Blade of the Laer - Fulgrim's Fall: Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children Space Marine Legion, was one of the first of his kind to fall from the Emperor's grace on the Xenos World named Laeran, officially designated as Twenty-Eight-Three, being the third world the 28th Expeditionary Fleet had brought into Imperial Compliance. Unbeknownst to the IIIrd 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 Great 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.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 with its alien population intact. 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 amethyst 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.