The Iron Fathers

[Iron Father Sardan Kronos]

Was wondering, if there are around 41 iron fathers (according to Eye of Medusa) How many does each clan have? The books i have read make it seem like there’s only one per clan. Like Kristos, Morvox, Atticus and so on. If that is the case, what do all the other iron fathers do?

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Beats me.  I ignore a lot of the new lore because I'm old & stubborn, and having a council with just one member from each clan makes more sense to me than this shenanigans that Guymer invented.

[Morovir]

I think there's no fixed number of Iron Fathers per clan, other than for Garrsak, which the 8e codex supplement states always only has one Iron Father. We know that Borrgos has at least two according to Eye of Medusa, as Captain Raan represents Iron Fathers Silvus and Breeka in the Eye. We know that some clan companies, but not all, are directly commanded by their Iron Father in lieu of an Iron Captain (such as Vurgaan), which indicates that there is no obligation for the Iron Fathers to lead the company that they are a part of, and that from Kardan Stronos' promotion to Iron Father at the end of Eye of Medusa whilst still a sergeant, Iron Fathers do not have to be captains before they become Iron Father's, which suggests that there could be an innate hierarchy of Iron Fathers within a clan depending on their seniority from before they were Iron Fathers. From the council scene in Eye of Medusa, there were 26 of the 41 present on Medusa, which shows that 15 Iron Fathers were off-world at the time and that a number of the Iron Fathers are Dreadnoughts. From this information, I would theorise that the Iron Fathers have a relatively free range to do what they want - some lead their companies, I'd presume a fair number of the Dreadnoughts spend most of the time sleeping, and in the cases where there is a single Iron Father in command of a company, I would presume that the other Iron Fathers of that clan just do their own thing - as they are all trained Techmarines, I would guess that they just have their own projects that they work on, functioning just like regular Techmarines with a slightly more spiritual/advisory capacity, or they could command elements of the clan when it is divided, or some could be permanent representatives of the Clan on Medusa, or they could even just prefer to spend time on the clan's Land Leviathan and attend to its needs. This is why I actually prefer the 41-member clan council to the old one with just one representative per clan - it makes things much more interesting.

[WARMASTER_]

On 3/4/2023 at 7:08 PM, Iron Father Ferrum said:

Beats me.  I ignore a lot of the new lore because I'm old & stubborn, and having a council with just one member from each clan makes more sense to me than this shenanigans that Guymer invented.

Just as a note, Guymer didn’t actually come up with really any of the newer lore in is IH novels, it’s all taken from the 6th Clan Raukaan supplement, after GW released the supplement and messed up the Clan culture to more align with a codex chapter he did well making it work [mostly]

I actually think Guymer did a great job portraying the Iron Hands and just how messed up they’ve become! Highlighting just how deranged, detached, Slavishly dogmatic [Yet somehow almost always in opposition to each] and completely and utterly merciless they aren’t They feel VERY 40k! Almost the most 40k chapter I’ve read and I loved it!