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Iron Warriors

1,157 bytes added, 13:13, 23 May 2009
Post-Heresy: I've made two more sections that indicate what it says on Dorn's article: That the Imperial Fists fought bravely and that the siege became a stalemate until Guilliman's arrival.
===Post-Heresy===
As what the followers of the Iron Warriors say, Perturabo soon devised and enacted the one real victory for the Iron Warriors his Legion in the immediate aftermath of the Horus Heresy. He crafted a trap on Sebastus IV, designed to ensnare [[Rogal Dorn]] and the [[Imperial Fists]], with whom Perturabo and his warriors harboured a bitter rivalry. The trap was known as the Eternal Fortress, a keep centred within twenty square miles of bunkers, towers, minefields, trenches, tank traps and redoubts. Upon hearing of this, Rogal Dorn publicly declared that he "would dig Perturabo out of his hole and bring him back to Terra in an iron cage".
Rogal Dorn expected an honourable battle, but this was not to be. Beginning by isolating the four Companies of the Imperial Fists that landed from their orbital support, Perturabo began to carefully divide his enemy and destroy them piecemeal. Some Imperial Fists managed to penetrate the defences and reach the center of the Eternal Fortress, only to find there was no central keep - simply an open space watched by yet more defenses. The fortress was a decoy of no real value. By the sixth day of the siege, Imperial Fists Space Marines were fighting individually, without support, using the bodies of their own battle brothers for cover.
The siege of the Eternal Fortress (later referred as the "Iron Cage Incident") lasted for a further three weeks. Relief came in the form of [[Roboute Guilliman]] and a force of [[Ultramarines]], but the siege left Rogal Dorn a broken man, rendered the Imperial Fists [[Chapter]] unable to fight for nineteen years, and the sacrifice of over four hundred loyalist Marines' [[gene-seed]] paved the way for Perturabo's ascension to [[Daemon Prince]].
 
Yet, Imperial records indicate otherwise. As the story goes, the Imperial Fists were always masters of siege craft, and even disadvantaged and unprepared, they fought like Lions. Pertuabo and his warriors had to sacrifice themselves to destroy Dorn, a sacrifice they were not willing to make. Furthermore, Dorn led his troops on the frontlines, fighting with fierocity that was unbecoming of the normally good natured and noble Primarch. Yet, in the aftermath of what he perceived as his failure to save the Emperor, Dorn sought to destroy his traitorous former brethren at any cost and redeem himself and the Imperial Fists in the eyes of the Imperium. As the siege went on, a stalemate became apparent, with neither side able to score a blow that would end the battle.
 
That changed with the arrival of Roboute Guilliman and his Ultramarines. With the unbreakable fighting spirit of the combined forces of the Imperial Fists and Ultramarines, additionally the genius of the commanders Dorn and Guilliman, the Iron Warriors were defeated at last, and in Dorn's eyes, his Legion was redeemed for earlier failures.
The Iron Warriors left on garrison duty defended their outposts in a decade-long campaign against Imperial forces. The Olympia garrison held out for two years, eventually triggering their missile stockpiles when defeat was unavoidable. They left a blasted wasteland that, like the other Traitor Legion home worlds, was declared Perdita.<sup>1</sup>
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