Ironwing
The Ironwing was one of the six specialized "wings" of the Dark Angels Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy.
Overview
The Ironwing was a formation dedicated to the use of overwhelming firepower on the field of battle, to confound the foe by means of barrage and conflagration, to defy their riposte with inviolate armour and carry the day by means of force alone. Yet, this mastery of destruction was not its sole calling, as the Ironwing also carried the responsibility of being the center of gravity for the Legion’s engineering, machinery, and esoteric technology. The Knights of the Ironwing were skilled engineers, and performed delicate surgeries upon their Legion’s machines.[4c] The Ironwing fielded a wealth of knowledge, with its inner circle being dominated by the Forge-lords of the legion; of all the Wings save the Dreadwing the Ironwing was most hated by the Mechanicum, for the Ironwing and its masters paid little heed to the creed of Mars and employed much technology that was forbidden to the adepts of the Mechanicum.[3a] The Voted-Lieutenant of the Ironwing was known as the Ironbringer.[1c]
In terms of their skill in engineering, while the siegemasters of the IV and VII Legions approached their craft in terms of higher walls and heavier guns, superior logistics and crude calculations of risk versus reward, for their counterparts within the knighthood of Caliban it was the maze that dominated. Their school of architecture followed the martial expression of the Spiral Path, a doctrine which formed the basis of that world’s fortress-building traditions. Within their designs, the Ironwing brought the byzantine rigour of masters of the Calibanite school. Constructing labyrinths of mirrors and Holo-Fields, blind tunnels, portcullises that led to nowhere, and engineering randomised systems of openings and closures of the communications and supply lanes that would alter the layout of movement within their fortresses on such a regular basis they could change every half-hour. They would plan chokepoints, murder holes and enfilades, plant robust minefields, arrange clear lines of fire for defenders, and install Tarantula sentinel batteries in every corridor. Their Masters would meticulously redouble their guards before battle, reorder the watches, and assign the knights of their Orders to the most critical junctions. The Ironwing was considerate and meticulous in all measures, for example even going so far as to reinforce the intricate cabling from void banks, adding backups for redundancy, and to double their pre-existing capacity.[4b]
This secretive and exacting nature of defense extended even to their own men. Individual garrison commanders would have as much knowledge as was needed to hold their section of a bastion’s defensive circles, but no more. Only their Masters would hold the secret codes and encryption algorithms that would allow them to navigate its breadth fully.[4b]
There was a method behind such sparsity of information: if the Legion’s own officers could not navigate a fortress beyond their own redoubts then an intruder could not help but be confounded, and no single act of carelessness or treachery could ever see the entire bastion fall. Such was the philosophy of the Lion.[4b]
Assets and Technology
The Ironwing held sway over the vast armouries of the Dark Angels, sharing ownership over the grim technologies found within the Sacristy of the Dreadwing, with not even the Dreadbringer himself being able to access the worst of what was held within those vaults without the consent of an Ironwing Forge-Wright.[4d] Commanding a force of war engines greater than any other Legion, when the First Legion was committed to war under the aegis of these masters of destruction, it did so as a steel fist, striking a blow that shatters the enemy at a single stroke and grinds their forces into oblivion under the steel tracks of its war engines.[3e] Ironwing units were equipped with heavily armoured vehicles such as Land Raiders[1] and Dreadnoughts,[2] alongside unique and powerful relic war machines[3d] for their missions.[1]
They also utilized forbidden technology such as the Excindio Battle-Automata, themselves neutered remains of the legendary Iron Men,[3c] and Psyarkana Weaponry.[4e] The Wrights of the Wing were known to study heretechnika that would be burned on sight on Mars, infernal war machines that consumed the flesh of the slain as fuel, and worse, diabolical engines whose Silica Animus harked back to the blood-soaked legends of prehistory, machines capable of offering divine providence and fortune in battle in exchange for the blood of a willing sacrifice.[4a]
Never a subtle Wing, composed as it was of the majority of the Legion's armoured vehicles, heavy Dreadnoughts and field artillery batteries, the Ironwing was a force ill-equipped for operations reliant on stealth or subterfuge. Yet, they excelled at the breaking of fortresses by superior firepower and the rapid onslaught of massed war engines to overrun and annihilate an unprepared foe in the open field. Its Marshals were experts on the engagement and destruction of enemy war machines and heavy guns, often called upon to see to the destruction of those apocalyptic engines of destruction encountered by the Legion in its lonely crusade. Though this deployment of massed war engines was by far the most renowned aspect of the Ironwing, it was not the only facet to their doctrine of overwhelming strength.[3a]
As a merging of the old Hosts of Iron and Stone, the Ironwing also included a substantial number of initiates from the infantry arms of the Legion, mostly those attached to heavy weapon support units, breacher cadres and Terminator squadrons. Indeed, during the last years of the Great Crusade, the Ironwing fielded the largest concentration of Terminators not only in the Dark Angels but in any of the Legions, including a number of experimental patterns of armour unknown in the panoply of other forces. Often employed en masse to storm fortresses or repel the onslaught of the enemy, these warriors earned a fearsome reputation within the Legion, many retaining the old emblem of the Host of Stone and assuming the title of Stoneborn.[3a]
The Masters and Forge-wrights of the wing were known to be equipped with Artificer Harnesses[4a] The Wing employed a unique Terran machine language within the Legion’s software known as Himalazian Base Code.[4a]
The Ironwing also possessed a mortal echelon, and its knights were known to take on human apprentices who would aid them in their technical duties.[4c]
Known Members
- Titus — Dreadnought and Voted Lieutenant during the Horus Heresy
- Iksal Mordwen — Voted Lieutenant during the Siege of Mykana in the Great Crusade[3b]
- Duriel — Voted Lieutenant during the Muspel Campaign of the Great Crusade[4a]
See also
Sources
- 1: The Horus Heresy Book Six - Retribution, pg. 269
- 2: Warhammer Community - Secret Orders of the Dark Angels (last accessed 14 January 2018)
- 3: The Horus Heresy Book Nine - Crusade:
- 4: Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First (Novel):
