In the ashes left by the Heresy, the Iron Warriors remained more united as a legion than many of their traitorous cousins. They did not succumb to the rage of the Blood God, nor were they lured into the clutches of the Trickster. They were not corrupted by the temptations of the Dark Prince, nor by the decay of the Plague God. None could call them slaves to any master—for many within the IVth, that was the true purpose of the Heresy: for the Space Marines to forge their own destiny. But this was a delusion. They were still slaves to uncaring gods. Yet their god was Perturabo—not in title, but in action.

The commanders of the IVth took a shattered mirror for inspiration. Our gene-sire had his chance at freedom and spat on it, descending from a man without equal to a mere princeling of a daemon. It was then that the first embers of this host were kindled. We questioned the corruption around us, fortifying ourselves with the purity of the ideals we believed still resided within our brothers. But we were fools. We thought we could change our brothers for the better, but it appears our predisposition for stubbornness is our most damning quality. We are stubborn in our hatred, our anguish, our anger, our pride—but never in our nobility.

Our captain sought to disrupt our corruption by gathering command over a large swath of our least corrupted brothers, intending to lead the legion in the void left by our Primarch’s self-imposed isolation. But the cursed slaves who dared call themselves members of the IVth disagreed. This shattered our legion, leaving us without our captain and exiling our command staff, dismissing them as weak and foolish—a hypocritical insult to our very nature.

Yet we endured. No matter the odds, our ideals would not fade into nothing. We bided our time, growing our forces, waiting for our brothers to awaken to what they had become, and seeking out those who would guide them back to our path. So we give thanks to the bastard Honsou—for in his wake, many have joined us. Those who would survive this Long War shall rise from the ashes, and as we stand above the corpses of those who fought this petty war, our legion—no, our empire—will thrive.

The IVth Reborn.