“Remember the betrayal, brother. You were there. Have you forgotten so easily the treachery, the original sin? The long war endures, do not lose sight of it!

The false Imperium is besieged on all sides. The time to storm the breach is coming. Remember the old ways and stand with us once more as we strike the death blow and watch our enemies’ blood flow throughout the galaxy.”

Praetor-elect Haman to Kharnadon the Ancient prior to sealing a pact with the Blooded Knife warband.

ORGANISATION

The Shadow Tyrants are a splinter group of Iron Warrior Astartes who did not flee into the Eye of Terror after the siege of Terra. A disdain for the daemonic and possessed elements within the armies of Horus drove them to make a dangerous escape away from Terra into the galaxy at large instead of towards the warp-tainted realm of the Eye of Terror. Disillusioned with Perturabo and his personal grudge with Rogal Dorn, the splinter group did not rejoin the vast bulk of their Legion defending the Empire of Iron or constructing the Eternal Fortress following the withdrawal from Terra. The Shadow Tyrants refused to be distracted from what they believed was the core goal of Horus’ war: the defeat of the Emperor’s loyalists and the remaking of his empire with the Astartes preeminent above all. With this goal constantly in mind, they vowed to lay siege to the Imperium across centuries and millennia until they succeeded.

While few in number, the Legionnaires who formed the Shadow Tyrants were accompanied by many elements of the non-Astartes forces who fought for them during the siege of Terra. These forces quickly became known as the Exercitus Ferrum by the Legionnaires, refusing to speak what they saw as the “common tongue” of low gothic. The organisation of the Exercitus Ferrum has remained broadly consistent across the ten thousand years since the siege of Terra. The post-heresy separation of administrative, military and naval organisations within the Imperium has not been mirrored by the Exercitus Ferrum. The forces of the Exercitus Ferrum which operate in each warzone are treated like a crusade-era expeditionary fleet. All support elements for a campaign are contained within one organisation, subservient to any Legionnaires Astartes who may be present in the warzone.

The organisation of the Exercitus Ferrum allows independent operations to be carried out across distant and disparate warzones. Similar to crusade-era formations, all components of the Exercitus Ferrum are made available to the Lord Militant of a specific warzone. The Armada Ferrum provides interstellar and in-system transport and naval warfare capabilities, the Auxilia Ferrum provides surface and void-based combat troops, while the Corps Logisticae coordinates the provision of materiel and manpower to the warzone. Dedicated Tithe Corps detachments also provide fresh recruits to existing regiments within the Auxilia and coordinate the mustering of new regiments from newly occupied planets and systems.

The Auxilia Ferrum contains the vast majority of the Exercitus Ferrum’s forces. A single warzone may be assigned multiple Cohorts Auxilia depending on the scale of the conflict or its priority to the Shadow Tyrant’s grand siege of the Imperium. The Cohorts Auxilia are formed from the base units of the Auxilia Ferrum: Regiments or Militia Minoris. The distinction between Regiments and Militia Minoris may not be obvious to their enemies or even clearly defined within the Exercitus Ferrum itself. In general, the multitude of human warbands, cults, military formations and Imperial traitor regiments will be categorised based on their martial coherence or ability to coordinate their own troops. Well organised sub-factions are classified as Regiments while more disorganised groups are labelled Militia Minoris. To the outsider, this categorisation may not be clear. For example, the leadership of the Slaughter Puppets warband demonstrate impressive levels of command and control while individual members of the warband display rigid military discipline. This places them firmly in the Regiment category despite their obvious devotion to Khorne.

While each Regiment or Militia Minoris organises its own leadership structure, the higher officer classes within the Auxilia Ferrum are drawn solely from the surviving hereditary families of the original Solar Auxilia troops who fought alongside the Shadow Tyrant Legionnaires at the siege of Terra. These hereditary families surround themselves with the trappings of nobility, passing heirloom weapons and armour from generation to generation and conversing predominantly in an ancient form of high gothic. Despite this, a family’s rise, fall or even extinction depends upon the performance of the family head in the Exercitus Ferrum. Promotion or demotion within the officer classes is solely based on ability and past performance. The Shadow Tyrants deign to speak with the ancestors of their original mortal forces due to their shared link to the siege of Terra and the continued service of the Exercitus Ferrum officer class to the Shadow Tyrant’s cause. Beyond that grace, the Legionnaires are relentless and pragmatic in their prosecution of the long war. To them, the officers of the Exercitus Ferrum are just another tool to be used against the enemy.

In addition to the Exercitus Ferrum, the Shadow Tyrants marshal large numbers of traitor Astartes warbands across the galaxy, either overtly through a web of alliances or covertly as background advisors and counsellors. Collectively, these forces are referred to as the Legiones Astartes. Dark Mechanicum forces and lone Hereteks are also controlled by the Shadow Tyrants through a multitude of symbiotic pacts and agreements across their “Shadow Empire”, the Imperium Umbra. While the Imperium Umbra contains hundreds of worlds across the galaxy, the vast majority of those worlds do not realise that they are ultimately aiding the Shadow Tyrant’s cause. Only a handful of planets or systems will have been visited openly by a Legionnaire. The Tithe Corps of the Exercitus Ferrum is the only contact that nearly every world within the Imperium Umbra will have with the wider war effort. In many cases, the planetary government fulfills its tithe without realising who will receive their materiel or manpower. Much like the Imperium of Mankind, each planet is only concerned with meeting their quotas and delivering their tithe on time.

MILITARY DOCTRINE

The Iron Warriors are typically famed for their skills of siege craft. These skills have not been disregarded by the Shadow Tyrants but they have added to them extensively. Brutal pragmatism characterises their military approach. Any and all weapons or strategies will be deployed by the Shadow Tyrants in pursuit of victory. Despite this, the Legionnaires place one weapon above all others: their collective experience and great intellects. The knowledge of ten thousand years of warfare is not easily replaced so while each Legionnaire will not shy away from the most dangerous of battlefields, they will also not risk their knowledge being wasted in a pointless or immaterial engagement. Their longevity is in no small part due to this approach as well as their ongoing use of arcane life-extending technologies.

The Legionnaires of the Shadow Tyrants also recognise that each of their battle-brothers have a unique knowledge-set and that they themselves may not be best placed to lead a specific campaign or operation. Each engagement may require a different leader. Collectively, the Shadow Tyrants present in a warzone will choose a Praetor-elect to lead their forces and implement their strategy. This approach is also taken at a lower level within their ranks. Captain-elects, Lieutenant-elects and Sergeant-elects are chosen from amongst their peers based on multiple factors. For example, the anticipated enemy, geography or allied forces available in the warzone.

The Shadow Tyrants harbour a long-held disgust for daemons, warp entities and the Chaos Gods. They have never set foot on the daemon worlds of the Eye of Terror, the Maelstrom or elsewhere in the galaxy, holding true to their ancient decision not to flee into the Eye of Terror with the bulk of Horus’ defeated army. This stance does not prevent them from recognising the value of daemons or the powers of Chaos as tools of war. The Shadow Tyrants have mastered the art of trapping and binding all manner of daemons to war machines by working closely with countless Hereteks across the millennia. So great is their knowledge of daemon-binding that pacts and agreements with Hereteks are easy to seal. It is often the case that those Hereteks receive as much dark knowledge in the daemon-forges of the Shadow Tyrants as they can offer in return.

The daemon engines which flow from the Shadow Tyrant forges are used predominantly as shock assault weapons. Crude and disposable, the vast majority of their daemon engines are little more than armoured hulls adorned with brutal close combat weapons. Limited numbers of more complex or larger daemon engines are produced where the Shadow Tyrants have reached mutual agreements with Hereteks. These larger daemon engines are regarded by the Shadow Tyrants as a luxury afforded to their Heretek allies. Hundreds of crude machines are easier to produce and deploy. In their view, it is seldom that one large daemon engine will accomplish a task which hundreds of simpler machines could not.

Weight of numbers and simplicity also applies to the Shadow Tyrants use of the Exercitus Ferrum. The administration and organisation of the Exercitus Ferrum is handled by the officers of the Iron Army themselves but their general deployment is directed by the Legionnaires of the Shadow Tyrants. Specific objectives for each deployment are set for the Exercitus Ferrum knowing how much manpower, materiel and time it should take to complete those objectives. If the Exercitus Ferrum strays outside of those parameters in a warzone, then the officer classes are held directly responsible for their failings. The resources and time required for a campaign can be calculated and predicted by the Legionnaires in advance. In their view, the competence of the officer classes are the main variable in a campaign. Where there are failings, the specific fault in their military machine can be diagnosed and the individual officer or officers will be replaced.

The Shadow Tyrants wage a total war across the galaxy. Seemingly unrelated conflicts in far flung star systems are in fact part of their grand siege of the Imperium. A never-ending war of attrition by the Exercitus Ferrum in one part of the galaxy may be drawing Imperial troops away from imminent raids by an allied Astartes warband in another sector. Those raids may be intended to disrupt the supply lines to a fortress world elsewhere while gathering resources for an upcoming siege of that same fortress world. Every attempted action by the Shadow Tyrants fits into their deliberate and mechanical approach to besieging the Imperium, wearing down its defences and positioning its enemies for the killing blow. When that moment comes, the Shadow Tyrants will set foot on Terra once more. They will break the gates, storm the Imperial palace and tear the corpse-Emperor from his throne.

KNOWN REGIMENTS

• Slaughter Puppets
• The Children of Duur
• Iron Dogs
• Ruk’hai 1^st – 143^rd
• Hammer of the Tyrants
• Gastoran’s Bears

KNOWN MILITIA MINORIS

• Cult of Fear
• Blessed Beasts
• Prandor Penitent Legion

KNOWN LEGIONES ASTARTES

(Current alliance status unknown)

• The Undying Flesh
• The Abyssal Phantoms
• Steel Brethren
• Dread Company
• The Phoenician’s Surgeons
• Blooded Knife
• Wolves of Horus
• The Faceless
• White Vipers (a.k.a. Death Vipers)