Pride of the Emperor - La Fenice: Within the 28th Expeditionary Fleet were a number of various support personnel that served the interests of recording and capturing important events of the Great Crusade for posterity. These were known as the Remembrancers, select civilians who were members of the Imperial Order of Remembrancers.The Order was comprised of the Imperium's greatest artists, writers, historians, poets and photographers, who had spread through the expeditionary fleets in their thousands to document the monumental achievements of the Great Crusade for posterity, though they had met varying degrees of welcome from the Space Marines. Precious few of the Legions appreciated their efforts, but Fulgrim had declared their presence to be a great boon and had granted them unprecedented access to his most intimate and guarded ceremonies.La Fenice ("The Phoenix" in an ancient Terran language known as Italian) was the area of the great ship the Emperor's Children had given over to the Remembrancers. It was a great theatre in the high decks of the vessel that served as a recreation space, eating hall, exhibition area and place of relaxation.Many of their ilk would take to spending their evening there, chatting, drinking and exchanging notes with fellow artistes. La Fenice fostered ideas, but it was also a hotbed of scandal and intrigue, for it was impossible to put so many people of an artistic persuasion in one place without generating operas worth of salacious gossip, some of it undoubtedly true, but some wildly inaccurate, slanderous and downright lunatic.As the corruption of the Emperor's Children by the power of Slaanesh spread throughout the entire fleet, even the Remembrancers became more and more decadent and debased. La Fenice became a place of lewdness, where people who should have known better drank too much, ate too much and indulged their every sordid appetite without regard for the mores of civilised behaviour.Almost every Remembrancer who had not journeyed to the surface of the Laer homeworld ultimately departed the 28th Expedition. Those very few who remained behind and managed to somehow remain unaffected by the corruption around them were shocked and revolted by the theatre's appearance.The artwork and statuary took on an altogether more sinister aspect as the primarch lent his vision to the final details of its renovation. Wild, orgiastic gatherings, like the debaucheries of the ancient Romanii Empire, were now a frequent occurrence.Throughout the final days of the Great Crusade, just before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the famed composer Bequa Kynska of Terra had accompanied the Emperor's Children's 28th Expeditionary Fleet as a Remembrancer aboard Fulgrim's flagship. Kynska was a jaded and egotistical musician always in search of further sensations to create more exhilarating and all-encompassing music, which made her an easy target for Slaaneshi corruption.After Kynska accompanied many of the 28th Expedition's Remembrancers to the temple dedicated to Slaanesh on the xenos world of Laeran, she was touched by the Chaos corruption of that foul place and slowly sought to create the ultimate orchestral piece that she believed could capture the wondrous sounds she had heard within the Laer temple.Her masterpiece was a symphony she named the Maraviglia and which she performed for Fulgrim and all the assembled Astartes of the Emperor's Children and their support personnel within La Fenice aboard the Pride of the Emperor. To recreate the sounds she had heard, Kynska created new musical instruments whose sonic powers could also be used for destruction when employed by an individual already corrupted by Slaanesh.As the Maraviglia began, the cacophony of sound unleashed by these instruments acted as a sorcerous ritual that opened a link between realspace and the Warp and allowed the power of Slaanesh to directly touch the audience. During the "performance" it was noted that the musical instruments were able to produce effects variously disorienting, stimulating and downright murderous.Chaos mutations ran rampant through the audience during the performance and Astartes and mortal humans alike were so overwhelmed by sensation and uncontrollable emotions that they unleashed an orgy of both sensual hedonism and the most base form of murder upon one another. Ultimately, the music summoned five Lesser Daemons of Slaanesh known as Daemonettes from the Warp who possessed the bodies of Kynska and several of her singers and joined in the slaughter.During this part of the concert, several Emperor's Children Astartes left their seats and took up the instruments to try and keep the Chaos music playing and in the course of their untrained fumblings discovered that they could unleash waves of destructive sonic power filled with the strength of Chaos.These Astartes became the first "Noise Marines," who would eventually take to the field on Istvaan V wielding this strange, new weaponry as a new unit of the IIIrd Legion called the Kakophoni under the command of First Captain Julius Kaesoron. It was during this performance in La Fenice that the Emperor's Children finally gave themselves wholly, both body and soul, to the Prince of Pleasure as his most dedicated human servants.Later on, during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, Fulgrim would go on to face his former brother Ferrus Manus, the primarch of the Iron Hands Legion. As Fulgrim raised his sword in preparation of delivering a deathblow to the Gorgon, he found that he did not possess the fortitude to deliver the killing blow.In an instant he saw what he had become and what a monstrous betrayal he had allowed himself to become party to. He knew in that eternal moment that he had made a terrible mistake in drawing the Daemon Sword from the Temple of the Laer, and he fought to release the damnable blade that had brought him so low.His grip was locked onto the weapon and even as he recognised how far he had fallen, he knew that he had come too far to stop, the realisation coupled with the knowledge that everything he had striven for had been a lie. Fulgrim’s blade seemed to move with a life of its own even as he swung it under his own volition.Fulgrim tried desperately to pull the blow, but his muscles were no longer his own to control. The daemonic blade sliced through the genetically-enhanced flesh and bone of one of the Emperor's sons. The Iron Hands' primarch fell to the ground, his head decapitated. Ferrus Manus was dead by his brother's own hand.Though Fulgrim had proved the victor, he discovered as he looked down at his battered brother's prostrate body that everything up until that moment had all been a lie. Fulgrim, as if awakened from a long sleep, was shocked by the death of Ferrus into thinking clearly about the situation for the first time since his expedition to Laeran, and he was horrified by what he had done and by the many betrayals that had led brother Astartes to slay one another.Overcome by his grief, he succumbed to a moment of weakness and foolishly agreed to the daemon's whispering suggestion that he could find release in oblivion. The Greater Daemon was then freed from the prison of the Laer sword and fully possessed Fulgrim's body, claiming it for its own, trapping the real Fulgrim's consciousness away within a psychic prison formed within his own mind but symbolically represented by a painting of the primarch that stood in the place of honour in La Fenice.This great portrait hung above the smashed wreckage of the proscenium. Even in the dying light, the portrait's magnificence was palpable. A glorious golden frame held the canvas trapped within its embrace, and the wondrous perfection of the painting was truly breathtaking. Clad in his wondrous armour of purple and gold, Fulgrim was portrayed before the great gates of the Heliopolis, the heart of the flagship, the flaming wings of a great phoenix sweeping up behind him.The firelight of the legendary bird shone upon his armour, each polished plate seeming to shimmer with the heat of the fire, his hair a cascade of gold. The primarch of the Emperor’s Children was lovingly portrayed in perfect detail, every nuance of his grandeur and the life that made Fulgrim such a vision of beauty captured in the exquisite brushwork.No finer figure of a warrior had ever existed or ever would again, and to even glimpse such a flawless example of the painter's art was to know that wonder still existed in the galaxy. Even a person gazed at the eyes of the painting they would see the horror within the primarch's eyes, a horror that had not been rendered by the skill of a mortal painter. Perfect, exquisite agony burned in the portrait's gaze, for the Greater Daemon had claimed the primarch's mortal shell.In time, Fulgrim would turn the tables on his daemonic captor and trick the entity into surrendering control of his body back to its rightful owner. Then the portrait in La Fenice would appear the same, but the burning gaze projecting outward in abject horror that elicited the pity of all who saw it would be that of the ageless being that had met its match in the primarch of the IIIrd Legion.