The Iron Warriors were the 4th Legion founded under their Primarch
Perturabo. Their armour is silver with red trim. Their homeworld was
Olympia before it was destroyed by the Imperium.
The Iron Warriors once formed the Emperor's most able body of siege
troops. They fought alongside the Imperial Fists on a hundred worlds
in the Great Crusade, laying siege to alien citadels and the palaces
of heretics who denied the Emperor's divinity. The Iron Warriors'
Primarch, Perturabo, excelled in siege and trench warfare above all
else, and his treatise on fortifications and their destruction formed
the basis of several sections of the Tactica Imperium.
The Iron Warriors betrayed their oaths to the Emperor in the wake of
the drop site massacres on Istvaan V. In accordance with Perturabo's
doctrines the Iron Warriors had rapidly established strongholds and
trench systems around their drop zones. The loyalist Space Marine
Legions which had suffered tremendous casualties during their initial
deployment found themselves driven back against the Iron Warriors'
fortifications by the ravening Traitor Legions. Instead of offering
the hard-pressed loyalists respite the bunkers and bastions proved to
be their graveyard as the Iron Warriors mercilessly gunned down
anything which moved within range. With the bloody rattle of heavy
bolters and the slicing beams of lascannon the Iron Warriors declared
for Horus.
After Istvaan the Iron Warriors split up to fight on a dozen other
worlds in the Heresy. Contingents of Iron Warriors led assaults by the
Chaos hordes against the Imperial palace on ancient Terra. They fought
on Vanaheim, reducing its armoured hive cities to twisted ruins one
after another. They battled across Thranx and Avellorn. worlds where
every scrap of ground is covered by plasteel and rockrete. They
struck at loyalist fortresses, temples, keeps and palaces across the
galaxy and ground them beneath the tracks of their siege tanks.
Wherever the Iron Warriors fought they threw up great evil citadels
in their wake and held them against all comers. Jagged towers mounting
heinous weapons of destruction dominated the surrounding terrain from
these monuments to Perturabo's cunning. Fields of trenches and forests
of razor wire surrounded the Iron Warriors' strongholds such that the
loyalists began to dread the bloody assaults needed to destroy them.
Even after Horus's defeat the Iron Warriors were only dislodged from
the Imperium's worlds at a terrible price.
The surviving Iron Warriors were driven back into the Eye of Terror.
There they took a world for their own and fortified it against all
comers. Freed from the shackles of physical laws the Iron Warriors'
battlements and turrets rose spiralling upwards for miles. Their
oubliettes and dungeons pierced the world to its core, donjons and
bastions sprang forth like fungi until no world was left, only an
impossible tangle of insane structure, a madman's architecture of iron
and stone where twisted stairs run at right angles to one another and
pinnacles plunge eternally downwards. Within this impossible fortress
countless warbands of the Iron Warriors lurk and plot how to crush and
imprison all beneath their rule.
Taken from Codex: Chaos v2
The Iron Warriors once formed the Emperor's most able body of siege troops. THe Iron Warriors' Primarch, Perturabo, excelled in siege and trench warfare above all else and his treatise on fortifications and their destruction formed the basis of several sections of the Tactica Imperium.
For reasons long forgotten, the Iron Warriors betrayed their oaths to the Emperor in the wake of the drop site massacres on Istvaan V and declared their allagiance to Horus. After Istvaan the Chapter split up to fight on a dozen other worlds and contingents of Iron Warriors led assault against the Imperial Palace. Wherever Iron Warriors fought they built huge evil citadels in their wake and held then against all comers. Even after Horus' defeat the Iron Warriors were only removed from Imperial worlds at a terrible price. The surviving Iron Warriors were driven back into the Eye of Terror, but their skills are still called upon for assaults on fortresses of the Imperium today, as the destruction of Cadians' 'impregnable' baston lines on Magnot Four-Zero well demonstrates. Taken from Codex: Chaos Space Marines v3