I Heard Everyone's Been Talking Trash About Me

Hello!

A very Grimdark month commences!

As usual, the majority of the Grimdark WIPs are not on Patreon anymore.  But community members can still access the latest WIPs as mentioned in previous posts.  Just to be thorough, community members will receive an email with the access information as well.

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So we finally come to the most disrespected and neglected Primarch in the setting. Do you think I'm joking? Check out this hauntingly accurate video on First Founding favoritism. Yeah, if spies in Angry Company HQ told me upper management have quarterly meetings on how to screw over Ferrus and the Iron Hands, I'd believe them. Cackling in glee as they pass around the cocaine jar.

Almost every Legion has a 'hell yeah, that's so cool' moment in the Horus Heresy but I really struggle to think of one for the Iron Hands. I mean, what moment do I choose from? That time when Ferrus knocked himself out fighting Fulgrim or that time Ferrus got his head chopped off by Fulgrim? 🤔 If I was being very generous, you could say Ferrus would have won round two if not for that pesky Chaos sword but he still put himself in a very precarious position during the Drop Site Massacre and basically brought three Legions close to extinction.

The Iron Hands had one cool character and the writers wouldn't even let the 10th Legion keep him. 🤦‍♂️ What, did the writers think if Shadrak Meduson stuck around after the Heresy the Iron Hands would become too interesting? Smurf fans get fancy annual box releases and mass media publicity. The only thing Iron Hands fans get are decades of headless jokes and ghost memes. To top it all off, the Primarch that subscribed to a Darwinist theory of 'survival of the fittest' ended up receiving a Darwin Award. In terms of Grimdark irony, that's pretty high on the list.

I've always gotten the impression the writers hate the Iron Hands although I'm not sure where that hate comes from. Maybe it's because Ferrus has the dubious distinction of being the first Primarch casualty in the Horus Heresy. Maybe it's because their Legion name makes it sound like they're a subset of the Iron Warriors. Or maybe it's because the Iron Hand's main feature is to strip away everything that actually makes them a Space Marine.

Yes, when Iron Hands get inducted as a Scout, they replace their left hand with bionics. This is supposed to be a sign of respect to their Primarchs 'Iron Hands'. And as they progress in their careers, Iron Hands gradually peel away even more of their flesh with bionic replacements even if there is absolutely nothing wrong with their organic parts. Which means servitors have more in common with humanity than the Iron Hands who grow radically more disdainful of mortals due to their weakness of flesh, far beyond the average Space Marine.

This hatred of the flesh keeps growing until all the veterans are essentially Space Marine shaped cyborgs with only their brains left. Makes you wonder why they bothered to become Space Marines in the first place. 🤨

In the book 'Wrath of Iron', it's established that Iron Hand bionics are not superior to their gene-crafted bodies. Instead their apparent hatred of all things squishy is implied to be a psychological problem, the fallout from their Primarch's death during the Drop Site Massacre.

Even if the Iron Hands will never admit it, they know their Primarch screwed up. Publicly, they blame the Salamanders and Raven Guard for not backing them up during the final push towards Horus's forces (a codex even mentions Iron Hands refuse to attend any ceremony that has those Chapters present). But unconsciously, they believe Ferrus' temper and stubborn refusal to back down got them all killed. And that emotional catastrophe can be traced back to a weakness of the flesh.

In another ironic twist, Ferrus himself never wanted his sons to abhor their own Emperor given gifts. Wrath of Iron opens with one of the Gorgon's rare excerpts, stating he wanted to remove the Iron Hands wayward thinking that the 'Flesh was weak' and that one day, he too would remove the metal from his own hands. So not only did the Iron Hands completely misinterpret their Chapter warcry (stolen from Vulkan's remark that. "The flesh is weak, but deeds endure", they're basically doing the exact opposite of what their Primarch wanted. Truly, his failure is complete.

Anyways, the point of this incredibly long rant disguised as a WIP is to show that Iron Hands have been condemned to such irrelevancy youtube commentators unironically shout "Iron Within, Iron Without!" in Iron Hands videos.

Well no more I say! This month, I'm going to shill hard for Ferrus the Mannis and put some check marks in the win column! I'm going shill harder than the Angry Company shills for the Armless Failure which has to be some sort of world record. 😄 I'll show how in future updates.

So for my proxy, I wanted to give a super Techmarine vibe as the 10th Legion is known for their Iron Fathers. His main feature is the 'Medusan Carapace' which is like a having swiss army knife of weapons, tools and mechadendrites on his power pack. Speaking of mechadendrites, I made two versions - the standard Iron Father one and the more slithery version. If you really want to lean into his nickname 'The Gorgon', you can give him a whole bunch of slithery ones for that metallic serpent look. But at the end of the day , you can choose which version and how many to give him and what tools to attach on each end.

For his arms, I'm kind of experimenting between three versions. Armored, completely unarmored or a sort of metallic hybrid like Colossus from X-Men or the Winter Soldier. Should probably add an 'X' on the third version now that I think about it. 😄

Got a few WIPs for the Chaos Knight but I'm still in the process of adding all the details. Working on some alternate head versions as well which I will show later.

Next up is Dante and the Norn Queen. Stay tuned!