+ Discourse on Legion nomenclature, Vol V Book V Chapter V, Verses CV–XVI; Pursuant to Perturabo and the IVth Legion +
– Antiquarian Macron; Remembrancer contingent – IVth Legion Assumpt
+ _CV – Of the others, some sought their names; others had names attributed to them. Two took their numinous self-image to heart; taking the vainglorious name of mythological beings. Others chased more temporal images for nomenclature – totemic animals, symbolic celestial bodies and the like. Others still looked to more earthy origins, grubbing around after their prison-sink cots and cradles of war-torn ruins. +
+ M37 Append:] CVI – To Unfortunus Veck is attributed: 'Guard your name well. Names grant power. This is for two reasons. Mundanely, knowledge is itself a synonym for power. Secondly, resonance. Your name is a label indelibly etched to your animus - your Emperor-warded soul. Your name can be an anchor for your safety, or it can be a pinion; reducing you to a butterfly in a lepidopterist's case.' +
+ _CVII–CVII – [REDACTED] +
+ _CVIII – The Fourth's primarch was famously uncommunicative and inward-looking, so his motivations and desires are as hard to fathom as the bottomless black seas of Kafkan. We can infer only from the statements, instructions and dictates handed down to the forces under his command. In choosing the name 'Iron Warriors', he was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy; both openly dictating its use and relying on his forces' underlying cultural bias and human psychology to embody the thing after which they name themselves. As with all decisions made by the Primarchs, the result was simultaneously straightforward (some would say almost blindingly obvious) and multi-faceted; fully understandable only by the genius, the child and other lunatics. +
+ _CVIX and additional remarks – [REDACTED] +
+ _CX – The Wormwood King sought no advice. He looked inwards. He was uncharacteristically phlegmatic when his choice matched two of his brethren. Of these, he more begrudged Manus the title of 'Iron'. To Perturabo, his 'elder brother' had childish reasons for choosing iron – seeing only its surface qualities, its application and use; and missing the mathemystical associations of the element. +
+ _CXI – To Perturabo is attributed: 'Iron is the most stable element in the physical universe. All other elements strive to attain its purity; shedding or gaining extraneous parts of their physical structure to alter its state to that of iron. The universe is thus refined. Eventually, inevitably, if will become an ever-expanding pattern of stillness, studded throughout with cold stars, infinitely distant from one another. This is the perfection of the future; to which all – willingly or not – may be shepherded and hurried.' +
+ _CXII – To Perturabo is attributed '[There is] little beyond a shell of iron around the Tenth Legion, whose humours are hot, dry and unsettled. For the Fourth, iron is within them. My Legion is to become saturnine, considered, and uncompromising; and whether that is an easy or difficult summit for their individual characters to attain, it shall be so. All refinement implies exclusion of impure constituents.' +
+ _CXIII – To Perturabo is also attributed: 'Iron is the fourth most prominent component of Old Earth; and it is this that dictates its suitability. Though the truths of alchemistry and physic override superstition; the alignment with the numerific designate assigned to me, and to the Legion I head, demonstrates a certain symmetry – if not outright foresight on the part of Him-on-Earth. Ah, but he is cunning. Ah, but he marks each of his creations with its own diacritic; its own self-fulfilling prophecy. +
+ [N.B. Original text for CXIV Apocryphal appendations; orig. ref. REDACTED] To Perturabo is attributed: 'This is beyond pageantry and classification. Naming oneself is power; it is also slavery to admit that one's existence requires others. It is thus in sufferance, but not in defiance, that I accede to this name; but in sufferance I will make it worthwhile.' +
+ _CXIV – To Perturabo is attributed: 'Once a star begins to synthesise iron, it is an admission of completion. The credulous may call this death; but in truth the star simply alters state – becoming what it was always meant to be. Sloughing off its needless blanket of more nebulous, transitory elements; alone a measurable enthalpic scale, it becomes darker, harder. This completion marks a cosmic refinement, a cessation of effort to reveal a result. If this bears any resemblance to the human condition, it is less death than birth.' +
+ _CXV – [REDACTED] +
+ _CXVI – To Perturabo is attributed: 'No crown but iron; and that worn not as a bauble or diadem to be worn and discarded, but as a crown in your core. Indeed; the man who becomes as iron comes to see the fundamental truth of humanity; that his flesh and mind and desires are as temporary and effervescent as the atmosphere of a star; and that his true state, and only lasting proof, is that black core. +
+ ...and a quick sneak preview of Aquarion Trinculo Setebos, as thanks for reading down this far! +
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