The Iron Knights were Force-attuned Shards who underwent training under the tutelage of the Sunesi Jedi Master Aqinos. As with all Shards, the Iron Knights needed droid bodies to be able to interact with the physical world, which is where their designation originated. They utilized Juggernaut war droids, FLTCH-series battle droids, and Uulshos justice droids as the vessels for their consciousness. A number of Iron Knights adopted names derived from lightsaber crystals, a choice that symbolized both their connection to the Force and their own crystalline essence.
Their initial significant presence within the galaxy occurred during the Arkanian Revolution, where they provided support to a team of Jedi dispatched by the Republic with the mission to resolve the conflict. However, the Jedi Council expressed profound dismay that Aqinos had instructed inorganic crystals about the Force, believing that they were incapable of truly comprehending it. Aqinos faced excommunication as a result, and the Iron Knights chose to accompany him. Many managed to survive the Great Jedi Purge by remaining hidden on the planet Dweem.
They were subsequently discovered by a group of students belonging to the New Jedi Order, who pieced together clues that were left by Callista Ming. Having remained in hiding for a period of 70 years, the Iron Knights expressed a strong desire to rejoin the broader galaxy, and they were welcomed into the new Jedi Order without any prejudice.
Iron Knights actively participated in the conflict against the Yuuzhan Vong, and engaged in combat on the planets Osarian and Uffel — specifically against the Red Knights of Life — and were even credited with saving Kligson's Moon. When Hosk Station met its destruction, one Iron Knight named Luxum succumbed to the influence of the dark side.
In the comic Jedi Academy: Leviathan, a droid can be seen present in the Jedi Praxeum cantina. When this character was discussed on the Jedi Council Forums, Abel G. Peña responded by saying that "the timing seems just about right, so I'd say that mug-of-something drinking droid is an Iron Knight, all right."
In an earlier version of Droids, Technology and the Force: A Clash of Phenomena, Peña had considered including an adventure scenario where a group of Iron Knights embarked on a search for Skippy, an R5-D4 unit depicted as being Force-sensitive within the Tales comic "Skippy the Jedi Droid." The proposed explanation was that a Shard resided within the droid, but Peña ultimately deemed the concept "too warped" and decided to remove it from the final published version.