Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

== Ferrus Manus ==

Ferrus Manus was the kind of person who always worded things as logical deductions, despite it often being clear that his motivations weren’t always based on logic. As a result, he would often take actions that didn’t seem in the Imperium’s best interests, but the infuriating part was that it was almost impossible to argue against them on purely logical grounds. E.g., during the War of the Beast he justified Fulgrim and himself defending Mars and the Forge Worlds over other worlds by pointing out that Earth wasn’t the only world threatened during the Siege of Sol, and the given that at least five primarchs (Magnus, Angron, Russ, Lorgar, and Sanguinius) were handling the defense of Earth that planet was covered well enough. Once the War of the Beast was over, the Imperium was going to have to do a lot of rebuilding, which would have been nearly impossible if the industrial base of Mars fell. It was infuriatingly clear he just valued Mars higher than the other worlds of Sol, but the thing is he wasn’t wrong from a coldly logical standpoint.

The seeds of dissent between Orioc and Mars, as well as Ferrus Manus’ increasing loyalty to the office of Fabricator-General rather than the person who actually held the seat, started with the War of the Beast. Orioc initially willingly submitted itself to Mars because Mars was the holy land and all of the Forge Worlds and Mars’ far-flung outposts were coming back together after so long. There was a brief honeymoon period where everything seemed okay during the Great Crusade. Then the War of the Beast happened. The Sol system was perhaps one of the hardest hit during the War of the Beast, between the orkish hordes, Dark Mechanicus “exiles” returning with forbidden fruit from the void, and so forth. Mars and Old Earth are the industrial and spiritual/administrative hearts of the Imperium, respectively, so it is necessary and possible to rebuild them, though it would take a lot of money. Orioc kind of falls through the cracks and get shafted during the whole thing because although it is on Earth people assume that the Olympus Mons Brotherhood will provide for them, so they get very little money. Orioc asks if they can get some funds to rebuild. Olympus Mons brotherhood say no, Holy Mars is more important. Orioc starts reconsidering if putting themselves below Mars was a good idea. Not enough to become space Protestants, but enough to start complaining.

This gets worse after Zagreus Kane dies and Ferrus suddenly finds himself as the second most powerful individual Mechanicus (in terms of soft power) after a Fabricator-General that is thousands of years younger than him and has more dogma than sense. At the same time it is likely that any future Fabricator-General might feel threatened by the prospect of Ferrus Manus throwing his weight around/

Believe it or not, Ferrus Manus actually did have a heart under all that metal. He was typically just too stoic and hyper-logical to show it. Case in point when Kelbor-Hal used him as an attack dog to intimidate Savlar. He had been given orders to destroy the neutronium factory if the Savlar Order didn’t cave, but he knew he would never have to carry them out. Either Savlar would back down (unlikely, but a man can dream), or Kelbor-Hal would calm down and realize this wasn’t going to work. Worst case scenario, the Steward would step in and force a diplomatic resolution, a working neutronium factory was too valuable to let go to waste. All he needed to do was stand there and look intimidating. Ironically, this shows that just as much faith in Oscar as he did the Fabricator-General, which to be honest is probably one reason Oscar picked him to be primarch.

Another example would be what happened with the world of Sarpedon during the Age of Apostasy. It is not really been decided what the Fabricator-General was doing during the Age of Apostasy. One suggestion that was made was that the Fabricator-General of the time was desperately claiming neutrality in the Imperial Civil War. The reason being that most of the Forge Worlds across the galaxy were split between Vandire and Thor loyalists, and if the Olympus Mons Brotherhood actively picked a side it would cause another Mechanicus Civil War.

Meanwhile Ferrus Manus decides to take the initiative and is seen sending a whole lot of Mechanicus ships to a nowhere world called Sarpedon. Sarpedon is a nowhere world on the fringes of the galaxy, it’s habitable and might become a Forge World one day, but at the moment it is little more  than a research station and most of the planet is still wilderness.  Vandire's people ask what's going on there. Ferrus responds it's a top secret AdMech research site so piss off, though not in so many words. He even tells the Steward this when he asks him, until the war is over.

Turns out Ferrus had been smuggling dissidents and likely targets of Vandire’s purges out of major population centers through places like Orioc and Forge Worlds for years and hiding them on Sarpedon, because it was the best place to hide people who can’t survive in a Mechanicus factorum. No one fucks with the AdMech or messes around in their cities unless you have Oscar-grade brass balls. AdMech have more freedom to do what they want within their own walls than any other group in the Imperium, so it was easy to smuggle people out without questions being asked. If Ferrus had told the Steward what was hiding there he would have endangered the refugees’ lives because he would have insisted on sending more forces to protect them (and thus blow their cover), so it had to wait until the war was over. When Ferrus was asked about why he did it he said they were all productive individuals whose actions benefitted the Imperium, and Vandire was being illogical because their loss would decrease Imperial efficiency, as if such an answer was self-evident.