Emperor's Children - Fulgrim's Fall: A passionate intensity filled the Emperor's Children from the moment Fulgrim knelt in humility before them as their new commander. It was as if the achievements of the past counted for nothing to them, only the future mattered, a future in which they could countenance no failure. They pursued all matters with total dedication and focus, and the skills of war were chief amongst their concerns and they would accept nothing that another could better.When another Legion excelled in any detail of warfare the Emperor's Children would set out to learn those skills. They channelled themselves completely into their training and study, allowing it to consume them completely until mastery was achieved. Once mastered, a method would be evaluated and refined.The Emperor's Children believed that the only measure of true achievement was to measure oneself against others. When another Legion was honoured, it was said that the IIIrd Legion took these accolades for their brothers as both a spur to do better and a wound to their own pride. When they failed to reach the quality of another it created jealousy. When they did excel it bred contempt for those they had risen above.And no matter how high they rose, no matter how much they achieved, it was never enough. The achievements they had gained in the past were dead to them. The Emperor's Children's hunger for perfection was without limit, and could never be sated. The atrocities that would come later demonstrated the truth of this assessment, but the signs of the IIIrd Legion's hidden darkness were there long before they fell.The point at which Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children embraced darkness is not known. Some amongst those who serve the Emperor pointed to Fulgrim's cleansing of the dangerous xenos known as the Laer as the event that finally doomed him, as there are indications that the malign forces of Chaos used this event to ensnare Fulgrim and begin the rapid corruption of the Emperor's Children.It is believed that 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 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 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 IIIrd Legion's diplomatic advance had been rebuffed with violence, and honour demanded that they answer in kind.During the ensuing campaign, the IIIrd 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 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.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.