For most Legions, interment within a Contemptor Dreadnought is a grim fate reserved for the mortally wounded; for the Iron Hands it is closer to an apotheosis. To be sealed within the sarcophagus is to complete the journey every son of Medusa begins the day he first replaces flesh with iron, to shed the last of the weak and failing body and become, at last, wholly a creature of the machine. Iron Hands Dreadnoughts are accordingly revered above almost all their brethren, ancient warriors woken to grind an enemy apart with fist and cannon and then returned to their honoured rest. Some, the clans admit only in low voices, do not sleep so much as brood, their long vigils curdling into a cold and machine-deep resentment that the wars of the living can no longer satisfy. In the grief-torn years after Isstvan V, it was these ancients who often burned hottest for revenge.
Order of battle
