Emperor's Children

The Slow Fall

The Emperor's Children fell more slowly and more visibly than any other Legion. Their decline began with Fulgrim's acceptance of the daemon-bound silver sword from Laer; it continued through the late Crusade as Fulgrim's arguments grew stranger and his Legion's parade-ground discipline began to shade into ritual perfection that resembled doctrine less and less.

By Isstvan V the Legion was already not what it had been. By the close of the Heresy they were Slaanesh's Legion in everything but formal declaration. By the Scouring the declaration was formal.

The Noise Marines

The Noise Marines are the Legion's signature unit — Astartes whose sonic weaponry can shatter Astartes plate at moderate range and whose nervous systems have been surgically modified to perceive sound as pleasure-pain in the Slaaneshi register. The standard Noise Marine carries a sonic blaster, a power weapon for close work, and a personal vocal-amplification grille that broadcasts his own scream as a weapon.

The weapons were originally Mechanicum prototypes the Emperor's Children commissioned during the Crusade. They have evolved since under Slaaneshi influence into devices that resemble musical instruments more than firearms.

Perfection in all things. We are still seeking it.

— Emperor's Children catechism, attributed post-Heresy

Fragmentation

The Legion has no central command. Every warband pursues its own version of perfection-past-sanity. Some hunt rare sensations. Some compose music from the screams of captives. Some commit themselves to single artistic projects that span centuries. Most consider this disorganisation a feature rather than a defect.

Fulgrim himself ascended to Daemon Prince status during the late Heresy and now operates from the Realm of Slaanesh, occasionally returning to realspace when sensation calls.

M42

The Emperor's Children have been active in the Arks of Omen campaign and in several Indomitus Crusade defensive engagements where their sonic weapons proved unusually effective against Primaris infantry. Fabius Bile — formerly the Legion's Chief Apothecary — has long since broken from the Legion proper, but his New Men experiments remain technically Emperor's Children gene-work.

Lucius the Eternal continues to die and return repeatedly. The Legion regards this as normal.

Fulgrim Before Slaanesh

Fulgrim's pre-Slaanesh operational character was shaped by his sustained personal commitment to the doctrine of perfection — the operational framework holding that every Astartes-level operational engagement could and should be conducted to a sustained standard of operational perfection. The doctrine had been Fulgrim's specific institutional inheritance from his pre-Crusade Chemos homeworld and had been integrated into the Third Legion's pre-Heresy operational doctrine across approximately fifty Crusade-era Terran years.

The doctrine had produced operational outcomes that the Emperor's broader Crusade-era operational doctrine considered exceptional. The Third Legion's pre-Heresy operational record included sustained kill-ratios approximately three times the Heresy-era Legion average, tempo that exceeded most other Heresy-era Legions, and discipline across the Legion's broader membership that the Emperor's documentation classified as "exemplary." The doctrine's vulnerability — the doctrine's pressure for perfection — was invisible during the pre-Heresy era.

The Daemon-Possession

Fulgrim's transition during the Heresy was conducted through the sustained psychic-and-theological engagement of a Slaaneshi Daemon-entity (named in surviving Slaaneshi correspondence as "the Daemon of the Laer Blade") that had been bound to a specific Heresy-era artefact Fulgrim had recovered during a specific Crusade-era operational engagement on the world of Laer. The Daemon's sustained psychic-engagement with Fulgrim during the post-Laer operational period progressively shifted Fulgrim's character from perfection-pursuit toward sustained-excess; the shift culminated in the Daemon's possession of Fulgrim during the Heresy's engagement against the Iron Hands' Ferrus Manus.

Fulgrim's state during the immediate post-possession period was sustained Daemon-occupancy: the Daemon controlled Fulgrim's decisions while Fulgrim's consciousness remained partially aware but subordinated. The arrangement was sustained-stable across approximately several Terran decades. Fulgrim's consciousness was eventually recovered through specific Slaaneshi ritual-engagement, but the recovered Fulgrim was and theologically committed to Slaaneshi institutional doctrine rather than to the perfection-doctrine he had previously held.

The Lucius Pattern

Lucius the Eternal — the Third Legion's specific senior subordinate whose operational pattern has become institutionally integrated into the Legion's broader operational doctrine — is distinctive among Traitor Legion senior officers for his specific sustained-resurrection capability. The capability operates through specific Slaaneshi theological-and-biological mechanism: any individual who kills Lucius in operational combat and experiences satisfaction from the killing is, by sustained Slaaneshi operational arrangement, biologically-and-theologically transformed into the next Lucius. The arrangement has produced approximately twenty-three documented Lucius-transitions across the post-Heresy era.

The Lucius pattern has produced specific institutional consequences for the Third Legion. The Legion's doctrine treats Lucius as a sustained-permanent institutional asset rather than as a sustained-individual operational officer; the Legion's senior officers coordinate operational planning around the assumption that Lucius will be sustained-operationally-present indefinitely. The pattern has also produced specific institutional consequences for Imperial Cult engagement with the Third Legion; the Imperial Cult's standing operational doctrine specifically prohibits Imperial Cult forces from sustaining operational satisfaction during Lucius-engagement, on the theological grounds that the satisfaction triggers the pattern's specific Slaaneshi mechanism.

Fulgrim's Return

Fulgrim's specific M42-era operational return — through sustained Slaaneshi ritual-coordination that has progressively returned him to Imperial-realspace operational engagement — has been the most-significant Daemon-Prince operational return in the post-Rift era for the Slaaneshi institutional arrangement. Fulgrim has, since 008.M42, mounted approximately five documented continued actions against Imperial Cult sectors, each resulting in operational outcomes that the Imperial Cult has classified as "devastating at sustained tactical scales."

Fulgrim's pattern during the post-return period has been institutionally reorganising the Third Legion's broader operational structure. The Legion had been fragmented across the post-Heresy era through the Slaaneshi institutional arrangement's tendency toward sustained-fragmentation; Fulgrim's M42-era operational return has begun reversing the fragmentation through sustained personal-operational-engagement with the Legion's various fragmented sub-units. The reorganisation is, by Imperial Cult intelligence assessment, "approximately thirty percent complete at the current Indomitus-era timepoint." The Imperial Cult's working assessment is that "the completed reorganisation will produce a sustained Third Legion operational capability that the Imperium has not faced since the immediate post-Heresy era."