Death Smiths

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

Death Smiths
Battle Cry	Watch the hammer fall!
Origin	Black Augurs
Warband Leader	Ilmari Wieland
Strength	500
Specialty	Daemon weapons
Colours	Black, red and blue

Although their raids on the Imperial space are few and far between, the Death Smiths nevertheless pose a tremendous threat to the realm of Man. Some of the Imperium's most glorious heroes have met an ignoble demise by the Daemon weapons of their forging, not to mention myriads of common citizens and soldiers all across the Galaxy. Like a factory of nightmares, their great forge keeps churning out accursed artefacts that bane the Imperium for millennia, until they are eventually lost or captured by the Grey Knights. Led by a heartless monster named Ilmari Wieland, the Death Smith will not rest until the heart of the Emperor himself is pierced with a blade wrought by their hands.

Warband History

The Great Crusade

The marines that would go on to form the bulk of the Death Smiths came from Glacier World Savolax. A planet ruled by sorcery and hatred, it was divided into two powerful magocracies, the all-male Conclave of Warlocks and the all-female Coven of Witches. Ever since the Age of Strife, those two had been entangled in a brutal war of extermination. This pointless conflict came to an abrupt end when the Solar Warriors made a landing on Savolax and brought it to Imperial Compliance using the controversial methods introduced by their recently found Primarch. At the orders of the Voidwatcher, all female psykers were burned at the stake, and the male ones were offered a choice between sharing this fate and joining the Legion. Ever the pragmatists, it's not hard to guess what the majority of the warlocks chose. As they joined the forces of the Great Crusade, they brought their unique sorceries with them, many of which had no analogues in the Galaxy. Clearly impressed by the contribution of his new recruits, the Voidwatcher ordered the planet thoroughly rebuilt and turned its largest wizard school, the Goetium, into a fortress-monastery for his Legion. The more he learned about Savolax and its ancient culture, the more his fascination with the planet grew. He was particularly interested in their school system that eliminated two students out of five to weed out the weaklings and forced the survivors to undergo torturous rituals that increased their power at the expense of some of their sanity. Some say it was then when he started conceptualising the ritual that would eventually become the Decimation.

Not all Savolaxi Solar Warriors shared their Primarch's admiration of their planet. In particular, Ilmari Wieland, better known as the Hammerfist, originally joined the XIV Legion exactly because he wanted to leave his cruel homeworld behind and never look back. Wieland had despised his planet's customs ever since he was forced to kill two of his friends during his final exam at Goetium, and his hatred for everything Savolaxi only grew during his tenure as one of the Conclave's elite enforcers. He had very high hopes for the Legion when he applied to join its ranks, as he envisioned it as a force of enlightenment and reason, fighting benighted prejudices across the Galaxy. And so, his disenchantment was truly intense when he realised that he essentially ended up in a bigger, more formidable Conclave of Warlocks amidst the stars.

His hopes for a brighter future crushed, Wieland found solace in studying the massive volumes of knowledge the Solar Warriors had amassed during the course of the Great Crusade. Eventually, his attention was drawn by a dusty tome stashed in the far corner of the Legion's library that described techniques used to bind sentient entities of the Warp to material objects, thus infusing these objects with their powers. Driven by creative enthusiasm, he managed to bind a minor spirit to his combat knife in his laboratory. This experiment didn't end too well, as the knife melted when Ilmari touched it, but this failure only ignited his desire to succeed. Before long, he had mastered all of the techniques described in the book, and then even surpassed its anonymous author as he began to make his own discoveries. He noticed that the properties of a possessed weapon were determined by the synergy between the type of the weapon, the material it was made from, the Daemon bound to it and the sacrifice made to accomplish the binding. During his experiments with different combinations of these factors, he soon found out that a massive human sacrifice was the only way to forge a really potent weapon. Since this was clearly unthinkable, Wieland abandoned his project with a heavy heart and went back to the library looking for new distractions.

He was still there, melancholically perusing through the books, when the Decimation struck. With wicked glee, the Voidwatcher unleashed his ultimate spell on his flagship, opening it to swathes of malevolent entities of pure dark energy. Within minutes, the void fortress turned into a death trap where disconcerted and helpless Space Marines were hunted by nightmarish creatures they could not comprehend. Most of the Solar Warriors met an ignoble demise there, with their minds torn to shreds with agonising lassitude and their souls brutally consumed. But those few of them who emerged alive from this hell had to pay a horrible price for their survival. Even with all of their willpower concentrated, they could not drive the Warp predators out of themselves, so in order to survive they had to merge with them. This alchemical wedding imbued them with potent psychic abilities and allowed them to peer into the future, but these new powers did not come free. Everything that had once been noble and admirable in them was consumed by hungry darkness, leaving nothing but cruelty and thirst for power in its stead. Wieland was amongst the survivors of this calamity, for a similar ritual he had to undergo in his Goetium days prepared him for the Decimation. But whereas that ritual had not affected his personality much, the Voidwatcher's dark ceremony killed the man he used to be, only to resurrect him as a heartless monster.

His pervious self's reservations about human sacrifice were little more than laughable superstitions for the new Hammerfist. As soon as he recovered from the Decimation, he requested an audience with the Voidwatcher, told him about his plan to forge a Daemon weapon and asked for some slaves. Although the All-Father was impressed with the research the young warlock undertook, not to mention his ambition, he refused to fulfill his request. Instead, perhaps intending to test the upstart Marine, he offered him to capture as many slaves as he needed during the upcoming campaign on Elon II. This turned out to be a much harder task than Wieland originally anticipated, as the Elonian officers made a point of evacuating all the civilians out of the harm's way well in advance. Yet the Hammerfist eventually found a way to turn their cautiousness against them. When the squad under his command managed to capture a small mountain fort, he used illusions to assume the appearance of its slain commendant and sent a vox announcement to all of the Elonian officers in the area, saying that the fort was in perfect safety and ready to accept refugees from the nearby settlements. One by one, coaches with military markings drove through its open gates, carrying tens of hungry and scared Elonian families to their impending doom.

While Wieland was forging the weapon he intended to infuse with a Daemon, his soldiers were toying with their captives, testing new spells on them, forcing them to play dangerous and humiliating games and telling them bloodcurdling stories of the horrors that were awaiting their souls in the Warp. After two entire days of constant smithing, the Hammerfist had finished his masterpiece: a traditional Ossian trident that he intended as a gift for his Primarch. The trembling refugees were then brutally corralled into the profane pentagram Wieland drew in the fort's courtyard. As the Black Augur lit the incense sticks in the pentagram's power nods and began muttering his malicious incantations, it got filled with singing irridescent flame. Some of the refugees caught inside it were reduced to ashes, some were frozen solid, others turned into stone statues or melted into pools of multicoloured slime. A Greater Daemon entered the pentagram through the tear in reality left by this sacrifice, but his sojourn in the material world was extremely brief: as soon as he appeared, a trap set for him by Wieland trapped him in the trident.

Thus the infamous Aeon Slayer was born. A true masterpiece of both sorcery and smithing, it still counts as one of the most dangerous profane artefacts to darken the Galaxy with its existence. Essentially little more than a common power weapon, it possessed a unique quality that made its wielder nigh invincible in close combat. The Aeon Slayer existed synchronously both in the present and in the future, allowing it to wound people several seconds before actually striking them. Even the Galaxy's most skillful swordsmen couldn't hold their own against the owner of this trident, as within minutes they all succumbed to the wounds that had yet to be inflicted. Needless to say, the Voidwatcher was deeply pleased with the Hammerfist's gift. Ever since the Conquest of Elon II, his Primarch's favour shone brightly on Wieland, and it is little surprise that he entered the Qesh campaign as a Vate, the first Savolaxi to reach this status.

Hektor Heresy

Wieland was amongst the Vates who thought that their Primarch was a fool for siding with Hektor. Although there were hardly many true Loyalists amongst the Black Augurs, a lot of them believed that there was more to be gained from siding with the Emperor's forces. It was mostly Hektor's blatant worship of the Ruinous Powers that put them off, for the sons of the Voidwatcher traditionally looked at the denizens of the Warp as servants, not masters. This applied to none more than to Wieland, for whom Daemons were an expendable material hardly more valuable than the metal he used to forge his weapons. He tried to reason with his Primarch, explaining how using sorcery to defeat the Traitors could change the Emperor's opinion on it. Yet all of his arguments fell on a deaf ear, for the All-Father had his own reasons for taking sides with the Warmaster. The second most powerful psyker in the Galaxy, he wished for nothing more than to claim his rightful position as the strongest one, and the only way to achieve this was over the Emperor's dead body. He realised, although not without annoyance, that he was no match for his father, so he planned to use his foolish brothers to dispose of him. In his boundless hubris, the Primarch was convinced he could easily deal with them after the Emperor was finished, either directly or by pitting them against one another.

And so the fate of the Black Augurs was sealed. Like a murder of crows their fleet traversed the frigid void of space, leaving countless worlds turned into grotesque menageries of nightmares in its wake. Wherever they went, madness followed: shadows started coming to life and murdering their owners by sucking the dimensions out of them; skeletons gained a will of their own and began freeing themselves from the prison of their still-living owners' flesh; all the words disappeared, driving everyone insane as they were left without a way to understand or express their own thoughts. No longer forced to hide their allegiance with the lords of the Immaterium, Black Augurs treated every planet they landed on as a testing site for devastating new spells and enchantments they created. Wieland and his apprentices were slightly less extravagant in the destruction they caused than most, merely capturing and slaughtering throngs of slaves to forge new Daemon weapons. A great many accursed artefacts were born during this era, such as the Sagebane, a spear that erased memories with every hit it landed, the Doom Mosaic, a sword with a blade assembled from tens of tiny pieces of metal that turned into a whirlwind of razor steel at its owner's command, or the Blasphemace, a mace that summoned a lesser daemon for every warrior slain with it.

It is little wonder that word of Wieland's matchless prowess as a smith soon spread far and wide within the Traitor Legions. The mightiest warriors of this accursed host soon started sending him commissions for Daemon weapons, promising to pay in slaves and arcane knowledge. And yet, in spite of the wealth beyond measure the Heresy brought him, the Hammerfist was still dissatisfied with his lot. First and foremost, he saw himself as an artist and a visionary, and being forced to churn out commissions for uncouth brutes who could never appreciate the elegance of his work made him furious. True creative freedom was his heart's deepest desire. Besides, he was tired of being surrounded by and taking orders from bumbling incompetents and nosy upstarts who believed their mastery of the Warp to be superior to that of Wieland. And so, like many other Vates, the Hammerfist was planning to betray and abandon his Legion once its usefulness to him was depleted. His last goal before leaving the Fourteenth Legion behind was his most ambitious one to date: to finally create a pair of weapons for himself that would be worthy of him. Of course, he needed a sacrifice of truly cyclopean proportions to make this dream a reality, but he didn't doubt for a second that he could easily find one on Holy Terra.

The Fall of Batavium

Like most other Vates, Wieland used the Battle of Terra to further his own goals. As soon as the forces under his command made a landfall, he headed towards the great Hive of Batavium with the intention to sacrifice its whole population. Although the Scions of Europa managed to discern his dark intentions and did their best to stop him, ultimately they failed. As the last Batavian perished in an apocalyptic thunderstorm conjured by the Hammerfist and his closest apprentice Jove Ampere, two Greater Daemons were summoned into the material world: a Bloodthirster and a Lord of Change. But as soon as they appeared, Wieland trapped them in his own hands, thus turning his bare fists into mighty Daemon Weapons.

With his ultimate goal on Terra achieved, the Hammerfist saw no reason to stay with his Legion any longer. After hijacking a Loyalist battleship orbiting the planet, he set course for the Eye of Terror, thus being one of the first Traitors to choose it as his refuge. But whereas most other Chaos Marines fled there seeking refuge from the Great Scouring, Wieland deliberately chose it as the perfect location for his new forge. Although a lot of Black Augurs followed him for different reason, he quickly singled out those who were more interested in wielding Daemon weapons that in forging them. With a band of his closest followers, he hunted those unfortunate fools down, stripped them of their power armour and bound in a fetal pose with runic chains. Ever since then, he has been using their bare backs as anvils for forging new weapons.

Eventually, Wieland's coven reached the Eye of Terror and started searching for a new home. After a while, they discovered a planet that suited them perfectly: a Daemon World composed entirely of different metals and alloys, with clockwork predators stalking wind-up prey in telescopic forests and submarine whales dreaming in the oceans of molten iron. Although the planet had already been inhabited by lesser Daemons and Wieland's men were few in number, they managed to clear it of all hostile life in a few months, for the weapons they wielded made each one of them equal to a small army. Renamed Adranum by its new masters, this world has been the base of operations of Wieland's followers ever since.

Current situation

During the millennia that have passed since the Heresy, Wieland's followers have been content to quietly remain on Adranum, forging Daemon weapons and building Daemon engines. Originally simply known as the Hammerfist Coven, they gradually came to be known as the Death Smiths after the nickname given to them by Varus Tithonus of the Eternal Zealots. Not an aggressive Warband by any stretch of the imagination, it nevertheless plays a crucial role in any major conflict that plays out in the Eye of Terror, for it is their weapons that often determine the victor. It is even rumoured that it was Wieland's support that allowed the Great Unifier to secure victory at the end of the Legionary Wars. A popular anecdote has it that the Hammerfist was so fed up with Traitor warbands constantly clashing with each other in the Adranum system and distracting him from his labour that he personally contacted the Unifier and offered to forge new equipment for him and his retinue if they could finally put an end these annoying wars. That being said, if the Death Smiths do not like fighting, it is certainly not for the lack of skill. Every single Marine of this warband is outfitted with a Daemon Weapon of his own creation, which makes him a force to be reckoned with. Their modest numbers have led numerous warlord of the Eye of Terror to underestimate them, only to find out that a single Death Smith was more than a match for a whole squad of his warriors.

If anything can force the followers of Wieland to leave Adranum, it is the constant need for new slaves to sacrifice. Although they usually obtain them by trading them for Daemon weapons with more active warbands, time and again their needs far outstrip what little other warbands can offer. Whenever this happens, they embark on an incursion into the Imperial space. Relatively disinterested in causing unnecessary destruction, they conduct a series of small-scale raids on unimportant worlds until they gather enough slaves for their needs, after which they swiftly return to their base in the Eye of Terror. The small size of their fleet usually allows them to successfully outmanoeuvre any pursuers from the Imperial Navy and avoid major confrontations. Another reason why the Death Smiths may trespass into the Emperor's domain is to retrieve a Daemon weapon that has fallen into the wrong hands. Numerous times they have ambushed the Grey Knight forces carrying captured artefacts of the Warp to Titan in order to be studied by the Inquisition.

Although Wieland himself does not take commissions from anyone, many of the ferromancers under his tutelage do accept them gladly as opportunities to hone their skill and earn fame. There is never a shortage of demand to their supply, for it is a rare Chaos Lord who does not crave a weapon forged by the Death Smiths. However, their prices are so steep that only a select few can afford such a purchase, and even they would think twice before going through with the deal. Of course, there is no shortage of self-confident fools who believe themselves able to steal a weapon from Adranum without leaving a single gold nugget in the pockets of its greedy inhabitants. All of them without exception have paid dearly for their hubris, for Wieland despises thieves almost as much the philistines who don't appreciate his art. Most of those would-be raiders end up as living anvils in the Hammerfist's great forge, forced to endure scorching metal and hammer strikes on their backs for all eternity.

Every bit as petty and confrontational as any other Marine carrying the Voidwatcher's gene-seed, the Death Smiths are constantly engaged in a cutthroat competition with their peers. Every one of them believes himself to be the Galaxy's finest blacksmith, only held back by the machinations of his incompetent rivals. Although physical confrontation is strictly prohibited and punished with excessive cruelty so typical of the Death Smiths, professional rivalry is highly encouraged in the warband, since Wieland believes it to be the best motivation for his followers to improve their skills. There is no such low to which a Death Smith would not stoop to to ensure that his weapons are superior to those forged by his competitors. They constantly spy on each other, attempt to ruin one another's weapons and take credits for ideas that are not theirs.

Notable Campaigns

The Sundering of Gordium

When Wieland decided to test his newest creation against real enemy forces on the Shrine World of Gordium, he certainly did not foresee the consequences of his decision. The sword that he had forged turned out to be so powerful that it slashed the continent where the battle was taking place in half, causing a catastrophe of planetary scale. After narrowly escaping certain death on a disintegrating planet, the Hammerfist decided to destroy the sword in the flames of the local sun, too fearful of its uncontrollable power. Yet the cursed artefact managed to escape destruction on that day; it was stolen by an insane Death Smith and disappeared into the Warp, hopefully never to emerge from it again.

Wenezlan's Fall

The grim fate that has befallen everyone who tried to steal a Daemon weapon from the Death Smiths does not stop ambitious Chaos Lords from trying. Assaults on Adranum happen at least every decade and are likely to persist into the future, since there will never be a shortage of self-confident fools who bite more than they can chew in the Eye of Terror. Lulled into a false sense of security by the modest numbers of the Death Smiths, these cocky warlords tend to forget that their enemies have probably the most dangerous arsenal of weapons in the Galaxy at their disposal. Perhaps one of the most ambitious assaults on Adranum was undertaken by Wenezlan Bohlen, a successful leader of a sizeable Eternal Zealots warband who managed to lure two more warbands to his cause with promises of looting the legendary arsenals of the Planet of Smiths. But even so, his warhost was annihilated by the Death Smiths and he himself received a truly horrible punishment for his arrogance.

Thunderstorm over Dommoc

Vain beyond measure, High Ferromancer Jove Ampere truly rejoices in granting himself numerous flattering titles: the Thunderer, the Cloud Gatherer, the Storm Compeller, and tens of others. He is followed to all meetings with fellow Chaos Lords by an apprentice whose sole role is to introduce his master by listing all of his grandiose self-assumed styles and honorifics in a chronological order, and Gods help him if he makes a single mistake or omission - the pettiness and cruelty of the Electrarch are second only to his narcissism. He even goes as far as to declare war on those who use the same titles as he does, such as the ork Big Mek Zorbo Da Zundera. Although their clash mostly consisted of both sides failing in spectacular ways, the Death Smiths failed a little less than the Greenskins, thus claiming the highly dubious victory.

Notable Members

Ilmari Wieland, the Hammerfist

Ilmari Wieland, the Hammerfist

Also known as the Hammerfist, Ilmari Wieland is without a scintilla of doubt the greatest smith of Daemon weapons to ever darken the Galaxy with unholy fruits of his labour. In many ways he originated the art of fusing metal and Warp energy together into unnatural amalgamations that poison the reality with their bare existence. Even though he does not share the burning hatred most of his brethren feel towards the Imperium, there are few amongst them who managed to inflict so much damage on the realm of Man as the Hammerfist. By providing the Traitors with tools of destructions of unparalleled power, he managed to secure countless victories for the Forces of Chaos. Weapons wrought by his hand have robbed the Imperium of scores of glorious heroes, and will probably continue taking their grim toll long after their master is gone.

Talos Mk. IV

Nobody amongst the Death Smiths knows where Wieland's enigmatic bodyguard came from. He never speaks, never takes off his helmet, and nobody has ever seen him asleep or eating. Naturally, legends have persisted for centuries that his suit of power armour conceals a bound Daemon, compelled by the Hammerfist to serve his bidding. The reality, however, is much stranger than that. There is nothing below the ceramite plates of the silent warrior's armour but thousands of cogs and gears constantly whirling in a maddening rhythm. For Talos is nothing more than an incredibly elaborate clockwork machine, a soulless automaton whose actions are dictated purely by rigid algorithms stored in punched tapes. Of course, Talos is no ordinary wind-up toy; by employing the entire arsenal of Warp-based tricks at his command, Wieland managed to grant his creation with true Abominable Intelligence without using any details more sophisticated than a cog. Extremely primitive yet fiendishly complex, Talos defies the basic laws of mechanics and cybernetics with his bare existence.

The strange things about this robotic warrior do not end with his inexplicable intelligence. Whereas an ordinary clockwork mechanism would be extremely easy to damage, Talos is nigh indestructible. Whenever his nodes and circuits sustain mechanical damage, their constituent gears immediately reassemble themselves, as if put back in place by an invisible watchmaker. Even when melted by thermal weapons, they retain their shape and cool down back to a solid state within fractions of a second. That being said, in spite of his unparalleled resilience, Talos has been destroyed on several occasions. His previous three incarnations have been vaporised by a Multi-melta, annihilated by a point-blanc shot of an Eradicator Beamer and torn atom from atom by a Gauss Cannon. Every time a Talos is destroyed, Wieland rebuilds him with several improvements, making sure that the clockwork warrior never succumbs to the same fate twice.

Although he can wield any of the Daemon weapons forged by his master, his trademark weapon is the dreaded Deflesher. A relatively normal power sword at the first sight, it is contaminated with a malaise similar to the infamous Obliterator virus. Anyone infected with it will soon find himself slowly turning into a machine, with the blood vessels being replaced with cables, bones with pistons and hydraulics and flesh giving way to microchips and circuitry. The spread of the disease can only be stopped by a timely amputation of the affected body part; if left unchecked, it turns its victim into a robot within the span of several days. Several famed Imperial heroes have crossed swords with Talos and emerged victorious, only to put a bolt through their heads days later on noticing the horrible transformations of their bodies.

Jove Ampere, the Thunderer

Jove Ampere, the Thunderer

The Ferromancer of the Second Forge, Jove Ampere is probably the only smith on Adranum who doesn't dream of one day surpassing Wieland - only because he already believes himself superior. Nobody is sure why the Hammerfist allows his student to keep these ridiculous delusions, although the true reason is probably because otherwise Ampere would try to kill his teacher to get to the top. The Thunderer has been by Wieland's side ever since Hektor's Heresy, it was him who conceived and executed the grand sacrifice of Batavium that gave Wieland his legendary Daemon fists. Everyone who knows him agrees that Ampere would probably be one of the most dangerous warlords of the Eye of Terror if it wasn't for his narcissism. But even so, the Thunderer is a force to be reckoned with, and gruesome tales of his disproportionate retribution for perceived slights make even Chaos Marines feel uneasy. Strangely for such an egomaniac, he does not worship Slaanesh; like most of the Death Smiths, he considers the Dark Gods merely extremely powerful Daemons unworthy of reverence. For him, the only figure in the whole Galaxy deserving of veneration is he himself. Over the millennia, he has turned the Second Forge into his own twisted personality cult with bizarre rituals and traditions.

Though back in the days of the Heresy Ampere could have been considered handsome, the time spent in the Eye of Terror left very little of his comely appearance. His face, once the envy of many a man, is now covered almost entirely in electrical burns, his eyes are constantly bloodshot from looking at sparks of lightning without protection, and his flaxen locks are burned at the ends. Still, he considers himself to be the most handsome man in the Galaxy and would go great lengths to punish those who think otherwise. His suit of Artificer armour is painted with Lightenberg figures and constantly shrouded in buzzing arcs of electricity. Though this would be enough to electrocute any other man, millennia spent under the mutating influence of the Warp made the Thunderer completely resistant to electricity, and his body is now constantly pierced by enough volts to light up a small city. Whenever he speaks, a rain of sparks leaves his mouth, and strong smell of ozone follows him everywhere. Ampere's Daemon weapons of choice are twin javelins called Swift and Rapid. Shaped like lightning bolts, these elegant needles of doom constantly produce 100 megavolts of electricity, enough to short-circuit most machines and turn any living enemy into a charred corpse. Once their target is destroyed, the javelins teleport back into their master's hands, allowing him to throw them again immediately.

Unlike most other Death Smiths who use Adranum's lava to heat up their forges, Ampere prefers to using celestial fire. The citadel of the Second Forge is a tall, slender copper spire, almost reaching all the way to the planet's ever turbulent stormclouds. Every minute tens of lightning bolts strike the tower, only to be caught by the forest of lightning rods dotting its upper levels and transmitted to the forges. There, enormous Tesla coils are used to transform the caught lightning into powerful arcs of electricity that are used to heat up pieces of metal before forging them into weapons of untold destruction. Ampere claims that this dangerous method allows him to craft tools of war worthy of gods and god-like beings like himself. Although like with much of the Thunderer's deluded boasting, the validity of this claim is disputable, most Death Smiths will agree that the weapons forged by him are second only to those created by Wieland himself.

Warband Combat Doctrine

Unlike most other warbands that possess a very limited amount of highly venerated Daemon weapons, the Death Smiths keep stashes of them in their arsenals. This allows them to equip at least every Ironmonger of their squads with one, turning otherwise unremarkable formations into unstoppable machines of death. This allows the warband to more than compensate for their small numbers, picking on foes much numerically superior to them and still annihilating them completely. Artificer armour is also much more common amongst the Death Smith than in any other Space Marine formation in the Galaxy. While even the low-ranking apprentices are highly encouraged to customise their suits of power armour, the Ferromancers wear protection that rivals the legendary armour suits of the Primarchs.

Due to their focus on Daemon weapons, the Death Smiths are by and large close combat specialists. However, that does not mean that they eschew ranged combat completely. Every Great Forge keeps a large number of Daemon engines, particularly Forgefiends, to offer heavy support to their troops. The Third Forge, led by Athanasius Turriano, is especially notorious for inventing and building horrible new Daemon engines, most of which are sold or rented to other warbands. The Death Smiths look with disdain at tanks and Helbrutes, considering them clumsy and inefficient, although most great Forges field several Contemptor pattern Dreadnoughts armed with Thunder Hammers.

Their favourite tactic on the battlefield probably stems from their experience as smiths, as they like to catch the foe between the hammer and the anvil. They use concentrated fire from the ranks of their heavy support units to make the enemy forces retreat in search of a cover, subtly driving them into the wall of their close combat specialists. Notoriously difficult to execute perfectly and dependant on the battlefield landscape, this manoeuvre has helped the Death Smiths win many battles without any casualties at all. But even if it fails, the warband still poses a grave threat to whoever dared provoke their ire, for even without any tactics at all they are still a force to be reckoned with.

Warband Organisation

An extremely small warband by any standards, the Death Smiths only include a measly 500 members. In spite of that, their superior equipment has allowed them time and again to stand their ground against such formidable foes as the Ramparts or the Green Men. Since their main focus is not on warfare, but on smithcraft, instead of combat units they are divided into seven Great Forges, each one of which comprises 50 members. Six of them are led by Ferromancers, Warpsmiths of matchless skill and power and pupils to Ilmari Wieland himself. All of them possess strong characters and personal philosophies which shape the Great Forges they lead and the weapons they make. Directly subordinate to the Ferromancer is the Conclave of Ironmongers, a circle of seven master smiths who have proven their skill with the hammer. The Ironmongers are granted with personal smithies and allowed to forge Daemon weapons. Each one of them has about six Apprentices, ordinary Chaos Marines who study the art and craft of smithing under them. Every Apprentice dreams of one day replacing his teacher, but constant sabotage from their peers ensures those dreams remain just that.

Every Great Forge resides in a citadel which houses the smithies of its Ferromancer and Ironmongers as well as numerous armouries, slave pens, living quarters for the Apprentices and fortifications. Each citadel reflects the personality of its master. For instance, the Second Forge resides in a slender copper spire piercing Adranum's storm clouds, the Third Forge is based in a colossal construct, a castle moving across the planet's barren landscapes on its creaking spider-like limbs, and the Fourth Forge operates from an enormous brass steamboat sailing around a lake of lava. But the most imposing one of them all is the one belonging to the First Forge. Led by Wieland himself, it has no Apprentices at all; instead, each one of its members is an accomplished smith wearing Terminator armour into battle. Their citadel is an imposing castle suspended on chains in the orifice of an active volcano. Regular eruptions can't damage it thanks to the protective runes the Hammerfist has inscribed on the walls of his abode. An elevator shaft reinforced with adamantium leads from the suspended castle's cellars down through the volcano orifice straight into the planetary core. It is there that Wieland's personal smithy is situated, one that is forbidden to anyone save its master. The greatest artefacts of evil ever to exist were created there.

Apart from smiths and their apprentices, the warband also includes around fifty hired Techmarines and Apothecaries personally picked by Wieland. Although the Death Smiths have learned to respect them and value their skills, they are still treated as suspicious outsiders. But even then, not even the Ferromancers dare slight those mercenaries, for Wieland's personal protection extends over them.

Warband Naval Forces

A comparatively small and passive warband, the Death Smiths have no real need for a fleet. As a result, they only possess a single Battle Barge, the Anvil of Doom. Originally the very spacecraft Wieland and his followers used to escape from Terra, over the millennia it has been so heavily customised that now it is barely recognisable. Since its current primary function is slave hunting, whole decks of the ship have been rebuilt into a nightmarish prison filled with death traps. The unused part of the living quarters has been turned into vast forges to accommodate the needs of the Death Smiths. The corrupting influence of the Warp has also left its mark on the Battle Barge. Because of it, the lower levels of the ship are now flooded with lava that strangely doesn't seem to damage its hull or maintenance systems.

Apart from the Anvil of Doom, the warband has a number of smaller spacecrafts, some of them belonging to different Great Forges. But even so, their fleet remains a means of transportation only. Whenever faced with the prospect of a naval clash, the Death Smiths prefer to flee rather than accept the challenge. Their disdain for void confrontation could perhaps be traced back to Wieland, who considers naval warfare the ultimate form of coward's combat, even worse than hiding from the enemy in metal boxes.

Warband Beliefs

Unusually for a Chaos Marines warband, the Death Smiths could not care less what happens in the Galaxy. Money and power interest them only inasmuch as they help them to further their goal - creation of more and better Daemon Weapons. Like with so many other warbands, their philosophy has been shaped by the personality of their charismatic leader, Ilmari Wieland. Once an influential Vate of the Fourteenth Legion, he personally rediscovered the long-lost art of infusing weapons with malevolent spirits of the Empyrean, and creation of Daemon weapons has been his obsession ever since. During the millennia, forging of evil artefacts has turned into a twisted religion of sorts for the Death Smiths, one that has completely eclipsed all other aspects of life for them.

Like Khorne does not care where the blood flows from as long as it flows, the Death Smiths are largely indifferent who wields the weapons they forge as long as they cause mayhem and destruction. The Great Unifier is perhaps the most notorious customer of theirs, but hardly the only one: according to estimations made by Ordo Malleus, every fifth Daemon weapon in the Eye of Terror originates from Adranus. Rumours persist that even certain radical Inquisitors use artefacts commissioned from Wieland's disciples.

Although the Death Smiths usually take part in Black Crusades, they only see them as a chance to collect more slaves for their sacrifices. Their nihilistic views and refusal to venerate the Dark Gods have provoked the ire of many a zealous warband over the years; notably, Eternal Zealots and most of their successors consider them heretics no better than the lackeys of the Corpse Emperor and make a point of destroying Daemon weapons forged by them whenever they manage to get a hold on one. However, this is an extremely unwise move, as nothing infuriates the followers of Wieland more than disrespect towards their works of art. And Death Smiths are not a warband whose enmity could be taken lightly, for their persistence in punishing those who slighted them and cruelty towards fallen enemies are legendary.

Warband Homeworld

The Death Smiths are based on the Daemon world of Adranum. A planet fashioned entirely from metal, from its clouds of iron powder to its seas of molten copper, it is an ideal refuge for a warband of insane smiths. Originally populated by nomadic tribes of Bloodletters breeding Juggernauts for gruesome corridas, it was cleared of all life by the followers of Wieland before they settled there. Although Space Marines are now indisputable masters of the planet, its population is mainly comprised of their slaves, unfortunate wretches kidnapped from their homeworlds and brought to Adranum to tend to its colossal machines and serve as fodder for grand sacrifices. Even though some of them manage to escape the citadels of their captors, they hardly ever survive for more than a couple of weeks, for Adranum has no sources of food or water.

However, there is one notable exception to this rule. According to a legend, a large group of slaves once managed to escape from the citadel of the Sixth Forge. They have wandered the scorching plains of Adranum until hunger and thirst forced them to turn to cannibalism. This allowed them to survive for several months longer than usual, long enough for the powers of Warp to start corrupting their bodies. Eventually, they turned into rabbit-like beastmen who could produce a sizeable litter every month and survive by eating their own offspring, leaving enough to propagate their species. The Death Smiths do not mind these new squatters on their lands, for the rabbit people make terrible slaves and even worse sacrifices.

It is almost certain that Adranum keeps many more secrets than its masters are interested in uncovering. For instance, a warband of Eternal Zealots has recently tried to bomb the Planet of Smiths from the orbit, leaving numerous tears in its metallic surface. Gigantic whirling cogs and gears could be seen from those tears, leading some Death Smiths to believe that their planet was in fact one colossal mechanism serving some mysterious function. Some thought it was a clock counting down to an apocalyptic event in the future, others believed it was an enormous weapon that could potentially bring down the Imperium if harnessed properly. In the end, however, nobody cared about it strong enough to actually venture down those tears and investigate.

Warband Appearance

The first thing people tend to notice about the Death Smiths is the quality of their equipment. A lot of them wear ornate suits of artificer armour, the decorations on which somehow stay undamaged in the heat of battle. Hammers, anvils, volcanoes and horned devils are common themes in their iconography, although the precise ornamentation used varies from Great Forge to Great Forge. Members of the First Forge etch their armour with reliefs of fists, while the Second Forge members cover their armour plates with depictions of lightning bolts and masks of Jove Ampere's divinely handsome face (at least they seem to find it handsome). Regardless of their precise allegiance, all of them paint their equipment black as a reminder of their warband's past as a Coven of the Black Augurs. The only exception to this rule are the fists of their armour suits, which they paint red and blue to honour Ilmari Wieland. Their visors are permanently aglow with a ghostly green fire that burns the retinas of anyone who looks at it without protection. For no apparent reason, their power armour produces more and louder clanking noise than usual, so their marching sound like hundreds of hammers rhythmically striking anvils.

Nearly all of the Death Smiths bear multiple burns of varying degrees, reminders of their dangerous craft. Numerous splinters of metal are embedded in their skin. Although mutations are not ubiquitous, some display such disturbing features as goat or ram horns, metal nails and teeth, smouldering cracks in the skin or unusual skin colours such as red or orange. Ashamed of these mutations, they usually hide them by welding iron masks around their faces, although the members of the Fifth Forge are known to display them with pride. It is also commonplace to replace mutated body parts with augmentics whenever possible.