It’s the ultimate story of betrayal, but in the Age of Darkness it was just one of many. Did Ferrus Manus really have to die?
Via our friends at Lexicanum
Ferrus was stolen away by the forces of Chaos just as his brothers, and spent his first years on the planet Medusa. As a youth he discovered an “X” mark on the pod that first brought him to this world and that the chamber was too precise to be a natural formation. Exploring further, he discovered runes and electro-conductive stalagmites all around the chamber. His inspections awakened an imprisoned colossal biomechanical worm-like creature, which attacked him and escaped, ignoring his attacks. He followed its path of destruction and swore he would destroy the beast he had unwittingly released. When he reached the surface, he saw other men in the distance but wouldn’t reveal himself to them, keeping his recent oath in mind.
Years later, Ferrus walked unscathed and fully formed from the mountains where he encountered the roaming clans and tribes of Medusa. Ferrus would not join these tribes, as many of his brothers did. Instead, he sought out physical challenges to make himself stronger and more resilient. These tests ended with his battle against the Great Silver Wyrm Asirnoth, a metallic beast impervious to harm; Ferrus had to drown it in magma to kill it. The melted flesh of the wyrm fused to Ferrus’s flesh, giving him the true metal hands his Legion would take its name from. Ferrus returned to the tribes and lectured them on technology. The clans advanced at a stunning pace and Medusa prospered, but Ferrus took care to leave the inter-clan rivalry and fighting by never taking sides, as he saw the competition between them as healthy and good.
The Emperor eventually came to Medusa and Ferrus Manus tested himself on him in a cataclysmic battle that is said to have lain waste to entire mountains. Finally having found someone equal, Ferrus accepted the Emperor as his master and took command of a legion of Space Marines.
Thousands of planets would fall to the remorseless Iron Hands under Ferrus’s leadership. Each weak link in humanity was to be purged if mankind was to grow stronger. Scholars spoke of the wave of piety and faith that spread before the Iron Hands, with many planets suddenly motivated to look into themselves when they heard that the Iron Hands were approaching. During the Great Crusade the Iron Hands battled the Human Diasporex alongside the Emperor’s Children. This was symbolic of the bond shared by Ferrus Manus and the Emperor’s Children Primarch Fulgrim, who were close friends. However during the Conquest of One-Five-Four Four he received visions from the Eldar alluding to his eventual demise at Fulgrim’s hands. Distrustful of the Xenos, Ferrus rejected the prophecy.
Ferrus was one of the four primarchs privately referred to by Roboute Guilliman as “the Dauntless Few“, the four of his brothers who most exemplified their father’s design and whose Legions reflected their best qualities (the others being Rogal Dorn, Sanguinius, and Leman Russ)
Once swayed himself to the side of the Warmaster, Fulgrim approached Ferrus Manus before the heresy and tried to lure him to join Chaos. Ferrus Manus was so enraged at this proposal that he attacked Fulgrim. A short duel took place, where Ferrus destroyed Fulgrim’s sword Fireblade, the same weapon Ferrus had given to him many years before. Fulgrim escaped after rendering Ferrus unconscious, leaving him alive but taking with him the massive Thunder Hammer Forgebreaker he himself had crafted for his brother.
The Iron Hands was one of the loyal legions the Emperor called to Isstvan V. Given the large distance, Ferrus Manus took the Legion’s fastest ships and departed only with his veterans. Most of them died in this battle, when following the loss of their primarch they were struck down by the traitor legions, caught between the hammer of the Emperor’s Children and upon the Anvil of the four support legions of the second wave.
Fulgrim personally killed Ferrus during the battle at Isstvan V, using the daemon weapon he acquired fighting the Laer to strike his head from his shoulders in one fell swoop. Fulgrim, distraught with grief that his closest brother was dead by his own hand, was soon thereafter possessed by the daemon within the sword. The possessed Fulgrim then delivered Ferrus’s head to Horus.
When Guilliman heard reports that Ferrus had fallen, along with Vulkan and Corax, he lamented that, of the three, he would miss Ferrus most of all.
Later during the Heresy as Horus fell deeper and deeper into Chaos and his mental state perhaps began to deteriorate, he took the skull of Ferrus Manus, mounted it on his throne, and began to increasingly speak to it. During their one-sided conversations, Horus lamented that he only had bloody-handed tyrants, mass murderers, and daemons for his generals instead of strategists and men of duty like Ferrus.
Ten thousand years later, a daemonette of Slaanesh taunted Iron Hands Sergeant Naim Morvox on Shardenus, claiming that it had seen Manus’s head, and “it is still screaming”.
