| abstract | - 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, though they were originally the Imperium of Man's proud IIIrd Legion of Astartes. The Emperor's Children was the only Space Marine Legion to bear the Emperor's own name and His own icon -- the Palatine Aquila -- granted to them by His own hand as a symbol of the Legion's martial perfection. Few were ever so honoured amongst the ancient Space Marine Legions and given less cause to betray the Master of Mankind than the Emperor's Children. Given the plaudits and accolades accorded them, few could doubt that they were the embodiment of what the Emperor had intended the Legiones Astartes to be: noble in action and aspect, excelling in all matters, strong, civilised, firm of purpose and loyal to the core. From this height they descended in treachery to the lowest and vilest of creatures, enslaved to pride and consumed by hedonistic desires that no natural power could fulfill. The Emperor's Children are now a scattered Legion much like their counterparts the World Eaters, their unity devoured by their allegiance to Chaos. The Emperor's Children Legion 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. The Chaos Space Marines of the Emperor's Children are known for possessing outlandish mutations and surgical alterations as "gifts" from Slaanesh which are designed to make them more "perfect" in the eyes of their twisted patron. The Emperor’s Children Traitor Legion exists for no other purpose but to exceed every extreme and to know every possible sensation. Its warriors are entirely in the thrall of Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Chaos, but once, the Legion of the Primarch Fulgrim strived for perfection in all they did, and were counted as one of the most dedicated of all of the Emperor's followers. The infant Primarch of the Emperor's Children grew up upon the bleak, dying world of Chemos, a mining colony long fallen to decay and decline as Old Night claimed the domains of Mankind. Isolated from surrounding systems, the industry of Chemos had fallen silent, the mines replaced by the reclamation plants and vapour extraction facilities that kept the dwindling population from vanishing entirely. Within fifty standard years of his arrival on Chemos, Fulgrim had risen to become its leader, and it was his dream that the wonders of long lost ages might be rediscovered and rebuilt. However, it was only when the Emperor came to his world that the Primarch could begin to fully realise his vision. By that time, it was not simply his homeworld that Fulgrim desired to see elevated to glory, but the entirety of Mankind. When Fulgrim was introduced to the Space Marine Legion that shared his genetic inheritance, he found not a resplendent host as did so many of his brothers, but a mere two hundred Battle-Brothers. An accident had befallen the nascent IIIrd Legion early in the development of its gene-stock, setting it far behind its fellows. Thus, it was necessary that Fulgrim and his warriors be integrated into the ranks of another Legion until such time as their numbers were sufficiently restored for them to take to battle on their own. The Legion to which Fulgrim and his warriors were assigned was the Luna Wolves, the Legion of Horus, and Fulgrim could not have had a better companion at whose side to master the arts of warfare. From the earliest days of its service to the Great Crusade, the nascent Legion was recognised for its drive to attain perfection in all its deeds. It was in recognition of this drive that the Emperor granted the warriors of the Legion the right to bear the Imperial eagle upon their chest armour, a unique honour at that time. In recognition that the Emperor was the very pinnacle of the perfection Fulgrim aspired to, the IIIrd Legion was named the Emperor's Children, a title it retained even after the calamitous events of the Horus Heresy. Some would say that it was Fulgrim's impossible desire to attain perfection in all that he did that ultimately led him and his Legion into the service of Slaanesh. The exact circumstances of Fulgrim's fall are all but lost to history, but certainly, Horus must have appealed to his refned sensibilities and stoked the fire of what, in retrospect, was an increasingly disturbing quest to attain otherwise unattainable heights of sensation. Gifted with the physique and intellect of a Primarch, no endeavour was beyond Fulgrim's attainment. Having mastered every strategy and tactic of war, he sought ever more esoteric pursuits, turning his hand to every creative pursuit imaginable, from poetry to sculpture. As his soul was slowly poisoned by the insidious taint of the Prince of Chaos, Fulgrim's passions grew ever darker and his drives ever more extreme. At the last, acting at the behest of Horus, he attempted to persuade his brother Primarch Ferrus Mannus of the Iron Hands Legion that factions within the nascent Imperium were aligning themselves against him and his kin, resulting in a bitter confrontation between erstwhile brothers. Though Ferrus survived the confrontation, the reward for Fulgrim was damnation, setting him well and truly upon the road that led to the Emperor's Children siding with the Traitors at Istvaan V, and ultimately to Terra. Though the Emperor's Children were present at the assault on the homeworld of Mankind, they were not numbered amongst the formations that assaulted the mighty fortifications erected by Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion, to defend the Imperial Palace. While the World Eaters and other Traitor Legions launched assault after assault upon the palace, the Emperor's Children are said to have laid waste to the surrounding city, slaughtering untold thousands, perhaps even millions, of the Emperor's subjects in an orgy of unfettered cruelty. Some have even suggested that the Emperor's Children were using the unprecedented violence of the Battle of Terra to slay sufficient victims to render their vital fluids into some abominable distillation, a stimulant that would grant them access to previously unheard of heights of sensation. In the end, the Battle of Terra was lifted when the Emperor slew the Arch-traitor Horus, and the Emperor's Children were driven from Terra along with the rest of the Traitors. Leaving a trail of desecrated worlds and violated populations, the Emperor's Children joined the ranks of those Legions taking refuge from the Imperium's wrath within the Eye of Terror, beginning a new and devastating series of wars against their erstwhile allies. The history of the Emperor's Children in the period that followed the defeat of the Traitor Legions at the Battle of Terra is largely obscured from Imperial scholars, for obvious reasons. 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. 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.
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