Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children are a Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines who devote themselves solely to the service of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure. The Emperor's Children are a shattered Legion much like their counterparts the World Eaters whose unity has been devoured by their allegiance to Chaos and that now exists only as scattered, autonomous warbands located in the Eye of Terror who are dedicated to their own pursuit of corrupt, hedonistic and usually murderous pleasures. Emperor's Children Chaos Space Marines are known for possessing outlandish mutations and surgical alterations as "gifts" from Slaanesh designed to make them more "perfect" in the eyes of their twisted patron.

The Phoenician
After being snatched from the Emperor of Mankind's gene-laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra, Fulgrim's gestation capsule came to rest on a resource-poor mining world known as Chemos. Chemos was a bleak, unforgiving planet warmed by a small binary star and surrounded by a thick nebula dust cloud. The result was a world that was a place forever shrouded in perpetual twilight. Chemos had been settled by humanity long before during the Dark Age of Technology as a mining world but was isolated from its neighbours by the great Warp Storms that marked the Age of Strife. The problem was that the resources of the planet were running out and its people were not producing enough food even for their own needs. Eventually, it fell to a group of fortress factories to produce all the needed resources for Chemos. The entirety of the Chemosian people had to work every hour of the day, maintaining the vapour mines and synthesisers. Recreation, art and leasure were sacrificed for survival. Chemos was dependent upon interstellar commerce for the provision of food, but the world was buffeted by Warp Storms that made it difficult for traders to reach the planet, thus condemning the Chemosians to a slow death, despite their attempts to impose strict food rationing and improvise other solutions for providing nutrients. Scouts from the fortress factory of Callax's branch of the planetary police force, the Caretakers, discovered the Primarch's gestation capsule after it plummeted to the surface of Chemos and were so impressed by the beauty of the infant within that they begged the leaders of Callax, its Executives, to spare his life, as orphans were routinely put to death so they would not further strain a settlement's resources. Fulgrim was spared and given into the hands of one of his rescuers, a member of the Caretakers, to raise as his own child.

Named after an ancient deity of the Chemosian people, Fulgrim in time became a new legend to the people of that suffering world. At half the age at which most of the other people of Callax went to work in the vapour mines and synthesisers, Fulgrim proved able to fulfill all the obligations of an adult labourer. He came to understand the ramshackle Chemosian mining technology with an intuitive ease that allowed him to begin to modify it with his extraordinary technical acumen, dramatically increasing its efficiency. By the time he was only 15 Terran years of age, Fulgrim had risen from the rank of a simple labourer to become one of the Executives who governed the fortress factory of Callax. As a leader, Fulgrim learned of the terrible plight that faced Callax and all the other settlements of Chemos as their technology and population gradually declined in the face of their resource shortages.

Under Fulgrim's direction, teams of engineers travelled far from Callax and the other fortress factories, reclaiming and repairing many of the most ancient and far-flung of the world's original mining outposts, many of which had not been used since before the start of the Age of Strife. Mining production skyrocketed, and as resources began to pour in large amounts into the treasuries of the fortress factories of Chemos for the first time in millennia, Fulgrim supervised the construction of even more sophisticated and efficient extraction machinery. This industrial efficiency soon grew to the point that Chemos' mines were actually producing surpluses for the first time in decades, allowing the world to begin to purchase food and other needed materials in large quantities from passing interstellar traders. Fulgrim, now the recognised planetary leader, fostered the re-emergence of Chemosian art and culture, important aspects of human life that had long been sacrificed to Chemos' resource shortage and need for constant labour.

The Coming of the Emperor
Not long after this great triumph the world's isolation came to an end. From the perpetually twilit sky emerged a flight of Stormbird dropships, heavily armoured and battle-scarred and bearing the Imperial Aquila, the badge of the Emperor of Mankind. When he learned of the Aquila, Fulgrim found his memories stirred. Chemos had no real military forces, but the Stormbirds' landing zone had been surrounded by the Caretakers, the planetary police force of the fortress cities. Fulgrim ordered the Caretakers to welcome the strangers and take them to meet with him in Callax.

In his private quarters, Fulgrim met with the heavily armoured warriors from the stars, men who represented a true civilisation that possessed all the culture and refinement that Fulgrim longed to return to his homeworld. From amongst the Astartes stepped the shining figure of the Emperor of Mankind, and with one look upon him, Fulgrim said nothing and simply dropped to his knees before his father and offered his sword in service. Fulgrim swore from that moment forward to serve the Emperor and the needs of the Imperium of Man with all his heart. The Emperor taught his son of Terra and of the Great Crusade he had initiated to reunite all the scattered worlds of Mankind beneath a single rule so that humanity would no longer face possible extinction at the hands of the galaxy's hostile forces and could claim its rightful place as the dominant intelligent species in the Milky Way. Imperial records do not indicate the exact date of the meeting between Fulgrim and the Emperor; all that is known is that Fulgrim's vast flagship, the Pride of the Emperor, was completed by the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars 160 standard years before the start of the Horus Heresy, sometime in the early 31st Millennium.

Fulgrim returned to Terra with the Emperor to meet the III Legion of Astartes that had been created from his own genome. But Fulgrim learned to his horror that an accident had destroyed the majority of the gene-seed that had been cultivated from his DNA to implant the Astartes of the III Legion and that without their Primarch, replacing it had proven to be a slow and labourious process. Fulgrim addressed the mere 200 Astartes that had been created for the III Legion and his speech proved so inspiring to the Imperial cause that the Emperor named the III Legion of Space Marines the Emperor's Children on the spot, and determined that only they could carve the Imperial Aquila, the double-headed eagle that was his own personal badge, upon the Ceramite chestplates of their Power Armour.

Fulgrim was soon consumed by the idea that he and the Emperor's Children needed to live up to the extraordinary honour the Emperor had shown them by becoming shining paragons of the perfection inherent in both the Emperor's person and his vision for Imperial culture and civilisation. The drive for perfection soon consumed the Primarch and his Legion, from the military tactics they employed to the embrace of an unusually artistic Legion culture and a concern for aesthetics and their personal appearances that was unsurpassed by any of the other Astartes. Fulgrim embodied this pursuit of physical beauty and perfection, for long silver hair flowed down his back, his wide eyes and melodic voice welcomed all who sought his counsel and his full lips often quirked into a wry smile. Fulgrim made sure that his Power Armour was of the finest quality that could be fabricated by Imperial technology and was intricately decorated in the purple and golden colours he had chosen for his Legion. Over it he usually wore a wide variety of intricately embroidered and high-collared cloaks.

Fulgrim was anxious from the start to make a substantial contribution to the Great Crusade like all of his Primarch brothers, but the small size of his Legion meant that the Emperor's Children were at first placed under the command of the Primarch Horus and were assigned to fight alongside his Luna Wolves Legion. Horus and Fulgrim soon grew personally close during their time together while their Legions participated in the conquest and pacification of the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy in the Ultima Segmentum. Eventually, over the course of several decades, the Emperor's Children's ranks were swelled by new Astartes who had been recruited from both Terra and Fulgrim's homeworld of Chemos, where the Legion had established its fortress-monastery at the old factory fortress of Callax. When the Emperor's Children were judged to have reached an appropriate size, Fulgrim was given command of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade and set off on his own course of conquest, returning dozens of worlds to the rule of the Emperor. Among them was the advanced xenos world of Laeran, where Fulgrim's fate would be sealed.

The Phoenix and the Gorgon
The brotherhood shared by the Primarchs Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus, the Phoenician and the Gorgon, was well known in the Imperium at the time of the Great Crusade, as the two superhuman leaders formed an instant connection upon their first meeting. This initial encounter occurred on Terra, beneath Mount Narodnya, the greatest forge of the Urals, where Ferrus Manus was busy toiling with the forge-masters who had once served the Terrawatt Clan during the Unification Wars soon after his arrival from Medusa. The Primarch of the Iron Hands had been demonstrating his phenomenal skill and the miraculous powers of his liquid metal hands when Fulgrim, the Primarch of the III Legion, the Emperor's Children, and his elite Phoenix Guard, had descended upon the sprawling forge complex.

Neither Primarch had yet met the other, but each had felt the shared bonds of alchemy and science that had gone into their making. Both were like gods unto the terrified artisans, who prostrated themselves before these two mighty warriors as though fearing a terrible battle might ensure between them. Ferrus Manus later told the tale to the Astartes of the X Legion claiming that Fulgrim had declared that he had come to forge the most perfect weapon ever created, and that he would bear it in the coming Great Crusade. Of course the Primarch of the Iron Hands could not let such a boast go unanswered, and he had laughed in Fulgrim’s face, declaring that such pasty hands could never be the equal of his own living metal appendages. Fulgrim accepted the challenge with regal grace, and both Primarchs had stripped to the waist, working without pause for weeks on end, the forge ringing with the deafening pounding of hammers, the hiss of cooling metal, and the good natured insults of the two demigods as they sought to outdo one another.

At the end of three months' unceasing toil, both warriors had finished their weapons. Fulgrim had forged an exquisite warhammer -- Forgebreaker -- that could level a mountain with a single blow, and Ferrus Manus a golden bladed sword -- Fireblade -- that forever burned with the fire of the forge. Both weapons were unmatched by any yet crafted by Man, and upon seeing what the other had created, each Primarch declared that his opponent’s was the greater. Fulgrim declared the golden sword the equal of that borne by the legendary hero Nuada Silverhand, while Ferrus Manus had sworn that only the mighty thunder gods of Nordyc legend were fit to bear such a magnificent warhammer. Without another word spoken, both Primarchs had swapped weapons and sealed their eternal friendship with the craft of their hands.

The weight of the formidable warhammer Forgebreaker was enormous and unbearable for anyone but one of the Emperor’s Astartes. Its haft was the colour of ebony, elaborately worked with threads of gold and silver that formed the shape of a lightning bolt, and the head was carved into the shape of a mighty eagle, its barbed beak forming the striking face and its tapered wings the claw. Anyone who looked upon the mighty warhammer could feel the power radiating from within it and know instinctively that more than just skill had gone into its forging. Love and honour, loyalty and friendship, death and vengeance...all were embodied within its majestic form, and the thought that the Iron Hands Primarch’s sworn honour brother had created this weapon made it truly legendary.

According to legend, Ferrus Manus was commonly referred to as The Gorgon. Some on Terra said the name was in reference to an ancient legend of the Olympian Hegemony. The Gorgon was a beast of such incredible ugliness that its very gaze could turn a man to stone. Many would be outraged at the disrespect in the implication of such a term when referring to a Primarch, but those who knew him best believed that Ferrus Manus quite enjoyed the name, because in any case, that was not where the name originated. It was an old nickname Fulgrim had given his brother after their initial meeting. Unlike the Phoenician, Ferrus Manus had little time for art, music or any of the cultural pastimes the III Legion's Primarch so enjoyed. It is said that after the two Primarchs met at Mount Narodnya, they returned to the Imperial Palace where Primarch Sanguinius of the Blood Angels Legion had arrived bearing gifts for the Emperor, exquisite statues from the glowing rock of Baal, priceless gem-stones and wondrous artefacts of aragonite, opal and tourmaline. The lord of the Blood Angels had brought enough to fill a dozen wings of the Palace with the greatest wonders imaginable.

Of course, Fulgrim was enthralled, finding that another of his brothers shared his love of such incredible beauty, but Ferrus Manus was unimpressed and said that such things were a waste of their time when there was a galaxy to win back. Fulgrim laughed and declared Ferrus a "terrible gorgon," saying that if the Primarchs did not value beauty, then they would never appreciate the stars they were to win back for their father. After that time the name stuck, and forever after Ferrus Manus was often referred to as The Gorgon.

Fulgrim's Fall
Fulgrim first fell from the Emperor's grace on the xenos planet called Laeran, officially designated as Twenty-Eight-Three, being the third world the 28th Expedition had brought to Imperial Compliance. Unbeknownst to the III Legion, the serpentine Laer species were corrupted xenos worshippers of the Chaos God of Pleasure, Slaanesh. Though the resource-rich Ocean World of Laeran would be of immeasurable value to the Crusade of the Emperor, its alien inhabitants did not wish to share what blind fortune had blessed them with. They had refused to see the manifest destiny that guided Mankind through the stars and had made it abundantly clear that they held the Imperium in nothing but contempt. The III Legion's advance had been rebuffed with violence, and honour demanded that they answer in kind.

During the ensuing campaign, the III Legion's Chief Apothecary Fabius discovered upon examining some of the corpses of the Laer that the serpentine creatures had been engaged in extensive genetic engineering to perfect their species, creating a multitude of different castes who were genetically designed to best serve their intended function in Laer society. Bringing his findings to his Primarch, Fabius explained that the Laer were not so dissimilar to the Emperor's Children in their approaches to perfection. He put forward the hypothesis that what the Emperor had made was incredible, but what if it was but the first step on a longer road? Fabius suggested that if they were to look upon their own flesh they could find new ways to improve upon it and bring it closer to perfection. The Apothecary may very well have signed his death warrant by speaking so frankly, but the possibilities that might be opened up were worth any risk. To attempt to unlock the secrets of the Emperor’s work in creating the Astartes would be the greatest undertaking of his life. Fulgrim inquired if Fabius truly believed that he could enhance the gene-seed of the Astartes. The Apothecary admitted that he didn't know for certain, but he believed that they had to at least try, for by doing so they would move closer to perfection -- and only by imperfection would the Emperor's Children fail the Emperor. The Primarch agreed with the Apothecary's proposition and gave Bile free leave to do what needed to be done.

Fulgrim's 28th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade conquered Laeran for the Imperium, exterminating its hostile native reptilian species, the Laer. Laeran was a water world, its continents having sunk beneath its oceans' waves centuries before when all of its ice caps and glaciers melted. The oceanic world was home to a native sentient species known as the Laer who were reptilian and serpentine in form but also engaged in extensive genetic engineering to perfect their species, creating a multitude of different castes who were genetically designed to best serve their intended function in Laer society. Having no land area, the Laer, whose technology equalled or even exceeded that of the Imperium in certain areas, had moved their entire society onto hundreds of floating coral islands that circled a central nexus in the planet's atmosphere. Each coral island was held aloft by an anti-gravity generator. What Fulgrim and his Emperor's Children Legion did not know was that the Laer were also an entire civilisation that had been corrupted by Slaanesh, the Chaos God of Pleasure and Pain. The central nexus point that all of their coral islands orbited was actually a massive temple dedicated to the Prince of Pleasure at the heart of which lay a potent Chaos Artefact, a beautifully crafted, single-edged Daemonblade, that served as the physical vessel for a Greater Daemon of the Prince of Chaos. The Laer evinced all the signs of what later generations of the Imperium would recognise as Slaaneshi corruption, including a need for constant extreme sensory inputs, such as riotous colours and constant sound, and the deriving of pleasure from only the most extreme of sensations, including their own deaths. Completely unaware of the real dangers he and his Astartes Legion faced on the Chaos-corrupted world, Fulgrim ordered the Emperor's Children and the other forces of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet to assault the planet and conquer it for the Imperium within a single Terran month, completely eradicating the Laer species in the process. The Council of Terra had decided that the subjugation of the Laer would cost too many Imperial lives and would take too long. Some estimates indicated that an attempted Imperial Compliance would take as long as ten standard years. There had even been talk of making Laeran a protectorate of the Imperium. Primarch Fulgrim would not countenance such talk, for by refusing the Emperor's beneficence, the Laer had effectively sealed their doom.

During the final slaughter of that serpentine xenos race, Fulgrim and his Astartes discovered the great temple dedicated to Slaanesh that lay on the central floating coral island of Laeran. The Imperium, ignorant of the existence of the Chaos Powers at this time and holding to the extreme rationalism and atheism of the Imperial Truth, did not realise the significance of such a find or what they had really discovered. The expedition led by Fulgrim began to be unwittingly corrupted by the temple's potent and malign influence. After defeating the temple's fanatical Laer defenders, Fulgrim discovered what the Laer were so fiercely protecting -- at the centre of the chamber of the unholy temple was a circular block of veined black stone, and embedded within was a tall silver sword with a gently-curved blade and a crude ameythest gem set in the pommel. This sword was not only a potent Slaaneshi artefact but also the physical vessel of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh.

Once Fulgrim had claimed the blade as his own, the daemon within it began whispering in his mind and corrupting his soul towards the service of Slaanesh. He began to wield the daemonblade more often than his prior weapon, the great sword Fireblade that had been forged for him on Terra by his fellow Primarch and most favoured brother, Ferrus Manus. Thinking the whispers in his mind was only his own subconscious speaking to him, Fulgrim began listening to what it offered. Eventually, he discovered these were actually the whispers of the daemon that existed within the blade. After a lot of persuasion from his brother Horus, himself already corrupted by the Ruinous Powers after his injury on the moon of Davin, Fulgrim gave himself over to Chaos, and found his particular patron in the Prince of Pleasure, who offered the Primarch a route to the ultimate perfection he so craved for himself and his Astartes, free of all morality and dependent upon the pursuit of ultimate self-obsession.

With the end of the war on Laeran, the steady stream of wounded and dead to the Apothecarion slowed, leaving Chief Apothecary Fabius more time to devote to his researches. To ensure the secrecy his experiments demanded, he had relocated to a little-used research facility aboard the Andronius, a Strike Cruiser under the authority of Lord Commander Eidolon. Its facilities had been basic at first, but with Eidolon’s blessing, he had gathered a bewildering array of specialist equipment. Eidolon had taken a personal interest in Bile's work, though he disapproved of his methods. Fulgrim had told the Lord Commander of the scale of what he was to attempt, for his work would enhance the physiology of the Astartes. Eidolon informed the Apothecary that when he returned from his more laborious duties, Bile would begin his experimentation on him. Through the Apothecary's genetic enhancements, the Lord Commander hoped to become Bile's greatest success, faster, and more deadly then ever before. He wished to become the indispensable right hand of the Primarch.

The Diasporex Persecution
During the latter part of the Great Crusade, the Iron Hands Legion encountered a nomadic, fleet-based civilisation composed of both humans and xenos known as the Diasporex. The Iron Hands shared the Imperial Truth of the Emperor of Mankind and offered the human members of the Diasporex the opportunity to separate from their alien allies and to join the newly forged Imperium, but they declined the Astartes' offer. Their offer rejected, the Iron Hands passed judgement, and in the following months the Iron Hands fleet attempted to annihilate the Diasporex, but they proved to be highly skilled and experienced in the realm of naval warfare, and managed to easily evade crucial battles and even to severely damage the Iron Hands' Strike Cruiser Ferrum. The Emperor's Children of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet were called in as reinforcements, and so, a joint Imperial strike force composed of both the Iron Hands and forces from the Emperor's Children Legion launched an all-out assault against the willful Diasporex. Though the Diasporex knew that a powerful fleet of warships was hunting them and sought their destruction, they refused to leave the sector and move on to someplace safer. The Iron Hands' scout ships soon discovered the truth -- the Diasporex used hidden solar collector arrays to collect fuel for their vessels from a star. This was the reason why the Diasporex remained within the sector. Attacking these vital fuel stations, the two Imperial Expeditionary Fleets drew the Diasporex fleet out into open battle as the human-alien alliance sought to avoid utter annihilation at the Imperials' hands.

During the massive naval battle that ensued Fulgrim's personal gunship, the Firebird, came under heavy attack and soon found itself in trouble. Rushing to his brother's side, Ferrus Manus' flagship, the Battle Barge Fist of Iron, came rushing to the rescue of his beleaguered brother. To restore his wounded pride, Fulgrim led a brief shipboarding action where the Emperor's Children wreaked bloody havoc on the troops of the Diasporex. But ultimate victory was robbed from him when the enemy ship's bridge was taken by one of his subordinate commanders. For months thereafter, Fulgrim would resent The Gorgon's actions, unable to truly understand the altruism of Ferrus' deed and the loss of life his selfless act had incurred on his Legion. Under the malignant influence of the daemon-possessed Laer blade that he wore at all times, Fulgrim could only see self-aggrandisement in his brother’s action, instead of the the heroic deed it had truly been. Ferrus' critical comments, the wounding darts that Fulgrim believed were meant to undermine him, were in actuality only jests designed to puncture Fulgrim's self-importance and restore his humility. What Fulgrim perceived as Ferrus’ prideful boasts and rash actions had been deeds of courage that he spitefully dismissed as the influence of Chaos began to claim the Phoenician's soul.

The Horus Heresy
Certain members of the Inquisition who have studied the fragmentary Imperial records of this time now believe that the Laeran daemonsword began to exert a powerful Chaotic influence over Fulgrim, and that the Emperor's Children forces he had deployed against the Laer may also have been tainted by their exposure to the concentrated Chaotic corruption of that serpentine race, who had fully sworn themselves to the service of Slaanesh. Even while wrestling with his own Chaotic taint, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children soon found himself at the center of the events that would bring on the Horus Heresy.

Fulgrim met with the renowned Eldar Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwe on the Maiden World of Tarsus, in which the Farseer attempted to warn Fulgrim that Horus had been wounded by the Chaotic aretfact blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame at the hands of Eugen Temba, the Planetary Governor of Davin who had fallen to the influence of the Plague Lord Nurgle. The wounding had allowed the Chaos Gods to gain a purchase on the Warmaster's soul and he was already turning to their service as he recuperated from the nearly-mortal wound the Kinebrach blade had given him at the hands of Temba on the Nurgle-corrupted moon of Davin. Fulgrim reacted with violent outrage at the Farseer's accusations due to his close friendship with his brother Horus, as his bond with the Warmaster was second only to that he shared with Ferrus Manus, the Primarch of the X Legion. This outrage was further enhanced by the influence of Fulgrim's daemonblade, which wanted the Primarch to reject the Eldar's truth and it led Fulgrim to launch an unprovoked and furious attack on Eldrad and his retinue alongside his Emperor's Children Captains and his personal Phoenix Guard. In the battle that ensued, the Emperor's Children slew both the revered Eldar Wraithlord Khiraen Goldhelm and a potent Avatar of Khaine, which forced the Farseer and the other Eldar troops to sorrowfully withdraw, as they realised that Chaos had already claimed yet another of the Mon-Keigh's Primarchs. Yet they had succeeded in killing all of Fulgrim's elite personal Phoenix Guard before their departure. Believing the Eldar had proven themselves a treacherous race that sought to divide and conquer the Imperium by spreading such lies about its leaders, Fulgrim, again under the increasing influence of the daemonblade, ordered the destruction by the 28th Expeditionary Fleet of several other beautiful Eldar Maiden Worlds using hideous virus bombs.

Whilst the exact timing of this meeting remains unknown in Imperial records, it is known that Fulgrim soon met Horus in person after the Eldar had provided their warning about the Warmaster's turn to Chaos, and Fulgrim demanded a personal account of his actions. Instead, Horus, deploying every ounce of his immense charisma, proved able to sway Fulgrim to his cause and the service of the Ruinous Powers. Fulgrim's respect for Horus allowed Chaos to find its own way into Fulgrim's heart, destroying Fulgrim's once rock-solid loyalty to the Emperor, and replacing it with the burning desire to destroy the man who he now believed held humanity back from the perfection Fulgrim so craved and that Horus convinced him only the Chaos Gods could truly provide. Only when Mankind had fully embraced Chaos could it know true perfection, Fulgrim came to believe, and the Emperor and his false Imperial Truth stood directly in the way of his and the rest of humanity's attainment of that perfection. In recognition of the trust Horus put in his brother, he gifted him with the potent Chaotic blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame. Only the two brothers shared the secret of the poisoned blade's true power, as it was the weapon blessed by the Plague God Nurgle that had almost killed Horus on Davin's feral moon.

Fulgrim was next ordered by Horus to meet with Ferrus Manus, the Primarch of the Iron Hands Legion and Fulgrim's greatest friend amongst his brother Primarchs, aboard his flagship the Battle Barge Fist of Iron in the hope that he could be swayed to the side of Horus and the other Traitor Legions who now served Chaos. Fulgrim had sent the bulk of his Legion and the 28th Expeditionary Fleet on to meet Horus and the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System while he and a small force aided the Iron Hands' 52nd Expeditionary Fleet in retaking the world of Callinedes IV from Orks. Great bonds of friendship and brotherhood had long existed between them, and Fulgrim felt that he could convince Ferrus of the righteousness of Horus' cause. Fulgrim's hope proved disastrously wrong and the meeting of the two Primarchs in Ferrus' private inner sanctum in his flagship's Anvilarium did not go well, as Ferrus was outraged that his brothers would turn against their father the Emperor. The meeting ended in violence as The Gorgon made his difference of opinion over continued loyalty to the Emperor known to the Phoenician with his weapons, and he was determined to stop Fulgrim's betrayal of the Imperium before it could begin. Ferrus used his silvery necrodermis hands to destroy Fulgrim's Power Sword Fireblade, but the explosion knocked him out.

Fulgrim intended to kill his brother with his own weapon, the warhammer Forgebreaker, but proved unable to kill his oldest friend despite the promptings of the Slaaneshi daemon that now throttled his soul. When Fulgrim emerged from Ferrus' inner sanctum, he gave a signal to his Phoenix Guard who instantly beheaded all of the Iron Hands Morlock Terminators who served as Ferrus Manus' bodyguard with their Power Halberds. The Emperor's Children also nearly slew the Iron Hands' First Captain Gabriel Santor. Fulgrim successfully fled the Iron Hands' expeditionary fleet in his personal assault craft, the Firebird, when he ordered his flagship, the Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor and its Escorts, to open fire upon the ships of the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet. This surprise attack crippled them and provided a distraction while Fulgrim and the forces of the III Legion fled into the Warp to rendezvous with the rest of their 28th Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System.

With their allegiance now settled and their path forward determined, the Chaotic corruption of the Emperor's Children spread quickly throughout the III Legion, from Fulgrim to his chief lieutenants, the two Lord Commanders of the Legion, and then to its company captains and squad sergeants and finally to all but a small minority of Emperor's Children Astartes who followed the dictates of Slaanesh rather than remaining loyal to the Emperor. The III Legion's once-laudable quest for excellence and perfection had been corrupted into a desire to achieve perfect hedonism and constant, self-absorbed, sensual excess.

Evolution
After another successful Compliance action was conducted on the Imperial world designated Twenty-Eight Four, Lord Commander Eidolon underwent elective augmentative surgery under the knife of Chief Apothecary Fabius. The Apothecary implanted a modified tracheal implant that bonded with the Lord Commander's vocal chords, allowing him to produce a nerve paralysing shriek similar to that employed by certain warrior breeds of the Laer.

When the Apothecary explained the nature of the new organ implanted into the Lord Commander's throat, Eidolon was outraged that Bile would implant xenos filth within him. Enraged, he ordered the Apothecary to halt the surgery and release him from the medicae table. But Fabius refused the Lord Commander's orders, for Fulgrim himself had authorised his work and Eidolon had insisted that the Apothecary work on him upon his return. The Lord Commander would later make use of this new ability whilst leading his 1st Company in concert with the Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro and his 7th Company against traitorous forces on Istvaan Extremis, the outermost planet within the Istvaan System. Whilst fighting against a powerful Slaaneshi mutant known as a Warsinger, Garro was laid low. It was then that Eidolon took hold of the situation and employed his newly acquired abilities, destroying the Warsinger with a devastating sonic shriek. In light of this, Eidolon may potentially be considered as one of the first Noise Marines.

Betrayal
Following the Cleansing of Laeren, the rot of corruption had begun to spread throughout the III Legion. Lord Commander Vespasian, one of two senior commanders within the hierarchy of the Emperor's Children, staunchly adhered to his Legion's ethos of perfection of honour, refusing to allow himself to fall to the rampant hubris and arrogance that had become more common within the ranks of the III Legion. Over the course of many months, Vespasian consulted other like-minded Battle-Brothers within the Legion, including 2nd Company commander Solomon Demeter, about his growing concerns and fears for the future of the Legion.

Vespasian was present during the meeting between Ulthwé Craftworld Farseer Eldrad Ulthran and his Primarch Fulgrim upon the Eldar Maiden World of Tarsus. He had heard the the dire warning presented to them of the Warmaster's corruption to the then unknown dark powers of Chaos and the inevitable rebellion that would soon follow. The Primarch had rejected such accusations as outright heresy and ordered his delegation to attack the upstart Xenos. Lord Commander Vespasian reluctantly followed his Primarch's orders and destroyed Tarsus and the rest of the Maiden Worlds the 28th Expeditionary Fleet had recently encountered through Exterminatus. Weeks later, Fulgrim's fleet was ordered by the Council of Terra to rendezvous with the Warmaster's 63rd Expeditionary Fleet to inquire about reports of the their recent conduct and acquire information in regards to Horus's grave injuries acquired on Davin's feral moon. Vespasian was excluded from this delegation with the Warmaster, further demonstrating the growing rift between the Lord Commander and his Primarch Fulgrim.

Following this delegation to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, Fulgrim announced to his senior commanders that he would lead a small force to join Ferrus Manus and his Iron Hands at Callinedes IV in the Callinedes System under the pretense of clearing it of an Ork infestation. The rest of the Legion would rendezvous with the Warmaster’s 63rd Expedition at the Istvaan System to halt a growing rebellion. But the III Legion wasn't to fight alone, for they were to deploy alongside the Death Guard and the World Eaters. Though the men of his Legion cheered in adulation at the prospect of fighting with their brother Astartes, Fulgrim's amusement turned instantly to sorrow as he understood that, but for Vespasian’s stubbornness, a great many of these warriors would have made a fine addition to the army of the Warmaster’s new crusade. With such warriors fighting for the Warmaster, what heights of perfection would have been beyond them? Vespasian’s refusal to allow his men to sample the heady delights of Fabius’s chemical stimulants, or to undergo enhancing surgeries, had condemned the warriors once under his command to death in the Warmaster’s trap of Istvaan III. He realised he should have disposed of Vespasian much sooner, and the mixture of guilt and excitement at the deaths he had set in motion was a potent cocktail of sensations. When the killing on Istvaan III was done, the chaff would have been cut from Horus’s force, and they would be a sharpened blade aimed at the heart of the corrupt Imperium.

Vespasian met his end after the operation conducted by the III Legion to cleanse Callinedes. The Lord Commander was denied audience with the Primarch, a most unusual occurrence, after numerous requests. A dark shroud had hung over Vespasian ever since the battle on the deep orbital of the Callinedes system. He felt obliged to act after he observed Solomon Demeter's 2nd Company being intentionally abandoned by both Captains Kaesoron's and Vairosean's companies. Within hours, the 2nd Company had been in transit to the Istvaan System to rendezvous with three other Legions to pacify the rebellious world of Istvaan III. Finally seizing the opportune moment, Vespasian confronted Fulgrim in his stateroom over the growing corruption and decay of the Legion's ideals that they had been founded upon. The Lord Commander discovered, much too late, the malign influence of Chaos that had held sway over his Primarch. With sibilant whispers of the daemon-possessed Laer sword urging him on, Fulgrim murdered Vespasian in cold blood by stabbing him in the neck with the Anathame.

Istvaan III
Before Horus openly launched his rebellion to overthrow the Emperor, an opportunity presented itself that would enable him to get rid of the Loyalist elements within the Astartes Legions under his command. The Imperial Planetary Governor of Istvaan III, Vardus Praal, had been corrupted by the Chaos God Slaanesh whose cultists had long been active on the world even before it had been conquered by the Imperium. Praal had declared his independence from the Imperium, and had begun to practice forbidden Slaaneshi sorcery, so the Council of Terra charged Horus with the retaking of that world, primarily its capital, the Choral City. This order merely furthered Horus' plan to overthrow the Emperor. Although the four Legions under his direct command -- the Sons of Horus, World Eaters, Death Guard and the Emperor's Children -- had already turned Traitor and pledged themselves to Chaos, there were still some Loyalist elements within each of these Legions that approximated one-third of each force; many of these warriors were Terran-born Space Marines who had been directly recruited into the Astartes Legions by the Emperor Himself before being reunited with their Primarchs during the Great Crusade.

Horus, under the guise of putting down the rebellion against Imperial Compliance on the world of Istvaan III, amassed his troops in the Istvaan System. Horus had a plan by which he would destroy all of the remaining Loyalist elements of the Legions under his command. After a lengthy bombardment of Istvaan III, Horus despatched all of the known Loyalist Astartes down to the planet, under the pretence of bringing it back into the Imperial fold. At the moment of victory and the capture of the Choral City, the planetary capital of Istvaan III, these Astartes were betrayed when a cascade of terrible Life-Eater virus-bombs fell onto the world, launched by the Warmaster's orbiting fleet. The Loyalist Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children, however, was aboard the Strike Cruiser Andronius and had discovered the plot to wipe out the Loyalist Astartes of the Traitor Legions. He was able, with help from Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard who was in command of the Death Guard Frigate Eisenstein, to reach the surface of Istvaan III despite pursuit and warn the Loyalist Space Marines he could find of all four Legions of their impending doom. Those that heard or passed on Tarvitz's warning took shelter before the virus-bombs struck.

The civilian population of Istvaan III received no such protection: 12 billion people died almost at once as the lethal flesh-dissolving virus called the Life-Eater carried by the bombs infected every living thing on the planet. The psychic shock of so many deaths at one time shrieked through the Warp, briefly obscuring even the glowing beacon of the Astronomican. The Primarch of the World Eaters, Angron, realising that the virus-bombs had not been fully effective at eliminating all the Loyalists, flew into a rage and hurled himself at the planet at the head of 50 companies of World Eaters Traitor Marines. Discarding tactics and strategy, the World Eaters Traitors worked themselves into a frenzy of mindless butchery fed by their growing allegiance to the Blood God Khorne. Horus was furious with Angron for delaying his plans, but Horus sought to turn the delay into a victory and was obliged to reinforce Angron with troops from the Sons of Horus, the Death Guard, and the Emperor's Children.

Fortunately, a contingent of Loyalists led by Battle-Captain Garro escaped Istvaan III aboard the damaged Imperial Frigate Eisenstein and fled to Terra to warn the Emperor that Horus had turned Traitor. On Istvaan III, the remaining Loyalists, under the command of Captains Tarvitz, Garviel Loken and Tarik Torgaddon, another Loyalist member of the Sons of Horus, fought bravely against their own traitorous brethren. Yet, despite some early successes that delayed Horus' plans for three full months while the battle on Istvaan III played out, their cause was ultimately doomed by their lack of air support and Titan firepower. During the battle, the Sons of Horus Captains Ezekyle Abaddon and Horus Aximand were sent to confront their former Mournival brothers, Loken and Torgaddon. Horus Aximand beheaded Torgaddon, but Abaddon failed to kill Loken when the building they were in collapsed. Loken somehow survived and witnessed the final orbital bombardment of Istvaan III that ended the Loyalists' desperate defence.

The few remaining Loyalists of the Emperor's Children Legion fought bravely on Istvaan III, led by Captains Saul Tarvitz and Solomon Demeter. To prove his worth and loyalty to Lord Commander Eidolon of the Emperor's Children -- and thus to his Primarch, Fulgrim -- Captain Lucius of the 13th Company of the Emperor's Children, the future Champion of Slaanesh known as Lucius the Eternal, turned against the Loyalists that he had fought beside because of his prior friendship with Saul Tarvitz. He wanted to punish Tarvitz for taking command of the defence, which had incited Lucius's fierce jealousy of his fellow captain. Lucius slew many of his former comrades personally, an act for which he was then accepted back into the III Legion on the side of the Traitors. In the end, the Loyalists retreated to their last bastion of defence, only a few hundred of their number remaining. Finally, tired of the conflict, Horus ordered his men to withdraw, and then had the remains of the Choral City bombarded into dust for a final time from orbit.

Lords of Pleasure
Throughout the final days of the Great Crusade, just before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the famed composer Bequa Kynska of Terra had accompanied the Emperor's Children's 28th Expeditionary Fleet as a Remembrancer aboard Fulgrim's Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor. Kynska was a jaded musician always in search of further sensations to create more exhilarating and all-encompassing music, which made her an easy target for Slaaneshi corruption. After Kynska accompanied many of the 28th Expedition's Remembrancers to the temple dedicated to Slaanesh on the xenos world of Laeran, she was touched by the Chaotic corruption of that foul place and slowly sought to create the ultimate orchestral piece that she believed could capture the wondrous sounds she had heard within the Laer temple. Her ultimate masterpiece was a symphony she named the Maraviglia and which she performed for Fulgrim and all the assembled Astartes of the Emperor's Children and their support personnel within the Remebrancers' lounge and theatre called La Fenice aboard the Pride of the Emperor. To recreate the sounds she had heard, Kynska created new musical instruments whose sonic powers could also be used for destruction when employed by an individual already corrupted by Slaanesh. As the Maraviglia began, the cachophony of sound unleashed by these instruments acted as a sorcerous ritual that opened a link between realspace and the Warp and allowed the power of Slaanesh to directly touch the audience. During the "performance" it was noted that the musical instruments were able to produce effects variously disorienting, stimulating and downright murderous.

Chaotic mutations ran rampant through the audience and Astartes and mortal humans alike were so overwhelmed by sensation and uncontrollable emotions that they unleashed an orgy of both sensual hedonism and the most base form of murder upon one another. Ultimately, the music summoned five Lesser Daemons of Slaanesh known as Daemonettes from the Warp who possessed the bodies of Kynska and several of her singers and joined in the slaughter. During this part of the concert, several Emperor's Children Astartes left their seats and took up the instruments to try and keep the Chaotic music playing and in the course of their untrained fumblings with the instruments discovered that they could unleash waves of destructive sonic power filled with the strength of Chaos. These Astartes became the first Noise Marines, who would eventually take to the field on Istvaan V wielding this strange, new weaponry as a new unit of the III Legion called the Kakophoni under the command of First Captain Julius Kaesoron. It was during this performance in La Fenice that the Emperor's Children finally gave themselves wholly, both body and soul, to the Prince of Pleasure as his most dedicated servants.

Drop Site Massacre
When the Loyalist Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands Legions arrived in the Istvaan System to face Horus and the Traitor Legions on Istvaan V, the Emperor's Children eagerly took part in the fighting. Thousands of Drop Pods and Stormbirds were deployed for the drop. The first wave was under the overall command of the Primarch Ferrus Manus and besides his own X Legion, the Salamanders led by Vulkan, and the Raven Guard under the command of their Primarch Corax joined him. Vulkan's Legion assaulted the left flank of the Traitors' battle line while Ferrus Manus, the Iron Hands' First Captain Gabriel Santor, and 10 full companies of elite Morlock Terminators charged straight into the centre of the enemy lines. Meanwhile, Corax's Legion hit the right flank of the enemy's position. The odds were considered equal; 30,000 Traitor Marines against 40,000 Loyalists. Horus was aware of the location of the Loyalists' chosen drop site and his troops fell upon the Loyalist Legions.

The battlefield of Isstvan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions. Treacherous warriors twisted by hatred fought their former brothers-in-arms in a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness. The mighty Titan war engines of the Machine God walked the planet’s surface and death followed in their wake. The blood of heroes and traitors flowed in rivers, and the hooded Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum unleashed perversions of ancient technology stolen from the Auretian Technocracy to wreak bloody havoc amongst the Loyalists. All across the Urgall Depression, hundreds died with every passing second, the promise of inevitable death a pall of darkness that hung over every warrior. The Traitor forces held, but their line was bending beneath the fury of the first Loyalist assault. It would take only the smallest twists of fate for it to break.

The second wave of "Loyalist" Space Marine Legions descended upon the landing zone on the northern edge of the Urgall Depression. Hundreds of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks roared towards the surface, their armoured hulls gleaming as the power of another four Astartes Legions arrived on Isstvan V. Yet the Space Marine Legions of the reserve were no longer loyal to the Emperor, having already secretly sworn themselves to Chaos and the cause of Horus. The Night Lords of Konrad Curze, the Iron Warriors of Perturabo, the Word Bearers of Lorgar, and the Alpha Legion of Alpharius represented a force larger than that which had first begun the assault on Isstvan V. The secret Traitor Legions mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle, unbloodied and fresh.

Though the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders had managed to make a full combat drop and secured the drop site, known as the Urgall Depression, they did so at a heavy cost. Overwhelmed with rage, the headstrong Ferrus Manus disregarded the counsel of his brothers Corax and Vulkan and hurled himself against the fleeing rebels, seeking to bring Fulgrim to personal combat. His veteran troops -- comprising the majority of the X Legion's Terminators and Dreadnoughts -- followed. What had begun as a massed strike against the Traitors’ position was rapidly turning into one of the largest engagements of the entire Great Crusade. All told, over 60,000 Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V. For all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.

Fulgrim smiled as his brother Ferrus Manus renewed his attack into the heart of the Traitors' defensive lines atop the Urgall Depression. Backlit by the flaring strobe of battle, his brother was a magnificent figure of vengeance, his silver hands and eyes reflecting the fires of slaughter with a brilliant gleam. For the briefest second, Fulgrim had been sure that Ferrus would pause to muster with the Raven Guard and Salamanders, but there would be no restraining his brother's aggrieved sense of honour. Around the Phoenician, the last of the Phoenix Guard awaited the blunt wedge of the Iron Hands, their golden halberds held low and aimed towards their foes.

Ferrus Manus and his Morlocks charged through the shattered ruin of the defences, his black armour and their burnished plates scarred and stained with the blood of enemies. Fulgrim’s fixed smile faltered as he truly appreciated the depths of hatred his brother held for him and wondered again how they had come to this point, knowing that any chance for brotherhood was lost. Only in death would their rivalry end. The Iron Hands pushed through the defences, the bulky Terminators unstoppable in their relentless advance. Lightning crackled from the claws of their gauntlets and their red eyes shone with anger. The Phoenix Guard braced themselves to meet the charge, fully aware of the power of such mighty suits of armour. The Phoenix Guard answered with a terrible war cry and leapt to meet the Morlocks in a searing clash of blades. Electric fire leapt from the golden edges of the halberds and the Lightning Claws of the warriors, and a storm of light and sound flared from each life and death struggle. The battle engulfed the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, but he stood above it, awaiting the dark armoured giant who strode untouched through the lightning shot carnage as brothers hacked at one another in hatred. Ferrus had long dreamt of this moment of reckoning, ever since Fulgrim had come to him with betrayal in his heart. Only one of them would walk away from their final confrontation.

Final Confrontation
Ferrus taunted Fulgrim for his betrayal of the Emperor and siding with the Traitor Horus. He thought his brother mad, for the Warmaster was defeated -- his forces routed and the power of another four Legions would soon be brought to bear to crush their attempt at rebellion utterly. Unable to contain himself any longer, Fulgrim shook his head, savouring the final act of betrayal to come, revealing to Ferrus that it was he who was naive. Horus would never be foolish enough to trap himself like this. He pointed out towards the northern edge of the Urgall Depression so that Ferrus could see that it was he and his fellow Loyalists who were undone. Ferrus looked and saw a force larger than that which had begun the assault during the first wave of attack, mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle.

Dragging their wounded and dead behind them, Corax and Vulkan led their forces back to the drop site to regroup and to allow the warriors of their recently arrived brother Primarchs of the second wave a measure of the glory in defeating Horus. Though they voxed hails requesting medical aid and supply, the line of Astartes atop the northern ridge remained grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred metres of their allies. It was then that Horus revealed his perfidy and sprung his lethal trap. Inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, a lone flare shot skyward, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below. The fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns, as the second wave of Astartes revealed where their true loyalties now lay. Ferrus looked on in stunned horror as Fulgrim laughed at the look on his brother's face as the forces of his "allies" opened fire upon the Salamanders and Raven Guard, killing hundreds in the fury of the first few moments, hundreds more in the seconds following, as volley after volley of Bolter fire and missiles scythed through their unsuspecting ranks.

Even as terrifying carnage was being wreaked upon the Loyalists below, the retreating forces of the Warmaster turned and brought their weapons to bear on the enemy warriors within their midst. Hundreds of World Eaters, Sons of Horus and the Death Guard fell upon the veteran companies of the Iron Hands, and though the warriors of the X Legion continued to fight gallantly, they were hopelessly outnumbered and would soon be hacked to pieces. Ferrus Manus turned to face Fulgrim, his teeth bared with the volcanic fury of his homeworld. The two Primarchs leapt at one anther, Ferrus wielding Fireblade and Fulgrim holding Forgebreaker. Their weapons had been forged in brotherhood, but were now wielded in vengeance, meeting in a blazing plume of energy. The two Primarchs traded blows with their monstrously powerful weapons, Ferrus Manus wielded his flaming blade in fiery slashes, his every blow defeated by the ebony hafted hammer he had borne in countless campaigns. Both warriors fought with the hatred only brothers divided could muster, their armour dented, torn and blackened by their fury.

The two Primarchs traded terrible blows, wounding one another deeply during their fierce struggle. As Ferrus pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the wounded Fulgrim, he cried out as he brought the flaming blade towards his brother's neck. But Fulgrim lashed out as he drew the single-edged, daemonically-possessed sword he had taken from the Laer temple and blocked the descending weapon. With the power of Chaos streaming from the blade, diabolical strength flooded Fulgrim's limbs as he pushed against the power of Ferrus Manus, feeling his brother's surprise at his resistance. Fulgrim managed to surge to his feet and lashed out, his silver blade biting deep into the breastplate of Ferrus' armour, and the Primarch of the Iron Hands cried out, falling to his knees once again. Fireblade slid from his grasp as he gasped in fierce agony. As Fulgrim raised the silver sword in preparation of delivering the deathblow to Ferrus Manus, he found that he did not possess the fortitude to deliver the killing blow. In an instant he saw what he had become and what monstrous betrayal he had allowed himself to be party to. He knew in that eternal moment that he had made a terrible mistake in drawing the sword from the Temple of the Laer, and he fought to release the damnable blade that had brought him so low.

His grip was locked onto the weapon and even as he recognised how far he had fallen, he knew that he had come too far to stop, the realisation coupled with the knowledge that everything he had striven for had been a lie. As though moving in slow motion, Fulgrim saw Ferrus Manus reaching for his fallen sword, his fingers closing around the wire-wound grip, the flames leaping once more to the blade at its creator’s touch. Fulgrim’s blade seemed to move with a life of its own as he swung the blade of his own volition. Fulgrim tried desperately to pull the blow, but his muscles were no longer his own to control. The daemonic blade sliced through the genetically-enhanced flesh and bone of one of the Emperor's sons. The Iron Hands' Primarch fell to the ground, his head decapitated. Ferrus Manus was dead by his brother's own hand

Though Fulgrim had proved the victor, he discovered as he looked down at his battered brother's prostrate body that everything up until that moment had all been a lie. Fulgrim, as if awakened from a long sleep, was shocked by the death of Ferrus into thinking clearly about the situation for the first time since his expedition to Laeran, and he was horrified by what he had done and by the many betrayals that had led brother Astartes to slay one another. Overcome by his grief, he succumbed to a moment of weakness and foolishly agreed to the daemon's whispering suggestion that he could find release in oblivion. The Greater Daemon was then freed from the prison of the sword and fully possessed Fulgrim's body, claiming it for its own, trapping the real Fulgrim's consciousness away within a psychic prison formed within his own mind but symbolically represented by a painting of the Primarch that stood in the place of honour in La Fenice, the theatre of the III Legion's flagship, the Pride of the Emperor.

Fulgrim and the Warmaster
Following the Traitor's victory at Istvaan V, Fulgrim requested a private audience with the Warmaster. Horus was pleased as his brother presented the grisly trophy of the severed head of Ferrus Manus, as promised. Gloating at this great accomplishment, Horus wished to share this triumph with his fellow captains. But the Emperor's Children's Primarch informed Horus that Fulgrim did not possess the fortitude to fulfill his oath to his brother, so he had done it for him! The Warmaster suddenly realised that the creature that stood before him was not truly his brother Fulgrim, but some sort of doppelganger. Horus threatened harm against this false Fulgrim, informing the creature that he could break him like a straw. The false Fulgrim had no desire to test himself in such a wasteful and fruitless trial of combat. Horus glanced towards Fulgrim’s waist, and relaxed as he saw that this thing masquerading as his brother had come before him unarmed. Whatever its purpose in unveiling itself, it had not come with violence on its mind. For he had come to pledge his loyalty to Horus' cause. He then informed Horus that he was actually a creature of the Warp -- a humble servant of the great power that was the Dark Prince Slaanesh. The Greater Daemon explained to the horrified Horus that he had claimed Fulgrim's mortal shell as his own, and further explained how pleasing it was to him.

Horus inquired as to his brother's fate. The daemon who now inhabited Fulgrim's body explained to Horus that Fulgrim was quite safe, residing within the body now under the control of the Greater Daemon, utterly aware of all that transpired but unable to do anything to intervene. His cries of anguish were a great comfort to the malefic creature. Horus was appalled by this turn of events, and said nothing in response to the daemon's revelations. The Saemon-Fulgrim had pledged its allegiance to his cause and it was a patently powerful Warp entity. Horus thought it best to keep the creature as an ally, for he certainly could not do without the III Legion at this juncture. However, Horus resolved to destroy the daemon and rescue Fulgrim from his torment when the time was right, for no one deserved to endure such a terrible fate. But what power could unmake a daemon? Horus and the Daemon-Fulgrim agreed to keep its true nature to themselves. The daemon had no particular desire to reveal itself and Horus was convinced that such a revelation would create many problems for him at this time with the other Primarchs dedicated to the Traitors' cause.

Traitor Conclave
Four days after the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, Horus Lupercal assembled those Primarchs who stood in opposition to the Imperium aboard his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit. They all knew the costs of the coming campaign, and their destinies within it. The Traitor fleets were underway. But after the "unpleasantness" of Isstvan, this was the first time they had gathered as a full fraternity. Eight Primarchs were present, though only half of them were physically in the room where the gathering took place. This included Fulgrim, Perturabo, Angron and Lorgar Aurelian. The absent four were nothing more than holographic projections: three of them -- Konrad Curze, Mortarion and Alpharius -- manifested around the table in the forms of flickering grey hololithic simulacra. The fourth of them appeared as a brighter image comprised of the silver radiance of brilliant witchfire. This last image was of Magnus the Red, who projected himself from afar by sorcerous means, from the Sorcerer's Planet where he was still licking his wounds from the recent Burning of Prospero by Leman Russ' Space Wolves.

As soon as Lorgar had taken his seat at the council table he could not take his eyes off his brother Fulgrim. The Warmaster grew ever more weary of his brother's inability to adhere to established planning and his lack of attention to the important gathering. Before the meeting could properly get underway, Lorgar slowly reached for the ornate Crozius mace on his back. As he drew the weapon in the company of his closest kin, his eyes remained locked on one of them, and all physically present felt the deepening chill of psychic frost riming along their armour. The Word Bearer Primarch accused the thing that mimicked his brother in physical appearance as not being who he purported to be. Before anyone could react, Lorgar's Crozius mace struck the supposed Emperor's Children Primarch. Fulgrim crashed into the back wall, his prostrate form crumpled to the ground. Turning his fierce eyes upon his other brothers he declared that this pretender was not Fulgrim. The other Primarchs that were present, advanced upon the changeling, drawing their own weapons. The Warmaster tried to placate the enraged Lorgar, his merest threat of a confrontation had usually been enough to quell Lorgar from any rash actions in the past. But as they faced Aurelian now, even Horus was wide-eyed in the changes wrought within him since Istvaan V. Clutching his mace in his crimson coloured gauntlets, defying his brothers, he warned them to stay back.

When Horus once again attempted to calm the enraged Primarch, Lorgar was surprised at the sudden realisation that the Warmaster already knew that Fulgrim was not whom he pretended to be. The Warmaster informed his fellow Primarchs that he would personally deal with the situation and dismissed them all from his chambers, with the exception of Lorgar. The Word Bearers Primarch could see the truth -- this creature was one of daemons of Chaos -- as whatever was wearing his brother's skin and armour had its soul hollowed out. Something nestled within, puppeteering the soulless body of their own brother. What Lorgar couldn't understand was how this had come to pass and why did Horus continue to protect such a dark secret? Horus explained to his brother that he had not orchestrated Fulgrim's demise; he was merely containing the aftermath.

Lorgar was perturbed that another sentience now rode within Fulgrim's body. Horus was annoyed at his brother's line of questioning, for Lorgar and Fulgrim had never been close. Why did it matter to him? Lorgar explained that it mattered because this vile intrusion was a perversion of the natural order. There was no harmony in such a joining. Not like his own blessed daemon-possessed sons, the Gal Vorbak. A living soul had been annihilated for its mortal shell to simply house a greedy, unborn wretch of a daemon. During Lorgar's Pilgrimage to the Eye of Terror years earlier, he had walked in the Warp itself. He had stood where the gods and mortals met. Lorgar knew this form of possession was weakness and corruption -- a perversion of what the Chaos Gods wished for Mankind. The Ruinous Powers wanted allies and willing followers, not soulless husks ridden by their daemons.

Using his powerful psychic abilities, Lorgar held the daemon at bay. The Warmaster cautioned that he was killing Fulgrim, but Lorgar replied that it was not their brother, but an "it" - - one that he could destroy if he so wished it. Lorgar threatened the daemon that he would learn its true name and banish it back into the Warp. The Daemon-Fulgrim was helpless against Lorgar's formidable psychic abilities. As the Warmaster attempted to restrain his brother by placing his hand on Lorgar's shoulder, the Primarch psychically commanded Horus to remove his hand. Unable to resist, Horus obeyed. His fingers shivered as they withdrew, and his grey eyes flickered with tension. As the enraged Lorgar strode away from the council chambers, Horus commented that his brother had changed since crossing blades with Corax on the surface of Istvaan V. Lorgar replied that everything had changed that night. He then took his leave and returned to his ship to contemplate what he perceived as utter foulness.

Fulgrim's Fate
Those that served in the III Legion had no idea that their beloved leader was clawing ineffectually at the bondage of his own mind in which he was held. Only the swordsman,Captain Lucius of the 13th Company, had appeared to realise that something was amiss with Fulgrim, but even he had said nothing. The Daemon-Fulgrim had sensed the burgeoning Warp touch upon the warrior and had presented him with the silver daemonblade within which the Laer had bound a fragment of its essence, as he now wielded the far more potent Kinebrach Anathame, a gift from Horus. Though the Laer Daemonsword was now bereft of its spirit, there was still power within the blade, power that would empower Lucius in the years of death to come.

After the conclave aboard Horus' flagship, the Daemon-Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children Legion were ordered to Mars to aid the coming civil war within the Adeptus Mechanicus by the Warmaster. But instead of following his brother's orders, the increasingly mercurial Primarch decided to disobey, and instead ordered his Legion to assault an Adeptus Mechanicus crystal Mining World called Prismatica V. Unable to deal with his lord's mercurial temperament as well as his fellow senior members of the Legion, Lord Commander Eidolon questioned the Primarch's orders. This proved to be a tragic miscalculation on Eidolon's part. Unable to placate his angered lord, the few words he managed to speak on his own behalf inadvertently provoked the Primarch further. The paranoid Primarch believed that the Lord Commander was mocking him and planned to betray him. Quicker than the mind's eye could follow, the Primarch withdrew the Anathame from its scabbard and slew his once-favoured son. He then held the severed head of the slain Eidolon over the opened casks of victory wine, the viscous blood dripping from the grisly trophy and mixing with the potent drink which was then shared amongst the senior members of the III Legion's inner circle.

Far from upset at the death of the much-despised Eidolon, the ascendent champion of the Emperor's Children, Lucius, took note of yet another example of Fulgrim's increasingly capricious behaviour. Contemplating upon the change in his lord, Lucius was inspired to investigate further after receiving a series of dark dreams concerning the painting of the Primarch that hang in La Fenice, which had been cordoned off and sealed by a detachment of the Phoenix Guard after the Maraviglia had worked its corrupting influence upon the Legion. Already concerned by his lord's erratic behaviour and strange moods, Lucius proceeded to scrutinise the Primarch's every move. His concerns grew even more when he noticed Fulgrim's lack of brotherly-camaraderie and observance of Legion rituals and tradition. But what truly aroused Lucius' suspicions was the realisation that Fulgrim's swordsmanship was suddenly inferior to his own superlative skills. His Primarch was not whom he appeared to be. His suspicions were further confirmed when he witnessed Fulgrim employing powerful psychic abilities in open combat against a Warhound-class Titan of the Adeptus Mechanicus during the III Legion's assault on Prismatica V.

Lucius continued to receive the strange dreams in his sleep, and began to follow the threads implanted by these prescient visions. Breaking a standing order, Lucius defied the Primarch and went to investigate La Fenice, the theatre located aboard the Emperor's Childrens' flagship Pride of the Emperor. This is where the Emperor's Children had truly fallen to the corrupting influence of Slaanesh, awakened by the operatic symphony known as the Maraviglia. Investigating the ruined chamber thoroughly, Lucius discovered above the stage that a great portrait hung above the smashed wreckage of the proscenium. Even in the dying light, the portrait’s magnificence was palpable. A glorious golden frame held the canvas trapped within its embrace, and the wondrous perfection of the painting was truly breathtaking. Clad in his wondrous armour of purple and gold, Fulgrim was portrayed before the great gates of the Heliopolis, the heart of the flagship, the flaming wings of a great phoenix sweeping up behind him. The firelight of the legendary bird shone upon his armour, each polished plate seeming to shimmer with the heat of the fire, his hair a cascade of gold. The Primarch of the Emperor’s Children was lovingly portrayed in perfect detail, every nuance of his grandeur and the life that made Fulgrim such a vision of beauty captured in the exquisite brushwork. No finer figure of a warrior had ever existed or ever would again, and to even glimpse such a flawless example of the painter’s art was to know that wonder still existed in the galaxy.

Gazing at the eyes of the painting, Lucius could see the horror within his Primarch's eyes, a horror that had not been rendered by the skill of a mortal painter. The perfect, exquisite agony burned in the portrait's gaze, the dark pools of the painted eyes seemed to follow his every movement. Lucius came to the conclusion that somehow, his Primarch was trapped within the painting, and that the entity that paraded around as their Legion's lord was an imposter. Determined to free his Primarch by any means at his disposal, Lucius secretly convened the Brotherhood of the Phoenix -- the exclusive warrior lodge of the III Legion that only allowed warriors of officer rank to join because of the Legion's love of hierarchy. This had to be done with the utmost secrecy, for by this time the corrupted senior officers had become powerful, volatile and self-obssessed with the pursuit of their individual pleasures. Also, many of these senior officers carried a loathing for Lucius, whom they viewed as a despised upstart. Through his skilled oratory, the swordsman was able to persuade his mercurial brothers that the Primarch was not himself. He further challenged their egos and stroked their vanity, tempting them into boldly capturing their Primarch. Shortly after, the Brotherhood of the Phoenix ambushed the Primarch, and despite taking several casualties, manage to subdue their lord by rendering him unconscious.

The Primarch was then taken to the Apothecarion of the III Legion's Chief Apothecary Fabius, where he was strapped down to one of the examination tables. Here, Fabius, Lucius, Julius Kaesoron and Marius Vairosean attempted to drive forth the daemonic entity from their lord's mortal shell through a protracted torture session known as excruciation. Fulgrim willingly submitted himself to his tormentors' ministrations, and continuously spoke of his perceptions of reality, events that were currently taking place in the galaxy as Chaos grew in power and the envisioned path for his Legion. During the torture session, Lucius suddenly realised that they had been misled. Misinterpreting the situation, they had been duped by their lord. Lucius immediately bended his knee and prostrated himself before his Primarch as Fulgrim easily tore himself free from his restraints. His fellow conspirators all bowed to their lord and master. Content that his favoured sons had learned from the experience, the Primarch did not punish them for their transgressions, for he was not the daemon-possessed shell of the Phoenix as he had allowed his Astartes to believe, but the man himself.

Fulgrim decided to share with Lucius his motives for such an elaborate ruse. He revealed that he had indeed been possessed by a daemonic entity for quite some time, an entity that had trapped his disembodied spirit within the great portrait that had hung in La Fenice. Unwilling to accept his fate, the Primarch had bided his time and used the tormenting experience to learn of Warp-craft and the infallible ways of daemonkind. He eventually was able to use this newly acquired arcane knowledge to force the daemon out of his mortal body -- swapping places with the foul entity -- and trapping it within the portrait for all time. Presumably, it was the daemon that had been sending Lucius the dark dreams in order to attempt to free itself from its prison. In an attempt to further educate his favoured champion in the unfathomable ways of Chaos, the Primarch's apparent inferiority in his sword techniques was merely a ploy to manipulate Lucius into challenging him. The Primarch went on to explain that his mercurial moods and lack of interest in camaraderie and the III Legion's rituals were a natural evolution of his nature to achieve perfection along the path laid out by Slaanesh. Fulgrim announced that he intended to go further than anyone in the realms of sensual experience, intent on pushing the boundaries of reality to the extreme. Fulgrim didn't merely want to accomplish these things for the sole acquisition of power, but to experience the journey -- a journey he wanted his sons to undertake with him. He explained that he had ordered the assault on Prismatica V to claim the crystal the Mechanicus had been mining there so that it might be used to erect a wondrous new city of mirrors dedicated to the exploration of sensual pleasure and self-enlightenment through sensation. But the next step on the Emperor's Children's path towards enlightenment through Chaos, was to rendezvous with the Primarch Perturabo and his Iron Warriors Legion.

Flames of Rebellion
Over the next seven years that followed the massacre on Istvaan V, Horus' rebellion spread across the galaxy, consuming the entire Imperium in the flames of the horrific civil war known to history as the Horus Heresy. By the time the final Battle of Terra began, the Emperor's Children had become only shadows of their former glorious selves, wholly consumed by the desires of Slaanesh, with every trace of decency long lost. While the other Traitor Legions assaulted the Imperial Palace, the Emperor's Children instead launched themselves upon the innocent citizens of Terra, engaging in a mad orgy of rape, terror and mutilation that only barely began to satiate their all-consuming, Slaanesh-inspired hunger for hedonistic pleasure, pain and sensation. Billions of Terrans were used as human guinea pigs or raw materials in the Emperor's Childrens' constant desire to create ever more powerful stimulants, as daemonic hosts to bring Slaaneshi Daemonic Legions to the fight from the Warp or were simply slain outright to allow a Traitor Marine the fleeting enjoyment brought on by the sensation of brutal murder.

Post-Heresy
The history of the Emperor’s Children in the period that followed the defeat of the Traitor Legions at the Siege of Terra is largely obscured from Imperial scholars, for obvious reasons. When Horus was finally defeated by the Emperor aboard his Battle Barge the Vengeful Spirit, the Emperor's Children left a trail of depopulated worlds in their wake as they fled alongside the other Traitor Legions into the Eye of Terror. As their supply of slaves was exhausted by their constant abuse, the remains of the III Legion resorted to raiding the other Traitor Legions for fresh meat to feed their endless perversions, and in the end were crushed by their angry brethren in a series of bloody wars that tore the Traitor Legions apart as they lost the guiding and unifying hand of Horus. Finally, in the course of these conflicts, the Emperor's Childrens' unity as an Astartes Legion was shattered and they devolved into a series of small, competing warbands. Because of the losses they suffered on Terra and in the period immediately after the Battle of Terra, warbands of the Emperor's Children are rare today in the 41st Millennium. This is a boon for the galaxy as the Emperor's Children love to take prisoners. There is perhaps no worse way to die than at the hands of these superhuman Slaaneshi fanatics -- save for perhaps facing the tender mercies of the Dark Eldar.

Perhaps the greatest mystery surrounds the fate of the Primarch Fulgrim himself, for it appears that he disappeared entirely. Some say that the Dark Prince of Chaos granted him apotheosis, and he assumed the mantle of a Daemon Primarch -- his mortal shape transformed into a serpentine form with four arms very similar to the appearance of the Laer xenos that Fulgrim and his Legion had exterminated when he began his fall to Chaos. Others claim that he was already possessed by a powerful Warp entity, and so such a fate could not have come about. There are those that claim that Fulgrim has retreated to some Daemon World of his own creation, and rules there still, overseeing such debased extremes of sensation and experience as no mortal can imagine. Some of those who revere Slaanesh regard this mythical place as the holy of holies, and spend entire lifetimes obsessively questing after it. To this day, many of the scattered surviving warbands of the Emperor's Children and the agents of the Inquisition's Ordo Malleus seek the location of this world, but none have yet returned with that information. Following the Horus Heresy, Fulgrim was last seen in realspace fighting Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines Chapter and its Successors. During their great duel, Fulgrim proved too crafty and guileful, slitting Guilliman's throat with the toxic Anathame that had nearly slain Horus himself without the intervention of the Chaos Gods to heal him. Guilliman was placed within a stasis field and returned to the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge where his body became a focus for the devotion of countless generations of Imperial pilgrims, while Fulgrim retreated into the Warp.

Notable Campaigns

 * The Cleansing of Laeran (Unknown Date.M31) - Shortly after the beginning of their own Crusade, the Emperor`s Children 28th Expeditionary Fleet encountered a hitherto-unknown alien race, who called themselves the Laer. Analysis of captured scouts and envoys showed the Laer to be concentrated in a single star system, Laeran ((officially codified as 28-3). Nonetheless they had the potential to be a powerful foe. Like the Emperor's Children themselves, the Laer prized perfection in all aspects of civilisation. By the use of chemical manipulation from birth, individual Laer were adapted to their roles, whether they be workers, soldiers, diplomats, even artists. Observers from the Adeptus Administratum wondered if perhaps the Laer might be made a protectorate of the Imperium as conquering such an efficient race could prove to be a long and costly endeavour.Fulgrim refused any notion of co-operation. Only Humanity was perfect, he insisted. For an alien race to hold its own ideals to be comparable to those of Humanity was blasphemy in its most blatant form, and deserved nothing less than annihilation. He ordered his Lord Commanders to attack immediately, beginning a war that the Administratum predicted would last decades. Fulgrim heard this prediction, and shook his head. In one month`s time, he said, the Eagle will rule Laeran. In every theatre of war the battle was joined. The Emperor's Children, in concert with Lord Commander Fayle's Imperial Army Archite Palatines, attacked the Laer in space, on the surface of their worlds, beneath their oceans and over the hulls of their orbital platforms. Everywhere they faced enemies adapted to their conditions - warships connected bio-electronically to their crews minds, liquid-breathing sea warriors, scouts capable of moving as fast as a speeder, gunners whose eyesight allowed them to target individual Space Marines in squads miles distant. The casualties on both sides were horrendous - it is estimated that, if not for the excellence of the Legion's Apothecaries, more than half of its warriors would have died from their wounds. The Laer never surrendered - their last warriors died fighting in the ruins of their capital city. One month after he had begun the attack, Fulgrim planted a standard displaying the Imperial Eagle over their corpses, leaving it the only thing standing on the worlds of the Laeran system. Over seven hundred of his men were dead, six times that number injured, but Fulgrim believed he had proven himself correct. Against the most finely-honed alien warriors ever encountered. Humanity had proven itself more powerful. The Laeran System, for ten thousand years now, has been home to three Imperial cities and a dozen mining colonies, all traces of its former xenos rulers gone.
 * The Compliance of Murder (Urisarach) (Unknown Date.M31) - After victory against the Laer, Lord Commander Eidolon departed the 28th Expeditionary Fleet with the elite 1st Company of the Emperor's Children to take part in the reinforcement of the Blood Angels IX Legion upon the Death World of Urisarach, which was officially codified in Imperial records as One-Forty-Twenty, as the twentieth world to be brought into Imperial Compliance by the 140th Expeditionary Fleet. This world was discovered by that fleet, which was commanded by the Blood Angels Legion's Captain Khitas Frome. Unable to translate the warnings from the orbiting Interex satellite beacons that warned approaching starships to stay away from Urisarach since it was a prison world of the dangerous sentient xenos species known as the Megarachnids, the Blood Angels Captain Khitas Frome ordered the fleet's entire contingent of three companies of Space Marines to begin landing operations to investigate and bring the planet into Imperial Compliance. Due to the extreme atmospheric turbulence, all of the Blood Angels' shuttles attempting to land on the planet became scattered and were thrown far off-course which left the Imperial landing parties isolated from each other. The atmosphere also affected Vox (radio) communications and made it difficult for the Imperial forces to coordinate their movements. Ground teams soon started sending garbled transmissions to the fleet's ships in orbit, reporting that the planet was inhabited by extremely hostile xenos. As the reports continued, the large arachnid-like xenos were described as too numerous and formidable to defeat without reinforcements. Not long afterwards, the Blood Angels made urgent distress calls requesting immediate reinforcements and extraction. The last transmission received by the fleet came from Captain Khitas Frome himself, who noted through clenched teeth, "This. World. Is. Murder." The name stuck and became the Imperium's informal appellation for Urisarach thereafter. A company of the Emperor's Children Legion under the command of Lord Commander Eidolon eventually arrived in response to the Blood Angels' distress calls. They made the same mistakes the Blood Angels had made, and had their landing parties scattered by the planet's powerful atmospheric disturbances. While the company took heavy casualties, one landing party led by Captain Saul Tarvitz discovered a large rock-like structure that resembled a dead tree. This "tree" had the bodies of several Blood Angels Space Marines impaled on its many branches with flying variants of the Megarachnids feasting upon the bodies. After destroying the structure, the sky above where the "tree" had been suddenly began to clear of the violent storms that had afflicted the Imperial forces from the beginning. Captain Tarvitz realised that these structures were actually artificial weather control devices that were responsible for Murder's heavy atmospheric turbulence. The Megarachnids immediately went about rebuilding the "tree" and sent hundreds of warriors to slaughter the last few Emperor's Children who remained. There had been little honour in the initial drop to the planet’s surface, amid the death and frantic nature of the combat against the loathsomely quick Megarachnid warriors. It had been brutal, intense and bloody work, and many good warriors had met their end beneath Murder's raging, bruised skies. Thanks to Eidolon’s mistakes, there had been precious little glory won until the Luna Wolves had arrived and brought their strength to bear. Just as the Emperor's Children force were about to be overwhelmed, a relief force of newly-arrived Luna Wolves Astartes from the Warmaster Horus's own 63rd Expeditionary Fleet began to land through the breach in the atmosphere. The Megarachnids were scattered and a full-scale assault on the hostile xenos of Murder began in earnest. Ten companies of Luna Wolves, the remnants of the Emperor's Children, tens of thousands of Imperial Army soldiers, and several Legio Mortis Titans proceeded to level entire swathes of the grass stalk forests and destroy every one of the "trees" they encountered, which steadily eroded Murder's atmospheric barrier. Horus, who was commanding the Imperial assault from his flagship in orbit, was very pleased with the progress being made. Some consideration had been paid to initiating a withdrawal from Murder now that a proper landing zone was available to allow an easy extraction of the troops, when an unexpected visitor suddenly arrived. The Primarch Sanguinius had come to the world to inspect the dead of his original Blood Angels landing force that had been wiped out early in the campaign. Adding five of his companies of Blood Angels to the Imperial invasion force, Sanguinius and his forces fought alongside the Warmaster against the aliens. Thousands of Megarachnids poured out of the forests and canyons of Murder in an endless wave. Despite never retreating from the Imperial assault, the Megarachnids only continued to lose ground. By the sixth month of the campaign it seemed the Megarachnids would soon face extinction when the fleet deployed by the Interex arrived in-system to determine who had assaulted the Megarachnids' reservation world. Finding contact with the highly-advanced humans of the Interex to be a more pressing issue that needed to be dealt with, the Warmaster ended the campaign against the xenos of Murder.
 * Diasporex Persecution, Battle of the Corollis Star (Unknown Date.M31) - During the latter part of the Great Crusade, the Iron Hands 52nd Expeditionary Fleet encountered a nomadic, fleet-based civilisation composed of both humans and xenos known as the Diasporex. The Iron Hands shared the Imperial Truth of the Emperor of Mankind and offered the human members of the Diasporex the opportunity to separate from their alien allies and to join the newly forged Imperium, but they declined the Astartes' offer. Their offer rejected, the Iron Hands passed judgement, and in the following months the Iron Hands fleet attempted to annihilate the Diasporex, but they proved to be highly skilled and experienced in the realm of naval warfare, and managed to easily evade crucial battles and even to severely damage the Iron Hands' Strike Cruiser Ferrum. The Emperor's Children of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet were called in as reinforcements, and so, a joint Imperial strike force composed of both the Iron Hands and forces from the Emperor's Children Legion prepared to launch an all-out assault against the willful Diasporex. Though the Diasporex knew that a powerful fleet of warships was hunting them and sought their destruction, they refused to leave the sector and move on to someplace safer. The Iron Hands' scout ships soon discovered the truth -- the Diasporex used hidden solar collector arrays hidden near the Corollis Star to collect fuel for their vessels. This was the reason why the Diasporex remained within the sector. Attacking these vital fuel stations, the two Imperial Expeditionary Fleets drew the Diasporex fleet out into open battle as the human-alien alliance sought to avoid utter annihilation at the Imperials' hands. During the massive naval battle that ensued Fulgrim's personal gunship, the Firebird, came under heavy attack and soon found itself in trouble. Rushing to his brother's side, Ferrus Manus' flagship, the Battle Barge Fist of Iron, came rushing to the rescue of his beleaguered brother. To restore his wounded pride, Fulgrim led a brief shipboarding action where the Emperor's Children wreaked bloody havoc on the troops of the Diasporex. But ultimate victory was robbed from him when the enemy ship's bridge was taken by one of his subordinate commanders. For months thereafter, Fulgrim would resent The Gorgon's actions, unable to truly understand the altruism of Ferrus' deed and the loss of life his selfless act had incurred on his Legion. Under the malignant influence of the daemon-possessed Laer blade that he wore at all times, Fulgrim could only see self-aggrandisement in his brother’s action, instead of the the heroic deed it had truly been. Ferrus's critical comments, the wounding darts that Fulgrim believed were meant to undermine him, were in actuality only jests designed to puncture Fulgrim's self-importance and restore his humility. What Fulgrim perceived as Ferrus’ prideful boasts and rash actions had been deeds of courage that he spitefully dismissed as the influence of Chaos began to claim the Phoenician's soul.
 * Battle of Tarsus (Unknown Date.M31) - During some unknown point during the Great Crusade, Primarch Fulgrim met with the renowned Eldar Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Ulthwé Craftworld on the Maiden World of Tarsus, in which the Farseer attempted to warn Fulgrim of the Warmaster's corruption after being wounded by a malefic Chaos blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame at the hands of the traitor Eugen Temba upon Davin's Nurgle-corrupted moon. Temba had been the former Planetary Governor of the Feral World of Davin who had fallen under the influence of the Plague Lord Nurgle. The injury caused by the poisonous blade had allowed the Chaos Gods to gain a purchase on the Warmaster's soul. Fulgrim reacted with violent outrage at the Farseer's accusations due to his close kinship with his brother Horus, as his bond with the Warmaster was second only to that shared with Ferrus Manus, the Primarch of the Iron Hands X Legion. This outrage was further enhanced by the corrupting influence of Fulgrim's Laer daemonblade, which darkly influenced the Primarch to reject the Eldar's truth and influenced Fulgrim to launch an unprovoked and furious attack on Eldrad and his retinue alongside his Emperor's Children Captains and his personal Phoenix Guard. In the battle that ensued, the Emperor's Children slew both the revered Eldar Wraithlord Khiraen Goldhelm and a potent Avatar of Khaine, which forced the Farseer and the other Eldar troops to sorrowfully withdraw, as they realised that Chaos had already claimed yet another of the "Mon-Keigh's" Primarchs. Yet they had succeeded in killing all of Fulgrim's elite personal Phoenix Guard before their departure. Believing the Eldar had proven themselves a treacherous xenos race that sought to divide and conquer the Imperium by spreading such lies about its leaders, Fulgrim, again under the increasing influence of the daemonblade, ordered the destruction of several other beautiful Eldar Maiden Worlds using hideous virus bombs.
 * Battle of Deep Orbital DS191 (Unknown Date.M31) - Weeks later, following the campaign on Tarsus, Fulgrim's fleet was ordered by the Council of Terra to rendezvous with the Warmaster's 63rd Expeditionary Fleet to inquire about reports of the their recent conduct and acquire information in regards to Horus's grave injuries acquired on Davin's feral moon. Most unusual, was that Lord Commander Vespasian was excluded from this delegation with the Warmaster, which demonstrated an ever-growing rift between the Lord Commander and his Primarch Fulgrim. Following this delegation to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, Fulgrim announced to his senior commanders that he would lead a small force to join Ferrus Manus and his Iron Hands at Callinedes IV in the Callinedes System under the pretense of clearing it of an Ork infestation. The Primarch spearheaded the assault during the pacification of Deep Orbital DS191, leading the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Companies. During the assault, Captain Solomon Demeter, commander of the Emperor's Children 2nd Company, found himself unsupported by the 1st and 3rd companies as the battle-plan had laid out. Overextended and in real danger of being cut off and destroyed, the 2nd Company was only saved from certain destruction by the unplanned and timely arrival of the 10th and 13th Companies under the commands of Captains Saul Tarvitz and Lucius, two junior officers that Demeter had found himself associating more and more with as he was systematically frozen out by Legion high command. A dark shroud hung over Lord Commander Vespasian after witnessing these dishonourable actions. He felt obliged to act after he observed Solomon Demeter's 2nd Company being intentionally abandoned by both Captains Kaesoron's and Vairosean's companies.
 * Battle of Istvaan Extremis (Unknown Date.M31) - The elite 1st Company of the Emperor's Children fought in concert with the Death Guard Legion's 7th Company under the command of Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro against traitorous forces on Istvaan Extremis, the outermost planet within the Istvaan System. Whilst fighting against a powerful Slaaneshi psyker known as a Warsinger, Garro sustained serious injuries; crushing damage to his torso, arm as well as the loss of his right leg from the mid-thigh down. He was only saved from certain death by the timely ministrations of the Emperor's Children Chief Apothecary Fabius. Taking stock of the desperate situation, Lord Commander Eidolon made use of a hitherto unknown ability -- a modified tracheal implant bonded with the Lord Commander's vocal chords, allowing him to produce a nerve paralysing shriek similar to that employed by certain warrior breeds of the Laer. This powerful ability killed the Warsinger and helped the Astartes to carry the day.
 * Battle of Istvaan III (Unknown Date.M31) - The Imperial Planetary Governor of Istvaan III, Vardus Praal, had been corrupted by the Chaos God Slaanesh whose cultists had long been active on the world even before it had been conquered by the Imperium. Praal had declared his independence from the Imperium, and had begun to practice forbidden Slaaneshi sorcery, so the Council of Terra charged Horus with the retaking of that world, primarily its capital, the Choral City. This order merely furthered Horus's plan to overthrow the Emperor. Although the four Legions under his direct command -- the Sons of Horus, the World Eaters, the Death Guard and the Emperor's Children -- had already turned Traitor and pledged themselves to Chaos, there were still some Loyalist elements within each of these Legions that approximated one-third of each force; many of these warriors were Terran-born Space Marines who had been directly recruited into the Astartes Legions by the Emperor himself before being reunited with their Primarchs during the Great Crusade. Horus, under the guise of putting down the rebellion against Imperial Compliance on the world of Istvaan III, amassed his troops in the Istvaan System. Horus had a plan by which he would destroy all of the remaining Loyalist elements of the Legions under his command. After a lengthy bombardment of Istvaan III, Horus despatched all of the known Loyalist Astartes down to the planet, under the pretence of bringing it back into the Imperium. Initial attacks on the Choral City had washed away any feelings of unease, the release of the Loyalists' anger and hurt in bloodshed reassuring them that things were as they should be, and that their earlier misgivings were no cause for concern. Then Captain Saul Tarvitz of 10th Company of the Emperor's Children had arrived with an incredible tale of betrayal and imminent attack. Many had scoffed at Tarvitz’s warning, but some had immediately known the truth of it, and had fought to make their brothers realise their danger. As the monstrous scale of the betrayal sank in, the Loyalist Sons of Horus, World Eaters and Emperor’s Children had raced to find shelter before the deadly viral payload struck the world intended to be their tomb. The Loyalists on the surface watched in horror as the first streaks of light lit up the sky and the detonations covered the skies in thick starbursts of deadly viral agents. The screaming of the city as it died haunted them, as they couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror that must have filled the minds of those who watched as the Life Eater devoured the flesh of their loved ones, before reducing them to disintegrated hunks of rotted, dead matter. Many within the Loyalist ranks knew what the deadly the Life Eater was, and they knew that within hours the entire planet would be a charnel house. Then the firestorm had come and razed the surface bare of any signs of its former inhabitants, burning them to ashen flakes on the wind as it destroyed all in its path and howled across the surface of Isstvan III in a seething tide of flame. The Primarch of the World Eaters, Angron, realising that the virus-bombs had not been fully effective at eliminating all the Loyalists, flew into a rage and hurled himself at the planet at the head of 50 companies of World Eaters Traitor Marines. Discarding tactics and strategy, the World Eaters Traitors worked themselves into a frenzy of mindless butchery fed by their growing allegiance to the Blood God Khorne. Horus was furious with Angron for delaying his plans, but Horus sought to turn the delay into a victory and was obliged to reinforce Angron with troops from the Sons of Horus, the Death Guard, and the Emperor's Children. Fortunately, a contingent of Loyalists led by Battle-Captain Garro escaped Istvaan III aboard the damaged Imperial frigate Eisenstein and fled to Terra to warn the Emperor that Horus had turned Traitor. On Istvaan III, the remaining Loyalists, under the command of Captains Tarvitz, Garviel Loken and Ezekyle Abaddon and Horus Aximand were sent to confront their former Mournival brothers, Loken and Torgaddon. Horus Aximand beheaded Torgaddon, but Abaddon failed to kill Loken when the building they were in collapsed. Loken survived and witnessed the final orbital bombardment of Istvaan III that ended the Loyalists' desperate defence. To prove his worth and loyalty to Lord Commander Eidolon of the Emperor's Children -- and thus to his Primarch, Fulgrim -- Captain Lucius of the 13th Company of the Emperor's Children, the future Champion of Slaanesh known as Lucius the Eternal, turned against the Loyalists that he had fought beside because of his prior friendship with Saul Tarvitz. Lucius slew many of them personally, an act for which he was then accepted back into the Emperor's Children Legion on the side of the Traitors. In the end, the Loyalists retreated to their last bastion of defence, only a few hundred of their number remaining. Finally, tired of the conflict, Horus ordered his men to withdraw, and then had the remains of the Choral City bombarded into dust for a final time from orbit.
 * Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V (Unknown Date.M31) - The world of Istvaan V was the location of the infamous Drop Site Massacre where the Traitor Legions of the Warmaster Horus redeployed following the virus-bombing of the Traitor Legions' own Loyalist members at Istvaan III at the start of the Horus Heresy. Upon learning of the terrible atrocity Horus had committed, the Emperor deployed seven Loyalist Legions of Space Marines to bring Horus to account for his actions. The Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard made up the first wave of the attack, but were pushed back by the superior tactics of Horus's maddened Chaos Space Marines. The Loyalist reserves were called in, but the four Space Marine Legions comprising them -- the Iron Warriors, the Alpha Legion, the Word Bearers and the Night Lords -- had also secretly betrayed the Emperor and were prepared to follow Horus and swear themselves to Chaos. The three Loyalist Legions were almost annihilated in the resulting crossfire but several thousand survivors from each Legion managed to escape off-world, though they were too decimated to play much of a further role in the defence of the Imperium from Horus' betrayal. During the ensuing slaughter, Fulgrim came face-to-face with his former brother and closest friend, Ferrus Manus. The two Primarchs engaged in a titanic struggle, but in the end the Gorgon was mortally wounded, and with the urging of the daemonblade that he always carried, Fulgrim beheaded the Iron Hands' Primarch. The ensuing civil war pitched the whole Imperium into anarchy and chaos.
 * Battle of Terra (Unknown Date.M31) - As the events of the Horus Heresy neared their tragic conclusion seven years after the fateful betrayal at Istvaan III, those Loyalist Legions not committed to the defence of Terra raced through the Warp, converging on the homeworld of Mankind. The Traitor Legions also massed above Terra to assault the Imperial Palace. The Battle of Terra was the final confrontation of the Horus Heresy that raged on Terra itself between the Forces of Chaos led by the Warmaster Horus and the Loyalist armies of the Imperium of Man led by the Emperor of Mankind himself. When Horus laid siege to Terra itself, the Emperor's Children were at his side, but they took little part in the slow process of whittling down the massive defences of the Imperial Palace. Instead Fulgrim turned his Legion loose on the uncontested areas of the planet, where billions of terrified humans cowered at the sight of the followers of Chaos, suddenly stripped of the protection they had counted on from the Palace. The brutality and slaughter of Istvaan repeated itself, but on a far, far greater scale. With the concentration of Chaos around Terra, the Apothecaries and Sorcerers of the Emperor's Children drew on the power of Slaanesh to enhance their pleasures, wantonly desecrating not only their minds and bodies, but now their immortal souls as well. Daemons were summoned and set loose among prisoners, feasting on their flesh as they died, while the Space Marines themselves sought even greater excesses of carnage and carnality. Fulgrim directed the slaughter with glee, believing that his Legion were setting their victims free from the chains of the Emperor's rule, and allowing them to feel true Humanity at the limits of experience. In that time, as the Siege of Terra raged around them, the Emperor's Children are reckoned to have murdered more than forty times their number of unarmed, defenceless people in their efforts to create new stimulants to feed their addiction to pleasure. How many more died simply to sate the bloodlust of their killers cannot be guessed at. The Loyalist forces ultimately proved victorious in their defence of the Imperial Palace, though only just barely, and Horus was ultimately slain by the full psychic powers unleashed by the Emperor on the deck of his massive Battle Barge the Vengeful Spirit, though the Master of Mankind was mortally wounded and had to be interred within the cybernetic life support mechanisms of the advanced psychic augmentation technology known as the Golden Throne. Those Imperial vessels which pursued Fulgrim's fleet from Terra followed a trail of devastated worlds, where corpses were piled high, survivors pleaded to be allowed to die to escape their nightmares and, ominously, thousands more were simply missing, never seen again. Eventually, after countless atrocities, the Emperor's Children reached the Eye of Terror where they and their fellow traitors hid from the vengeance of the Imperium. According to the Inquisition's Hades Oracle, the Emperor's Children quickly exhausted their supply of slaves and playthings, and began to prey upon the only victims available: the slaves and servants of the other Traitor Legions. The resulting wars were terrible and bloody, but there could be only one eventual result, and finally the Legion of the Emperor's Children was shattered. The outcome of the Battle of Terra shaped the destiny of humanity for the next 10,000 standard years. Thus began the Long War of the Forces of Chaos to overthrow the Corpse Emperor.

Legion Organisation
From its humble beginnings with only 200 Astartes, the Emperor's Children Legion expanded to reach a full complement of 100 companies by the end of the Great Crusade, meaning there were approximately 10,000 Space Marines in the III Legion. Because of their earlier difficulties with their gene-seed, the Emperor's Children were always one of the smaller Astartes Legions, though not the smallest. The III Legion was a strongly hierarchical army where orders were transmitted via an extremely rigid command system and its Space Marines were taught to follow orders without question and aspire to the perfection displayed by their company and Legion officers and embodied by their Primarch. The Primarch Fulgrim was the ultimate commander of the III Legion and exercised authority over all its members. Unlike the other Legions, Fulgrim directly issued his orders to two intermediate officers with the rank of Lord Commander, namely Lord Commander Eidolon and Lord Commander Vespasian in the latter days of the Great Crusade. The Lord Commanders in turn issued orders to the Line Officers (Captains) of each company, who then issued orders to their squad sergeants. The Emperor's Children had a strong belief in the importance of hierarchy and of knowing one's place in the Legion. Perhaps one of the worst insults in a Legion devoted to the pursuit of perfection was that an Astartes had a personality that made him fit only to advance as far as a squad sergeant or a Line Officer, placing the highest ranks of the III Legion forever beyond their grasp because of their personal limitations.

The Emperor's Children had almost no psykers in their midst and never maintained a powerful Librarium before the Edicts of Nikaea banned the use of psychic powers amongst the Astartes Legions. This was because the development of psychic powers were the result of a mutation or a series of mutations within the human genome. A mutation, a random change in the genetic sequence, implied imperfection, and no imperfection could be tolerated by the Astartes of the III Legion. Even in the 41st Millennium it is rare to see a Chaos Sorcerer amongst the warbands of the Emperor's Children.

Like many of the other Astartes Legions of the Great Crusade, the Emperor's Children operated a warrior lodge system known as the Brotherhood of the Phoenix. They had learned about the warrior lodge from their time fighting alongside the Luna Wolves, although given the Emperor's Children's love of formal hierarchy, the Brotherhood of the Phoenix was much more formal in structure and behaviour than their brethren Legions' warrior lodges and was open for membership only to the Primach, the Lord Commanders, and the company captains to maintain the Legion's leadership structure.

The entirety of this careful hierarchy was lost after the end of the Horus Heresy when the Emperor's Children were scattered by their constant battles with the other Traitor Legions in their pursuit of new slaves to torment and enjoy. By the time of the 41st Millennium, the Emperor's Children Legion had fragmented into a small number of Chaos Space Marine warbands of varying size, each led by their own commander who had no allegiance or care for the other warbands in the Legion. Each Astartes had become compeletely self-absorbed in his own quest for new sensations and pleasures, associating with the other members fo his own warband only because their numbers made it easier for these Chaos Space Marines to engage in the battles and slave-taking that were their primary sources of sensation and pleasure.

Specialist Ranks and Formations

 * Noise Marines - As with all followers of Slaanesh, the only focus of life for the Astartes of the Emperor's Children is the senseless indulgence of every whim and desire. This makes the Emperor's Children the most violent, sadistic, and debauched creatures imaginable. As part of their dedication to the ways of the Prince of Chaos, many of the Emperor's Children ultimately became Noise Marines. The original Noise Marines were created by the Emperor's Children's Chief Apothecary Fabius Bile who sought to "perfect" the gene-seed of the Astartes by unlocking the secrets of the Emperor's original genetic engineering and then "improving" upon it through the use of forbidden Chaotic knowledge; due to Fabius' genetic alterations, a Noise Marine's hearing is a thousand times more sensitive than even a "normal" Space Marine's, and can distinguish between even the subtlest differences in pitch, tone and volume. A Noise Marine's enhanced hearing affects his whole mind, causing extreme emotional reactions that make all other sensations seem pale and worthless. The louder and more discordant the noise, the more extreme the emotional reaction provoked and the resulting pleasure the Noise Marine feels. Eventually only the din of battle and heightened screams of fear, pain or terror can stir a Noise Marine to feel the pleasure he so craves. The Noise Marines' name comes from their preference for weapons that use concentrated sound, including: the Sonic Blaster -- outwardly resembling a Bolter -- produced discordant blasts of sound; the Blastmaster -- a rifle-like weapon that produces different sonic frequencies that overpower senses and can even destroy flesh; and the Doom Siren, a loudspeaker surgically melded into the Chaos Space Marine's body that enhances his own screams into violent torrents of pure sonic force that can knock even the largest enemy off his feet. Noise Marines also possess an ability called the "Warp Scream." This explosion of sound dulls the sensory reactions of all those in close vicinity to them. All of this sonic weaponry is descended from the musical instruments invented by the famed composer Bequa Kynska of Terra, who accompanied the Emperor's Children's 28th Expeditionary Fleet as a Remembrancer aboard the Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor during the last days of the Great Crusade. Kynska was a jaded musician always in search of further sensations to create more exhilarating and all-encompassing music, which made her an easy target for Slaaneshi corruption. After Kynska accompanied many of the 28th Expedition's Remembrancers to the temple dedicated to Slaanesh on the xenos world of Laeran, she was touched by the Chaotic corruption of that foul place and slowly sought to create the ultimate orchestral piece that she believed could capture the wondrous sounds she had heard within the Laer temple. Her ultimate masterpiece was a symphony she named the Maraviglia and which she performed for Fulgrim and all the assembled Astartes of the Emperor's Children and their support personnel within the Remebrancers' lounge and theatre called La Fenice aboard the Pride of the Emperor. To recreate the sounds she had heard, Kynska created new musical instruments whose sonic powers could also be used for destruction when employed by an individual already corrupted by Slaanesh. During the performance of the Maraviglia, the cachophony of sound unleashed by these instruments acted as a ritual that opened a link between realspace and the Warp and allowed the power of Slaanesh to directly touch the audience. Chaotic mutations ran rampant through the audience and Astartes and humans alike were so overwhelmed by sensation and uncontrollable emotions that they unleashed an orgy of both sensual hedonism and the most base form of murder upon one another. Ultimately, the music summoned five Lesser Daemons of Slaanesh known as Daemonettes from the Warp who possessed the bodies of Kynska and several of her singers and joined in the slaughter. During this part of the performance, several Emperor's Children Astartes left their seats and took up the isntruments to try and keep the Chaotic music playing and in the course of their untrained fumblings with the instruments discovered that they could unleash waves of destructive sonic power filled with the strength of Chaos. When the Emperor's Children engaged the Imperial Loyalists during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, many of the Emperor's Children used modified forms of these instruments as sonic weaponry and so became the first Noise Marines. They gathered under the leadership of the III Legion's First Captain Julius Kaesoron and formed a single unit known as the Kakophoni. Not all Noise Marines are members of the Emperor's Children and not all rank and file Emperor's Children are Noise Marines. Other Chaos Space Marine armies may field Noise Marines as part of their troops, though the original alterations are always based on the work of the Emperor's Children and Noise Marines are always devotees of Slaanesh.
 * Phoenix Guard - The Phoenix Guard was the elite unit of Space Marines from the Emperor's Children Legion who served as the Primarch Fulgrim's bodyguard during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. The members of the Phoenix Guard followed their beloved Phoenician wherever he went as part of their duties, even when he was travelling within the relative safety of the starships of the Imperial Army and the vessels of the other Space Marine Legions. During the battle to conquer the xenos world of Laeran, the Phoenix Guard took part in the final extermination of the serpentine Laer species. The entire unit was slain on the world of Tarsus in the Perdus Region of the galaxy after Fulgrim, already under the influence of Chaos through the Laer Daemonsword he had captured on Laeran, took offence at the Eldar Farseer Eldrad Ulthran's warning about Horus' corruption by Chaos, and proceeded to open fire on the Farseer and his troops from Craftworld Ulthwe. A new Phoenix Guard was then recruited and accompanied Fulgrim during both his fateful meeting with Horus where he finally embraced Chaos and in his abortive attempt to recruit Ferrus Manus to the Traitors' cause aboard Ferrus' own flagship where they successfully slaughtered the Morlock Terminators who served as Ferrus' own bodyguard unit. While the Phoenix Guard served Fulgrim through the Battle of Terra, it is unknown if the unit still exists and serves as the Daemon Prince's bodyguard on the unknown Daemon World he now calls home.
 * Roaring Blades - Long ago, during the era of the Great Crusade, the Righteous Blades were one of the most decorated and respected infantry units in the Imperial Army. Vassals of Fulgrim, the Righteous Blades provided infantry support for the III Legion. The Righteous Blades fought on countless worlds in the name of the Emperor, and won several victories. But when the Emperor’s Children turned Traitor and joined the Warmaster Horus in dedicating themselves to the Dark Gods of Chaos, the Righteous Blades followed suit. The Imperium lost a proud band of warriors that day, but the Righteous Blades lost their souls, becoming pleasure-addicted acolytes of Slaanesh. These Emperor-forsaken Heretics then became forever after known as the "Roaring Blades."

Legion Combat Doctrine
The Legion accepted nothing less than perfection in all their endeavours, and worked ceaselessly to perfect their military operations. Each and every Space Marine trained every waking hour for his assigned task, whether it be as a foot soldier, driver, gunner, scout or sniper. Every aspect of battle was analysed and used to their advantage, from terrain and weather to deployment or reserves. Nothing was left to chance. In combat the Emperor's Children were as brave as any Space Marines who ever lived, sustained not merely by the example of their peers but by a deep individual belief in their duty. They fought to the best of their abilities in all conditions, whether the battle was a massive planetary assault or a simple patrol. It was widely believed that no Space Marine of the Emperor's Children had ever been routed in battle. Similarly, the III Legion was highly demanding of the forces allied with it. Any signs of hesitation or inefficiency in the Imperial Army units serving alongside the Legion or even amongst their brother Astartes, was not tolerated. The main guiding principle of the Legion was to lead by example, which was ingrained into every fibre of the Emperor's Children. They had little patience for any other regimen.

Legion Beliefs
According to the surviving Legion monuments seized by the Inquisition, the Emperor's Children did not literally deify the Emperor, but the strength and passion of their belief in him was equal to that of any later adherent of the Imperial Cult. Following Fulgrim's lead, the III Legion believed that the Emperor represented the pinnacle of humanity, and that only by following his example was it possible to attain one's full potential as a human being. Any person or group who resisted this goal was below contempt, not worthy even of consideration as a fellow human. However, the Legion's near-worship of the Emperor was extremely hierarchical. The Emperor's perfection was thought to be embodied first by the Primarchs, then the officers of the Astartes Legions, and finally the squad sergeants and the line Space Marines themselves. Normal humans were expected to try and emulate the perfection of the Astartes as best as their obvious inferior positions would allow. Inquisition theorists speculate that this belief system is why it was so easy for the entire III Legion to be corrupted following the seduction of Fulgrim and his fellow officers, as the entirety of the Legion would simply emulate the actions and beliefs of those they believed to be paragons of perfection.

The surviving records tell that, before their fall to Chaos, the Emperor's Children believed that the Emperor would eventually achieve total conquest of the galaxy, and with all hindrances removed there would remain no obstacle to the perfection of human civilisation. While their studies of battle were all-important, the Space Marines of the Legion were taught reverence for the cultural aspects of Mankind's civilisation -- music, art and sculpture among others. Artisans were brought from all the worlds of the Imperium to fashion the Legion's armour, weapons and vehicles to the highest standards. The diversity of humanity was highly prized, and there were few restrictions on the avenues of learning available to the Astartes of the Legion.

Corruption by Slaanesh changed all of this. Now the surviving Astartes of the III Legion seek only the pursuit of their own most base and hedonistic desires, and hold that morality itself is only an illusion. Chaos, and more specifcally the doctrines of the Prince of Pleasure, offer a path to a new form of enlightenment for Mankind and all the other thinking species of the galaxy. While Slaaneshi devotees may seem to be simply insane and self-obsessed sociopaths to outsiders, true devotees of the Path of Pain and Pleasure know that these are only the first steps along the road to true self-knowledge offered by the Dark Prince. While outsiders would claim that the Emperor's Children are simply slaves to their own obsessive desires and the needs of their foul god, the primarch Fulgrim once noted that ALL men are slaves to something, whether it be their own ambition, concept of morality or even of the Emperor Himself.

Legion Homeworld
The Emperor's Children's homeworld of Chemos had an edict of Exterminatus declared against it by the Imperium and was destroyed following the conclusion of the Horus Heresy, as happened to all of the hopelessly corrupted homeworlds of the Traitor Legions. In the 41st Millennium, the III Legion now exists only as small, fragmented warbands, each adopting their own base within the Eye of Terror from which to strike out at the demesnes of the False Emperor. Rumours also persist of a Daemon World in the Eye of Terror dedicated to pleasure ruled over by the Daemon Primarch Fulgrim, although how substantial a detachment of Emperor's Children Chaos Space Marines he retains, if indeed such a planet exists, is unknown.

Legion Gene-Seed
After the near destruction of the Legion in the gene-seeding process, surviving fragments of the Codex Apothecarion Terra indicate that absolute excellence was demanded of the Apothecaries who handled and worked on the precious genetic material. This ethos quickly merged with the Legion's general belief in perfection, so that the Emperor's Children gene-seed was perhaps the most pure and stable of all the Legions. Only the finest physical specimens were chosen for implantation, so that the mutation rate of the gene-seed was practically zero. Every enhancement produced by the gene-seed functioned at peak efficiency, allowing the Space Marines to achieve their full potential in battle. No other Space Marine Legion achieved such a goal, and the technology and expertise required have never been rediscovered in the millennia following the Horus Heresy.

Pre-Heresy
The Space Marines of the III Legion before their corruption at the start of the Horus Heresy sported purple and gold Power Armour, with a golden Imperial Aquila on their chestplates. While this is a common decoration for Astartes armour in the 41st Millennium, during the days of the Great Crusade, only the Emperor's Children were allowed to display the Aquila as a sign of their favour in the eyes of the Emperor of Mankind.

Post-Heresy
During the Heresy, the Emperor's Children repainted their armour in those colours which honour Slaanesh -- pastel colours such as pink and black; they also favor bright, garish, clashing, sensuous colors for decoration and no two Emperor's Children Astartes will have the same colour patterns on their Power Armour. They also make wide use of Noise Marines in their forces. An excellent description of what an Emperor's Children Astartes looks like in the 41st Millennium can be found in Sons of Dorn by Chris Roberson, where there is an excellent description of the Emperor's Children Chaos Lord named Sybaris: "Sybaris’ armour was enamelled with garish hues, eye-watering purple and squint-inducing gold, and encrusted with garish decoration and filigree like a tree choked with vines run amok. What flesh that could be seen within the armour was pale white, and studded with piercings, needles and rings of all varieties. The eyes which gazed out of that white skull seemed deadened and numb, the pupils so wide and dilated that scarcely any iris was visible. These were eyes that had seen too much and never quite recovered. It was a condition that was like the opposite of blindness—rather than milky orbs that could see nothing, these were black eyes that could see everything, and could never look away."

Pre-Heresy
The Emperor's Children Legion badge During the Great Crusade consisted of a golden eagle's wing that ended in a talon. This was part of the symbol of the Aquila, the Emperor's personal heraldry, which the Emperor's Children were the only Legion authorised to wear at the time. The officers of the III Legion wore a larger and more elaborate variant of the taloned eagle's wing that was crafted out of precious metals, usually a gold wing and talon that clutched a purple jewel.

Post-Heresy
Once the Horus Heresy began, the Emperor's Children began to decorate their garish Power Armour with the blasphemous symbols and sigils of Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure, as well as the eight-pointed Star of Chaos, an oft-incorporated Chaotic icon used by all of the Traitor Legions.

Notable Emperor's Children

 * Fulgrim (Daemon Primarch) - Fulgrim the Phoenician was the Primarch of the Emperor's Children and later Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. Fulgrim regretted his corruption by Chaos and repented of his actions after he slew his brother Primarch Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands Legion during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V. However, the spiritual weakness produced by this moment of clarity led Fulgrim to surrender control of his body to possession by the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh that inhabited the Daemonsword he had taken from the xenos world of Laeran. The real Fulgrim became a prisoner in his own body, the state of his soul revealed in a painting kept on the Emperor's Children Legion's flagship Pride of the Emperor, while the possessed Fulgrim went on to lead his Legion to ever greater heights of nurder and debauchery in the eyes of the Prince of Pleasure. However, Fulgrim used his captivity to master the ways of the Warp and ultimately cast the daemon from his body, retaking his rightful place yet having also progressed even further along the path of Chaos as set forth by the Prince of Pleasure. Fulgrim was ultimately raised to become a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and now dwells on an unknown Daemon World in the Eye of Terror. The soul of the real Fulgrim remains trapped in a nightmare from which he can never wake.
 * Eidolon (Lord Commander) - Eidolon was the first Space Marine selected by Fulgrim to lead an entire company. He was commonly regarded as the most proficient of all the Lord Commanders of the III Legion and had been a dedicated student of the art of warfare in all its aspects. He was decapitated by Fulgrim with the Chaotic blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame after he dared to question why Fulgrim had ordered the III Legion to assault the relatively unimportant Adeptus Mechanicus world of Prismatica V. Unsubstantiated rumours persist that Eidolon yet lives; and that he is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of raids upon Imperial worlds for the last ten millennia. Unsubstantiated evidence suggests Eidolon has served as a lieutenant to Abaddon the Despoiler, a consort to Queen Sylelle as well as a champion of the Daemon Prince N'Kari.
 * Vespasian (Lord Commander) - One of two senior Lord Commanders of the III Legion during the Great Crusade era. Unlike his counterpart Eidolon, Vespasian was immensely likeable, for his incredible abilities as a warrior and commander were tempered by a rare humility that made others warm to him immediately. In the manner of the Emperor’s Children, warriors who followed Vespasian would take their lead from him in all things, his example serving as a model of how they might best achieve perfection through purity of purpose. Following the campaign against the Laer, over time a rift soon grew between the once-favoured Lord Commander and his Primarch. Eventually, Vespasian confronted Fulgrim in his staterooms over the growing rot and decay of the ideals that their Legion was founded on. To his horror Vespasian discovered too late the malign influence that held sway over his Primarch. Fulgrim murdered Vespasian by stabbing him in the neck with his cursed sword.
 * Anteus (Lord Commander) - Lord Commander during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras.
 * Cyrius (Lord Commander) - Following the Horus Heresy, Lucius finally met his match in swordsmanship, when the two Emperor's Children Astartes dueled. His agonising death was an experience of transcendent pleasure, but Slaanesh was loath to let such a promising protege slip into the realm of death. Over the following weeks, the artificer armour Cyrius wore began to warp and change. His hair fell out in clumps, and dark lines appeared under his flesh, slowly pushing through his skin as a maze of scar tissue. Soon, Lucius emerged completely, and all that remained of his executioner was a screaming, writhing face, subsumed for eternity into Lucius's armour. (Deceased)
 * Illois (Lord Commander) - Killed during the Great Crusade (Deceased)
 * Teliosa (Lord Commander) - Hero of the Madrivane Campaign. Killed during the Great Crusade (Deceased)
 * Julius Kaesoron (First Captain) - Commander of the elite 1st Company. After Slaaneshi corruption consumed much of the Legion, Kaesoron submitted to the surgical modification experiments of the Apothecary Fabius Bile and was transformed into one of the first Noise Marines. He gathered the other Noise Marines of the III Legion around him before the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V and formed the infamous unit that became known as the Kakophoni.
 * Solomon Demeter (Captain) - Commander of the 2nd Company and a loyalist. Was severely wounded by the firestorm that followed the virus bombing on Istvaan III. Apothecary Vaddon helped to heal him but Demeter was later killed at the hands of Lucius (Deceased)
 * Marius Vairosean (Captain) - Captain of the Emperor's Children's 3rd Company. Marius' quest for perfection would lead him, along with his entire Legion, along the vile path of Chaotic corruption. Due to the influence of Slaanesh and the hideous ministrations of the Apothecary Fabius Bile, Vairosean was soon consumed by the corruption of Slaanesh and he was likely the very first of the Noise Marines of Slaanesh.
 * Saul Tarvitz (Captain) - Commander of the 10th Company and staunch loyalist. Tarvitz was a file officer whom did not aspire to anything higher, despite being extremely competitive. Most troops that he lead greatly respected him, except Lucius, who was enraged the attention Tarvitz receives for his competent leadership. Captain Tarvitz was supposed to be in the initial drop-assault onto the surface of Istvaan III but had traded places at the last minute with Ancient Rylanor. Discovering the treachery of Warmaster Horus and his Primarch Fulgrim, Tarvitz willingly placed himself in the line of fire by going to the surface of the planet to warn his fellow loyalists. Shortly after safely reaching the surface, Horus ordered viral bombardment of the planet, but thanks to Tarvitz last minute warning, some of the Loyalist forces were able to take cover in air tight bunkers. Tarvitz, along with his fellow Captains from the Luna Wolves, Garviel Loken and Tarik Torgaddon, managed to turn the rag-tag loyalist survivors into a cohesive fighting unit. This fomer, unremarkable line officer had turned a planned massacre into a successful guerrilla war, confounding even the great Primarchs' best laid plans. Tarvitz, along with his fellow Loyalists apparently met their final fate on Istvaan III. (Presumed Deceased)
 * Lucius the Eternal (Captain, later Lord Commander) - Lucius the Eternal is the current Champion of the Chaos God Slaanesh and a Lord Commander of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion. Lucius is also known as the Soulthief, Fulgrim's Champion, and the Scion of Chemos. Lucius has been blessed by Slaanesh so that when he is slain, no easy task in itself, his killer will eventually transform into Lucius if he takes any pleasure or satisfaction from the killing. Lucius was once the Captain of the Emperor's Children Legion's 13th Company. He served alongside his friend and fellow Astartes officer, Captain Saul Tarvitz of the 10th Company, during the Great Crusade of the 31st Millennium. Lucius' friendship with Tarvitz often displayed those character flaws that lead to Lucius' ultimate damnation. Where Tarvitz was a grounded and mature Astartes, Lucius was often childish and egotistical, but already known within his Legion as a superlative swordsman. Lucius's character changed greatly during the early days of the Horus Heresy. The most obvious change was the appearance of the scars he carved ritually into his face, changing him from a flawless Space Marine into a corrupt tyrant who gloried in the sensation of dealing out pain. The reasons recorded for this disfigurement have varied. Some claim they express Lucius's "devotion and piety" towards the Chaos Gods, others that they were intended to deflect comments that he looked more like a boy than a warrior. In reality, Lucius met a Slaanesh-corrupted Remembrancer and painter who accompanied the 28th Expeditionary Fleet named Serena D'Angelus. After showing Lucius her hideously scarred forearms, she explained that each scar was a memorial to one of her victims. Lucius, who had had his nose broken by Garviel Loken of the Luna Wolves, understood that his appearance would never be flawless again, and so scarred his face without remorse. After this meeting he added a scar to his body every time he met a worthy opponent, such as before duelling with his former comrade and best friend, Saul Tarvitz. Lucius' descent into the clutches of Chaos only deepened during the Battle of Istvaan III after Horus betrayed the Loyalists within his own Traitor Legions to cleanse his troops of any who remained beholden to the will of the Emperor. Originally forced to fight on the side of the Loyalist Astartes during the three-month-long battle on that devastated world because his friendship with Tarvitz had made the Legion's leaders believe he would not support their decision to betray the Emperor of Mankind, Lucius' pride and jealousy eventually overwhelmed him. Lucius came to resent Tarvitz's role in their success against the enemy and the respect he commanded from the other Loyalist Astartes. Lucius contacted Lord Commander Eidolon and promised to deliver Tarvitz -- and break the Loyalists' defences -- for the Warmaster in return for being reaccepted into the Legion. Eidolon accepted the proposal. Lucius slaughtered a group of 30 Astartes who were defending the Loyalists' lines to open the way for the Traitors' final assault against their former brethren. Lucius succeeded in this assassination with the aid of Captain Solomon Demeter of the 2nd Company of the Emperor's Children, who had also remained a Loyalist and realised too late that Lucius had tricked him into attacking a group of Loyalist Astartes. Lucius slew the wounded Demeter just after he realised with horror the full extent of his mistake and Lucius' betrayal. With his place restored in the ranks of the Traitors, Lucius then challenged Tarvitz to a one-on-one duel to finally determine who was the better warrior. Tarvitz emerged the victor, but Lucius fled the battle and returned to the arms of his Traitor Legion, having fulfilled his side of the bargain. After his return to his Legion following the events on Istvaan III, Lucius eventually rose to become one of the 2 Lord Commanders of the Emperor's Children, after that Traitor Legion had been cemented in thrall to Slaanesh. Lucius did not obtain that position easily, however, for he was actually slain during an Emperor's Children gladiatorial game by the Chaos Space Marine he had challenged for the rank, Lord Commander Cyrius. Lucius' death was described as an experience of such "transcendent pleasure" that it caused Slaanesh himself to intervene and to reincarnate Lucius within the body of the previously victorious Cyrius; the latter's soul became a trapped, screaming face within Lucius' Artificer Armour by the will of the Prince of Pleasure.
 * Hellespon (Captain) - Captain during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras.
 * Tyrion (Captain) - Captain during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras.
 * Xiandor (Captain) - Captain during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras.
 * Odovocar (Captain) - Legion Standard Bearer
 * Charmosian (Chaplain) - Chaplain of the 18th Company, and one of the senior-most members of the Legion. He acted as a member of Fulgrim's honour guard during the latter stages of the Legion's corruption. He was killed by Lucius at Istvaan III when the pair dueled. (Deceased)
 * Gaius Caphen (Lieutenant) - Second-in-command to Captain Demeter of the 2nd Company. Died of his wounds before the traitors land on Istvaan III. (Deceased)
 * Lycaon - Equerry to First Captain Kaesoron of the 1st Company.
 * Fabius Bile (Chief Apothecary) - Fabius Bile, now known as the Clone Lord, was the Chief Apothecary and Lieutenant Commander of the Emperor's Children Legion. After the Horus Heresy he left the Legion and the path of Slaanesh behind to pursue his own agenda to unearth the secret genetic engineering knowledge that the Emperor of Mankind had used to create the Astartes. He is known to have unleashed genocide and hideous genetic experiments on countless worlds across the galaxy.
 * Ancient Rylanor, "Ancient of Rites" (Venerable Dreadnought) - Rylanor was a venerated hero of the and 'Ancient of Rites' of the III Legion who was wounded battling the Eldar decades before the Horus Heresy and was interred within an adamantium shell of a Dreadnought. Rylanor was only part of Fulgrim's honour guard through tradition, though he was increasingly troubled by the direction the III Legion was moving in after the assault on Laeran. He traded places for the drop onto Istvaan III with Saul Tarvitz, who was supposed to go instead. Rylanor accepted and joined the assault on Istvaan III. He fought against the Traitors during the Battle of Istvaan III but it is unknown whether he met his ultimate fate at the hands of his former brothers.
 * Thordorian (Dreadnought) - Thordorian was a Dreadnought of the Emperor's Children during the Great Crusade era.
 * Solathen (Sergeant) - Commanded Squad Nasicae.

Legion Fleet
The Emperor's Children are known to have possessed the following vessels at the time of the Horus Heresy: Many of the Emperor's Children's vessels were known to launch smaller interceptor craft known as Raptors.
 * Pride of the Emperor - Battle Barge and flagship of Primarch Fulgrim.
 * Firebird - Fulgrim's personal Assault Ship
 * Stealth - Fulgrim's Cruiser
 * The Agony and the Ecstasy - Battle Barge
 * Callidora - Battle Barge
 * Erewhon - Emperor-class Battleship
 * Andronius - Strike Cruiser
 * Longinus - Strike Cruiser
 * Fulgrim's Virtue - Escort

Gallery
[[Category:E]]