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| - The Iron Hands are a Loyalist Space Marines Chapter and one of the original First Founding Space Marine Legions created from the gene-seed of their martyred Primarch, Ferrus Manus. Like the other Loyalist Astartes Legions, the Iron Hands would later be divided up after the Horus Heresy into multiple different Chapters, as required by the Codex Astartes, although one Chapter of the original Legion remained known as the Iron Hands and is described below. Although unwavering in their faith in the Emperor of Mankind and His dream of human unity as embodied in the Imperium of Man, the Iron Hands also believe that human flesh is weak and easily corruptible, and strive to replace their organic bodies with more "pure" bionic substitutes, thus closely emulating the faith of the Adeptus Mechanicus' Cult of the Machine. The Iron Hands were born as the Xth Legion of Space Marines, engineered by the Emperor of Mankind to bring His light to the long-lost human colony worlds scattered across the stars. Renowned for their pride, cold-hearted brutality and remorselessness in battle, the Iron Hands were among the most powerful and famed Space Marine Legions of the Great Crusade. They were the hammer that had shattered countless foes in the Emperor's quest to liberate Mankind from the darkness of Old Night. Their Primarch was Ferrus Manus, a bellicose and uncompromising warlord and peerless weapon-smith, from whom the Xth Legion took their name and whose command was to them inviolatable law. When the Horus Heresy first erupted and plunged the newborn Imperium into a galaxy-wide civil war, the Iron Hands Legion was too far from Terra to intervene directly in the climactic battle of the conflict. Their Primarch Ferrus Manus was enraged by the weakness of those Legions who fell to Chaos, particularly with his closest brother amongst the Primarchs, Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children, and by his own inability to face the Traitors. Ferrus Manus gathered together his most Veteran Astartes and departed for the Istvaan System. It was during the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V that the Iron Hands, the Raven Guard and the Salamanders Legions were ambushed by the Traitors led by the Warmaster Horus, and though the three Loyalist Legions fought with extraordinary valour, Ferrus Manus himself was lost, beheaded by Fulgrim's Slaaneshi daemonblade which he had uncovered from the xenos world of Laeran. The Iron Hands were undone by their own hubris and the blade of the traitor both, and paid a heavy price in the brutal slaying of their Primarch and the near-crippling of their strength. Though left a shattered Legion, the cold fury of the Iron Hands' bitter vengeance would afterwards be writ across the stars. While the Traitors declared their Primarch dead upon the blasted wastes of Istvaan V, the current Iron Hands Chapter refuses to accept this, for the Primarch's body was never recovered. For over 10,000 Terran years, the Sons of Ferrus Manus have stoked their burning hatred, drawing strength from this inexhaustible well of rage as they await their lost Primarch's return. The unique identity of the Iron Hands is forged by their belief that all flesh is inherently weak, for it is subject to mortification, decay and temptation and is thus a weakness that must ultimately be purged if the Chapter's Astartes are to best serve the Emperor. This is a belief most probably rooted in the experiences of the Horus Heresy, but the inherent character of the people of the Chapter's homeworld of Medusa, with their stoicism and patient forbearance, also plays a part. Following the apparent death of their Primarch at Istvaan V, the surviving members of the Legion returned to their homeworld and fanned the coals of hatred that would endure across the millennia. The Iron Hands chose to isolate themselves from many of their fellow Astartes Chapters after the Second Founding and slowly became bitter recluses, wielding their anger as a protective shield against a universe of growing weakness and insanity. It soon came to pass that none were immune from their ire. The Traitors had renounced their oaths and turned against their brothers, but the Loyalists had allowed it to happen, and the Emperor had fallen. The Iron Hands harboured a special resentment for the other loyal Legions present at Istvaan V. They believe that had the Legions been sufficiently strong and fought on instead of retreating, their Primarch would not have been lost, the Traitors would have been defeated, and the Heresy would have been crushed. The Iron Hands harbour a special hatred for the Successor Chapters of the other two Loyalist "Shattered Legions" -- the Salamanders and the Raven Guard -- that fought with them at Istvaan V, for they believe that if those Legions had been stronger and continued to fight rather than retreating, Ferrus Manus would not have been lost and the Heresy might have ended there. This belief defies all facts to the contrary. The Iron Hands' abhorrence of weakness is not limited to the moral however, for they hold that the body itself, even that of a genetically-enhanced Astartes, is frail and impermanent and subject to sickness and aging. The Iron Hands are driven to replace the weak biological matter all men are born into with cold, unyielding iron, a practise that begins when a Neophyte is initiated into the Chapter as a full Battle-Brother. The Initiate's left hand is removed and replaced with a bionic version in a ritual inspired by a tale of the Primarch when his own hands were encased in living metal following a battle with a great metal serpent. Some Initiates sever their own hand during the ritual, while others plunge it into the searing hot lava flowing from the mountains of Medusa, bearing the pain and transforming it to hate. Throughout an Iron Hand's lifetime, he grows ever more bitter towards his foes and ever more resentful of his own flesh. He appears to come to hate himself, or his biological form at least, like a man forcibly garbed in flth-encrusted rags. More of his organs and limbs are replaced with bionic augmetics, each inherently superior to the original. To some outsiders, this is a supreme blasphemy, for many of the organs eventually discarded are those that make a Space Marine what he is, and which are the direct inheritance of the Emperor and the Primarch. Nevertheless, a Battle-Brother of the Iron Hands that has reached several standard centuries of service is likely to appear almost entirely mechanical, every visible scrap of flesh replaced with gleaming, oiled and burnished steel. A few centuries more and the warrior's biological body might consist of little more than his brain and his major internal organs. It is said that some Iron Hands, those that survive the rigours of war and their own hate-fuelled self-mutilation, are no more than a brain encased in a ceramite shell. Because of this drive, many of the Chapter's leaders are entombed within the form of a Dreadnought. These form the Chapter Council, for the Iron Hands have no individual Chapter Master. Each company is an all-but independent body called a Clan Company, which maintains its own mobile fortress-monastery that trawls the endless wastes of Medusa guarding against weakness in the people and recruiting the strongest into its ranks. Some claim that the Chapter's hatred of the flesh represents the manifestation of a corruption in its gene-seed, and certainly the Iron Hands Legion sired only two known Successor Chapters. Whatever the cause, the Iron Hands' resolution and grim determination remain beyond doubt, as many of the Imperium's enemies have discovered.
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