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This article, Iron Gaze, was written by Arxane Angel. This is an Expanded Universe article. The lore expands upon established canon, but does not contradict it. |
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This article, Iron Gaze, is currently under active construction. The author, Arxane Angel, apologizes for the inconvenience. |
The Iron Gaze are a Loyalist Successor Chapter created from the genetic lineage of the stoic and unforgiving Iron Hands. Created during the 26Th Founding they quickly garnered a reputation for use of extensive cybernetic augments, shock-and-awe tactics and the use of peculiar specialist known as a 'Sin-eater' which has replaced the standard Codex Librarian. The Chapter specializes in fighting Orks and more recently enemy psykers, and are known for deploying en mass in a full company or even multiple companies in strength.
Chapter History
Clan Vurgaan
War on Nazareth
Nazareth was a thriving forge world located in the Anatolex Sector in the galactic southeast on the borders of Segmentum Ultima, colonized by humans during the final days of the Great Crusade before the Horus Heresy. During the Heresy, the planet managed to avoid the majority of the conflict by virtue of being somewhat distant from main Imperial population hubs such as Ultramar. Because of this, the facilities on Nazareth were among the first to continue producing their technological marvels at full capacity after the Heresy and were able to continue for the next several millennia.
During the Nova Terra Interregnum in M34 and M35, Nazareth became a sort of a safe haven for the more liberal-minded tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. This led to a particularly high concentration of high-ranking officers of the Mechanicus and an uncommonly high level of tolerance when it came to experimenting with xenos-tech. While the Mechanicus wasn't satisfied with such borderline heretical tendencies, Nazareth remained an industrial powerhouse of the region and its officers commanded enough political power to prevent any open hostilities. Nonetheless, experiments were conducted as discreetly as possible, and since the allegiance of the local human population was unquestionably in favour of the Imperium and the Emperor, the practices were allowed to continue. They were even known to trade with a nearby Tau colony.
During the year 866.M39, a sudden Warp Storm shrouded the entire sector, cutting off all travel and communications. Not allowing this nuisance to get in the way of industrial output, Archmagos Intendant Amenhal, the senior-ranking Mechanicus present and one of the co-rulers of Nazareth, immediately put millennia of xenos-tech experiments to use. The focus was on establishing a transport line to the nearest agri-world of Galil, which they managed with Warp-resistant ships outfitted with Tau technology.
With the steady stream of basic life necessities restored, the tech-priests of Nazareth went back to their experiments. As centuries went by, the abundant resources of Nazareth started to run out, forcing the workers to dig deeper and deeper into the planet's crust. Somewhere around the year 139.M40, the workers broke into a vast underground cavern complex filled with pyramidal structures and highly advanced technology. It didn’t take long for tech-priests to identify this as Necron technology and realized that Nazareth was, in actuality, a Tomb World all along, although these Necron complexes were somewhat deeper than usual. Before a proper response could be formulated by the planetary government, the complex started to come to life and a small number of Necrons attacked the explorers.
Thankfully for the Imperials, the warp storm surrounding the sector somehow interfered with the awakening protocol of the Necrons, slowing it immensely. This allowed the defenders to stand firmly against the small Necron vanguard and heavily fortify their path to the surface before the Necrons could reach it and lay devastation to the civilian population.
The standoff continued for months, with Necrons slowly awakening but being kept at bay by the advanced hybrid technology of the defenders. Furthermore, the tech-priests jumped at the chance to examine the reality-bending technology of the Necrons, and even to reverse-engineer it, bit by bit. At one point, the Necron Lord of Nazareth himself awoke and immediately put their secret weapon to use: the very same pyramidal structures the first expedition found months earlier. The structures were a previously unseen Necron weapon - mobile fortresses designed to drill deep into the crust of the planet and turn it into a Tomb World in no time. Unfortunately for the human defenders, just as they were able to drill down, the pyramids were able to drill up. Massive earthquakes started to shake the very foundations of the industrial cities of Nazareth. Within hours, the first of hundreds of pyramids started to break through the surface, bypassing Imperial fortifications, instantly destroying their surroundings, and letting hundreds of Necrons out.
Tens of millions of humans died within days, even with the valiant defence raised by the Planetary Defense Force and Mechanicus priests. The battle continued to rage for years, with the majority of the population evacuating to orbital stations and leaving the surface to Necron forces. Soon, Nazareth's tectonic plates, already heavily damaged by the Necron pyramids and further destabilized by constant orbital bombardments by the defenders, started to break, creating vast chasms the size of oceans with dozens of levels of cavern complexes. During the conflict, neither side managed to keep any kind of territory for long. The Imperials were unable to push back Necrons due to their slowly awakening but constantly streaming in reinforcements. Still, the Necrons were unable to break past the orbital line of the defence the humans quickly set up.
After almost a century of fighting, constant advances in hybrid technology and cybernetic augments, the humans managed to produce start to thin out the Necron forces. Slowly but surely, humans pushed the robotic menace back. But Necrons were never ones to lay down in defeat. It is said that as the defenders pushed against them, led by Archmagos Intendant Amenhal himself, the Necrons pulled together their last forces and the energies of the Necron Lord became a conduit for their last resort weapon: an incredibly powerful fiery pulse that propagated itself across the whole planet, breaching into orbit and burning the majority of atmosphere, destroying both Necrons and humans alike.
Two groups of humans survived: the civilians aboard ships that were mobile enough to escape the blast and several detachments of surface-bound defenders that were armoured and/or augmented enough to survive the pulse long enough to find shelter in the underground caverns.
Reclaiming Nazareth
In the year 712.M41, the warp storm that surrounded the Anatolex Sector for almost two thousand years finally dissipated. The news of re-established communications with the once-prosperous sector spread quickly. Extensive scanning performed by tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Navigators of the Navis Nobilite showed that the warp storm changed warp currents, rendering their old charts obsolete.
Furthermore, the scans showed a new, stable path straight into (and out of) the powerful Orkish kingdom of Charadon, a previously unassailable fortress packed with Snagrod the Arch-Arsonist's WAAAGH!. Unfortunately, the Orks caught the smell of fresh territories ripe for plunder and had already begun raiding nearby Imperial worlds in the sector.
The High Lords of Terra jumped at the chance to finally strike at the Orks before they launched another invasion; for this purpose, a decision was made to send forth a Space Marine Chapter to bring the fight to the pesky greenskins. The decision fell to Clan Vurgaan of the Iron Hands Chapter. The Iron Hands made their preparations with the utmost haste, and within a year they were already fighting the Orks in the Anatolex Sector.
During the year 721.M41, a Clan Company led by the Iron Father Hannibal Kinthir, an accomplished veteran of the First War for Armageddon, arrived in the orbit of Nazareth. What they found was the most peculiar planet they had ever seen: sporadic continents separated by vast chasms, dotted with dozens and hundreds of pyramidal structures and covered with shifting spots of atmosphere. Scans indicated that the native human population were locked in conflict with a group of Orks who were performing extensive salvaging on the planet and the wreckage of massive orbital stations.
The Iron Hands didn’t waste any time, immediately making planetfall on Nazareth. While not numerically strong, the Orks proved to be solid foes, fighting with uncommon zeal and employing some unusual weaponry. But the Orks were dealing with more than one front; they were sustaining heavy losses by what appeared to be cybernetically augmented but incredibly feral humans, the native descendants of Nazareth colonists. Kinthir decided that the Orks needed to be dealt as soon as possible in order to protect the already sparse native population from extinction. The infestation was soon wiped, and victors soon turned to searching for the source of the strange weaponry the Orks used, as well as establishing contact with the techno-barbaric tribes of Nazarethians.
The source of the weapons turned out to be the strange pyramids that dotted the landscape. A decision was made to salvage as much of technology as possible for research and data gathering, and defer any further decision-making on future of the natives and the painfully obvious xenos-tech being used.
But before the plan could be accomplished, another massive battlegroup of Orks arrived in the orbit of Nazareth, finished with plundering the Galil. The group was led by the Arch-Arsonist himself, summoned by the now-dead Orks to Nazareth for its strange technology.
Kinthir refused to leave Nazarethians to their fate and or let the technology fall into a powerful Warboss' hands. A fierce battle ensued, lasting for days, with Iron Hands fighting stubbornly and relentlessly. It is said that after a week of fighting, Iron Father Kinthir engaged the Arch-Arsonist in a duel that lasted whole night and out of which they both came heavily wounded. Before the duel could conclude, Iron Hands reinforcements arrived, forcing the massive Ork to flee. However, Kinthir was heavily wounded. As he lay there with Apothecaries swarming over him to save their courageous Iron Father, a vision of a single glaring eye floating over a golden throne came upon him. What Kinthir heard in his vision, no one knows, but after the ordeal, he was known to often say his famous phrase: “The Emperor Watches”.
By the time Kinthir recuperated from his wounds, a decision was made by the High Lords of Terra that a new crusading chapter of Space Marines would be created to protect the Anatolex sector, coinciding with the 26th Founding. For his valor, Kinthir was named a Chapter Master of the new chapter, the Iron Gaze. He requested for Nazareth to be awarded to them as their Homeworld, much to the confusion of the High Lords and Iron Hands; why anyone would want a planet in such a sorry state? But Kinthir had a quest.
He forwent his old name, taking upon himself the title of Son of Nazareth, and led his chapter to their new home.
Over the course of years, Nazareth went through major rebuilding. Orbital stations and sensor arrays were repaired, damaged tectonic plates stabilized with use of custom-ordered terraforming machinery, and a massive fortress was built to serve as the Fortress-Monastery for the Iron Gaze chapter. The Chapter Master decided that they would recruit candidates from the barbaric tribes of Nazareth; quite fitting for the chapter, as they took the usual Iron Hands devotion for cybernetic augmentation even further. It turned out that while the Nazarethians had degraded both socially and technologically over the course of centuries, the knowledge of implementing cybernetic augmentation was kept safe and passed down the generations by tribal Tech-shamans. Because they lacked the knowledge to create new pieces of the technology, such items were deemed sacred, often passed from father to son within family, or simply extracted from their fallen foes, which was also the most common cause of inter-tribal wars.
And just as Nazareth grew, so did the chapter's knowledge and understanding of past events on the peculiar planet. Many dataslates were found throughout the devastated cities and stations from various civilians, soldiers and tech-priests, telling their experiences of life and war on Nazareth. But no technological trove, no data slate was more valuable than the one found on one of the orbital stations, the one belonging to Archmagos Intendant Amenhal himself. Within it, the Iron Gaze found detailed events that transpired over centuries, the info and schematics of wide variety of experimental hybrid xenos-tech and even the personal notes and musings of the eccentric Archmagos. With borderline heretical zeal, the Iron Gaze started reproducing these experiments, adding layer upon layer of cybernetic augments to themselves. Some of the tech-priests in their retinue were fascinated with findings, while some were outraged with heretical tech and reported these events to the Mechanicus, which responded with the demand that Nazareth be subjected to Exterminatus. After the Iron Gaze refused the demand, the Mechanicus, not having enough evidence to proclaim the marines traitors, simply pulled their support from the chapter. Nonetheless, plenty of Marines and tech-priests remained, allowing them to rebuild ancient factories on Nazareth and allowing them to simply provide for themselves.
The technology that was produced in the decades that followed was simply amazing. The Iron Gaze swept away the Ork threat with ease during the time, further cementing their position and protecting them against Mechanicus's queries about their so-called heretical practices.
Notable Campaigns
Chapter Homeworld
Fortress-Monastery
Chapter Organisation
Officer Ranks
Specialist Ranks
- The Sin-eaters of the Iron Gaze - In the decades following their founding and settling the planet of Nazareth, the Iron Gaze continued their research on the trove of dataslates they found.
Around year 750.M41, a data-slate containing the research of a certain Magos Biologis was found; the research was focused on gene manipulation in order to give humans natural Warp, and therefore corruption, resistance.
Intrigued by the research, the Iron Gaze sought to alter their own gene-seed with what they found. It seemed like they succeeded, giving their new recruits low-level Warp resistance but at the cost of suppressing psyker abilities completely and deteriorating control of the Omophagea, making them somewhat more bloodthirsty. At first, at least.
As they soon found out, recruits carrying the Blank gene, even if recessive, started exhibiting some very strange abilities. First of all, after implantation of the gene-seed, recessives' Blank gene became active, making them incredibly powerful Blanks, able to control their auras. Furthermore, their Omophagea became even more stimulated, making them feel a bloodthirst and desire for enemy flesh more keenly than their brothers. A positive side efficacy of this mutation is that they can consume enemy brains and gain extremely detailed knowledge about their victim's life.
While Blanks are extremely rare, people carrying the gene recessively turned out to be a little less so. The Iron Gaze very soon had several dozen such individuals within their chapter. This prompted the creation of a special rank that replaced the now-extinct Librarians: the Sin-eaters. Due to their importance, the Sin-eaters are the only members of the chapter that get to wear otherwise rare Terminator armour.
Line Ranks
Specialist Units & Formations
Order of Battle
Headquarters
Companies
Chapter Beliefs
Gene-Seed
Genetic Flaws
Combat Doctrine
The Iron Gaze are firm believers in the effects of fear, making terror the focus of their tactics. Furthermore, they jealously guard their gear and technology, including the augments of their fallen, so they aim to prevent any death or loss whenever possible. This leads to them sticking to the old Imperial saying “no kill like overkill”; they tend to attack in full chapter force, and rarely pull their punches, instead deploying the entirety of their vast armoury.
The usual offensive effort of the Iron Gaze starts with a squad led by Sin-eaters and accompanied by several Iron Gaze members of varying ranks infiltrating deep within enemy lines. Their job is to scout enemy positions, figure out how they are organized and identify key targets. When what they deem is the most knowledgeable officer as far as enemy organization goes is found, they proceed with a precision strike so the Sin-eaters can consume the target and instantly acquire intimate details about enemy forces; the half-eaten target is then left where it can instil as much fear as possible. The squad then pulls out from the zone, delivering the information to the Commander at hand.
When the actual attack starts, the first strike consists of spacecraft performing relentless orbital bombardment to soften up the enemy lines. What follows are deep-striking custom-made Hades Breaching Drills, breaking enemy formations and allowing the Iron Gaze Astartes to strike quickly. Finally, in comes the main force, led by the Iron Gaze Centurion Warsuits, of which the chapter possesses enormous amounts.
While the battle rages, Sin-eater squads re-infiltrate enemy lines, searching for enemy commanders to “extract” information from and preventing enemy reorganization after the initial shock of such attack. Survivors, if there are any, are usually left heavily traumatized.
Deathwatch Service
Notable Space Marines
Chapter Fleet
Chapter Relics
Chapter Appearance
Chapter Colours
Chapter Badge
Relations
Allies
Enemies
Notable Quotes
By the Iron Gaze
About the Iron Gaze
| Twenty Sixth Founding Space Marine Chapters | |
|---|---|
| Dark Angels Successors | Sable Pride • |
| White Scars Successors | Jade Knives • Maroon Hunters • |
| Space Wolves Successors | N/A |
| Imperial Fists Successors | Gray Hussars • Knights of Thunder • Mourning Wardens • |
| Blood Angels Successors | Knights of the Throne • Storm Angels • |
| Iron Hands Successors | †Iron Gaze • Sons of Iron • |
| Ultramarines Successors | Aasvogels • Blood Reavers • Crystal Skulls • Exercitus Imperialis • Novadracones • Sworn of Guilliman • |
| Salamanders Successors | Thunder Ogres • |
| Raven Guard Successors | Dusk Vultures • |
| Unknown Lineage | Angels of Eternity • Omega Knights • |
| Renegades | • |
Gallery