned for their skill with shot and bullet and formed the core of the recruitment stock of the embryonic Legion with the region pacified and showing all signs of being steadfastly loyal to the Emperor's new regime the 4th legions gene rights were delighted to discover that the gene seed of the Legion was amongst the most stable of all the estar teased with rejection rates Leeloo many legions would later require the attention of the lunar gene cults to fully stabilize their progeny clans but not so for the fourth it had the advantage of rapid expansion capabilities placing us at the strength of several battalions while the unification wars were still ongoing and many of the other legions could only field strike teams of Astarte z' for small-scale tactical operations rushed into service with the 1st and 5th legions the 4th saw heavy action in many of the largest engagements of both the final days of the unification Wars and the solar reclamation beyond they alone broke the back of the war witches in the punishing Venus campaign and their unyielding resolve despite heavy losses in this and other battles saw them outfitted with the most up-to-date arms and armament from newly allied Mars and received a massive influx of recruits from Terra that had been originally intended to swell the disastrously defeated 3rd legion following the sabotage of the latter's jean seed the effectiveness of the fourth when taken in tandem with the comparative ease with which its gene seed was adopted by recruits made it an important one in the tenuous early days of the crusade as one of if not the most numerous legion in those early days it was easily split between dozens of the first expeditionary fleets that left anchor in the Sol system the most notable of these was the 8th expeditionary fleet of which the 4th commanded and formed the core of in the ensuing 11-year long campaign of conquest the 8th expeditionary fleet drove mercilessly into the galactic core annihilating scores of xenos races and human holdouts and proved critical in providing humanity with control over segments and Sola to establish a large stellar regime from where the crusade could expand Edwards from as the fourth Legion drove ever Edwards it lost what scant connections it had to the culture of its birth tribes on Terra while this was common amongst many of the legions especially those that were granted recruitment Fife's claimed by their newfound pry marks nothing was to emerge to fill this particular void in the fourth even in the early days as customs from the scores of new human worlds encountered were adopted by other estar teased the fourth remained rigid and unchanging especially in regard to its military formation the approved structures tactics and hierarchy of the Principia bella cosa were held on to by the fourth as if law and endured to the point of bizarre inflexibility the fourth did not even change how they approached combat itself with relentless application of force being their only style of warfare regardless of opponent while this was effective in the early days of the crusade the diverse range of enemies the Imperium faced only expanded with the fronts of the human war machine and the forth simply refused to change with this cunning strategies and clever application of intelligence were not for them the foe must be ground to dust under boot or shot or shell there was simply no other course as other legions diverged in some cases extremely markedly from the largely uniform formations of the early days of human expansion the fourth remained unyielding in the face of military adaptation or cultural shifts while they remained an incredibly effective force of arms the consistency to a fault their methods represented began to draw attention other legions especially those who had been reunited with their pry marks and had vastly changed since their Terran days viewed the fourth as unimaginative and mechanistic almost little better than mechanical automata some even as it was rumoured to the primark Horace viewed them as honorless the pragmatic warfare of the legion speaking to a cold calculating approach to what was an inherently emotional practice however others within the Imperial chain of command lauded the fourth for being utterly reliable some of the fry marks namely Lehmann Rus of the 6th Legion space wolves Ferris Manas of the 10th Legion Iron Hands and Horace looper callow the 16th Legion Luna wolves refused to split their legions at the behest of mortal commanders selecting their own legion elements for deployment upon their own whims the fourth lacking a primark for longer than many of their fellows had no such auspices and would respond to any and all orders they received the Legion saw it as its called to follow the letter of the law of the Great Crusade and this led to it receiving a reputation that it would never shake cross countless worlds forth legions reliability led to it being employed in thousands of engagements that required the might of Anna starties to win but carried with them no renown no celebrity lay in these tasks for there were campaigns of bloody suppression and horrific attrition the fourth became known as the Legion to call upon when no other would answer and commit themselves without complaint to whatever years long siege or bloody garrison engagements required the meager and bleak pride the Legion could take in its work was scant comfort it is likely that the seeds of it's festering discontent began to take hold during this time this reputation previously a blessing slowly became a curse as the forth were now the Legion to dispatch to the worst hellholes in the galaxy the bizarre paradox was set to emerge within its heart the Legion was marvelously technologically proficient amassing one of the largest pools of armoured vehicles of any Crusade Force saved the tenth Legion I enhanced and was in possession of the finest and most numerous artillery divisions of all legions their approach to warfare as the frontline force they had become was to strike from a position of overwhelming superiority where possible punishing the enemy with an apocalyptic initial bombardment however despite the carefully crafted pre battle strategies the Legion would often refuse to relent in these once committed even in the face of staggering casualties despite their shrewd tactical nature sudden reversals of fortune as are common upon the battlefield were not met with adaptability merely stubbornness determined to protect its honor as the workhorse Legion of the crusade it seemed that the fourth would pay any blood price necessary for victory this only worsened as time went on culminating in a single engagement during the reclamation of four world in khalad Ian that cost the lives of twenty nine thousand nest artists an almost unthinkable number for a campaign though hard-fought should not nearly have been so costly the further loss of over 12 million attached human Imperial Army troops only compounded the problem and those within the war council murmured that the Legion had used the campaign as an attempt to prove their relevancy as other legions eclipsed them in both number and quality of conquests it was not until the late eighth 40s of m30 that the fourth Legion were reunited with its Primark / Travel had been raised as a ward of demikhov the self-styled tyrant of locusts upon the mountainous planet of Olympia the child was cold calculating and distrustful of those around him to the point of paranoia his foster father saw the prodigiously talented infant as a tool for his reign and despite attempting to coax some affection out of the boy was met with cold indifference Brett Wabo devoured the knowledge of his new world and soon met with incredible success as a general endemic haces army capturing an untold number of Olympia's mountain fortresses in the name of his father's regime / travaux being one of the later pry marks found was reunited with his legion fully grown fully formed being with decades of heart forth soldiering under his belt the transition was by all accounts initially smooth Dalek oz had built a model society albeit one based entirely upon his rule and if the price of retaining control of his planet albeit in the name of the Imperium was simply rendering his adopted son to the Emperor it was a cost he eagerly paid prayer to a bow for his part had long since reasoned that he was not in any way an ordinary being likely artificial and had made peace with the knowledge that one day his Creator would arrive he is believed to have paid his true father as little affection as he had Danica's requesting simply that he be put to use in the ongoing crusade the distance he consistently maintained with others extended to his new brothers who despite attempts to bring him into what passed for a brotherly fold amongst the pry marks found the iron Lord to be guarded to the point of indifference none would ever count him as a friend the way they may with others but the Emperor cared little for this to him his newfound son was a perfect tool all pry marks possessed incredible powers of intellect but proto a bo stood above all his brothers in his breathtaking capacity for learning and knowledge even when compared to Minds like that of ferrous Menace or Magnus the read the lord of the fourth was perhaps the most gifted with raw scientific and technical intelligence war to him was a morass of living breathing mathematics the logic puzzle to be solved through precisely vectored applications of firepower and manpower it is known that the pry marks spent little time with his father Petrov Oh was instead handed command of the fourth Legion specifically 35,000 East Artie's mustered for use under his direct leadership as half the number again of the Legion was as it was wanted to be engaged across dozens of fronts and dozens of grim theaters per table Oh reviewed the entirety of the legions combat records in doctrinal practices measuring his newfound sons against their cousins in other legions and found the forth wanting he reacted to this in the way of Olympia in the way he had been raised decimation war is unequivocal uncaring unforgiving and blind blind also will be the selection of those who will pay the blood price for the greater failure of your record one in 10 of the legion chosen randomly by lottery was honorless Lee called by their brothers the move caused outrage amongst the great and good of the Imperium some of whom decrying the master of mankind himself for giving command of the most reliable of the starties legions to a lunatic reboot gulaman pragmatic and noble master of the 13th legion ultramarines protested the action upon both the staggering loss of imperial resources it represented but also the sheer shameful economy of these men's deaths the emperor in what can only be his wisdom silenced all of these voices and neither reprimanded nor censured the iron lord retro a bose message to the fourth was clear failure was no option and punishment for any would be Swift there would be no favor no preference given all would serve or all would die the Legion would be peerless or it would be no Legion at all over the coming years the wedge that had driven the fourth Legion now known as the iron warriors between themselves and their cousins would only grow more severe their choleric Primark made for his legion no friends amongst either his brothers or the Imperial hierarchy only those of the mechanical especially the warlike order adductor could have counted the iron Lord in any favor and even then the priests of Mars viewed the legions use of technology without any deference to the Machine God with judging oculi his rule over the Legion was frosty while other legions could consider their pry marks a paternal figure to some degree the forth bore their genetic sire no such love for he had none to give them and was seemingly ever eager to spend the lives of his iron warriors as coin in the transaction of battle it is widely recognized amongst us scholars that the iron Warriors incurred more casualties than any other Legion by a large degree even the first legion Dark Angels whose combat losses in the rang Dan Xena sites almost wiped them out as a fighting force while no number is extant the incredible losses the fort sustained in it's bloody attritional campaigns is undoubtable it is a dark testament to the resourcefulness and organizational genius of pert to a bow and the ease at which the legions gene seed could be adopted amongst initiates but these losses never crippled the iron warriors as a legion nor even deprecated its fighting ability however it has been theorized that such constant exposure to death destruction and loss of comrades had despite all of their restarting psycho conditioning a profound effect upon the Warriors of the forth stubbornness turned into a callous indifference towards life in general both anistar teased his own and those of his comrades this was notable to those cousins of theirs in other legions who found the iron warriors bitter and cynical characters to the mortals of the Imperial Army the forth reputation was grim indeed more so than any other Legion the iron Warriors were want if not eager to use human auxiliaries a simple cannon fodder to deplete the ammunition of an enemy or to gauge their strength and tactical disposition the exactas Imperialis would dub the legion the corpse grinders alarming Imperial iterators with the corrosive effect on morale this was to have regiments under the command of the forth would often mutiny in war zones where casualty rates were appalling only for these mutinies to be put down by further slaughter meted out by the fourth Legion itself such was the scale of this problem the bore master Horus had to personally intervene to ensure that Imperial auxilary detachments seconded to the fourth were comprised exclusively of Penal battalions of enslaved members of non-compliant regimes the iron warriors were in an ever-deepening spiral unable and unwilling to arrest their fall towards infamy as a Great Crusade drew to its close the rivalries common amongst the legions grew with the forth into bitter MDGs / - a Bo's fueled with the Primark of the seventh Legion rogue adorn is notable as the worst amongst all brothers at the time strategic disparities made them no friends with the 19th Legion Ravan guard the 13th Legion ultramarines scorned the fourths use of the lives of their estar teased the iron warriors held the fifth legion white scars and 6th Legion space wolves to blame for their lack of acknowledgement in the defeat of the green-skinned wah measured the legions undoubtable talent in siege warfare led to the war master redirecting them to the most thankless siege operations all the more and resentment for this and other slights both real and imagined were akin to a cancer in the twin hearts of tens of thousands of a star teased as the coming decades were to show this was simply the seed of dread things to come you [Music]

Channel: Oculus Imperia

Views: 93,581

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer 40000, Warhammer 30k, Warhammer 30000, Warhammer Lore, Warhammer 40k Lore, 40k Lore, Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy Lore, Iron Warriors, Legiones Astartes, Astartes, Space Marines, Perturabo, Primarchs, Great Crusade, Forge World, Games Workshop

Id: F4i3YdIabys

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/CaptTenacity]

Oh my, it happened again.

[u/thetrickybuddha]

This is my favorite legion so I must remain true to its spirit by giving you the highest compliment an Iron Warrior can give. I found it adequate. :D

[u/Das_Man]

• People complain about video frequency on otherwise gushing Oculus thread.
• Comes through with 20 min Iron Warriors video less than 24 hours later.

Your move heretics.

[u/SlobBarker]

Very cool vid. I'm impressed at how much IW artwork you found.

The part about the backlash to Perty's decimation order was really interesting. Are there any other examples of other primarchs attempting to weigh in on other legions' internal affairs?

[u/[deleted]]

I like his content, but I wish he would upgrade his microphone to something more clear. It sounds like he's speaking into a laptop currently, and it greatly takes away from his videos.

[u/[deleted]]

Yes Yes Yes!

[u/BlackViperMWG]

Awesome as always, blessed historian. Very nice for mentioning the Rangdan Xenocides too! Just few things;

your pronunciation of Roboute Guilliman seems weird, try to use official one, from this video

in cca 16:42, there is picture from Battle of Tallarn, so your caption of that picture is wrong.

[u/[deleted]]

Great channel.

[u/Ruin_In_The_Dark]

Man this is awesome.