+ inload: Phalangite Radoslav +

'Adtactus!' 
Radoslav was on his feet, heavy footfalls slamming and skewing on the treacherous dusty marble. he dashed a dozen yards or so, then threw himself down, his dull iron armour skidding him along into the dubious cover of a statue. The pediment was shattered irrecoverably, almost as though it had burst, and the statue itself – a titanic figure, twenty foot or more high – had fallen lengthways. His boltgun tucked firmly in one hand, Radoslav began crawling quickly along the length towards the head.

Alongside the sudden roars and heavy crack-boom of boltguns, and beneath the steady high-pitched rattle of rotor cannon fire, there were the smaller sounds of war. The drizzle of brass shellcases onto marble floors, the crunch-fluid scrabbling of sand and rubble, and the rising hum and buzz of auto-reactive power armour.

Two more Iron Warriors skidded in behind him, their backs to the statue. The first, an unhelmeted figure with a nose not so much broken as smeared across his face, nodded to him. His eyes gleamed, mischievously and his grin revealed a mouth full of broken teeth. As one, the three rose up, boltguns in hand, firing as soon as they crested the statue. 

It was good cover. 

It was not good enough. The lower half of the statue vanished in a sudden cloud of marble dust that billowed like clapped board dusters in a scholam. 

The Larraman's Ear was intended to allow an Astartes line warrior super-sensitive hearing. His autosenses worked in concert to cut out damaging auditory input; ensuring the best of both worlds. For this reason, Radoslav felt the explosion more than heard it, though such was the power of the impact that his armour itself rang like a bell. The rigid armour plates rippled, cracking and crimping. He felt his left hand being pulped, and the armour straining to hold his leg straight to prevent major joint breakage.

A secondary function of the Larraman's Ear – implanted into the skull in the space vacated by the scooped-out and discarded pulp of the inner ear – was to ensure the Astartes was almost impossible to disorientate or confuse. It was this, and this alone, that meant Radoslav was immediately able to scrabble backwards and avoid the second, third and fourth detonations which brought down the roof of the building.

Demo charges. Demo charges. The Fists were destroying the Palace itself to keep them out. Battered and bleeding, Radoslav slunk back to the lines to find an apothecary.

+++

+ Phalangite Ignace Radoslav +

+ Blue eye-lenses gleaming, Ignace Radoslav is clad in an entire suit of Voss Prime-pattern Crusade armour, augmented by Sol Militaris pattern bracers, and a greave reinforced with molecular bonding studs – possibly a field adaptation made during the Siege. A final flourish is the helmet, a common artificer-altered type that combines reinforced forward plating with a stylised version of the Legion symbol. It was a common and popular variant amongst the Iron Warriors, who were well-known for customising and improving their issued plate. +

+ This shot shows a holstered umbra-pattern boltpistol, indicating his thigh plate does not support magnetic locking. It is possible that Radoslav is a void-war specialist, though this is not confirmed by his current tactical markings; presumably updated between the Battle of Phall and the ground war on Mars. +

+ Many believed the Iron Warriors to be clad in unpainted ceramite, but as this shot shows, there is a subtle difference between the duller metal of the rear-facing hooped armour and backpack (both simply sealed ceramite) and the brighter iron finish of the plate. Ferrous compounds were bonded with the ceramite and burnished to give a bright reflective finish before issue. These were almost invariably hidden beneath layers of grime and soot during active combat, though some Iron Warriors did march in gleaming ranks. +

+ Radoslav is believed to have survived the War on Terra, as a number of sightings marked him as being a combatant during at least two campaigns of the Great Scouring; conducted by the Blood Angels and Raven Guard. +