Ferrus Manus: The Gorgon of Medusa (Volume 7) (The Horus Heresy: Primarchs) [Hardcover] Guymer, David

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On both occasions, the Legion had defeated a powerful foe with relatively few losses despite very heavy resistance and while operating in environmentally hazardous conditions. Because of the constraints of these two battle environments -- the first being a Human-made space hulk, and the second, the airless and frozen caverns of a Dead World -- these victories, while notable, did not serve to distinguish them yet in the particular style of warfare to which they would later become most famed. The Urshan had also suffered heavy losses in the battle's opening stages, but afterwards they had been employed principally only in guarding the landing zones and supply lines while the X th Legion fought, and many had ultimately been spared, leading to Rust being hailed as a great triumph also on account of how little had been sacrificed to attain it. The Iron Hands are infamous for their extensive use of bionics, which has helped bring them into a close relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus. [9a] After the Horus Heresy, when the Legions were reorganized into Chapters, the Iron Hands became recluses, attempting to find ways to make themselves even stronger so that they would be fit for serving under Ferrus Manus again at the end of times. Many within the Chapter consider flesh to be a sign of weakness, and seek to expunge it from themselves through mechanical enhancement. [63b] To this end, they have made it a practice to make extensive use of bionic modifications, going so far that there are rumours of some battle brothers being wholly mechanical. Iron Hands consider the greatest honour they can receive is to be interred in Dreadnought armour. [9a] It is in the so-called Blessing of Iron ritual that the Iron Hands replace parts of their bodies with Bionics. [Needs Citation]

The campaign on One-Five-Four Four is not going well for the Imperial forces, and especially not for Ferrus Manus, primarch of the Iron Hands Legiones Astartes, who is troubled not only by the existence of the weaknesses within, but by the hinderances without as well; the terrain and fluid savagery of the Eldar enemies are taking a toll on his battle-group and placing him behind schedule. Even the latest victory, a battle commanded by his determined First Captain, Gabriel Santar, does not satisfy him, and neither does the proving correct of the Iron Hands' creed; the flesh is weak, at least out in the desert and at least where the attached regiments of the Imperial Army are concerned. Not only is Manus concerned with being behind schedule, and losing face in front of his brothers Mortarion and Vulkan, but the possibility that Eldar witchcraft could be causing his Astartes to under-perform fills him with ire. They are not my hands. This fact is forgotten by my brothers -- inexplicably, it has always seemed to me. The hands are strong, to be sure, and have created great things for us all, but they are not mine. And that counts for something. They forget that the silver on my arms comes from a beast that I vanquished. It is the mark of a great evil that I ended, and yet it persists within me... I would struggle to remove it now... I will not remove the silver from my flesh because I have learned to depend on it. The fault is with my mind. I rely on the augmentation given to me by my metal gauntlets, so much so that the flesh beneath them is now little more than a distant memory... A day will come when I will strip it from me, lest I lose the power to master myself forever. Already my Legion's warriors replace their shield hands with metal in my honour, and so they too are learning to doubt the natural strength of their bodies. They must be weaned off this practice before it becomes a mania for them. Hatred of what is natural, of what is Human, is the first and greatest of the corruptions. So I record it here: when the time comes, I will strip my hands of their unnatural silver. I will instruct my Legion to recant their distrust of the flesh. I will turn them away from the gifts of the machine and bid them relearn the mysteries of flesh, bone and blood. When my father's Crusade is over, this shall be my sacred task. When the fighting is done, I shall cure my Legion and myself. For if fighting is all there is, if we may never pause to reflect on what such devotion to strength is doing to us, then our compulsion will only grow."It was at the precise moment that Ferrus Manus' head was scythed from his shoulders by the Traitor Fulgrim that the Daemonic entity known as the Sapphire King came into being. Spawned from the psychic bow wave of Ferrus Manus' death, this Daemon was forged from the Primarch's frustrated pride, his boiling anger and sorrow, and from his shame. From the moment of its birth, the Sapphire King fed on the repressed emotions of the soul-scarred Iron Hands. It basked in their chained desperation, bound to their fate by the emotions they felt but would not express. The Daemon bedevilled them across the centuries, offering opportunities for damnation disguised as steps away from the weakness they so feared. It nudged the minds of Imperial officials and potential foes, forever seeking to goad the Iron Hands into spending away their humanity like coin. The Chapter bent their every effort to purging the weaknesses of the flesh, never realising that the more they demonised their wants and needs, the greater the hold the spectre of their repressed emotions gained upon them. Necrodermis is the xenos material created over sixty million standard years ago by the Necrontyr species that is often described as "living metal." It was originally used by the Necrontyr to construct their massive sub-light starships that explored and settled the Milky Way Galaxy millions of standard years ago. The Necron Star Gods, the C'tan, are entities of pure energy that can only interact with the physical universe through the possession of robotic bodies crafted for them by the ancient Necrontyr from necrodermis. The shape of their necrodermis body can be modified at will by its possessing C'tan, or C'tan Shard as they currently exist, and so each Star God looks very different from its fellows. Unbeknownst to Ferrus Manus, two Eldar discuss his fate; one decides to intervene, to make sure that Manus walks along the more positive of the two possible paths leading to his future. The other warns against it, telling him that "stone cannot bend, it can only break."

As the Kristosian Conclave reached its zenith in 460.M41, the Sapphire King judged the Iron Hands ripe to fall and set its trap in motion. Each Iron Hand carried within his heart a rancid seed, a bomb of repressed passions that could erupt to destroy him at any moment. The Daemon would simply provide the spark to light the flame and watch the Chapter burn upon a pyre of their own emotions. In that same year, a vast host of Iron Hands descended upon the Gaudinia System. Iron Father Kristos had assumed the mantle of war leader and had assembled more than eight hundred Iron Hands under his control. This was the greatest deployment of the Chapter for centuries, and was accompanied by the majority of the Iron Council. Clan Company Raukaan once again took the lead in a massive planetary assault upon Gaudania Prime and so was at the heart of the abominable trap that was there unleashed. After solar days of near-continuous fighting, the waves of alien assault grew fewer and fewer between, until they guttered and stopped at last. The Orks of Rust had not lost the will to fight, but had simply run out of blood and machinery to spend. Shadrak Meduson's identity was at some point taken by none other than Alpharius, Primarch of the Alpha Legion himself. Assuming the mantle of Meduson and garbing a unit of his own marines in Iron Hand battlegear, Alpharius' disguise was completely undetectable by the members of the Iron Hands legion he met. Travelling in a vessel that appeared to be the Iron Heart, Meduson's own flagship, Alpharius fell in with a seperate unit of mixed Istvaan survivor marines under the command of Cadmus Tyro and convinced them, in his guise as Meduson, to aid him in an action against other members of the Alpha Legion. His deception was revealed towards the end of the affair, and the survivors of Tyro's force escaped with the knowledge that Alpharius had been impersonating Meduson. [7] Downfall M41: Gaudinian Heresy — A third of the Iron Council is lost to a massive Daemonic corruption and in an ensuing ambush by the Emperor's Children. [22b] M41: Defence of Fabris Callivant — The Iron Hands defended the homeworld of their allies, House Callivant, from Ork forces. [37b] [37c]

Rogal Dorn vs Alpharius

Meduson took part in the Iron Hands' battles of the Great Crusade, achieving such prominence that, for example, he was the officer assigned battlefield command of the Legion forces upon the world of One-Five-Four-Four whilst both Ferrus Manus and First Captain Gabriel Santar were absent from the line of battle. During this campaign - one of pacification against the inhabitants and hostile lifeforms of a world under the dominance of the Eldar — Meduson commanded the right flank of the legion, his men being used both as an anchor point and as an assault force. As commander of the 10th company, he acted as a mediator between his senior sergeant, Bion Henricos, and the other officers of the Primarch's command council when Sergeant Henricos suggested using their attached Imperial Army units as forward scouts, to the disdain of the others. [2] The Iron Hands chose to isolate themselves from many of their fellow Adeptus 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. When Horus was defeated by the Emperor, the Emperor's Children left a trail of depopulated worlds in their wake as they fled towards the Eye of Terror. As their supply of slaves was exhausted, they resorted to raiding the other Traitor Legions for fresh meat, leading to a series of conflicts known as the Legion War. [1] Fulgrim was seen in combat a century after the Heresy at the Battle of Thessala with Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines, where he slashed his brother's throat and laid him low with a fatal poison, before disappearing from records for many centuries. As his first act as Warleader, Meduson announced his Hand Elect. Breaking with tradition, he assigned the role to four individuals, not one; a representative each from Sorgol, Avernii, the Salamanders and the Raven Guard. His second pronouncement was to send out a wide-band message, promising to Tybalt Marr that one day, Shadrak Medsuson would have his head. When questioned as to why he was attaching his name to the threat, Meduson outlined that, currently, the traitors did not fear the Istvaan survivors. By using one name again and again when striking and harassing them, he believed he would create an effect like to that of a 'boogeyman', a morale blow that would aid their efforts and hamper the effectiveness of the enemy. Meduson then proposed a strategy that was a combination, an alloying of the legion tactics of all those present; they would fight a guerilla-war, hit and run, but also seek to gather strength to their banner, and save what other survivors of the Massacre and the rebellion that they could. [1]