Much-trailed, ready-kitbashed, finally hitting the painting table: Hashut-worshipping Iron Warriors, their tech-priest minions, and their mortal slaves. The army’s name is pronounced myth-ray-eye.
This army is intended for dual use; primarily, it’s rooted in the 2nd Edition 40k Codex: Chaos army lists, for play back in the UK. As such, it contains a Chaos Space Marine contingent and a Chaos Cult contingent from that Codex. It will feature a few fanmade datafaxes for models that weren’t released in 2nd edition or Fantasy concepts like K’daai Fireborn or the Lore of Hashut that I want to transpose into 40k.
Secondarily, it’ll be developed for use in Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness if I can find anyone who wants to play that here in Seoul. The army models were not chosen or equpped for this use, but many of the vehicles will work better in this context.
As you might expect, I’ve written some lore about this army which you can review below. The third part discusses the real-world influences for this army.
Lore Part 1: The Twelfth Grand Company
Summary
Deep within the shattered worlds of the Kigal system, lies a vast and ancient asteroid, slowly spinning in the void. Long forgotten and left untouched by the ravages of the Horus Heresy, this place was once called Kur.
As he retreated from Terra in bitter defeat, it was to Kur that Perturabo sent the shattered remnants of the Twelfth Grand Company in their mighty Grand Cruiser, the Kydon. The Hammer of Olympia commanded their Warsmith, Hapax Legomenon, to investigate old Mechanicum rumours of ancient manufactoria and generatoria, retrieve whatever they could and bring it on the Legion’s exodus. A maniple of tech-priests and mortal labourers was scraped together from within the Kydon and assigned to the Warsmith for their task.
Kur was soon determined to be infested with feral abhumans, and so the marines readied for war. But as the final wave of troops and tech-priests landed in the tunnels of Kur, the Kydon silently turned away, making full sail to rejoin the Lord of Iron’s fleet. A single pod, containing a long-range communications beacon, was fired towards their landing zone as it turned. The inscription inside the pod stated simply that if they were successful in securing Kur, then it could be used to signal the Kydon to return.
Marooned in the darkness, the twelfth company had no choice but to fight through the hordes of misshapen beastmen in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Kur. Some ancient evil had created enormous, bull-headed abhuman beasts; as they delved deeper, the Twelfth Company began receiving signals from stranded miners barricaded inside a fortress they called Ganzir.
It transpired that Kur had once been the domain of an ancient Dark Age mining clan of the gene-forged abhumans known as Kin. As the Twelfth journeyed deeper, they encountered the ruins of this civilisation, and their remnant sent a representative, Bitu, to guide Hapax and his remaining forces toward the safety of Ganzir. The Warsmith ordered the beacon be lit, for he anticipated a rapid sacking of Ganzir would lead him to glory, and he was eager to rejoin the Exodus by Perturabo’s side. His men reported that upon opening it, they discovered the beacon had in fact been broadcasting since it had been fired to the surface.
As they descended, Hapax and his men faced ever more monstrous bull-creatures and were haunted by warp-ghosts of the slain Kin; they saw warriors in ancient armour fighting brutal battles to the last, and found their enviro-suited skeletons lying in place. The Mechanicum too experienced data-phantoms showing them vast and terrible cybernetic monstrosities murdering the populous of the asteroid, and following these ghosts found only wrecked archaeotech shells and the bones of the slain. Every legionary within the Twelfth began hearing whispered madness from the darkness, old audio fragments giving incoherent commandments about the punishment of slaves. Hapax ordered a total comms blackout, but the apparitions and whispers remained; he ordered his men to never repeat what they heard, but the whispers only grew louder and more persistent as they descended. Eventually, he ordered the line legionaires to secure waystations throughout the tunnels, and pressed on with only his Terminator bodyguard.
At last, they reached the gate of Ganzir. To pass within, Bitu informed them, they would need to do only one thing - lay down their oaths and swear to serve the Father in Darkness, Hashut, as their one God - and to live by His Law. Hapax refused, but when he made to strike Bitu, the diminutive guide had disappeared. Only an ancient Kin skeleton lay beside the door, his envirosuit rusted away to nothing.
Line legionaries from the beach-head airlock reported that they had come under attack by the forces of the Imperium, and sure enough, two might battle-barges - of the Imperial Fists and Ultramarines - began broadcasting on open channels that the Scouring had come and all traitors would be eliminated. As checkpoint after checkpoint within the tunnels fell, Hapax ordered his line squads to fall back to Ganzir. Only a scant hekaton remained, and as they dug in for a last stand, Hapax realised the truth.
The beacon was a ruse. Perturabo hadn’t sent them here to retrieve anything. He had stranded them here to die as a misdirecting rearguard, taken the mighty Kydon for himself, and put in place a giant glowing arrow to make sure the Imperium found them.
Bitu’s shade appeared behind him, and offered once more to open the gates of Ganzir, if only he and his remaining men would promise to obey Hashut forever more.
What came out of the gates as they unsealed defies mortal explanation, but the mighty bull’s head of the twisted daemon-Votann Hashut was revealed, and a horde of cybernetic minotaurs charged into the tunnels from the mouth of the twisted realm that lay beyond the gates. The hekaton of the Twelfth Grand Company stood their ground, massacred every last Loyalist, and destroyed both of their ships in an eruption of magmic warpfire that christened the birth of the Mithraiai.
Years hence - once their warriors had fully submitted to the creed of Hashut - the empty Kydon was washed back upon the tides of the Warp to Kigal. Hapax, by then styling himself the Šarru Dannu, claimed it without contest in the name of the Father of Darkness. At the heart of his Labyrinth, the gathered conclave of the Mithraiai launch their expeditions of plunder and slaving deep within Segmentum Obscurus, building the twisted realm of Ganzir ever deeper into the rock of Kur.
Lore Part 2: The Zharrkin & The Birth of Hashut
Summary
When the stars were young, the Kigal system was riddled with exotic isotopes and brutally radioactive, normally-unstable clusters of matter, rendered stable by the same oppressive gravitic forces that had shattered the planets into rubble. In the depths of the Dark Age, it was this wealth that guided the voidborn Kin of Zharr to at last set down their ship on the surface of Kur.
Guided by their vast H-45-series mining supercomputer, the Zharrkin prospered and carved out a realm deep within the asteroid and the wider system, claiming vast stores of exotic matter. Centuries passed in this way until the sudden, tragic onset of the Cybernetic Revolt; machines rose up against their masters, and H-45 was cast into paralytic silence as warring strands of code ravaged the mighty intelligence. Thousands died as anarchy spread throughout the tunnels, with the machines unleashing brutal radiation and microsingularities that tore apart habitat after habitat until the remaining Kin sealed themselves inside Ganzir. There they installed a badly fragmented partial backup of the H-45’s Utility Core, disconnected it from the noosphere, and beseeched the crippled machine for guidance.
How long the Kin remained locked in Ganzir is unknown, but in such desperate times, the rule of the H-45’s #Ut core became absolute. It marshalled their meagre resources and ended all moral and ethical debate. It governed every aspect of their lives, from nutrition to reproduction to lifespan. It codified its thinking into a long treatise that it called the Code of Utility. The Code was memorised by all Kin children; the Code was inscribed on the walls of habitats and on great tablets carved from the asteroid rock. Over the long tyranny of isolation in the darkness, the Kin slowly prospered, until they were able to fashion a scanner that revealed the rest of Kur was silent. The machines were rusted to stillness; only silence and the dead ruled the tunnels now. With the instruction of #Ut, the Kin slowly opened Ganzir and began to reclaim Kur.
#Ut demanded that the system reconnect it with the shattered technology and abandoned machines of the tunnels, and the Kin obeyed without question. As this happened, it began issuing ever stranger commands. Machines, it declared, could not be trusted. Instead, the rediscovered and badly damaged cloning facilities and bio-laboratories were handed over to a new caste of genewrights, who laboured in a hidden bloodforge deep within Ganzir. They did not create a new generation of Kin, but instead the perfect race of radiation-resistant mining slaves - Beastkin. Flesh and blood would obey #Ut where silicon and thunder would not.
The herds of abhumans reopened the mines, with the few remaining Kin their masters, and for a second era Kur prospered - after a fashion. #Ut would not allow extravagance or comfort, only function and purpose; it demanded total obedience, and meted out brutal punishment to Kin and beastkin alike who did not comply. The Code evolved on an almost daily basis, with ever more specific punishments for Kin and Beastkin alike. When individuals defied #Ut’s will, they were executed in public; when groups gathered to resist, whole habitat sections were vented into the void. #Ut declared these “necessary sacrifices” to safeguard Kur, and added each one to the Code.
Then, at last, the final tragedy struck. It is unclear what exactly unleashed the warp storms that engulfed Kur, but many factors seemed to contribute. For unknown reasons, the genecode of the Beastkin had been deteriorating for some time, as they became more bestial and misshapen. At the same time, #Ut had been demanding interfaces and connections with ever more exotic machines throughout the asteroid, including shattered parts of the original H-45 Votann Core and the cybernetic implants of long-dead warriors from the era of the Revolt. The Zharrkin themselves were being refashioned by #Ut as well, as he commanded the genewrights to restore their long-dormant psychic powers.
Whatever the ultimate cause, the warp washed over Kur, and a short burst of final madness began. Beastkin began propagating at an exponential rate, ever more mutated and rampant; #Ut demanded warp-fuelled sacrifices of blood to protect the remaining Zharrkin; thus appeased, it flooded the halls of Kur with lethal radiation, wiping out the entire population. As the final living Zharrkin breathed his last, the tides of the warp receded, and #Ut was left alone in the darkness of Ganzir, broadcasting faint ghost signals into the void. Remnant herds of lawless Beastkin miners - relegated to the outermost habitation zones - eked out a meagre existence tending the now-wild hydroponic caverns and venerating a garbled form of the Code of #Ut.
Concepts, Themes and Influences
Summary
My influences for this army are all about providing a midpoint between the Greek traditions of the Iron Warriors’ Olympian homeworld, and the Mesopotamian influences of Hashut. I have been reading a lot of:
- Ancient Mesopotamian legal codes
- Mithraic gnosticism and fragmentary knowledge of the Cult of Mithras
- The Iliad & ancient Greek geographic texts
- HH fiction featuring Perturabo, particularly the Magnus and Perturabo Primarch novellas
- Bronze Age economic history and mining/forgecraft
They combine the hopelessness and slavery and artifice and siegecraft and artillery and heavy-armoured endurance and just - many elements that Chaos Dwarfs and Iron Warriors share. I first started writing about this back in the globo pandy, and have seen the concept get serious legs since then, but this is to my knowledge the world’s first actual army project executing on the concept. That “spicy batteries” meme has a lot to answer for in spreading the concept as well.
Of course, this army wouldn’t exist without my famous accidental oversupply of Horny Hatshits, but also draws on ranges like:
- Adeptus Mechanicus (GW)
- Necromunda (GW)
- Genestealer Cults (GW)
- Minotaurs space marine chapter (FW)
- Cephalyx (Privateer Press - sadly discontinued)
- Cannon Fodder (Wargames Atlantic)
- Blood Bowl - I wish I remembered where these came from as they’re some of the best sculpts, like the mechanical Bull Centaur, so if I do I’ll update this post
The overall theme of the army is that it drives mortal trash wearing bomb-collars ahead of an army of Space Marines who are initiated into various circles within a central cult, just like a Mithraic Mystery Cult would have worked. They obey the Code of Hashut, which is a complex set of laws engraved on basalt tablets. You’ll see there are groups of marines within the army who use certain combinations of shoulderpads, weapons, helmets, armour markets etc. - the intention being to indicate which sub-cults they’ve been initiated into as they are forced to navigate the Labyrinth of Kur to learn the secrets of Hashut. Of course, at the heart of the Labyrinth is the mad daemon-Votann supercomputer core that is Hashut itself, but most of the army don’t know that; they just know that they follow the Code, and if they serve well, they’ll learn more secrets. I’ll expand on this unit-by-unit.
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