Iron Warriors

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Revision as of 02:19, 19 April 2012

One of the nine Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000.

They are the Villain Protagonists of Graham McNeill's series of Iron Warriors novels, and also feature heavily in the Ultramarines novels Dead Sky, Black Sun and The Chapter's Due. McNeill's novels follow the fortunes of the Chapter after the Horus Heresy, focusing on Warsmith Honsou and the Iron Warriors assault on the Imperial world of Hydra Cordatus.

!!Novels And Short Stories In The Series

• Storm of Iron
• The Enemy of my Enemy
• The Heraclitus Effect
• The Skull Harvest
• Iron Warrior
• The Iron Without
• The Best of Calth

Please resist the urge to put examples on this page or link to this page on tropes unless you are citing from 40K novels in which the Iron Warriors feature. Examples which are specific to rulebooks and other in-universe fluff should go on either the 40K page or in the Character Page.

Tropes connected to the Iron Warriors

• Attack! Attack! Attack!:
• The Bad Guys Win: Storm of Iron was the first novel where Chaos won. In the 2008 reprint Graham McNeill says that even the people at Games Workshop were shocked.
• The Berserkers: Used in the siege.
• Catch Phrase: "Iron Within, Iron Without."
• Colony Drop: Fellclaw.
• Crowning Moment Of Awesome:
  • It's brought to a sudden halt when Honsou staggers, drawing Vauban into a hasty finishing blow, only to charge inside Vauban's swing and ram the shattered ruin of his sword straight through both Vauban's breastplate and his heart. Ouch.
    • An even better crowning moment goes to another guardsman, who manages to survive having the rest of the Red Shirts in his guard outpost slaughtered, makes his way back to the base with a Chaos Marine pursuing him the whole way, gets into a missile silo with the instruction of an Adeptus Mechanicus Techpriest, and manages to take out the Marine chasing him, and launch an anti-ship missile into the heart of the Chaos army at the same time.
• Curse Cut Shot: Because of Killed Mid-Sentence:

  Klane: What the f--

• Cyborg.
  • Cybernetics Saves Your Soul From Chaos.
• The Dark Side Makes You Forget: Discussed.
• Dissimile: There's a place called "The Hope"... because people hope not to be assigned there. In other words, it's anything but hope. The trope is once again subverted in that "The Hope" becomes a bastion of resistance... before promptly and relatively easily falling. Quadruple Subversion or Double Double Subversion? You decide, but it's the same thing.
• Five Bad Band:
  • The Warsmith and his lieutenants fall rather easily into place:
    • Big Bad: The Warsmith
    • The Dragon: Forrix
    • The Evil Genius: Jharek Kelmaur
    • The Brute: Kroeger
    • Dark Chick: Honsou
  • In Iron Warrior, the configuration changes:
    • Big Bad: Honsou.
    • The Dragon: Grendel.
    • The Evil Genius: Cycerin.
    • The Brute: The Newborn.
    • Dark Chick: Etassay, Emperor's Children.
    • Sixth Ranger Traitor / The Starscream: Vaanes though he never goes through with it, but it's implied.
• Hero Antagonists: The Ultramarines in Iron Warrior.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Klane, see above.
• More Dakka.
• Prophetic Name: Fellclaw, both for being requisitioned by Chaos renegades and being used as a Colony Drop
• The Reveal: The Citadel on Hydra Cordatus is housing a massive stockpile of Space Marine progenoids, which is to be used for future Foundings. To insure its safety, the Adeptus Mechanicus has been slowly poisoning the regiments stationed there to make sure that no one stays long enough to discover it.
• Sanity Slippage: Kroeger, the Ultramarines Dreadnaught.
• Sealed Evil In The Belly Of A Giant Spaceship in Iron Warrior.
• Ship-Town With A Dark Secret.
• Siege Engines.
• The Spock: Often used as a contrast to the Hot Blooded World Eaters or the... weird Emperors Children.
  • Ironically, this makes many of them question why they friggin rebelled in the first place and to realise that They Can't Go Home Again, even if some miss their origins.
• Tank Goodness: Probably the most tank-heavy of all the legions of Chaos.
• Those Two Bad Guys: Two Red Shirts Klane And Yosha converse about seeing something before all hell breaks loose.
• War Is Glorious: Close to rivaling World Eaters.
• Worthy Opponent.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Forrix, Grendel and possibly other members of the Iron Warriors seem to continue fighting for the group for the sole reason that they were with their Chapter when everyone rebelled, and those that didn't instigated the moose... well, they had to go along for the ride too.