Solomon Demeter - Cleansing of Laeren: Shortly after the beginning of their participation in the Great Crusade on their own terms, the Emperor's Children's 28th Expeditionary Fleet encountered a hitherto-unknown serpentine alien race who called themselves the Laer. The Emperor's Children, in concert with Lord Commander Fayle's Imperial Army regiments of the Archite Palatines, attacked the Laer in space, on the surface of their world, beneath their oceans and over the hulls of their orbital platforms. The Battle on Atoll 19 would later be described as a minor, opening skirmish in the Cleansing of Laeran; a footnote to the fighting that was yet to come, but to the warriors in the speartip of Solomon Demeter's 2nd Company, it felt considerably more intense than a skirmish. During the fighting, he disdained the wearing of a helmet to prevent the Laer from deciphering his orders over the IIIrd Legion's Vox-network, and because he knew that if he was hit in the head by one of the Laer weapons, he was as good as dead, helmet or not.Knowing he could not expect any immediate help or aerial support, Demeter understood he was going to have to accomplish his objectives the hard way. Though it railed against his sense of order and perfection to undertake the assault without the proper support in place, Demeter could not deny the exhilaration he felt as he improvised his tactics as he went along. Some commanders said that it was an inevitable fact that they would fight without the forces they wanted, but such a belief was anathema to most of the Emperor's Children.During this campaign, Demeter learned that a commander should not fuss too much over making the "right" choice. All he needed to worry about was making a "good" choice, see it through and accept the consequences. This type of lateral thinking went against the grain of the standard tactics employed by the Emperor's Children, and garnered the disapproval of some of Demeter's fellow captains as well as his subordinates. But his abilities to think on the fly were instrumental in carrying the day, for the sheer lethality of the combat zone made it a necessity.Despite lacking optimum troop-strength, Captain Demeter was able to organise a speartip advance, deploying his Astartes in a lightning assault up the centre of the enemy's lines. Demeter watched with pride as the Emperor's Children fought with a flawless martial discipline unmatched by any other Legion. They fought with the cold, clinical application of perfect force.Though the line of Emperor's Children bent backwards under the onslaught of the Laer, it did not break. Demeter moved to the centre of the line and took his place in the thick of the fighting, killing with methodical precision until he ran out of ammunition and switched back to his Chainsword. He fought two-handed, cleaving his blade through alien flesh, and bellowing at his warriors to stand firm as a seething tide of Laer surrounded them.With the capture of Atoll 19, the opening stage of the campaign against the world of Laeran had been won, though the ferocity of the fighting and the brittle knife-edge upon which it had been won would never be known except by those whose word would one day be reviled. Atoll 19 would be the first of many bridgeheads established before the Emperor's Children were finished with Laeran.The war for Laeran was fought across many varied battlefields, the warriors of the Emperor's Children fighting on floating atolls and through the ruins of ancient structures. Underwater cites were discovered within days of the campaign's opening and detachments of Astartes took the fight to the abyssal darkness of undersea trenches, smashing into structures that had never known the touch of sunlight, in specially modified boarding torpedoes fired from Imperial Cruisers hovering above the sea.Solomon Demeter led his 2nd Company against the first of these cities, subjugating it within six hours, his plan of attack garnering praise from his Primarch. During the final assault of the campaign upon the central Laer temple, Demeter miraculously survived when his Thunderhawk gunship was shot down and it plummeted into the ocean. As a result, he was not present when the Primarch entered the great temple of the Laer (secretly a fane dedicated to the worship of Slaanesh) where Fulgrim found a daemon-possessed sword later known to history as the Chaotic artefact called the Blade of the Laer.