Iron Hearts Legion

Iron Hearts
Battle Cry	"Life Eternal! Death Eternal!"
Number	XVII
Primarch	Rubinek
Homeworld	Rust
Specialty	Resilient Infantry, Farseeing, Survival
Allegiance	Dark Imperium
Colours	Iron and Bronze, corroded and tarnished.

The Iron Hearts are the seventeenth legion in the /tg/ alternate history 40k timeline Imperium Asunder. Before even the onset of the Heresy, the Iron Hearts experienced the full scope of death and destruction between astartes fighting astartes. Upon his introduction into the Imperium Rubinek swore to his father that he would forsake any old ways and spread the Imperial Truth.

Ultimately however, to lead his marines safely through the ravages of the frontlines of the Great Crusade, Rubinek made use of every tool available to him -- Including the power that provided him with his Iron Heart. This haunted obelisk had provided the mechanical heart that saved Rubinek's life, and in turn the Primarch passed this blessing onto his children as the Crusade battered them with relentless casualties.

The use of this ancient and forbidden technology was expressly disallowed by the Emperor. In the latter half of the Crusade the Iron Hearts had steadily gained more and more for the Imperium, but all the while they had been kept whole and fighting by blasphemous artifice. When the Emperor learned of this, he cast Rubinek out, and unleashed on his legion the Bloodhounds.

Summary of Legion VII

Homeworld

The Iron Hearts were primarily based in a small cluster of all-but-abandoned worlds, including their homeworld Rust, which contained many unexplored lairs of Dark-Age technology. After their near-total destruction by the Bloodhounds, the Iron Hearts became a fleet-based chapter, their home worlds having been leveled at the Emperor's merciless command.

Legion History

Rubinek's Discovery

Primarch Rubinek was found by nomads on a world of caustic wastelands and rusted mechanical predators. When grown he became the leader of his tribe and guided them through the wastes. They prospered, thanks to prophetic dreams that time and time again led him true.

One year he dreamt a hellish metal fortress, lair of the world's beasts, and beyond that, a valley paradise. He led his nomads against the horrors and reached their leader, a massive beast of bloodslick gears and rusted blades. While the tribe's survivors fled to salvation Rubinek fought the colossus blade to claw, knowing how his fight would end: buried with his enemy, speared through the heart. So he had dreamt, so it was. The tribe settled in the valley and mourned.

After a time of only darkness Rubinek realized he yet lived. Weak, he disentombed himself from a mountain of metal and found his people. A priestess tended to his ruined chest a day and a night, and in the end he was made whole thanks to a miraculous mechanical heart. She explained only that a great obelisk whispered to her the secrets of life, and gave this heart.

Gene-Seed

The Sickly Ones

Rubinek's gene-seed marked him as a nigh-irredeemable abomination in the eyes of his Father, just barely fit to live, and ever an embarrassment to the Master of Mankind. Weak and frail by Primarch's standards, his body was wracked with mutation, only stabilized by the implantation of the Iron Heart into his chest. Thus was it so for his sons - the first attempts at forging warriors from Rubinek's gene-seed were dismal failures, producing creatures unfit to have any part in the Emperor's grand design. It was only through the secret usage of forbidden techno-sorceries, gleaned from the ruins of his homeworld, that Rubinek could mold his sons into soldiers worthy of his Father's cause.

The Monolith Men

The Iron Hearts Legion is an army of cyborgs, their faulty gene-seed bolstered - and, in many ways, improved - by the usage of esoteric Golden Age technology. The process of implanting this mystical anarcheotech into a human body is not fully understood by even the Legion itself, and full of peril, not always producing a true Astartes, and in many cases resulting in a braindead corpse barely fit for servitorhood. Those that survive the implantation process are split into three distinxt categories based on their adaptation to the ancient technology. It is important to note that there is little derision among the Iron Hearts themselves for those with lesser tolerance for these implants - Rubinek's sons are closely-knit and highly communal, bonded by their natures as outcasts and offscourings.

Bronzeborn

Most initiates that survive the bonding process are Bronzeborn. Though enhanced in many ways beyond any standard human, the Bronzeborn are by no means true Astartes, a crucial error in their metabolization of the Monolith's technology causing a nullification of many Space Marine traits. They are strong and enduring, but not nearly to the extent of a true Space Marine, and they usually lack most of the supplementary organs and abilities that define an Astartes. Pale and lean, they tend to be highly vulnerable to infection, and spend much of their time in sealed environments or suits. They serve a support and auxiliary role within the Legion, more than a match for any Guardsman, not not nearly of the same caliber as a true Space Marine.

Ironborn

These are true Space Marines, gaining the full range of Astartes abilities, plus a few extra gifts provided by the Monolith technology. Ironborn Marines are extraordinarily durable and strong even by Astartes standards, boasting skeletons of tempered plasteel and a baffling network of internal redundancies that keep them moving through injuries that would cripple or outright kill a normal Space Marine.

Steelborn

A rare blessing, Steelborn are those to whom the ancient technology of the Monolith adheres with extraordinary ease. More anarcheotech than Astartes, these Marines are immediately identifiable as something utterly removed from their brothers. Their skin is a sheath of regenerating plasteel, their joints reinforced with adamantine servo-thrusters. Cords of metallic reinforcement twine through their muscles, granting them extraordinary strength, and internal targeting systems worked into their irises constantly feed tactical information into their brains. In some cases, the Steelborn even develop more advanced adaptations - personal forcefield emitters, palm-mounted energy weapons, and clandestine monomolecular blades have all been reported among Steelborn Marines. In a few exceptionally rare cases, Steelborn of the Iron Hearts have been blessed with the ability to project a searing volkite pulse from their eyes.