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Mara Thorne's Journal Entry: The Lie of the Ironhand
The Captain is recovered. No, not recovered. He is remade. The fever left him with a strange stillness, and he no longer speaks of strategy; he speaks of construction. He told Thomas and me that the old Kael Ironhand—the mercenary who fought for gold and died in the mud—was gone. He said the trauma had forged a new man, a man whose only loyalty is now to Order. He calls the group of us his "First Legion," and his first order was to destroy the cult site entirely—to wipe the evidence of the power he had used. He is systematic in his creation, and systematic in his lies. And he tells them all with the certainty of a man who knows the truth is irrelevant.
— Mara Thorne, Scribe, Witness to the First Fabrication
The infusion of purified Warp-energy had done its work. Kael Ironhand's body, though scarred and malnourished, was stabilized. The massive wound in his side was no longer a mortal threat, merely a deep, agonizing memory. Sauron, the Shattered Lord, was now firmly anchored in the muscle and bone of the warlord.
His mind, no longer dedicated solely to the crisis of survival, turned toward the meticulous art of identity construction.
The old Kael Ironhand—the greedy, bitter mercenary—was an unsuitable vessel for the Maiar's grand design. The true foundation of any lasting Order was not force, but belief. He needed a suitable, compelling history for his new self. He needed a Lie that would serve as the first brick in the foundation of his inevitable empire.
The Fabrication
Sauron sat alone with Mara Thorne and Thomas in the ruins of the Border Princes chapel, a cold, dry wind whistling through the broken arches. He had forced Thomas to clean his borrowed armor—a heavy, scarred breastplate—and forced Mara to tend to his wound, ensuring they had seen the gruesome reality and the unnatural speed of his recovery.
When he spoke, Kael Ironhand's voice was low, gravelly, and commanded absolute attention.
"The man you knew is dead," he announced, his eyes fixed on the empty space beyond the refugees.
Thomas shifted nervously, his hand moving to the hilt of his short knife. Mara, however, simply stared, her ink-stained fingers clutching her journal. She was already half-expecting a divine revelation or a demonic confession.
"The mercenary, Kael Ironhand, fought his last battle by that river crossing," Sauron continued, weaving his narrative with detached precision. "His will broke. His loyalties—to gold, to drink, to chaos—failed him. The blow to the head was not a deathblow; it was a cleansing."
He paused, letting the silence magnify the weight of his words. He was using the raw terror and desperate need of the mortals to write his own history.
"I am a new man. Forged by the crucible of this land's savagery. The old Kael Ironhand chased coin; this Kael Ironhand chases Order."
"Who… who are you, then?" Mara whispered, the question escaping her lips before she could check it.
Sauron offered her a tactical truth wrapped in a political fabrication. He did not tell her he was a defeated god-spirit from another dimension; such a truth was useless and unbelievable. He told her what she needed to hear.
"I am the Iron Hand," he stated, making the borrowed name his own. "I am the man who has seen the face of your gods—your Sigmar, your Chaos Gods—and found them all wanting. They offer comfort, or they offer ruin. Neither provides survival."
He leaned forward, his gaze locking onto Mara's. "I have returned from the edge of the Void with a single, absolute purpose: to build the one thing that can stand against the Chaos that consumes this world. I am building The Dominion of Order."
The First Mandate: Efficiency
The new identity was accepted instantly. For the terrified refugees, the story of a mercenary transformed by trauma into an uncompromising savior was a far easier pill to swallow than the idea of a simple, dying man. Kael Ironhand, the Iron Hand, was a necessary miracle.
Sauron's next step was to establish the bedrock of his new reign: Absolute Efficiency.
He dictated his first set of decrees to Mara, instructing her to write them down in the salvaged journal—a perverse scripture of pragmatism.
The Law of Utility: "Every individual must serve a defined function. If a function is lost, the individual becomes a liability. Liabilities are discarded." (A justification for leaving the injured woman behind).
The Law of Resource Allocation: "Nothing is sacred. All materials—bone, metal, fabric, stone—are resources. All resources must be documented and utilized." (Justifying the stripping of armor from the dead).
The Law of Absolute Secrecy: "The only truth that exists is the one which ensures survival. Any past truth, and any future promise, is a weapon to be wielded. The origins of the Iron Hand are for the Iron Hand alone." (The foundation of his passive deception).
Sauron was creating a system before he had an army. He was establishing the rules of engagement for a world defined by its lawlessness.
He observed Mara as she wrote. She was trembling, yet her script was firm, precise, and meticulous. She had found her function: she was the Scribe of the Iron Order, the first keeper of his burgeoning regime's history. Her loyalty was not built on love, but on the cold, irresistible logic of self-preservation.
The Looming Threat
The stabilization of the Kael Ironhand body allowed Sauron to extend his awareness, to listen to the psychic winds of the Border Princes.
He could feel the whispers now, the low-grade psychic static that hinted at movement. The Chaos cultists who had sensed the massive, alien power spike from the purified Warp Stone were closing in. They did not know they were hunting a Maiar; they only knew a rival Warlord had appeared, a being of immense, controlled power that did not bow to their masters.
This was not a threat; it was a strategic opportunity.
Sauron needed a source of manpower, and in this world of endless war, manpower meant soldiers. To forge soldiers from terrified refugees, he needed a focused, immediate threat and an unquestionable victory.
He directed Thomas, the farmer, to scavenge the remains of the Beastmen skirmish for usable weapons. He commanded Mara to mark the approach routes of the cultists—predicted based on his superior understanding of their chaotic, yet ultimately predictable, psychology.
"They will come for the site," Sauron told Mara, pointing toward the concealed cult ring. "They will be drawn by the smell of their stolen power. They will come at night, believing the darkness is their shield. They are wrong."
He picked up a heavy, short-handled war-hammer—Kael's preferred weapon—and tested the weight. It was crude, heavy, and imperfectly balanced, but it served the function.
"You will write, Mara Thorne," he said, his voice quiet. "You will write about the first battle of the Iron Hand. You will write about the night where Order first broke the armies of Chaos in this land. And you will write about it as a miracle of divine power, not a simple, merciless ambush."
The first act of conquest would not be a grand war, but a calculated, brutal act of defense—a demonstration of The Iron Hand's absolute superiority in the one arena that mattered to the refugees: Survival. The Dying Warlord was now ready to become the Iron Savior.