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No Legion fell so far because none had climbed so high. The III Legion, the Emperor's Children, held an honour no other could claim: the right to bear the Emperor's own aquila upon their breastplates, a mark of favour granted by the Master of Mankind himself. Nearly destroyed in their infancy by a genetic blight that reduced them to a mere handful of warriors, they were remade in the image of their recovered primarch, and they carried into the Great Crusade a hunger to be not merely good but perfect, flawless in war and in all things.
Fulgrim found his Legion upon Chemos, a dying world of eternal toil where survival demanded that every task be performed to its utmost, and he poured that ethic into his sons until perfection became their gospel. For a time the creed made them magnificent: an elite and balanced Legion equally skilled in every discipline of war, admired by their brothers and held up as the very ideal of what a Space Marine should be. Yet perfection is a road without end, and the Emperor's Children walked it until it led them somewhere terrible.
The Pursuit of Perfection
The Legion's obsession began as discipline and curdled, by slow degrees, into something darker. To be perfect in war was not enough; the Emperor's Children sought perfection in sensation, in art, in the very experience of existence, always straining toward a summit that receded with every step. This restless craving left them uniquely vulnerable, for a warrior who can never be satisfied will forever seek stronger sensations, and there are powers in the galaxy that offer exactly that in exchange for a soul.
The Serpent's Gift
Upon the world of the Laer, Fulgrim took up an ancient blade, and the daemon bound within it began a patient, honeyed campaign to unmake him. What the primarch believed to be his own ambition was in truth the whispering of Slaanesh, and one by one the Legion's virtues were inverted: discipline became indulgence, artistry became atrocity, and the pursuit of perfection became a plunge into excess without limit or shame. The Maraviglia, a grand performance staged to unveil the Legion's new devotions, tore the veil between rapture and horror and dragged the III Legion's soul across it.
The Betrayal of Isstvan
When Horus called, Fulgrim brought his Legion to the traitors' cause, and upon the black sands of Isstvan V the Emperor's Children revealed their corruption to the galaxy. There Fulgrim faced Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands, a brother he had once called his closest friend, and struck him down amid the slaughter of the Drop Site Massacre. From that day the Legion abandoned all pretence of the ideal it had once embodied, giving itself wholly to sensation and cruelty, its warriors adorning themselves in the trophies of a perfection that had rotted into pure appetite. The most admired of Legions had become the most depraved, and there could be no returning from the road they had chosen.
Order of battle
Units
Troops
InfantryLegion Seeker SquadMaster marksmen who select and slay the enemy's champions with single, faultless volleys.
InfantryLegion Tactical SquadOnce the very model of a line formation, drilled to flawless execution, their disciplined precision later edged with Slaaneshi cruelty.
InfantryLegion Tactical Support SquadRhino-borne specialists whose massed volkite and flame sear a flawless breach for the Palatine assault.
Elites
InfantryPalatine BladesMaster swordsmen who elevate close combat to a discipline as exacting as any craft, killing with a duellist's theatrical precision.
InfantryPhoenix GuardFulgrim's Terminator-armoured champions, bearing the phoenix as their emblem and matching its splendour with flawless martial artistry.
Fast Attack
VehicleLegion Javelin Attack SpeederA swift, elegant skimmer whose lance-fire opens flawless killing lanes for the Phoenician's assault.
InfantryPalatine Aquila ReconnaissanceSwift and discerning scouts bearing the Legion's proudest honour, mapping a foe's undoing with the perfectionist's exacting eye.
Heavy Support
WalkerContemptor DreadnoughtA warrior whose pursuit of perfection outlasted his flesh, interred within a war-engine of exquisite and lovingly decorated make.
InfantryKakophoniBearers of sonic armaments that shred flesh and shatter resolve, orchestrating carnage as though conducting a symphony of agony.
VehicleLegion PredatorThe Legion's battle tank driven with parade-ground precision, every shell placed like a brushstroke.
VehicleLegion Sicaran Battle TankA swift relic-tank whose flawless gunnery scours the field ahead of the Legion's bladed advance.
VehicleLegion Storm Eagle GunshipA gilded assault flyer that delivers Fulgrim's chosen to the precise heart of the enemy in a single flawless stroke.
Heroes & legends
Characters
FulgrimThe PhoenicianThe dazzling paragon of the Great Crusade whose endless striving for perfection opened him to a daemon's whisper and the fall to Slaanesh.
Julius KaesoronHarbinger of ExcessFirst Captain of the Emperor's Children and among the very first to embrace the corruption that consumed the Legion whole.
LuciusThe SwordsmanA prodigy of the blade consumed by the need to prove himself the finest swordsman alive, his vanity the perfect soil for Slaanesh.
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