Event · M31

Confrontation aboard the Fist of Iron

The confrontation aboard the Fist of Iron was the decisive and violent rupture between the primarchs Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus, fought in the Callinedes System around 005.M31 on the eve of the Horus Heresy. As Horus launched his rebellion at Isstvan III, he charged Fulgrim, by then already corrupted, with winning over Ferrus Manus, his closest friend among the primarchs. Fulgrim despatched the bulk of the Emperor’s Children and the 28th Expeditionary Fleet on to Isstvan, while he himself led a small force to join the Iron Hands’ 52nd Expeditionary Fleet, then engaged against Orks in the Callinedes System, fighting that encompassed the clearing of the space station Deep Orbital DS191 and the retaking of Callinedes IV. Fulgrim sought out his brother within the Anvilarium, Ferrus Manus’s private sanctum aboard the Iron Hands battle-barge Fist of Iron, to put Horus’s case to him. Ferrus, appalled that his brothers would turn against the Emperor, responded with violence rather than words. Accounts of what followed differ: one holds that Ferrus destroyed Fireblade, the sword he had himself forged for Fulgrim, before Fulgrim struck him unconscious; another records that Ferrus attempted to break Fireblade with his metal hands and was instead knocked senseless by the resulting explosion, with Fulgrim leaving the sword behind him. By either account, Fulgrim found himself unable to deliver a killing blow to his unconscious brother, and took up Forgebreaker, the thunder hammer he himself had once forged for Ferrus, as he departed the sanctum. Fulgrim then signalled his Phoenix Guard, who fell upon Ferrus’s Morlock Terminator bodyguard, beheading them; First Captain Gabriel Santar was left close to death in the fighting. Fulgrim withdrew aboard his gunship, Firebird, while the Emperor’s Children battle-barge Pride of the Emperor and its escorts opened fire on vessels of the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet, before the Legion broke off and fled into the warp to rejoin Horus’s forces at Isstvan. Ferrus Manus, enraged by his brother’s betrayal, subsequently received the Emperor’s orders, relayed through Rogal Dorn, to join the relief force mustering against Horus at Isstvan V; gathering the Iron Hands’ fastest ships and his veteran companies, he set course for what would become the Drop Site Massacre.

See where Confrontation aboard the Fist of Iron occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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