'FORRIX SMASHED HIS power fist into the door, feeling the layered metal starting to give.
His warriors gathered behind him, impatient to kill their prey and begin refortifying this place. He slammed his fist against the door again feeling the metal crumple beneath his assault. He gripped the twisted metal and pulled, tearing the door from its mounting with a roar of triumph. Forrix pushed through the doorway to see a Magos in white robes and a one armed Guard officer standing beside him. The man fired his bolt pistol and Forrix grinned as he felt the ringing impacts against his armour.
He raised his own weapon and squeezed off a short burst taking the Magos between the shoulders, disintegrating his torso and blasting him clear in a welter of blood.
The Guard officer leapt and fumbled with the levers, vainly attempting to finish what the Magos had began. Forrix laughed at the man's efforts and shot him in the leg, toppling him with a scream of pain. He deactivated the energy field surrounding his fist and lifted the howling officer from the ground, hurling him to a waiting Terminator.
Forrix realised they had cut it close and shot each wailing speaker to silence the alarms.
"Replace the rods. It will prevent the reactor from blowing" he said to another Terminator, and strode from the room.
Tor Christo had fallen.'
*****
This is the third Loremaster post, it's a little late because the summer period is not conducive to keeping ontop of hobby or blogposts at all.
School summer and family holidays, work in general and the heat this summer have all collided to crush any form of motivation and mojo I had going. As things head towards Autumn (not Fall, damn yanks), and things resume some form of normalcy (as close as it can get), around here, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things and get posting more regularly again.
With that said...
This time on Loremaster we are dealing with some traitor lore, loyalists beware. This will be split into two parts because of the length of the segments we are discussing.
The first post deals with those paranoid, embittered siege specialists of the Great Crusade who fell to chaos and nearly won the heresy for Horus during the siege of Terra.
The Iron Warriors, besieging the world of Hydra Cordatus during the 'Storm of Iron.
"Storm of Iron is probably the most memorable black library book I’ve read so far. There have been other books that have been better, but storm of iron has two great bits in it that still stand out in my mind after at least ten years since I last read it.
Coincidentally, they are both my favourite and most frustrating things black library have ever published in a book.
Near the end of the book both my favourite bit and frustrating bits happen.
My favourite bit, happens when one of the iron warriors goes and punches a warhound titan on the foot making it fall over and putting it out of action. I still think of the Ed209 in the stairwell from robocop.
And the frustrating scene is where a Guardswoman who was captured earlier in the story, who has been maintaining the armour for a chaos marine merges with it. Which I thought was a great idea!
Then you never see her again in any of the iron warriors books or others that cross over".
'ON THE NIGHTMARE battlefields of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, few foes spark more fear and dread than the Chaos Space Marines. Nurturing a hatred that is millennia-old, they attack without mercy, spreading terror and destruction in their wake.
Now hell has come to Hydra Cordatus, for a massive force of terrifying Iron Warriors, brutal assault troops of Chaos, have invaded the planet and lain siege to its mighty Imperial citadel. But what prize could possibly be worth so much savage bloodshed and destruction and how long can the defenders possibly hold out?'.
Graham McNeill is part of that upper echelon of Black Library authors, part of the alumni with the other two previously mentioned in this series, Dan Abnett and Aaron Dembski-Bowden respectively.
He has penned the huge encompassing Ultramarines series, as well as several Horus Heresy novels and various other Black library novels.
Storm of Iron was meant to be a stand alone book when it was written, instead it began a villainous series with Warsmith Honsou, and later his assault on Ultramar due to events in the Ultramarines novels.
Later it tied into the Horus Heresy series by having the characters reference setting foot on Hydra Cordatus during the Heresy and being featured in one of the Iron Warriors novels of the series.
Storm of Iron is set upon the Imperial world of Hydra Cordatus, where the Iron Warriors lay siege to an Adeptus Mechanicus facility in order to gathering offerings to Abaddon the Despoiler, and for their Warsmith to ascend to Daemonhood. It follows the path of the siege from the opening assault on the spaceport, to the trenches dug towards the walls of the citadel and Daemonic siege engines wheeled into place.
There are forlorn assaults of prisoners, forced forwards by the Iron Warriors as a method of draining the enemies ammunition reserves, as well as blitz attacks by the Traitor Astartes themselves forcing breaches in the walls.
All whilst focusing upon a select few characters, the main one being Honsou who is an Iron Warrior created after the Heresy and who is made from a mongrel mix of Geneseed from the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists!
Kroegor, is another Iron Warrior, but one who is falling more and more into the clutches of the Blood God and spends a fair amount of time butchering people.
Forrix is a Terminator captain, who has been alive since the Horus Heresy and is apathetic towards anything, so much so that he has been passed over for elevation to Warsmith several times.
Larana Utorian, a lieutenant of the Jouran regiments defending the citadel, and a captured prisoner forced to work for the Iron Warriors.
'FORRIX WATCHED THE Warhound infront of them back off through the smoke, realising that it's shields must be down.
"Follow it! Go after it!" He bellowed. The titan was not just an enemy warmachine to him now, but a beast from the Olympian legends and he felt a burning, primal desire to slay it. He almost laughed aloud, emotions and desires once thought lost forever rushed to the surface of his mind like a drowning man clawing for oxygen.
A ringing impact slammed into the Land Raider, throwing him sideways and he knew they had been hit badly. Smoke and flames speeds into the crew compartment, and as he looked back Forrix saw a great hole torn in the side of the vehicle.
Through the ragged tear he could see the looming form of another Warhound Titan. It snarling face carved in an expression of fury and Forrix was again gripped by the desire to slay one of the beasts.'
Things build over the course of the siege, Forrix alternately hunting and retreating from the Titans, as yet more Titans join the battle, both Loyalist and Traitor alike.
Battles are mixed with tense, paranoid filled camp sections where the senior commanders of the Iron Warriors try to formulate plans for the siege and backstab each other in equal measure.
The part here which I really like is the description of Forrix's emotions rising up again, in the lore of the Iron Warriors, they suppressed their emotions through relentless attritional battles during the great crusade, becoming machine like and cold.
Their monotone war chant of "Iron within, Iron without" only adding to the emotionless automaton warrior trope they have.
They are described as being their emotions deep down as they became more and more resentful of their assigned duties and orders, this small section of him regaining something of that is an interesting thought whilst reading.
Forrix seems to soften towards the 'half-breed' Honsou, maybe an effect of the above, but reverts to the cold Iron Warriors mindset when the hunt for the Warhound begins in earnest.
'His powerful strides had taken him to the top of the breach when a deafening roar erupted from beyond the crest and the rocks before him exploded, huge chunks of rockcrete blasted to powder by shell impacts.
The beast of legend was before him, not just one but two of the agile scout Titans darted back and forth in the gap between the citadel's inner and outer walls. The Warhounds loped like caged beasts, pausing every now and then to spray the breach with murderous fire.
Forrix's heart sank.'
This begins the hunt for the Warhound as Forrix looses twenty something Terminators to one of the Titan's as they crest and try to force the breach, and realises that they can't close with their prey just yet, but more importantly they cannot take and hold the breach with that opposing firepower.
He becomes more determined then ever to slay the beast and spends the next section of the battle stalking it until he can pounce.
'Forrix watched the beast stagger as a shell from a Vindicator burst against its leg. The Warhound lurched, they had it now, backed into a corner.
"It is time for a reckoning, beast! He yelled as he crashed forwards.
The pilot's compartment swung low, the green of its eyes locking with Forrix and he laughed, knowing that the beast's life was forfeit.
Forrix clambered onto it's massive foot and hammered his powerfist into the ankle joint again and again.
He held on for dear life as the joint sheared off in an explosion and the Warhound toppled. Shadowed forms struggled weakly within as Forrix emptied his combi-bolter into the Warhound's bridge, slaughtering the crew.'
This is a great description of what would actually be the best way to disable a walker. You'd get in close and try to disable the legs/feet as quickly as possible (I am assuming, as these things don't actually exist...yet, this is 38,000 years in the future!).
When you look at the size different (and price!) of the miniatures which are described, it seems daft that a Terminator Armoured Lord could take out a Titan in close combat, but it's actually the most 40k thing that you could do thinking about it.
This is a world where there are spaceships which can rain bombardments from orbit and soldiers still charge at each other with swords instead of shooting each other!
As fun as it is seeing the beast come crashing down, things don't all go Forrix's way...
'With the beast slain, smoke and dust momentarily clouded his vision. As it cleared he felt his pleasure at the kill drain from him as he found himself staring into the baleful eyes of the second Warhound.
"No!" Hissed Forrix.
It's weapons whined, building power to fire, Forrix had the briefest sensation of pain and frustration before the Defensor Fidei's guns destroyed him.'
After all that work, he is ultimately undone because he forgot about the second Titan and was enjoying the moment of killing the first Warhound.
It's kind of an anticlimax as you start to really like the character and how he has been built up so far through the novel, only to have him wiped from existence a couple of lines later.
A veteran of over ten thousand years, having fought in the great crusade, through the heresy and the long war thereafter, and he is killed because he takes the time to savour the kill!
Ironic no?
I'll detail the other half of the prompt about the Guardswoman in part 2, as this post was getting a little long in the tooth already.
Until next time, have nice day...
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