It was during the Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan 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. Ferrus Manus gathered together his most Veteran Astartes and departed for the Isstvan System. 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. 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 was Ferrus Manus, a bellicose and uncompromising warlord and peerless weapon-smith, from whom the X th Legion took their name and whose command was to them inviolatable law. They were the hammer that had shattered countless foes in the Emperor's quest to liberate Mankind from the darkness of Old Night. 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. The Iron Hands were born as the X th Legion of Space Marines, engineered by the Emperor to bring His light to the long-lost Human colony worlds scattered across the stars. 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.Īlthough 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 Mechanicus.

The Iron Hands are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and one of the original First Founding Space Marine Legions created from the gene-seed of their martyred primarch, Ferrus Manus.

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