Iron Without: The Unique Combat Strategy of the Fourth Part V
WARHAMMER 40KIRON WARRIORSHORUS HERESY
Oroslan
3/20/20246 min read
Under the Hand of the Iron Lord
After the conquest of Meratar, Perturabo was satisfied and gave the legion a new name - the Iron Warriors. He ordered the dismantling of hundreds of shipyards throughout the cluster and the creation of new warships from them. Many planets became the raw material appendages of his legion. Perturabo personally coordinated the logistics. Not an ounce of iron ore passed by his tenacious gaze. This allowed the Fourth to double its firepower and grow in numbers in less than a decade.
It is difficult to say why Perturabo did not notice the critical flaw in the monster of fire and blood that his legion had become. The Iron Warriors conquered one world after another and knew no more defeats. Their strategies always worked flawlessly; for every enemy move they made their own, and it invariably became devastating for the enemy. However, their desire to win at any cost has reached a new level. Previously, they sacrificed themselves to carry out orders, now life has ceased to mean anything to them at all. Especially the life of a mortal soldier, because in the equation of war it had a much smaller specific gravity than the life of a trans person.
Hammer of Olympia knew that fighting alongside other Primarchs would benefit his Legion. Therefore, he soon formed the 125th Expeditionary Fleet, including the main contingent of Iron Warriors. This fleet was called the battering ram of the Great Crusade. They rushed from one front to another, fighting alongside each legion in turn. Then the other primarchs finally appreciated the power of the Fourth. They saw that there was no fortress that Perturabo's warriors could not take. His military doctrine worked flawlessly in such battles. He taught his sons to calculate every factor and wisely use human blood to lubricate the inexorable mechanism of war.
All who fought alongside the Iron Warriors were stunned by the power and accuracy of their artillery. If a fortress could not be destroyed from orbit and there was no order to capture it, Perturabo's darkly renowned artillery would reduce the fortifications to ashes in a matter of hours. It didn't matter who lined the defense, humans or xenos. If the Iron Warriors got involved, any defense was doomed.
As the years passed, the Legion became more and more like its primarch. This did not please Perturabo's brothers, and it especially did not please the mortals who were forced to fight alongside the Fourth. Steadfast determination, dispassionate intellect and inner strength went hand in hand with suspicion, bitter mistrust and indifference to the experiences of others. These traits resulted in the Iron Warriors winning more battles overall than any other Legion after gaining their Primarch. But their losses were higher than those of any other legion.
They preferred a fair open battle, although siege warfare has traditionally been considered the most brutal and unpredictable form of armed confrontation. The endurance of the Iron Warriors is legendary. And the most interesting thing is that the colossal losses did not affect their fighting spirit in any way. According to statistics, the Astartes company, destroyed by three quarters, continued to fight half as effectively. But the company of Iron Warriors fought as competently and harmoniously as at the beginning of the battle, even if at the end there was only one warrior left in the company. This is another paradox of the Fourth Legion that has not found an explanation.
There is an opinion that the resilience gifted to the warriors by the genes of their father, as well as special methods of psychoindoctrination that increased their resistance to stress, still could not completely protect the warriors of the Fourth from the horrors of war. They forbade themselves to worry, but this does not mean that they did not worry. Hidden outbursts of emotion eventually destabilized them, making them explosive and prone to sudden outbursts of anger. In this, the Iron Warriors also became a reflection of their genetic father.
In other legions the Iron Warriors saw a lack of discipline and vanity. They remembered long-standing grievances well, and Perturabo knew about them from archival records. The leaders of the Great Crusade always underestimated his legion, although they themselves entrusted it with the dirtiest and most grueling work. The Fourth has developed a more or less stable relationship with the Martian cult. However, the Red Planet never fully trusted Perturabo (unlike Ferrus Manus). The priests knew that they were only a tool for the Hammer of Olympia to find the most effective weapons of war. Perturabo did not believe in the Omnissiah, he did not care about rituals and the sanctity of technology. He just needed his cannons to fire further and further, and their shells to become more destructive.
It is important to understand that Perturabo was not cruel. Not in the sense in which they usually talk about it. He never sacrificed people senselessly. Every soldier counted with him; he truly valued every life. But if on the scales the life of a mortal turned out to be lighter than a bolter shell in a legionnaire’s pouch, then he was sent to certain death in order to preserve this shell. Because in the future, the shell will pierce the armor of the enemy tank and turn the head of the enemy general into a bloody suspension. And this will save millions of mortal lives, freeing another world.
The Excertus Imperialis, troops of the Imperial Army who fought alongside the Iron Warriors, regularly sent demands for transfers to Terra. They were a strategic resource for Perturabo, but from the outside it seemed that they were simply plugging holes. In a sense, this is true. Perturabo often used mortals as cannon fodder to lure out the enemy or, conversely, to trap them in a fire bag. Often he exposed mortal units to attack in order to assess the power of the enemy by how quickly he dealt with the army men.
Soon, with Horus in command of the Great Crusade, he decided to no longer send "normal" Imperial Army units into the Iron Warriors' fleets. By order of the Warmaster, Perturabo now had penal battalions, as well as formations recruited from criminals and slaves from conquered worlds. This contingent at first tried to rebel, but Perturabo carried out a decimation in the ranks of mortals only once, and that was the end of the riots.
During the final years of the Great Crusade, the only brother with whom the Hammer of Olympia had any kind of stable relationship was Magnus the Red. The Crimson King was impressed by Perturabo's lively intellect, which knew no equal. The two brothers thought on completely different planes, but both sought to get to the truth at all costs. Both saw the world as a series of equations and tirelessly solved them. But one is in an esoteric quest, the other is for the sake of the future that their father dreamed of.
Perturabo had almost no contact with his other brothers, with the possible exception of Angron and Horus. He openly despised Corax and his Raven Guard, considering their methods of warfare to be frivolous and childish. During the Isessander War, tension between the two legions reached its peak, miraculously not resulting in an armed conflict. Raven repaid the Hammer in return. But more than anyone else, Perturabo competed with Rogal Dorn. It was as if they were a reflection of each other. One is a master of siege, the other is an unsurpassed genius of defense. Both knew how to wage protracted wars of attrition, and their legions were resilient and unyielding.
But Dorn has always been his father's favorite. His legion often fought alongside the Emperor, and then Terra accompanied him, and the main contingent remained in the Solar System. No one has ever glorified the Iron Warriors or held them up as an example as opposed to the Imperial Fists. Although their victories were no less significant and it is unlikely that the two legions were inferior to each other in military art.
In this sense, the campaign against Waagh is indicative! orc leader Mashogg. Initially, only the Space Wolves and White Scars participated in this campaign. Two effective assault legions attacked Mushogg's orbital fortresses time after time, and time after time their attacks were bogged down by the Ork mass. Russ and Khan could not defeat the numerous enemy. The archives do not preserve the reasons why the Iron Warriors came into the system. Was it the Warmaster's order, or Perturabo's initiative? In essence, there is no difference.
Perturabo proposed to the brothers his plan for storming the orbital fortresses, and placed his own warriors at the forefront of the attack. The very first attack led to a quick and decisive victory. Mashogg was killed, Waagh! stopped, the orcs were completely exterminated. Only in the chronicles the Space Wolves and White Scars are indicated as the winners. Perturabo is identified by the word "comrade" and only one sentence is said that he participated in the development of the assault plan. And this happened everywhere. Everyone has long been accustomed to the fact that the Iron Warriors simply do their job and do not demand anything in return. No one thought how wrong this was to the loyal soldiers of the Imperium.
