Iron Warriors

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Iron Within, Iron Without!

One of the original 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 insert character tropes in the Character Page.

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[edit] Novels

• Animal Nemesis: Titans for those who fight them. The Ahabism makes an Imperial defeat even worse and even takes over Forrix, who actually succeeds in killing one, only to be killed by another.
• Arc Words: "The Place had fallen."
• 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.
• Bus Crash: Obax Zakayo betrays Honsou between The Enemy of my Enemy and The Heraclitus Effect.
• 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, Hawke (see character page for more), 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.
• Dead Person Impersonation: The Avatar of Khorne, Naicin.
• 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 (interchangeable with The Newborn).
    • The Evil Genius: Cycerin.
    • The Brute: The Newborn (interchangeable with Grendel).
    • Dark Chick: Etassay, Emperor's Children.
    • Sixth Ranger Traitor / The Starscream: Vaanes though he never goes through with it, but it's implied in Iron Warrior that he'd stand aside and let Honsou, Grendel and Etassay get slaughtered.
• Hero Antagonists: The Ultramarines in Iron Warrior.
• Ironic Echo: Honsou reminiscents he heard tales that warriors in the past "played war" by attacking and defending as honor let them, then the other side was allowed to walk away, and considers it impractical and weak Honor Before Reason. Later, the Warsmith gives the defenders a darker deal, but in the vein of the story: kill yourself and spare your soul. Nobody comments on how the two situations are similar.
• Kill Them All: Despite the Warsmith's victory, the entire Five Bad Band from Storm of Iron is killed - except Honsou and the Warsmith, though the latter leaves for other warp realms.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Klane, see above.
• Mêlée à Trois: Invoked at the end of The Skull Harvest between Honsou, Uluvent and Etassay.
• More Dakka.
• Prophetic Name: Fellclaw, both for being requisitioned by Chaos renegades and being used as a Colony Drop.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Newborn.
• 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.
  • Also that Kroeger had been dead for the second half of Storm of Iron, only known by the readers.
• Reverse Mole: Grendel in The Skull Harvest.
• Sanity Slippage: Kroeger, the Ultramarines Dreadnaught.
• Sealed Evil In The Belly Of A Giant Spaceship in Iron Warrior.
• Ship-Town With A Dark Secret in Iron Warrior.
• 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.
• Tournament Arc: The entire Skull Harvest.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Every other book a Oracular Urchin appears to give cryptic prophecies of thing that will or will not happen. It Doesn't Help that the future can be changed and few even know for certain how the future will present itself when things will actually come to pass. It gets so bad, Vaanes kills one of these Blind Seers who comes voluntarily to tell the Newborn's future, because he's Dangerously Genre Savvy enough to not trust things bearing gifts in the Eye of Terror.
• War Is Glorious: Close to rivaling World Eaters.
• Woobie Destroyer Of World: The Newborn:

  I am the broken shards of a human being, Ardaric Vaanes. My every breath is pain. Every beat of my heart is pain. Everything is pain. Why should I be the only one to suffer like this? I want everyone to hurt like I do.

• 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 hadn't instigated the moose... well, they had to go along for the ride too.
• You Kill It You Bought It: One of the rules of The Skull Harvest. It's why Honsou went there in the first place.

[edit] Other material

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