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Index Astartes: Iron Gorgons Although they were once a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes as noble as any other, the desire of the Iron Gorgons to replace weakness with strength led them into dark places from which they could not return. Origins Iron Gorgon of the Kajomn Clan At the time of the Twelfth Founding in the latter days of the Thirty-Fourth Millennium the High Lords of Terra decreed that one of the new Chapters would be drawn from the geneseed of the Iron Hands, a First Founding Chapter and the scions of the primarch Ferrus Manus. Representatives were dispatched to Medusa, the Chapter’s homeworld, to speak with the Great Chapter Council (the Iron Hands are peculiar in that they do not have a Chapter Master, preferring to divide power between multiple individuals). Tainted From Conception? Some Imperial scholars have concluded that the founding process doomed the Gorgons from the start. They argue that including individuals in the initial training core who would have preferred to remain with the Iron Hands bred bitterness against their superiors into the Chapter, resulting in the frosty relationships between the Gorgons and other Imperial bodies. Some even maintain that, although all of the members of the Sorrgol Clan had been tested and proven to be pure following their return from the Eye of Terror, the taint of Chaos lay hidden in the training cadre and over the millennia infected the entire Chapter. At that time the Sorrgol Clan (roughly equivalent in size, if not composition, to a company in a Codex Chapter) had just returned from a crusade into the Eye of Terror and were below half strength. It was decided that half the survivors would remain with the Iron Hands to rebuild and the other half would form the core of the new Chapter. The Council decided to randomly pair each Astartes warrior with another and have them fight a duel. The winner of each duel had the honour of choosing whether to remain an Iron Hand or become part of a new Chapter; the loser was assigned a role by his superiors regardless of his wishes. In this way the strong would go where they could serve to the best of their ability and the weak would learn the harsh lesson of defeat. Such is the way with the scions of Ferrus Manus. In total the training cadre was made up of two dozen members of the Sorrgol Clan and an additional dozen specialists drawn from several other clans of the Iron Hands. The new Great Chapter Council met for the first time to decide upon a name for the new Chapter whilst on route to the planet they had been granted as their homeworld. They decided to honour their Primarch by naming themselves the Iron Gorgons – Ferrus Manus is referred to as the ‘Gorgon’ in some historical accounts. When they arrived at their new homeworld they were mightily impressed by the character and determination of the indigenous tribesmen. This in itself is very uncommon for the descendents of Ferrus Manus, who often look down on any who are not of their own geneseed, holding unaugmented humans in particular contempt. Over the next millennia-and-a-half the Iron Gorgons fought countless battles against every enemy of the Imperium. Their largely autonomous clans spread far and wide over Segmentums Obscurus, Pacificus and Ultima, replying to calls for aid as and when they occurred. Over time they developed a reputation as stubborn siege-breakers, who could keep on pushing when all other Imperial forces had withdrawn and still claim victory. The cost of this was that the Gorgons had a very high casualty rate. Combined with their refusal to even consider excepting recruits from anywhere other than Sarkosh this meant that the Gorgons were very rarely at full strength. The Gorgons also developed a sense of superiority over other members of the Imperium. Imperial Guard regiments who fought alongside the Iron Gorgons suffered from extremely high levels of friendly fire incidents and members of the Gorgons frequently came to blows with allied Space Marines over the slightest real or perceived slight. The Gorgons only had good relations with other descendents of the Iron Hands and the Mechanicum, the latter of which regularly granted tributes of vehicles, power armour and other rarer equipment to the Gorgons far in excess of most Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. The Fall The Iron Gorgons emerged from the dark and chaotic days of the Occlusiad relatively unscathed. As a result of this the entire Chapter was able to respond to the general call to arms at the beginning of the Taninim Crusade to regain territory lost to the Imperium’s enemies. Following a series of stunning victories over the mutant empire of the Dual King the Chapter gathered en masse to strike at the worlds of the Gnorghaan, despite a millennia old decree forbidding any Imperial personnel from straying within ten light years of Gnorghaani territory. The Gnorghaan There is very little mention of the Gnorghaan in Imperium records. Undoubtedly much was destroyed along with many other documents pertaining to the Taninim Crusade, but the shortage of information is still puzzling. Apparently the Gnorghaan were humanoid in appearance, although only around the height of a human child aged seven standard years. They were physically very weak but possessed an innate ability to understand the workings of their heretical technology and could innovate to a degree deemed impossible by members of the Cult Mechanicus. Their armour, laser technology and sonic weapons were far superior to Imperial equivalents. In the Forty-First Millennium the only remaining Gnorghaani technology is in the hands of the Iron Gorgons and the occasional well-equipped Rogue Trader. The initial strikes on the outlying colony worlds of the Gnorghaan were extremely successful. The xenos were unused to such brutal war, having lived at peace with their neighbours for hundreds of years. However they quickly adapted, evacuating outlying settlements to fortified cities and preparing for a lengthy siege. If the Gorgons had developed any feelings of complacency they were swiftly abolished when their forces were met with battalions of heavily armoured tanks armed with multiple laser and sonic weapons easily capable of penetrating power armour. Every victory won by the Gorgons was paid for in Astartes blood. Nevertheless, this was the combat the Gorgons excelled at and they eventually forced the Gnorghaan back to their capital world. By the time the Gorgon fleet arrived in orbit above the world designated as Gnorghaan Alpha the Chapter was barely above half strength. Lesser Chapters would have called for reinforcements or left a blockade fleet in the system whilst they returned to their homeworld to recruit and rearm, but not the Gorgons. They deployed every available warrior and vehicle to the surface of Gnorghaan Alpha to wipe out the xenos once and for all. Several hours after the last Thunderhawk Transporter had landed on the planet the Gorgons lost all contact with their fleet in orbit. At first they dismissed this as atmospherics interfering with the vox signals, or perhaps a Gnorghaani vox-jammer. But as the hours turned into days the Gorgons grew more concerned that something terrible had happened to their fleet. After two weeks with no contact of any kind with their orbiting forces the Gorgons accepted that the fleet had gone and they would have to defeat the Gnorghaans without reinforcement or resupply. By this stage five of the xenos fortified cities had been destroyed, but four more remained and they appeared to be better defended than any previously encountered. The Gorgons had also suffered heavy casualties. Four clans had been completely wiped out and the remainder were all below half strength. The sixth city fell at great cost and by this stage the situation was becoming increasingly desperate. Most of the Gorgons had run out of ammunition and had resorted to slaying their enemies with their bare hands. The remaining vehicles were all badly damaged and also running out of ammunition. At the daily Grand Council Meeting to determine the next stage of the war several of the Techmarines and Iron Fathers of the Chapter ventured the idea of using captured Gnorghaani weaponry against its creators. After all, the code of the Gorgons was that the strong would dominate over the weak. In this case, wasn’t it logical that the strong Gnorghaani technology should triumph over the weak Imperial technology? The Gorgons always strove to purge weakness from their ranks. Why should this not apply to their machines as well as their flesh? After lengthy discussion it was decided to test this principle in the coming assault on the seventh Gnorghaani city. The Deepest Mystery To this day the disappearance of the Iron Gorgons’ fleet is a complete mystery. One theory among Inquisitors who have investigated the Gorgons is that the Gnorghaani possessed some kind of surface-to-space weaponry on their capital planet that they used to destroy the Iron Gorgons fleet, although this raises the question of why they did do so earlier. Another common theory is that one of the many xenos or heretic fleets displaced by the ferocity of the Imperial crusade entered the system and attacked the Gorgons’ fleet whilst it was stuck in low orbit supporting the ground assault. Another theory is that one of the Iron Gorgon librarians, stuck in orbit whilst he recuperated from injuries sustained in a previous battle, suffered a terrible vision of the heresy his brothers were about to commit and somehow persuaded the fleet to abandon them on Gnorghaan Alpha. The only evidence for this theory is a pirate captured by Inquisitorial forces two decades later who claimed to have once been a serf of the Iron Gorgons. The pirate was suffering from a multitude of warp-travel related mental illnesses, and cannot be considered a reliable witness. Although designed for the small and agile hands of the Gnorghaan, the process of adapting it for use by power armoured Space Marines was relatively straight forward for the remaining Techmarines and Iron Fathers. The few vehicles that had been captured intact were more difficult but after stripping away most of the secondary power generators and life support systems it was possible for a single Astartes to operate one without too much trouble. The defenders of the seventh city were taken completely by surprise by the new tactic. The Gnorghaan had obviously never expected their own weapons to be used against them, the armour of their infantry soldiers proving as fallible as Imperial power armour had. Lacking both the superhuman physiologies and grim determination of the Emperor’s finest, the Gnorghaan were completely massacred. The captured vehicles likewise proved very successful, their only failing being a lack of numbers. The Taninim Crusade Lasting from 678.M37 to 714.M37, the ill-fated Taninim Crusade was an attempt by the High Lords of Terra to galvanise the Segmentum Obscurus, reeling from the Occlusiad War, by expanding its borders and removing age-old xenos threats. No less than eleven Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes were dispatched into the Taninim Expanse to cleanse it of xenos and filth. Much of what happened there has been purged from Imperial history, but it is clear that only a few of Chapters returned from the Expanse with their loyalty to the Imperium fully intact. Following such a decisive proof of the superiority of their new strategy, every Gorgon replaced his Imperial-sanctioned weaponry with those of the xenos. As final evidence that their chosen course was correct the last two Gnorghaani cities swiftly capitulated, although again the loss of Astartes life was severe. By this stage only three clans existed in a recognisable state, with two others only made up of half a dozen brothers each. The other five clans had been completely annihilated. Their duty complete, the Gorgons modified a Gnorghaani vox mast to broadcast an extraction request to all Imperial personnel in that area of space. Two months later one of the main crusade fleets, made up of ships from Battlefleet XXX and the YYY and ZZZ Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, broke warp over Gnorghaan Alpha. The Gorgons had expected to be greeted as conquering heroes who had fought a powerful xenos empire single-handedly and triumphed at great cost. Instead they were treated with suspicion for their use of xenos technology and disregard for the decrees of the Mechanicum. Events came to a head when Inquisitor Sophia Vorgrazzi and Magos Hertz called for them to be put on trial for crimes against the Emperor as Omnissiah. Condemned both by their supposed superiors and by one they considered an ally cut the remaining Gorgons to the core. The Grand Council violently resisted arrest by brothers of the ZZZ and then captured a Strike Cruiser, fleeing the system with the last survivors of the Iron Gorgons. Vorgrazzi promptly declared the Chapter renegade and Excommunitus Traitoris. The Forty-First Millennium Following what they saw as their betrayal by the Imperium, the Gorgons became raiders. They roamed the northern edges of the Segmentums Obscurus and Ultima; capturing ships, equipment, raw materials and, most importantly, recruits. Over time the three surviving clans grew large enough to once again operate autonomously, although the Chapter will still gather as one to attack a large target of opportunity. The Gorgons still consider themselves loyal to the Emperor and maintain a deep hatred of Chaos, regularly attacking Chaos Space Marine warbands when they come across them. However, they despise most of the Imperium as too weak and foolish to accept that it is not the source of technology that is important but its usage. They hope that if they can gather enough strength they can launch an attack on the Sol System to prove the superiority of their augmented Gnorghaani weaponry over that of Mars and persuade the Mechanicum to allow true innovation and adaptation of xenos technologies Organisation Like their Iron Hand progenitors, the Iron Gorgons were originally made up of ten autonomous clans. Each recruited from a specific group of Sarkoshi tribes and had their own unique traditions and history. Representatives from each clan made up the Great Chapter Council to coordinate campaigns including more than one clan and to arbitrate in inter-clan disputes. After the Taninim Crusade only three clans were left in a recognisable state and the survivors of the conflict reorganised accordingly. At first the clans did not possess the numbers to operate autonomously as they once had, but as the Gorgons rebuilt and recruited they once again separated to roam the Imperium independently. The Great Clan Council now only meets occasionally (and usually through a psychic intermediary rather than face-to-face) to coordinate large attacks consisting of two or three clans. Originally each of the ten clans consisted of around one hundred battle-brothers, in keeping with the proscribed Chapter size of one thousand line-troops. Since their betrayal the Gorgons no longer saw the need to be bound in such a way. As such there is no longer an upper limit to size a clan may reach, although levels of recruitment and casualties conspire to ensure that a clan will very rarely number more than two hundred, meaning that the Chapter as a whole is made up of approximately six hundred line-troops at any given time. Combat Doctrine The Iron Gorgons always had a reputation for being siege breakers, and that tradition has carried on since the Taninim Crusade. Many of the finest fortresses in the northern Imperium have fallen prey to the implacable might of the Gorgons and their powerful xenos-augmented weaponry. The Techmarines and Iron Fathers of the Gorgons have continued to innovate and reverse engineer alien technology to render the Chapter’s weapons utterly devastating and their armour nigh indestructible. Beliefs The Gorgons believe that for humanity to survive in this cruel universe they must continually strengthen and better themselves. Where flesh is weak, it must be replaced with machinery. When machinery is weak, it must be replaced with stronger machinery. They do not see xenos technology as heretical, they see xenos as heretical. If they can slay a xenos then they have earned the right to use that xenos’ technology in order to improve themselves. The only alternative is stagnation and death. The Gorgons hope that eventually they will be strong and numerous enough to strike deep into the Sol System, overcoming the formidable defences of Terra itself and proving to the High Lords and the Mechanicum that the way of the Gorgons is the only way that will raise mankind out of the dark ages and into the light of progress and true galactic supremacy under the watchful gaze of the Emperor Himself. On Sarkosh there existed a legend brought from ancient Terra itself. This legend was of the Gorgon, a mythical monster that could kill a man with a single glance. Over time this belief spread throughout the Chapter, and many Astartes started to believe that the Gorgon was the pinnacle of the Emperor’s ambition for his Space Marines. When they could slay their enemies just by looking at them, then they would know that they had achieved perfection. It became tradition that when a neophyte became a full Astartes he would have his weak eyes replaced with infallible augmetics. As he progressed through the ranks the augmetics would be upgraded to incorporate lasers to strike at his opponents. However, the Techmarines of the Chapter struggled to produce power generators small and powerful enough to actually kill an opponent. The best they could manage was to cause enough pain to distract an enemy and leave him vulnerable to the fatal blow of a chainsword or combat knife. However, when the Chapter began incorporating Gnorghaani laser technology into their weapons they realised that their quest was at an end. One of the many superior qualities of Gnorghaani laser technology is its compact efficiency. Finally the Gorgons could achieve what they saw as perfection, the replacement of their frail flesh eyes with an augmetic that functioned much better as an optical device and could also kill a man just by looking at him. Their eye lasers are much shorter range than hand-held equivalents, but they ensure that when the Gorgons reach close combat they are almost unbeatable. Homeworld Sarkosh was a planet of craggy mountains and deep, jungle-filled valleys. The native tribes made their living hunting the various creatures that lived on Sarkosh, such as the huge bird-like batrosz that rode the thermals above the mountains and only descended to lay their eggs, and the cunning chameleowolves that could change their skin colour to blend into any surrounding. The tribes also delved into the deep caverns under the mountains to gather valuable gemstones for the tribute barques that landed on the few grassy plains every eight years. Life on Sarkosh was tough and bred strong, determined and uncomplaining young men as recruits for the Gorgons. With Sarkosh now an airless rock, the mountains fused into radioactive glass, the Gorgons are forced to recruit from the Imperial worlds they attack. When the Gorgons win a victory they put all the human opponents they capture to work as slaves aboard their forge-ships. Only the strongest slaves survive more than a few months, and those that do are forced to fight one another in single combat. The victors become the equivalent of Chapter serfs, serving a single Astartes and attending to his every need. Those few that are still young enough for geneseed implantation are given the opportunity to become Astartes themselves. The Gorgons also defend Imperial worlds from the forces of Chaos, whom the Chapter still despises despite its betrayal by the Imperium, or xenos. Normally, however, the Gorgons will only defend worlds it sees as strong and uncorrupted – usually backwards planets of the death world, feral world or feudal world categories. After the enemy is defeated the Gorgons will organise tournaments for the young men of the planet and the victors become neophytes. Geneseed The descendents of Ferrus Manus despise the weakness of flesh and praise the strength of the machine. Some see this as a fundamental flaw of the geneseed, although the Inquisition and the Mechanicus both regard it as pure. The same cannot be said for the geneseed of the Iron Gorgons. Although tithes before the Taninim Crusade are free of mutation, on the rare occasions since then that the Mechanicus has been able to retrieve samples of Gorgon geneseed they have been alarmed by the level of deviancy from what is deemed acceptable in loyalist Chapters. Most Magos who study the geneseed have reached the conclusion that the Gorgons have carried out experimentation on their own lifeblood to ‘improve’ it. Whilst the Mechanicum cannot examine what effect the experimentation has had without carry out live geneseed implantation – something it is unwilling to countenance – the implications for the Imperium cannot be good. Battle-cry Each clan has several unique battle cries linked to its history, but a common battle-cry across the entire Chapter is “Vengeance for Sarkosh!”