Index Astartes – Emperor's Children : The Perfect and the Broken

Broken upon the anvil of war and scarred forever by Dark Eldars' blades, the Emperor's Children are now the vengeful sons of a martyred Emperor, fighting across the entire galaxy in the name of Mankind with a cold fury and an endurance that few souls outside the Third Legion can match. Ten thousand years after they were taken from joining in the Heresy by xenos treachery, their thirst for vengeance is still just as strong, and the degenerate eldars of Commorragh still look upon the emblem of the golden aquila with fear as they remember the terrible revenge already enacted. They are few in numbers, but each of them is an army of his own, and woe betide any who dare cross the path of Fulgrim's scions.

Origins

When the Emperor's conquest of Terra was over, He looked up at the galaxy, and saw that the task at hand remained tremendous, and beyond any man's ability to achieve alone, even one such as Him. So it was that He decided to sire twenty children, who would be the generals He needed to reclaim the worlds Mankind had lost during the Long Night, and protect them forevermore afterwards. In the laboratories of Luna, hidden away from the rest of the newly created Imperium, He created twenty beings of perfection, who would be the pinnacle of human genetics and possess the Emperor's own transcending powers. But before these children could be born, they were stolen away, spread across the galaxy by the Dark Gods' cruel hands.

Fulgrim was one of these children, one of the Primarchs. He came to the world of Chemos, far into the Ultima Segmentum. Unlike some of his brothers, he wasn't adult when he emerged from his pod : indeed, he wasn't even a boy. He was a baby, shining with light and the promise of a better future.

At this time, Chemos was a ruined, dying world. Once a prosperous mining world, the civilization that had once ruled the planet had collapsed during the Long Night as it was cut off from its neighbors, who had supplied it with sustainance in return for the ore its produced. Its inhabitants now lived precarious lives, eating and drinking food and water that had already been recycled a thousand times over by the time of their birth. A few fortress factories supplied what little resources were available, and work was hard to keep up with the near-impossible quotas required for the fortress to even hope to survive a year longer.

Fulgrim was found by three workers of such a fortress. They had seen his drop-pod descend upon the world, and had hoped to salvage it for mineral, yet what they found was so much more precious. Where the young Primarch had arrived, the dry, dead earth was spraying water, a fountain of clear liquid the likes of which the human had never seen. Believing it to be a sign, and awed at the boy's beauty, they brought him to their home fortress.

On Chemos, orphans were a weight that was usually discarded, but at the sight of Fulgrim, even the cold-hearted accountants called the Caretakers who ruled the city couldn't bring themselves to do what was, according to the law of their forebears, their duty. Fulgrim was raised by the collectivity of his adoptive fortress factory, and at the age of five he was already accomplishing the work of two grown men. His true potential, however, laid in his genius intellect. In mere years, he inverted the entropic cycle into which Chemos had been trapped. He rediscovered abandoned settlements and mastered the technologies within, bringing a new golden age to the people of Chemos entire. Culture and arts, long abandoned in the pursuit of simple survival, were founded anew. For the first time since the coming of the Age of Strife, the people of Chemos could go to sleep knowing the world would be a better place the next day.

Fifty years after Fulgrim's arrival, the Emperor arrived to Chemos. The Master of Mankind had been looking for His lost sons, and He could feel that one of them was on the prosperous planet. He descended upon Chemos, and was reunited with His estranged son.

Fulgrim immediately knelt before the Emperor, recognising Him as his father. He and Chemos were welcomed into the fold of the Imperium, and the Primarch was brought to Terra, where he would be given command of the Legion that had been created from his gene-code. However, where the other Legions numbered in the thousands, the Third Legion had been all but destroyed by an accident of unknown causes during its foundation. Less than two hundred sons of Fulgrim remained, and they welcomed their father's return with great hope.

'What happened ?'

Fulgrim's voice was tense, and his fists were tight. There was a thin, almost undetectable hint of emotion in his voice. In all the centuries to come, that emotion would only very rarely come back to haunt the Primarch, but in that moment, it was here : fear. Fulgrim was afraid that there had been a problem with his own genetics, that some flaw within himself had caused the near destruction of his Legion.

The Emperor saw the worries of His son, and shook His head. When He spoke, His voice was not the usual thundering boom of the warlord who commanded billion-strong armies, nor was it that of the overlord demanding obedience from cowed populations. It was simply the voice of a father, reassuring his son – yet there was an hint of sorrow in His eyes.

'Treachery, my son. Treachery of the blackest kind.'

Fulgrim gave a great speech to the gathered warriors, telling them that they would rise from their current precarious situation. He claimed that they were the Children of the Emperor, cast in His own perfect image, and that they would never fail him. Many present were shocked by Fulgrim's use of the Emperor's name in his Legion's heraldry, but the Emperor indulged His son with a smile, and even allowed the newly renamed Emperor's Children to wear the symbol of the aquila upon their armor, an honor unique amongst the Legiones Astartes - even to this day, ten thousand years later. With their Primarch – whom they called the 'Phoenician', in reference to the creature of legend who could rise from its own ashes – at their head, the sons of the Third Legion were ready to assume their rightful place into the Great Crusade.

The Great Crusade

Despite Fulgrim's desire to prove his worth to his father, his Legion was simply not numerous enough to be sent on the front alone. By the Emperor's own decree, it was assigned to assisting the Sixteenth Legion, the Luna Wolves of Horus Lupercal. Fulgrim met his brother aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and the two Primarchs immediately formed a bond that would last for centuries. Horus admired Fulgrim's tactical acumen and confidence, though he felt his brother needed a presence at his side to ensure his pride didn't take the better of him. For decades the Emperor's Children fought at the side of the Luna Wolves, until the time came for the Third Legion to fight its own part in the Great Crusade.

Fulgrim gathered the full strength of his Legion to wage war against an enemy that had been known to the Imperium for a long time, but had yet to be purged from the galaxy : the Laers. The Laers were a xenos race inhabiting a world with no landmasses to speak of, yet they had developed intra-system space flight and if nothing was done, they would soon discover Warp travel and spread across the stars. But despite the obvious threat Fulgrim considered them to pose to the Imperium's future, they had been ignored, as Imperial tacticians estimated that a war against them would take decades and cost the lives of millions of soldiers. There had even been talk of making the Laer's homeworld into a protectorate of the Imperium.

This was an outrage Fulgrim couldn't allow to pass, and a challenge he could not resist. To him, only humanity was perfect, and thus deserving to rule the galaxy. Had not the Emperor forbidden all alliance with the xenos ? Had the fleets of the Great Crusade not put dozens of human worlds to the sword because they had allied themselves with the alien during the Long Night, and refused to return to the Imperium's righteous embrace ? To let the Laers live, reasoned Fulgrim, would be hypocrisy on a galactic scale.

He vowed that his Legion would destroy the Laers in a single month, and prove that they were worthy of the name they had been honored with. The war began in earnest, with the Laers fighting the way only a species facing extinction can. The xenos had taken to modifying their own bodies in an attempt to adapt themselves to their various roles in society, and to the unknowing observer it would have looked as if the Emperor's Children were battling a coalition of aliens rather than a single race unified by a common genome. Even as the Astartes fought them, pushing them ever further toward their capital city, the Laers adapted, revealing blades of bone that were designed to pierce through a power armor's gorget and sound weapons that could burst the skull of a Space Marine inside his helmet. The Apothecaries of the Third Legion dissected thousands of the creatures, attempting to understand how they were able to alter themselves so quickly without disastrous results, but to no avail. It was as if the science of the Laers did not follow the rules of the universe.

Yet the true horror of the Laers was yet to be revealed. As the campaign approached its climax, Fulgrim himself led the final assault on what had been identified to be the Laers' most defended stronghold. They expected to find a governing center, or archives of their civilization, but all they found was a building filled with somnolent Laers, in the middle of great statues and paints. It took a moment for the champions of the secular Imperium to understand that they were within a temple. It took less time for the Librarians amongst them to realize they had been led into a trap. The temple was full of the corruption of the Warp, hidden behind a thick layer of glamour that confused the senses and tried to reach into the minds of the Astartes. Enraged by the deception, Fulgrim ordered the temple be purged by bolter and blade, before his fleet razed it from orbit.

As the Emperor's Children turned their weapons on the entranced Laers, the Sea of Souls stirred, and an host of creatures from the beyond incarnated themselves into the flesh of their worshippers. Fulgrim and his Phoenix Guard fought against an army of monstrosities, refusing to listen to the lies they were shouting at them. When they finally emerged from the temple, half of them had been lost, and the Lord Commander Vespasian rested in the arms of Fulgrim, grievously wounded by a whispering blade carried by one of the incorporeal abominations. Victory belonged to the Emperor's Children, but it rang hollow, as they had lost too many of their warriors, and were ultimately denied the prize they had fought for when Fulgrim grimly ordered the entire world be destroyed by his fleet. Vespasian himself, one of Fulgrim's closest advisers, took years to recover from his wound, and ultimately needed the help of the Thousand Sons' arcane secrets to heal fully.

He was lying down in the Apothecarion, with the one man he thought could save him standing near him. Too long had he waited. The whispers never ceased now, and in the rare times he could even understand their meaning, they made his blood ran cold with revulsion.

'Can you describe the weapon that did this to you ?' asked the Apothecary.

Vespasian couldn't. He remembered the blade all too well, as did he remember the abomination that had wielded it, yet he found that he could not speak the words. Something was blocking his tongue, preventing him from speaking. Panic, the alien sensation he had not known in decades, crept into his mind, and he started at the Thousand Sons' emissary, desperately trying to convene the sense of helplessness that was befalling him. He had tried to do the same with all the Apothecaries of his Legion, but they hadn't understood. They had simply assumed he was going in shock – and there had been no Librarian nearby to pick up his thoughts. They were forbidden in the Apothecarion, to avoid the pressure of too much pain on their senses – and Vespasian hadn't been able to leave the damn place in years. This ... this joint mission with the Thousand Sons ... it was his only chance.

At once, it seemed, the Apothecary understood. He called for his brothers, while focusing his powers on relaxing the Lord Commander's muscles. An instant later, the doors of the Apothecarion aboard the Andronicus opened to let a full squad of the Fifteenth Legion enter, carrying the staves of their office.

Vespasian heard something within him – something that had once been great, that had once been promised power over the stars and the fate of the galaxy, but was now reduced to a single fragment of its former glory trapped in the body of a Legionary that would never allow it control – scream in despair at the sight. A feral, hateful smile formed on Vespasian's lips at the thought-sound.

For many years after the Cleansing of Learan, the Emperor's Children performed their duties in the Great Crusade, earning many honors for their martial prowess and tactical skills. Horus himself would often praise his brother's Legion, and claim that as long as he, Fulgrim an Sanguinius stood together, there was no foe in the galaxy that could stop them. When the First Primarch was elevated to the rank of Warmaster on Ullanor, Fulgrim congratulated him warmly, and promised to help him at the best he could in his new duties. He helped him smooth things with those of his brothers who thought they would have been a better choice, and his Legion helped support the Sons of Horus' expeditions across the galaxy while their father assumed the mantle of Commander of the Great Crusade.

At times, however, the Emperor's Children confidence and their quest for utmost perfection in performing their duties would be perceived as arrogance by the other troops of the Great Crusade, including some of their brothers in the Legions. While Fulgrim had an excellent relationship with his brother Ferrus Manus, the two Primarchs having first met in the forges of Terra and gifted each other with godly weapons of untold majesty, he was mocked by Leman Russ and Angron, who considered him to be more at his place in an art gallery than on a battlefield. Roboute Guilliman called Fulgrim upon the so-called arrogance of his warriors, warning his brother than 'pride goeth before a fall' while Vulkan's Salamanders simply refused to fight alongside the Third Legion. The eager acceptance that Fulgrim showed of the remembrancers did little to rise his brothers' opinion of him, but the Phoenician knew the value of art, having seen on Chemos how hollow the lives of human beings could be without it.

Besides Horus and Ferrus Manus, the one brother Fulgrim was the closest to was Konrad Curze, the lord of the Night Lords. Fulgrim had been with the Emperor when they had discovered the Savior of Nostramo, and the two of them had been friends ever since. On Cheraut, it was Fulgrim who prevented Konrad from killing Rogal when he was enraged by the Seventh Primarch's exactions – an act that the Phoenician would regret greatly many years later.

Fulgrim was also a friend of Magnus, of whom he admired the culture and philosophy. The Phoenician had learned the value of the Librarians during the Cleansing of Laeran, and when the Council of Nikea gathered, he spoke in favor of the Librarius with great passion before his brothers and father, reminding them of the horrors that dwelled behind the walls of reality, and how the Legions needed to be prepared to face them. While his position earned him the enmity of Mortarion and Corax, as well as renewed the one he had with Russ, Fulgrim was convinced he had done the right thing. He was vindicated when the Emperor delivered his judgement, though the reaction of Russ cast a dark shadow of the events of this day.

The Trap

Two hundred years after the beginning of the Great Crusade, Fulgrim received a call for help from his brother Manus. The Gorgon was fighting a war against a fleet of humans allied with xenos called the Diasporex, and asked for the help of the Emperor's Children in fighting them. Glad to be reunited with his beloved brother, Fulgrim gathered his Legion, and set course for the coordinates Ferrus Manus had sent him. The Emperor's Children rejoiced at the prospect of fighting alongside the Iron Hands in such a righteous war, and held their traditional victory banquets as their ships neared the indicated coordinates. It would be the last time such a banquet was ever held by the Third Legion.

When the fleet emerged from the void, neither the Iron Hands nor the Diasporex were anywhere in the near vicinity. Checks on the galactic charts confirmed that they were at the rendez-vous point, but there was no sign of the Tenth Legion. For weeks, the Emperor's Children searched for their cousins, sending astropathic messages through the increasingly agitated Empyrean and ships to scout the nearby systems – perhaps the Iron Hands' message had been altered by the Warp, and they were a few parsecs away.

Then, thirty days after the fleet's arrival, the void opened. Thousands of ships emerged from absolute darkness, bearing the emblems of a hundred noble houses of the dark kin of the eldars. As one, the raiders plunged upon thePride of the Emperor, the flagship of the Third Legion. They cut it apart, and sent thousands of warriors aboard. Caught by surprise, dispersed across several systems in their quest for the Iron Hands, the rest of the fleet could only watch in horror and listen to increasingly desperate vox-transmission and astropathic sendings as they rushed toward the incursion. By the time they arrived, it was too late : the Pride of the Emperor's corpse hung in the void like a dead animal. The raiders captured hundreds of their brothers, including the Primarch himself.

Fulgrim was on the deck of the Pride of the Emperor when the Dark Eldars came. He knew of the eldars and their twin kinds – those who lived aboard their craftworlds, only ever interfering with the Imperium when their own interests commanded them to do so, according to their incomprehensible designs, and those who raided human settlements for slaves and slaughter. He recognised the fleet as a gathering of the second category ... but it made no sense. Never before had the pirate eldars ever been seen in such numbers, and never before had they dared to attack a Legion !

'Why ?' he asked under his breath. His mind – the genial mind of a Primarch – couldn't understand the situation. The only thing he knew for certain was that this was a trap, but how ? Did the eldars send the message that had borne his brother's sigils ?

'My lord ?' said one of the officers. 'We are being hailed by ... by the enemy fleet.'

'Open it.'

The voice of the xenos was like the sound of broken glass piercing the skin. Even behind its alien tone, Fulgrim could feel the unbearable hatred that burned within the speaker.

'Chosen of She-Who-Thirsts,' hissed the creature. 'Disgusting Mon-Keigh who would whore yourselves away to the Goddess of Tears. We are the Lords of Commorragh, the princes of the Dark City, the true rulers of this galaxy.'

'What do you want ?' asked Fulgrim.

'We want you, son of a false god and puppet of one born of our own blood. We want your life and your death. Your screams will feed us, the agonies of your sons will warm our blood in the cold void. And when you finally die, She-Who-Thirsts will be denied Her champion.'

Centuries later, the Imperial historians would attempt to unravel the reasons behind the Dark Eldars' actions. Interrogation of prisoners would reveal that the Dark Eldars believed the Emperor's Children were on their way to fall to the Dark God known to the Imperium as Slaanesh, the God of Pain and Pleasure, born of the Fall of the Eldars and eternal curse of their dying species. Why they would ever believe that the noble sons of Fulgrim would ever stoop so low remains a mystery, but the mind of the xenos is unknowable to the loyal subject of the Imperium. Theories abound, though – the Dark Eldars were manipulated by the rebels, who were performing the Isstvan III atrocity at the precise moment of the xenos' arrival; or the Emperor's Children were initially targeted by the Ruinous Powers for corruption before proving that they would never ally themselves with Chaos and forcing the Dark Gods to change their plans. Only the Emperor may know the true, and perhaps Guilliman in his stasis casket.

Regardless of the reason behind the Dark Eldars' assault, the rest of the Emperor's Children reacted violently to their father's abduction. Hundreds of ships launched themselves at the xenos' pursuit, and entered the fabled Webway by the gates used by the eldars. The moment they did so, however, they were lost in a realm that wasn't reality and wasn't the Warp, one where they had no idea how to navigate. The trap had been sprung, and the Emperor's Children would now suffer the long agonies of what would come to be called the Bleeding War.

The Bleeding War

Trapped in the Webway, unable to understand what was happening to them, and deprived of their Primarch, the Emperor's Children nonetheless fought on. Their Librarians managed to understand some of the rules of this strange dimension they had found themselves stranded in, and they led the Legion toward the Dark Eldars by following the trails of pain and agony they left in their wake – even there, in a place where the Warp's presence was reduced to the few tendrils of it that passed through the cracks, the stench of the xenos could still be dectected. But the Eldar fleet had scattered across the black dimension, and the Emperor's Children were forced to do the same, as they did not know on which vessel their Primarch was held captive.

It quickly appeared that the Dark Eldars had known that they would be followed, and were ready to tear apart the Legion piece by piece. They goaded entire ships by broadcasting the screams of their commanders' brothers across the void, and then retreated to ambush points where the Astartes vessels would be outnumbered and trapped. Of Fulgrim himself, there was no sign in their taunt – doubtlessly because they still had to get a single moan of pain out of the Primarch.

As the days went on and turned to weeks, then to months, then to years, the faith of the Emperor's Children in their Primarch's survival began to fade. Some began to talk about leaving the Webway, returning to the Imperium and asking for the aid of Fulgrim's brothers. But beyond the sheer revulsion the Astartes felt at abandoning their Primarch, even if only for a time, a more practical consideration prevented this : the Emperor's Children did not know the way out. The gates they had passed through had vanished, and they were unable to locate others in this labyrinth.

Saul was bleeding in his cell. Pain was coursing through every nerve of his body, yet it was nothing compared to the agony he felt at the sight of his brother's corpse.

Lucius – prideful, childish, handsome Lucius. They had fought together on Murder, the cursed world where Lord Commander Eidolon had died. They had endured, and when the Sons of Horus had arrived, they had been fighting back to back against a seemingly endless tide of the megarachnids. Lucius had been at his side when he had delivered Eidolon's body to Fulgrim, and they had drunk together to the memory of all the brothers they had lost on this damned world.

And now he was dead, and their jailers had cast his body in Saul's cell to taunt him. The sorrow that had haunted the Captain ever since he had been brought onto that accursed ship, kicking and screaming, threatened to overwhelm him. Then, he noticed that there were no wound on Lucius' body that could explain his death – he had died when his hearts had given up, unable to sustain the stress inflicted on the flesh of their host.

'No, damn you', spat Saul, raising his hands. With all the strength he could muster, he hit the chest of the dead man, again and again, forcing the blood to flow, forcing the hearts to contract once more, ignoring the pain in his muscles, ignoring the laughter of his captors as they watched his pathetic attempts at resurrecting his comrade.

Then Lucius' eyes opened, and he gasped, forcing air into his three lungs. He looked at Saul with wide eyes, unable to accept that he was alive once more. There was no more laughter from their jailers – they stood motionless, stupefied at the miraculous rebirth.

'You must live, Lucius,' told Saul to his friend, even as the gates of the cell opened once more, and the Dark Eldars came back for him. 'Whatever happens, you must live. Live, and claim revenge.'

These were the last words Lucius ever heard his brother speak before they took him. For hours, the blademaster listened to the sounds of xenos blades cut into Saul's flesh, and the hissing of acid and poisons as they were injected into his body. Not even once did Saul gave his tormentors the satisfaction of his screams.

Lucius looked down, and picked up a piece of metal that had fallen from his own body. It was the broken blade of a scalpel, not a weapon – not even a tool. But he lifted it to his face – the only part of him that the Dark Eldars had left untouched, out of some cruel humor – and he began to cut. Even in his weakened state, his enhanced biology healed the wounds as soon as they formed, leaving only pale scars behind.

One scar for Saul. One for Solomon. One for Julius ...

Finally, after years of raiding battles amidst the never-ending blackness of the absolute void, salvation came to the Emperor's Children. The Night Lords, led by their Legion Master Sevatar, came to the help of the Third Legion. They rescued their ships from the hundred battles they were trapped in, and hit at the core of the Dark Eldar armada. Hundreds of Emperor's Children were released from the depths of the xenos ships – forever marked by the horrors they had experienced at the hands of that degenerate race.

Fulgrim himself was found not on one of the ships, but in a void-fortress floating amidst the darkness of the Webway itself. The Phoenician had been horribly tortured, his beautiful face ruined and his body torn apart before being sewn back together by the expert knives of the Dark Eldar's haemonculis. The Astartes found traces that the Primarch had escaped several times, only to be captured again when the Dark Eldars ambushed him at his sons' prison, knowing he would always try to free them, no matter the risk for himself. When the gate to that prison was open, however, there were no Emperor's Children behind it : only the bodies of Fulgrim's Phoenix Guard, dead months, perhaps years ago. The Phoenician had been deceived all this time.

The Prince of Crows busted the heavy door, Rylanor the Ancient and Vespasian at his side, while the warriors he had brought with him covered them. The stink of genetically enriched blood was almost overpowering to his enhanced senses. The Dreadnought burst the chains holding the prisoner, and the two Legion commanders helped the bloody demigod to his feet before he shook them off.

Sevatar looked up at the bleeding, maimed form of Fulgrim. Despite the wounds that covered him, each of which would have crippled a Legionary for life, the Primarch was still standing. He opened his mouth, and to the Legion Master's horror, Sevatar saw that Fulgrim's tongue was gone. Yet a voice emanated from the Phoenician's throat : somehow he was forcing his vocal cords to produce recognisable sounds, even though his voice would never again be the smooth, beautiful thing it had once been – just like the rest of him.

'S-s-sevatarrrr ... Whe-where isss Konrradd ? Wherrre iss my bro-brotherrrr ?'

Sevatar told him. He told him of Guilliman's treachery, of the Isstvan V Atrocity. He told him of the war that had torn the Imperium apart, that was even now closing to Terra. He told him of the fate that had befelled the King of the Night, on a world sullied forever by the blackest betrayal of all ages and the death of the future that all Astartes had fought for.

And, for the first time ever since the Dark Eldars had captured him, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children wept.

Upon learning what had occurred in the rest of the galaxy while he was being tortured, Fulgrim entered in a terrible rage. He vowed to kill Guilliman with his own hands, and bade the remnants of his Legion to follow him and their saviors back to Terra. There, he promised in the broken voice of a man without a tongue, they would make the traitors pay. As for the Dark Eldars, he swore that a time would come when they would curse the day they dared to attack the Third Legion. Thus, the Third and Eighth Legion began their journey to Terra. To the Emperor's Children's surprise, the Night Lords took them across the Webway, using the mysterious dimension as a shortcut to approach Terra without needing to go through the boiling Empyrean. How exactly the Night Lords knew the path remains unknown to this day, and though it is suspected the high command of the two Legions know the truth of the matter, they refuse to speak of it.

The Battle for Terra

'In endless agony reborn,

By the blades of true brothers returned,

Enemies of the Emperor, we have come for you.'

Transmission from the Andronicus upon the Emperor's Children's arrival at Terra

When the Emperor's Children and the Night Lords arrived at Terra, they found a world burning with war and slowly descending into oblivion – dragging all of Mankind's future with it. Reports flooded in from the surface, and a plan was immediately decided. The Night Lords, unable to ignore the screams of the Terrans as they were butchered by the debased Blood Angels, went to the surface to fight against their treacherous brethren, while the Emperor's Children showed the traitor fleet the true meaning of void war.

Lucius the Reborn

While most of the Emperor's Children fought in boarding actions during the last hours of the Siege, a few of them descended on the Throneworld to fight alongside the Night Lords. First amongst the was Lucius, Thirteenth Captain of the Third Legion – though he commanded no men by then, having lost them all to the Dark Eldars' depredations. Rumors claimed that Lucius had died aboard the Dark Eldars' torture cells, but had risen to avenge his brothers. Regardless the truth, he had been found outside of the prisoners' confinements, hunting for the xenos who had dared to spill his Legion's blood, his once handsome face a mess of crisscrossing scars.

Lucius was a swordsman of terrifying skill, who had proved to be a match even for the supernatural speeds of Commorragh's own elite blade-dancers. On the grounds of Terra, he challenged the champions of the Traitor Legions, killing dozens of them in the final nights of the Siege. Legend has it that Lucius and Sevatar, Legion Master of the Eighth Legion, fought back to back against the Blood Angels, and that Lucius gave his life to the save that of the Prince of Crows. However, the same story is told across all loyalist Legions present at Terra. Amongst the Iron Warriors, it is recounted that Lucius died to save the mysterious 'Warsmith' of an Imperial Fist's blade, while the Thousand Sons claim he sacrificed himself to protect Ahriman from the assault of a Dark Angel and the Death Guard still speaking in awe of how he saved Captain Nathaniel Garro from the fangs of one of the Space Wolves' great beasts. Even the Sons of Horus, who fought on the other side of the heretics' lines, claim that Lucius saved the life of Abaddon himself.

Regardless of the truth, Lucius was never seen again after the Siege, and his body was never recovered. When the Ecclesiarchy rose in power and influence, he was sanctified as Lucius the Reborn, Eternal Watcher of the Imperial Palace. A towering statue built in his image still stands at the gates of the Palace, though it lacks the many self-inflicted scars.

With boarding actions and maneuvers that no sane pilot would ever have attempted with Astartes cruisers, the Emperor's Children broke the hold of the traitor fleet on Terra, covering the descent of their cousins. Crewing both the remnants of their fleet and the ships of the Eighth Legion, they destroyed hundred of traitor ships. The other loyalist ships in orbit, thanks to their help, were able to direct their attention on the planet below once more, and lent their bombardment cannons to the effort of war once more. Though very few of them remained, the Emperor's Children had effectively turned the tides of the Battle for Terra, and with it, that of the entire Roboutian Heresy.

As for Fulgrim, he remained aboard the Andronicus, the new flagship of his Legion, until the last moment. A dozen Apothecaries were still working on his body, treating the thousands of wounds and poisons he was suffering from. Each one they healed was one less their Primarch would have to carry when the time was right. Finally, the call came from Terra – a psychic summoning from the Emperor, who asked for His son to stand at His side in the final battle. Fulgrim rose and ran toward the ship's teleportarium, flying servitors and running Astartes finishing to put on his armor even as he marched. The machineries of the Andronicus locked on the signal of the Emperor's own armor, and Fulgrim vanished in a flash of light, ready to help his father kill the Arch-Traitor.

What happened in the Throneroom is history. Fulgrim appeared as Roboute was gloating over the fallen form of the Emperor, ready to deliver the killing blow. With the sword Fireblade, forged for him by his brother Ferrus in a brighter age, the Phoenician cut down the Arch-Traitor, creating an opening for the Emperor to strike at Guilliman on the psychic plane. The combined blows of the Emperor and his son was enough to kill Roboute and end the Heresy that had torn the Imperium apart ever since the Isstvan Atrocity.

Lucius looked down at the burning world from the shoulder of a dying Titan. The traitor war-machine was his latest kill, and perhaps the most impressive. He had pierced through the steel-skin of its foot, and battled his way up to the reactor inside the beast's chest before breaking down the controls and safeties of the caged sun.

His body was covered in wounds, his blood was forming pools at his feet. Was this death, at last ? He had fought on, as Saul had asked from him. He had fought and fought and fought, and he had killed many of the traitors. He had followed the visions, the image of his friend guiding him through the battlefield toward those who needed to die and those who must live. The Prince of Crows; the Iron Lord; the Keeper of the Lore; the Guardian of the Dead and the Voice of Reason ... They all lived. Now, at least, could he die ? Had he done enough ?

The ground rushed toward him as the Titan collapsed. Its reactor was going to detonate, in the middle of the traitor Mechanicum's forces. There would be nothing left of Lucius to bury. Would that be enough for him to die, this time ? Or would the golden light bring him back again ?

There was a flash of burning light and agonizing pain, and then, at last, Lucius was reunited with his brothers.

The Clone Wars

When the dust of the Roboutian Heresy settled, Fulgrim watched what remained of his Legion and felt the bitter taste of hollow victory. Never a numerous Legion, the Emperor's Children were now on the verge of extinction, with less than a thousand of them remaining. The Phoenician vowed to bring his Legion back from the abyss as he had done when he had taken command of it, and he led the Emperor's Children back to Chemos, where the rebuilding could begin. That he couldn't help the rest of the Imperium to claim back the galaxy was a source of terrible shame, but after all that had happened to him and his sons, it was a burden he could easily, if not happily bear.

For a hundred years he rebuilt his Legion, allowing his remaining Apothecaries to extract fresh genetic material from his body and implant it within the youths of Chemos, raising a new generation of Emperor's Children. Despite the demands of many of his warriors, he refused to lower the standards of his Legion, as most of the other loyalist Legions did in the aftermath of the Roboutian Heresy. The newly elevated Astartes fought in the Ultima Segmentum in the Purge, reclaiming worlds that had been conquered by the traitors or had taken advantage of the rebellion to secede from the Imperium. The ranks of the Emperor's Children swelled again, albeit slowly, and once more it seemed the Third Legion had risen from the ashes of its destruction.

Then, one day, a message came from the Iron Cages around the Eye of Terror. An host of nightmarish creatures had emerged from it : twisted, malformed creatures that bore uncanny resemblance with Astartes, fighting at the side of Blood Angels warbands and led by a Space Marine bearing the colors of the Emperor's Children. Worse, dissections of the monsters had revealed that they bore traces of Sons of Horus' genetic material.

It appeared that, after the fall of Roboute and the end of the Heresy, the Blood Angels had returned to Baal with the corpse of Horus Lupercal. They had intended to strip bare their fortresses and holdings before continuing to the Eye of Terror, where their reborn Daemon Primarch waited for them. But they had found more than what they had left : Fabius Bile, former Chief Apothecary of the Third Legion, was waiting for them. Fabius had thrown off his allegiance to the Emperor's Children, and now pursued his own goals. He had offered an alliance to the Ninth Legion, and the Blood Angels had accepted to bring him before their lord Sanguinius.

Fabius Bile, the Clonelord

When Roboute called for his brothers to rise against the Emperor, the Legions themselves were divided. But while individual warriors of the Traitor Legions remained true to their oath, so too did some of the loyalist Primarch's sons turn against the Emperor, and more Astartes have turned from the Imperium's light in the millennia. They are a smear upon their Legion's honor, and are hunted mercilessly by their erstwhile brothers, who seek to purge the galaxy of their hateful presence.

Yet of all the thousands of renegades who have walked the stars, none is more hated and feared than Fabius Bile. Once an Apothecary of the Emperor's Children, he is now a ravenous madman whose knowledge of biology has been turned to the darkest ends.

During the first stages of the Bleeding War, Fabius was one of the many Emperor's Children captured by the Dark Eldars. What exactly happened to him is unknown, but it is whispered that after he was driven mad by the xenos' tortures, the Apothecary came to impress even the Dark Eldars' blasphemous alchemists with his cruelty and his intellect, turning on his own brethren for his experiments. Tales of the survivors rescued from xenos ships soured Fulgrim's mind even further, as the Primarch was disgusted that one of his own sons could stoop so low. Fabius was presumed dead when the Dark Eldars were repelled by the Night Lords, but it was not so.

Even after the Clone Wars, he has been sighted alongside forces of the Blood Angels and Raven Guard, seeking the genetic lore of the latter and hoping to claim the gene-seed of the fallen foes of the former. He is rumored to have sold his services to all of the nine Traitor Legions at some point in time, helping them replenish their numbers in return for genetic material or blasphemous secrets. His exact goals are unknown, but it is rumored that he desires to create a perfect being, who would surpass even the Emperor in its glory. The Inquisition has had a kill-on-sight order against him standing since the dawn of the Clone Wars, and even though Fabius' death has been reported several times, it is still standing, since the one who calls himself Primogenitor has always returned.

In the Eye of Terror, Fabius had struck a deal with the Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh. He was allowed to study the corpse of Horus Lupercal, and from its harvested flesh he had created thousands of clones. Most of them hadn't survived gestation, but many had reached adulthood, though they were so difform that even the infamous Spawn Marines of the Raven Guard were superior, pristine beings compared to them. Looking at the results of Fabius' experiments, Sanguinius had laughed at the insult to his fallen brother's memory, and granted a portion of his Legion to the Primogenitor.

Seeking to harvest the genetic material of loyalist Legions, untainted by the touch of Chaos, Fabius had led the cloned hordes and the warbands of Blood Angels out of the Eye, piercing through the Iron Cages and establishing a kingdom spanning dozens of worlds. Thus began the Clone Wars.

When the news reached Fulgrim, he felt a level of hatred he had not felt since learning of Roboute's treachery. He called all of his Legion to him, leaving only a token force at Chemos, and travelled straight toward the frontlines of this new war. There, he met with the Sons of Horus and a coordinated force of the other loyalist Legions. While there was some suspicions directed against the Emperor's Children, it was quickly banished by the fury with which they fought against Fabius' abominations.

Together, the Third and Sixteenth Legion broke through the heretics' lines, and assaulted the world upon which Fabius Bile was conducting his blasphemous experiments. While the Sons of Horus laid waste to the cloning facilities and reclaimed the remains of their fallen father, Fulgrim sought Fabius to kill him with his own hands. The Phoenician pursued his quarry across the entire city, finally cornering him in a great tower filled with incubation pods.

At the Primogenitor's signal, all of them opened at once, revealing their hideous content : clones, not of Horus, but of Fulgrim himself, created from Fabius' own genetic code and the blood he had bargained from the Dark Eldars who had tortured his Primarch. Hundreds of them rushed at Fulgrim, giving their lives so that their creator could escape aboard his ship, the Pulchritudinous. All of them died under Fulgrim's blade, but the Primogenitor avoided justice.

Fulgrim was howling his rage and disgust at his son, even as he ran away like the coward he was. To think that he had once considered Fabius one of his own, to think that he had thanked him personally for his services during the Cleansing of Learan, when the Apothecary's talents had saved the lives of dozens of loyal, true Emperor's Children !

A graceless blow brought Fulgrim back to reality. He dodged effortlessly, and beheaded the creature with a single sweep of Fireblade, striking down three more of the monsters at once. But there were still hundreds of them, all looking at him with hate-filled eyes. He could sense their jealousy of his body, even though it was covered in scars and still painful from the tortures of the haemonculis – a pain that would never truly fade.

Some of them lacked a limb or had too many, other had three eyes or had smooth faces with no orifices. The only thing they had in common – bar their mane of white hair – was the raw aura of torment that surrounded them. Behind their hatred, behind their anger, there was simply pain, and the desire for their lives to end.

Lifting Fireblade once more, Fulgrim prepared to grant them their wish.

The Clone Wars were over. But not all of Horus' clones had been destroyed : they would continue to plague the Imperium for centuries, calling themselves the Black Legion in a blasphemous parody of the true sons of the Emperor.

The Burning of Commorragh

In the last years of the thirty-fifth millenium, the Emperor's Children were finally given the chance of revenge they had waited for so long. Infiltrators of the mysterious Alpha Legion had located a path to the Dark City of Commorragh, lair of the treacherous and corrupt xenos known as the Dark Eldars. Though few Emperor's Children yet lived who had personally endured the horrors of the Trap, Fulgrim himself remembered it well, and his sons had kept the lore of these events intact.

The Phoenician called for the ancient promise, and the Night Lords answered. Another Legion came : the World Eaters, led by Angron, the Red Angel. The Primarch of the Twelfth Legion owed a debt to Fulgrim ever since the two had fought together at Skalathrax, and he intended to repay it with the destruction of the Dark City. Not all the forces of the Legions were gathered, of course – they still had their duties to the Imperium, and couldn't abandon their allies in the quest for vengeance. But thousands of Astartes and dozens of ships, with no less than two Primarchs leading, were nonetheless a force such as the galaxy had rarely seen since the dark days of the Roboutian Heresy.

Together, the forces of three Legions entered the Webway, following the path provided by the Alpha Legion. They passed through a gateway that had long stood abandonned by the eldars, and traced the psychic beacons left by the Twentieth Legion across the infinite blackness. For several weeks they advanced, until the fleet passed one final portal, and emerged in the skies of the Dark City, above its caged suns. Then, with a fury that had grown for millenia, Fulgrim gave the order to attack, and Commorragh burned.

Bombardment cannons fired upon the nobility's spires, reducing many bloodlines whose influence was older than the Fall to ash in mere moments. The defences of the city were designed more to protect individual domains from their neighbors than to repel an outside assault, and the Dark Eldars were now paying for their arrogance. They had believed no one could reach them, let alone one of the 'inferior races', and now they would burn, as all xenos must for their crimes against Humanity.

When the Dark City was mostly reduced to rubble, the Legionaries descended in the ruins, ready to hunt down the survivors and put an end to the centuries of terror that the xenos raiders had inflicted upon the rest of the galaxy. Angron and Fulgrim led a devastating charge, crushing the Eldars' efforts to assemble a cohesive defence, then pursuing those who attempted to flee. The Emperor's Children remembered the lesson of the Trap, though, and warned their allies to not attempt to hunt the xenos beyond the gates of the Webway – they may never be able to return.

Fulgrim himself, however, did not heed his own advice. As he walked down the dark tunnels of haemonculi covents, who had so horribly tortured him thousands of years ago, he came across an all too familiar figure. There, beneath the ruins of the Dark City, was Fabius Bile himself. Why exactly the Arch-renegade was there is unknown, though it is assumed by the Inquisition he came to trade blasphemous secrets with those who had first initiated him to their forbidden arts.

The Phoenician's reaction was predictable. Enraged, he pursued his traitor son across the labyrinth the haemonculis used as their homes' first line of defence, followed by his Phoenix Guard. The traitor knew his way through the many deadly traps that layered the dedale, but the loyal Emperor's Children did not, and Fulgrim lost many of his sons to the Dark Eldars' heretical machines, until he was alone in the pursuit. On the surface, Angron called for him, begging him to turn back and return before he too was lost. The Red Angel promised Fulgrim he would help him to track and punish the traitor, but they really needed to leave : the caged suns of Commorragh had grown unstable with the damage the fleet had caused to the Dark City, and there was a risk they would soon tear apart their confines and engulf the entire bubble of reality Commorragh was built in.

But there was no answer from Fulgrim. Finally, the Librarians of the assault force warned that the presence of the Phoenician had vanished : he was no longer in the Dark City. He must have crossed into the Webway in pursuit of his quarry, and was now lost to his loyal sons. Filled with sorrow, Angron ordonned the retreat, vowing to find his brother even if it should take him a thousand years.

Asdrubael Vect

After the three Legions sacked Commorragh, the Dark City was left without leadership. The noble houses that had ruled it with an iron fist ever since before the Fall were ruined, their households destroyed and their lines decimated. From the wreckage rose one eldar who would one day become a legend : Asdrubael Vect. While some legends claim that he was once a lowly slave of the Dark City, he himself pretends to have witnessed the Fall with his own eyes, and having endured ever since. Whatever the truth may be, he forced order upon the absolute chaos that followed the Legions' assault. His Cabal of the Black Heart gathered those who had lost everything and those who saw an opportunity in the destruction. With thousands of warriors under his command, he was able to impose himself as the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh, and replaced the ancient noble houses by the Cabals, an unforgiving meritocracy where only one's own cunning, strength and brutality mattered. Slowly, the Dark City reclaimed the influence and wealth it had lost, though it still warily stays way from the worlds under the Emperor's Children's protection.

In time, Asdrubael has added much of the other dominions of the Dark Eldars to Commorragh. In the forty-first millenium, only one other eldar possess enough power and resources to be considered his rival : El'Uriaq, Tyrant of Shaa-Dom. Despite a great many attempts, neither of the two have managed to kill the other so far, and they are currently in an uneasy truce, each waiting for the other's inevitable betrayal while waiting for the first sign of weakness to strike first.

Organisation

The Brotherhood of the Silent Scream

Marius Vairosean, Captain of the Third Company of the Emperor's Children, was one of Fulgrim's most devoted warriors. During the Bleeding War, he fought harder than any other Emperor's Children to deliver his Primarch from his imprisonment, but never managed to reach him. By a cruel twist of fate, when the Night Lords arrived and freed Fulgrim, Marius was recovering from the grievous wounds he had sustained in a previous, failed attempt. His shame at not being here to rescue his Primarch burnt deep within him, and he cut off his own tongue as penance for his perceived wrongdoings, despite his brothers' words.

Many other warriors did the same, and they came to be known as the Brotherhood of the Silent Scream. At the siege of Terra, the hundred of them boarded the Iron Hands' vessel Sisypheum, and killed hundreds of the traitor Marines before being forced to retreat as the ship prepared to run from the Sol system.

Across the centuries, clad in the unpainted, uncleaned armor of their shame, the Brotherhood of the Silent Scream would endure. Warriors of the Third Legion who consider they have failed in their duties – such as those who survive when the rest of their squad does not – join them, ritually cutting off their own tongue as sign of their own regret. The Brotherhood has dedicated itself to the Inquisition, and forms a company of Adeptus Astartes under the command of the Ordo Xenos. They have their own monastery on Chemos, and answer the call of various Inquisitors across the galaxy. Rumor has it that they even accept warriors from other Legions into their ranks, so long as they are willing to abandon they colors and undergo the ritual ablation.

As for Marius Vairosean's ultimate fate, he died in a battle against the Iron Hands, slain by one of the plague-stricken Marines – some even say, one who was on the Sisypheum at the Siege of Terra.

The loss of their Primarch was a terrible blow to the Emperor's Children's morale, but they endured it, convinced that their father still lived and would one day return to lead them. In the meantime, they chose to establish the position of Legion Master, used by other Loyalist Legions who had lost their father.

The Emperor's Children have never truly recovered from their losses in the Bleeding War. Even with the centuries Fulgrim spent on rebuilding his Legion, their numbers never reached those of the other loyalist Legions, and these days the official records indicate less than thirty thousand Space Marines of the Third Legion in existence. They are organised in Great Companies, each under a Lord Commander's leadership, while the Legion Master reigns on Chemos. When the Legion Master dies, a new Lord Commander and his thousand warriors are designed to take up the mantle of Legion Master and replace the previous one as guardians of Chemos, while the Legion Master's successor as the leader of his Great Company takes his warriors back into the stars. While it may seem a waste to consign a thousand warriors to guarding duty for what can last centuries, the repeated assaults from warbands of Ultramarines or other Traitor Legions make the protection of Chemos one of the Third Legion's priorities.

Each Great Company is arranged in ten Companies, with nine Captains each commanding up to a hundred warriors while the Lord Commander leads the elite of his troops to battle. The assignments of each Great Company is decided by the Lord Commander, though the Legion Master, to whom most of the demands for help are addressed, has ultimate authority over the Lord Commanders and can order them to go where he believes they will be the most useful to the Imperium.

Beliefs

'We bleed. We endure. And in enduring, we grow strong.'

Mantra of the Emperor's Children

Long gone are the proud dignity and the noble countenance of the Emperor's Children. In the maws of the Bleeding War, they were shown the darkest, most ignoble side of themselves. They saw the same bitter lesson they had taught the Laers : nobility and glory were vain, useless things when cornered with the threat of extinction : one would do many, many things to avoid it. Yet unlike the twisted xenos, the Emperor's Children did not fall into the abyss that is Chaos, nor did they betray their very nature in a desperate bid to adapt to what the fates had cast against them. Instead, they endured, and gained strength in the trials they went through.

The sons of Fulgrim believe that it is their duty as Astartes to suffer so that the rest of the Imperium will not have to. Just as the Emperor endures untold torments on His Golden Throne for the good of Humanity, so too must His Children endure the duty that He has given to them. As enhanced superhumans with the Emperor's gift flowing through their veins, they are capable of recovering from what would kill or cripple a mortal man, and everything that fails to kill them only makes them stronger. Each battle, each scar, each defeat even, is but a lesson to learn so that they will be ready next time. The Legion almost died before it was born, but was resurrected by Fulgrim's arrival, and was again almost destroyed by the Dark Eldars, but they claimed their vengeance. To be a son of Fulgrim is to fight, to know loss, to grow stronger, and to claim revenge.

Combat doctrine

Just as their beliefs, the tactics of the Emperor's Children have changed much since before the Heresy. While before they took great pride in fighting alone, or only alongside brother Legionaries, necessity has changed these habits. Now the Emperor's Children fight at the side of great regiments of the Imperial Guard, back to back with the common humans. On the grounds, the Emperor's Children are more than ready to collaborate with mortal officers, as their numbers do not allow them to wage crusades of their own. With the whole industry of a world behind them, the sons of Fulgrim can field impressive numbers of Astartes heavy vehicles, though they tend to show a preference for the thickness of close-quarters combat, where their superiority is brought to light in full.

Usually, Great Companies break down at Company level on a whole campaign, and each Captain further separates his squads on the battlefield, coordinating them while leading from the front. This way, by fighting at the side of their human auxiliaries, the Emperor's Children's charisma can help hold the line and turn back situations where any tactician would have given up. The Legionaries' resilience is also a thing to behold, capable of giving hope to even the most desperate Guardsman, as they will keep fighting long after they wounds should have killed them. Those who seem to return for the dead after their sus-membrane activates to save their lives, then deactivate to let them return to the fight, are considered blessed by the Emperor, and are said to bear the Mark of Lucius.

The Librarians of the Legion, who guided the Emperor's Children during the Great Crusade, still play an important part in the Legion. They are trained into channelling the suffering inflicted by the enemy, to use it to push themselves and those around him to greater heights of heroism and sacrifice, or unleash it upon their enemies in streams of warp-fire and thunder. It is a dangerous tactic, though, and some of the Librarians are unable to bear the burden it causes on them, bursting apart or collapsing into catatonia. Training to avoid this is extensive, but difficult to perform, as the Emperor's Children would never inflict torture on anyone : instead, the Initiates of the Librarius are taken to field hospitals in warzones, learning to focus the pain of thousands into a single blow against those responsible for it.

In space, the Emperor's Children are a force to be reckoned with, the teachings of the Bleeding War still fresh in their memory. Void tactics are one of the Legion's speciality, another being the boarding actions that they perform with a ruthless efficiency that many a traitor or xenos has come to curse over the millenia.

Homeworld

Chemos, in the Ultima Segmentum, is still the homeworld of the Emperor's Children. Reborn under Fulgrim's guidance all those millenia ago, it has prospered ever since under the rule of the Primarch's sons. The entire world is dedicated to supplying the Third Legion with all that it needs to continue fighting the many wars of the Imperium : ammunition, weapons, armor and recruits. Dozens of city-states have been built, replacing the fortress-factories with beautiful architectural wonders. They compete to produce the most interesting recruits in great tournaments that host thousands of young men fighting in arenas in the hope of catching the eye of the Legion's envoys.

Unlike most worlds with its level of productivity, Chemos is still a verdant planet, following a very precise balance designed by Fulgrim himself. That balance, however, has grown increasingly erratic in the late centuries, ever since the latest raid of the vengeful Ultramarines attacked the world itself with bio-weapons that devastated an entire landmass and reduced one of the great forests to a dead, poisoned land.

The Forbidden Vault

Deep beneath the surface of Chemos, under the fortress of the Legion, rests the greatest secret of the Emperor's Children. There, gathered through hundreds of years, is a repository of all the information gained about the Arch-renegade Fabius Bile, including notes and schematics written by the madman himself. Sealed beneath twelve layers of adamantium doors and purity seals, very few are allowed to go in, and only those who are hunting Bile or have something to add to its can be granted permission to enter it by the current Legion Master. No one outside of the Legion's commanding circle and the few brothers who have come near to slaying Fabius themselves know of the Forbidden Vault's existence. A few Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus and Malleus have been allowed to enter it, under vows of secrecy that would turn the entire Legion against them if they were ever broken. The prudence of the Legion is understandable : the secrets of Fabius Bile have corrupted many Legionaries who have fallen prey to his deviant philosophy during the millennia, and countless mortals have made dealings with the Primogenitor, only to curse their own foolishness when their kingdoms were destroyed by the cloned armies with which they were built.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Third Legion recruits almost only from Chemos, although it had been known to take aspirants from other worlds on occasion, when an exceptional individual catches the attention of the Legion's warriors. After passing a series of grueling tests, the aspirants are implanted with Fulgrim's gene-seed, and must endure the torments of their own transforming body without the help of the artificial sleep used by other Legions – the pain is considered a step on the youths' journey to becoming Astartes.

The Reminiscence

To the rest of the Imperium, the gene-seed of the Emperor's Children is believed to be of unquestionable purity, lacking any of the flaws that may afflict the other Legions. But while all nineteen implants of the sons of Fulgrim work perfectly, a dark shadow remains cast upon the Phoenician's genetic legacy. Ten thousand years after the Bleeding War, the Emperor's Children still bear the scars of that horrific event : those newly elevated to the status of Space Marines experiment visions and nightmares of the Dark Eldars' ships and torture chambers, reliving the agony of their genetic ancestors and that of their Primarch. Some are driven mad by the visions, and quietly given the Emperor's Peace. Most, however, master the nightmares, and while the horrific visions never truly leave them, the Emperor's Children only see them as reminders of a past that must never be forgotten.

Once most of the changes have occurred, the aspirants become Scouts, added to the Companies to perform reconnoitring missions for their elders until they prove their worth. When that happens, they are brought back to Chemos and undergo the Pilgrimage : a journey across the last of Chemos desert. Left alone at the border with only the clothes on their back and a canteen of racid water, they must cross the wastelands and reach the oasis created by Fulgrim's arrival millenia ago.

The journey is difficult in his own right, but what truly makes it a trial worthy of being the last step before full induction into the Legion lies elsewhere. Too few of the Initiates survive the journey for it to be simply an ordinary wasteland, and while the wards placed around the area clearly prevent any intrusion, they also seem to be designed to keep something from escaping. Regardless of what is there, once the Initiate reaches the outpost at the oasis, he is taken back to the fortress, where he receives his final implants and his armor, before being formally introduced into the Emperor's Children in a great ceremony.

Jihar was scared. Fear was supposed to have been purged from his mind, but he thought that even a veteran Space Marine would be scared in his place.

The sandstorms were filled with ghosts, who spoke to him in hate-filled voices. That was nothing new – as a Scout, Jihar had faced the madness of the Warp before. Even if it shocked him to see it on Chemos, he could still endure it. No, what truly terrified him was what the voices were saying. They were telling him of a galaxy where hope was dead and truth had been buried, where the Emperor's Children were monsters who preyed upon the weak and revelled in torment. They showed him a tall man, wearing the colors of the Third Legion, but hideously defaced by the touch of Chaos and surrounded by the never-ending screams of the dead and damned. And the face ... the face ...

The face was his own ...

Battlecry

The main battle-cry of the Emperor's Children is the same one they used during the Great Crusade : 'Children of the Emperor ! Death to His foes !'. When facing the hated Dark Eldars, they use 'Remember Commorragh !' and'Fulgrim Lives !' Against the Traitor Legion of the Iron Hands, they scream 'Death to the Gorgon !' and show yet increased fury – they still remember who it was that betrayed their Primarch and left him to the Dark Eldars' clutches.