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Greeting I have been building/Painting up my allied Renegade Iron Hands and Dark Mechanicus Forces and have had some ideas for their fluff rolling around in my head for a while and I want to put them down somewhere and get some idea of how well it all looks and get some answers to some open questions I have.

My Homebrew Chapter, The Rust, got it's start in the HH during the drop site massacre on Istvaan V. A few Iron Hands from the surface managed to make a retreat to one of their strike cruisers and from their make a costly but ultimately successful run of the blockade. From their, beaten, broken, wounded, and not having a clear idea what was going on they headed to someone they thought they could trust to heal and rearm; a AdMechanicus forge world.

Upon Landing they found their AdMech hosts gracious enough hosts but were unable to make contact with other parts of their legion or the imperium due to "warp storms." Little did they know that the Forgeworld they had landed on was part of the Dark Mechanicus aligned to Kelbor-Hal. Confused, Betrayed, and Angry(as much at the Salamander+Ravenguard for not assaulting and the Ultras+DA+BA+SW+IF+WS for not bothering to show up as with the traitors) they were content to heal, add bionics and rearm until the "warp storms" that were blocking their communications went away.
The Magos of the Forgeworld was devoted to the dark cause, clearly annoyed at the Emperor impersonating the Omnissiah to use the AdMech's materials and production without thanks. The Magos let the IH live and heal in the hopes of turning them to the pursuit of true knowledge and the true machine god, out of friendship to the IH, and to keep up the appearances of being loyal so as to not attract attention from the Ultramarines. The magos however would not let the IH leave, keeping their warp drive in a permanent state of malfunction and preventing them using communications offworld. While helping to repair the IH weapons, vehicles and ships the Dark Mechanicus slowly introduced heretek to the IH slowly showing them the power of knowledge without bounds.

After the Battle of Calth, retreating Word Bearer came to the Forge world to repair their ships and rearm as they fled Ultramarine pursuit. Discovering that the Dark forgeworld was harboring Iron Hands, at first they were prepared to bombard the IH and destroy the last survivors. After talking to the forgeworld's magos, the WB instead forcing the IH to kneel and prosthelytizing them into renouncing their faith in the Emperor and then trying to get them to openly worship chaos; however, the IH love of the cult of the machine god and their presence on a dark forge world meant that the IH would not openly worship the ruinous powers but would instead continue to worship knowledge and the machine god with Chaos only being a means to that pursuit of knowledge. The WB reluctantly accepted the IH conversion, not as true as they would have liked but enough to save them from the sword. They then left to join up with the rest of the WB legion.

After this the IH became the Rust, helping the dark forge world defend itself and launch fleets into distant sectors of the galaxy to recover artifacts of the dark ages of technology. The Rust and the Dark Mech work together to mask their system from the IoM. While using heretek and worshiping Chaos through the worship of true knowledge and the machine god they are traitors they appear normal enough to the casual IoM forces but need to hide, sabotage or kill Inquisitors and other AdMech forces who are knowledgeable enough to know them for what they are.

The forgeworld does give municions and material to other forces of chaos, mainly the Alpha Legion and various traitor guard elements that exist in the area but most of it's output goes to maintaining Explorator fleets and defending itself from Xenos and elements of the IoM that have discovered their true colors.

The Rust have a slightly mutated geneseed(IH) as they do not openly worship chaos, that is still capable of creating new marines.

In order to have remained in control of their system and not have a crusade launched against them how far into the segmentum Ultima or the Eastern Fringes would they need to be?

I would love to be your polar opposite on the eastern fringe you would either be directly north or south of the tau empire I think.

Drakka77 wrote:
I would love to be your polar opposite on the eastern fringe you would either be directly north or south of the tau empire I think.

Polar Opposite?
Loyal Iron Warriors?


I was thinking North of the Tau empire, as far West in Segmintum Ultima as I could manage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I really like the image of the Dark Apostle, so I want my Iron Fathers to be the prosthelytizing type marching into battle with, in addition to their servo arms and bionic extra bits, huge megaphones blaring secrets of universal truth "technology is divine, the emperor is a pretender, knowledge unbounded is the only way, etc" Something gained by their exposer to the word bearers.

I figure contact with the Alpha Legion would allow them to help mask the Dark Mechanicus's forgeworld from imperial records. If someone does find out they are out of line, dabbling in heretek and worshiping chaos through the machine god then the Alpha Legion could be paid(with arms and munitions) to kill those who know, infiltrate and destroy records, or discredit those who are making said claims.

Mine are 13th founding chapter working north of the tau. Mine are a forge world based army that works closely with mechanicus, IG, sisters, and other imperium forces for exploration and conquest. Haven't thought about loyal iron warriors though.

Drakka77 wrote:
Mine are 13th founding chapter working north of the tau. Mine are a forge world based army that works closely with mechanicus, IG, sisters, and other imperium forces for exploration and conquest. Haven't thought about loyal iron warriors though.

I see, cool. Conquest isnt in my MO and there isnt much to conquer if you are working not for the imperium unless things change. The tau for instance probably know that they can't conquer IoM planets lest they attract unwanted levels of attention.

I really hate the daemonic/warp nature of chaos, hence my wanting to be based far away from the eye of terror. I much more like the idea of the rotting administration of the IoM where entire planets can get lost in antiquated byzantine paperwork for 1000s of years.

I really dont think there are any loyal IW, and if there are, I bet the IF would go out of their way to battle them anyway.

I see and I was just thinking a few small scale skirmishes since I have some iron hands background as well.

Drakka77 wrote:
I see and I was just thinking a few small scale skirmishes since I have some iron hands background as well.

we will have to get them together once my epic winter painting session is complete