Editing Iron Warriors (section)

==History==

{{Topquote|I DEMAND TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY.|An Iron Warrior putting their Legion's impetus for turning traitor into simple words, courtesy of [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Alfabusa]] }}

[[File:IV Legion.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The IVth prior to Perturabo being found. About the only thing [[Perturabo|Perty]] did was slap on some hazard stripes.]]
The fourth legion saw its origin on Terra back during the Unification Wars. At its inception, it was discovered that the Iron Warriors Geneseed was remarkably stable, and this allowed them to build up their numbers significantly more easily than most other legions at the time. Due to this, they saw heavy fighting in both the Unification Wars and the Solar Reclamation alongside the Dark Angels and White Scars. Due to the ease with which their Geneseed could be implanted and their reliable, steadfast nature, they received the best gear and weapons Mars could provide, and a metric fuckton of recruits when compared to other legions. Their numbers allowed them to be seconded to a huge number of Expeditionary Fleets, where they were of great use in securing Segmentum Solar. However, as the Crusade ground on, things started to turn sour for the fourth. Their ridgid, inflexible tactical outlook started seeing them suffer significant casualties when confronted with unusual Xenos opponents or cunning human holdouts. Their only real way of fighting was to overwhelm a foe with force, and when that didn't work, they simply applied more force.

While this made a number of other Legions look at them askance, the human elements of Imperial High Command absolutely loved them. Many of the Legions, especially those which had been reunited with their Primarchs, were not at all fond of placing their Astartes under mortal commanders, or splitting them up. Mortal officers could ''ask'' for Legion support, but even the most important amongst them were as likely as not to either be told to go fuck themselves, or would just never hear back at all. The Astartes, again, especially those which had found their Primarchs, chose their own campaigns, and generally these would be theatres which would come with some renown or glory. The fourth however, was not at all concerned with being lauded, nor so prideful as to refuse assignments. They would camp out in the trenches with mortal allies for as long as it took to get any particular job done. Even so, these thankless tasks did begin to wear on the fourth, especially due to the fact that eventually, everyone in the Imperial Army figured out that they could call upon the fourth to do whatever needed doing, where most other Legions would not. They became the workhorses of the Astartes, and took a sort of passive-aggressive pride in this. They began to specialize in front line artillery and mechanized assaults, which were often successful due to sheer, overwhelming firepower. However, they were embarrassingly bad at countering the unexpected, and would often suffer massive casualties due to sheer stubbornness if an enemy came to have them in a disadvantageous position. Sadly, as the Crusade continued, things never really got any better for them, mostly because they seemed to be hell-bent on someone else making things better for them rather than doing it themselves. There is even a passage when, whilst shoveling up earthworks in preparation for the Drop Site Massacre, one of the Sons of Horus literally turns to one of the Emperor's Children and asks, "Hey, why aren't the Iron Warriors doing this?" (which was a bit stupid considering that the Iron Warriors weren't even there...) You’d think the situation would get better upon finding Daddy [[Perturabo]]...

Big surprise, it didn't. In fact, it was that at that very moment that things really started to go downhill. When united with his legion for the first time, the Iron Warriors had just finished up an absolutely awful campaign on a Forge world called Calladion. The campaign had been brutal, but it had been made significantly worse than it needed to be due to the almost autistic tendencies of the Iron Warriors to only fight one particular way. They had somehow managed to lose '''29,000''' Astartes, and over '''12,000,000''' mortal troops. [[grimdark|The mortals were one thing]], but to lose that many Astartes in the taking of a single world was unheard of. As such, Perturabo looked upon them and saw that they were not [[Ultramarines|all they could be]] and decided that they needed a bout of [[Blam|decimation]] to motivate them properly. So he had 10% of his entire legion [[grimdark|sentenced to death]].

This actually worked and changed the character of the legion from "work-horse" legion to "meat grinder" legion; Perturabo's trick taught them that casualties do not matter, only victory does. They became a legion of [[neckbeards|mathematicians]], where battle strategies could be determined using formula based on available weaponry and expected attrition rates. Fortunately for them, Perturabo was expertly skilled with [[Roboute Guilliman|numbers and logistics]] and organised his legion extremely efficiently, therefore his legion was able to absorb such losses due to maintaining very high numbers, second only to the [[Ultramarines|XIIIth Legion]]. In fact they could have possibly overtaken any other legion in numbers if they did not continually suffer such high casualty rates.

This casual attitude towards attrition unfortunately created an atmosphere of paranoia amongst the officer cadre, where the only way to guarantee survival was to get promoted into a position of usefulness and never, ever get into a position where something bad could be made to stick to them. Therefore their officers suffered incredible [[Nerdrage]] whenever things did not go according to plan and [[That Guy|scrambled over each other]] attempting to gain the attention of their superiors.

Also, their reputation suffered amongst the allied Imperial Army auxilia, who gave the Iron Warriors the nickname ''Corpse Grinders'', as units that were assigned to them tended to get used as cannon fodder for softening up the enemy. This tendency eventually led to the [[Administratum|Council of Terra]] to only assign the Iron Warriors support from penal brigades of poor quality expendable troops, causing the reputation of the Legion to spiral further downwards. Oddly enough, the Iron Warriors were notable for having some of the most disciplined auxilia '''during''' the Horus Heresy, due to further freedom in organizing their allied forces.

This new-and-improved attitude still didn't endear them to their brother legions, though, and, eventually it was this complete lack of anything remotely resembling respect from anyone at all that would finally lead to [[Perturabo|their Primarch flipping his lid]]. An excellent lesson in learning how to say "no" when told to do other people's jobs for them. Or to delegate garrison duty to the Imperial Army whose existence was mostly to be used as garrison forces, rather than tying your transhuman supersoldiers up on fucking guard duty.

===Heresy===
As the Iron Warriors ground on, feeding soldiers into meat grinders like an old lady at the Las Vegas slot machines, Olympia became unruly. Eventually, the nobility revolted. After a grueling campaign against the Hrud, this news was taken...less than charitably. Perturabo snapped so hard that he had his Legion assault the world, enslaved the entire population, killed his sister (the only person he ever loved as a family back in Olympia), and founded an "Iron Empire" around it to feed his war machine. To their credit, a few Iron Warriors revolted against the order to '''burn their home and enslave their own people''', only to be shot by the rest of their brethren, while Perturabo himself was secretly glad ''some'' of his sons defied his order. Perturabo feared whatever retribution the Emperor would bring for destroying Olympia, while Horus supported his actions as just and necessary. This seeming act of understanding, mixed with fear and shame was all the leverage Horus needed to bring him on side for the Traitors. The Iron Warriors duly went to Isstvan V and took part in the [[Drop Site Massacre]].

After that, the next step was Phall, where a large chunk of the Imperial Fists fleet was becalmed. To the Iron Warriors this was everyone's birthday and Christmas thrown together, but even though they nearly destroyed the entire fleet, Alexis Polux spoiled the party somewhat by ordering an attack on the ''Iron Blood''. Perturabo himself came under attack by Imperial Fists Terminators, which only helped to turn his paranoia up to 12. The Iron Warriors' most rational commander was also backhanded into a Dreadnought by the Primarch when it emerged that Sigismund wasn't leading the fleet. Soon after, the IV joined the Emperor's Children on a campaign where Fulgrim tried to use Perturabo's life force to ascend to daemonhood. Things were looking like business as usual.

Where the Legion had its biggest successes, they were mostly on the Loyalist side. At Paramar, Kyr Vhalen's loyalist Grand Company met an Alpha Legion force invading their favourite Forge World. The Alpha Legion told them to get with the program. Kyr Vhalen told them "do one" and while Paramar was taken, the Iron Warriors inflicted serious losses on the tricksy bastards and some lived to fight another day. The old Warsmith Barabas Dantioch humiliated his successor at the Schadenhold, and Auric Saxton killed off Lord Commander Iddinam of the Emperor's Children. Later on in the Heresy, Consul-Praevian [[Nârik Dreygur]] and the remnants of his Grand Battalion switched back to Team Imperium during the Battle of Mezoa after getting sick of the Alpha Legion using them as cannon fodder, thus ensuring a loyalist victory.

If any Iron Warrior had hoped for a better fate than being treated as a disposable trench grunt, that hope was dashed as the Heresy grounds on. For example, during the push for the Sol System, the IV<sup>th</sup> legion were ordered to act as the rearguard to cover the Horus's flanks against loyalist legions not otherwise tied down in other fronts or already hunkered down in Terra. As you can guess, having to fight a continuous fighting retreat by yourself leads to a fuck-ton of casualties. One Sons of Horus emissary asked an Iron Warrior commander why he was raiding an enemy trench with his men. He simply said he "Wanted to remind himself that things do not change." This was made worse when said emissary gave an order to Perturabo to take his legion and go fetch Angron and drag him to join the siege that will happen soon. This practically means abandoning their position and a good chunk of the legion alone to hold the line until they die, without the support of their Primarch or the rest of their legion.

As the Heretics drew close to the Sol System, the IV Legion came into its own, crushing fortress after fortress on the world to Terra. Finally the Iron Warriors were having a good time, and it only got better on Terra as they pulled down whole square kilometres of Dorn's works. This lasted right up until Horus told Perturabo to mass everything he had and throw it right at the Mercury Wall in one big concentrated assault. Perty now realized that, for all Horus' flattery and fine words, the Warmaster still expected him to continue with the same kind of wasteful, grinding siege warfare that had caused him and his legion to snap and turn on the Emperor. He immediately threw a bitch fit at the Warmaster about how he was no different from the Emperor, then ordered his legion to down tools and head for the exits. And that was that, at least until . . .

===Iron Cage===
Taking inspiration from their Primarch, they display great facility in setting traps. The most notable of these was the "Iron Cage incident" at the close of the [[Horus Heresy]], where the Iron Warriors built a twenty square kilometer fortress on Sebastus IV with a massive fortified bunker at the center. They leaked information that allowed the [[Imperial Fists]] to track them there and [[Rogal Dorn]] himself promised to bring back Perturabo in "an iron cage". The Fists assaulted the fortress, taking huge casualties in doing so as the Iron Warriors fell back to split their advance and draw them into kill zones. Eventually the Fists expended all their ammunition and resorted to knife-fighting. When the Fists finally broke through to the central bunker, they discovered it empty save for the numerous inward-pointing guns designed to kill anyone who breached it.

The entire purpose of the fortress was just to bait and exhaust the Imperial Fists' forces, turning their own legendary determination into a liability that led to their own deaths and the humiliation of their legion (albeit one that would have required the death of Perturabo to completely wipe them out, if you believe those corpsefuckers' propaganda). [[Just As Planned]]. While the Iron Cage incident was the most notable, the Iron Warriors do plenty of other things like that, but on a smaller scale. Nearly unrivalled dickery including firing fixed position guns into civilian habitation blocks to bait the enemy into counter-attacking, then evacuating through underground trenches and detonating pre-rigged explosives when the opposing forces reach the fixed gun emplacements.

===The War of the Beast===
This little incident that made the Ullanor Crusade look like a skirmish brought out some unusual behavior from the Iron Warriors. First of all, the threat posed by the orks against the galaxy was so great, that the Iron Warriors allied with the Imperial Fists, of all people. If that weren't out of character enough for them, they also found the orks' use of humans as literal cattle [[what|disgusting]]. Maybe the whole Daemonculaba thing was also too disgusting for them since Honsou hadn't been around at the time, maybe even the Iron Warriors have standards when it comes to human experimentation...or maybe the [[C.S. Goto|writer just didn't know jack shit about the Iron Warrior's character]]. It's probably that last one.

Honsou wasn't around at the time and Warsmith Kalkator, the leader of the Grand Company, was a firm anti-Chaos Warsmith - so he would have also been disgusted at the Daemonculaba. It should also be noted Warsmith Kalkator's Grand Company operated away from the other Iron Warriors in the Eye of Terror and kept his own 'mini empire.' Not like he's above doing horrible shit, as he was introduced gunning down his own human forces as they were being overrun by the Orks, which is how the Iron Warriors 'SHOULD' be - stone cold pragmatists.

And it's worth pointing out that the Iron Warriors are still [[Space Marines]], and therefore (super)human. And part of that is generally seeing humanity as a superior species in the galaxy, especially this close to the Heresy, when they still thought and operated closer to their original legion mentality and hadn't fallen totally down the Chaos rabbit hole. Thus, seeing some Xenos, especially Orks of all things, setting themselves above humans chapped their ass mightilly. The Iron Warriors can treat mortal humans like dog shit, but they'll be damned if they'll let some Orks do it. It's the principle of the thing. Heck, Chaos Marines tend to hate aliens as much as Imperials do. Many Chaos Marines don't even see themselves as a threat to humanity but instead view Chaos as humanity's true path to dominance.

Also, he would be the first person to get a Space Marine chapter to turn traitor since the Heresy.

===Post Great Rift===
Perturabo spent millennia studying the defenses of Segmentum Obscurus and establishing a network of techno-Cultist informants so that with the Great Rift, he can have the Iron Warriors beset the Segmentum worlds. While gunning for Dysactis, they ended up going head to head with the Death Guards and lost.....doh!