The 40k Lorecast - Episode 85 - Emperor's Children pt 1 - The Rise and Fall of the 3rd Legion

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

On today’s cast we cover the 3rd legion of the Space Marines, the Emperor’s Children. Starting with their founding from the conquered nobles houses of terra to their exemplary actions earning them the right to wear the Aquilla on their armor. We then spend time talking about the loss of their gene-seed and the presumed dooming of their legion, until the discover of their Primarch Fulgrim. We then dive deep into Fulgrim, his discover on Chemos though his joining of the emperor and making best friends with Ferrus Manus. After that we cover his exposure to corruption on Laer and the rapid descent into chaos from that moment. We then take a pause to discuss the effect of Slaanesh’s corruption on the rest of his legion and forces. We then close with a bang with the events of Istvaan III and V.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're jumping into what might be the greatest fall of all the Trader Legions, the Emperor's Children. 40K lore is a weekly podcast focusing the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. If you check our show notes, you'll see links to our website,

where you can find our merchandise, upcoming major, other projects, and more. You can also find a link to our Patreon where you can come in and support the show. More coming on that in the next couple months, guys. Just heads up. We're going to be expanding out our Patreon. Oh, much more. Opportunities. Yep.

And, of course, a link to our Discord. We always push the Discord. There's a reason for it. If you enjoy the cast, we really do welcome you to join our Discord and give it a shot. It's a completely free server. It has everything from 40K lore, literature, gameplay. But more importantly, just communication and conversations around things like video games, memes, fan theories, anything.

And it's really become this very healthy and fun place that has literal thousands of members, not just members, but active people speaking and interacting around the 40K universe and more. So please come in and give it a shot. As always, huge shout out to the mods, a very large team of mods we have, helping keep it exactly those things. So the Third Legion, like all Space Marine Legions, the Third Legion's origins come from Unification War. While they actually, it's weird, they do and don't take part in the Unification Wars because they're actually, because it, all right, me say it a better way for everybody.

In the older lore, they didn't take part the Unification Wars, but then randomly there's a note somewhere about them pacifying Antarctica. I don't know. But the way the lore was always written in the way I read it was that at the end of the Unification Wars, that's when the emperors said differently. Some of the legions actually came into being during the Unification Wars and fought a little bit in them. I think the Blood Angels are one of them. I want to say the Space Wolves were as well,

but it wasn't like the full legion. It was small portions of them. The Archangels, they pulled people from two. Most of them did not, though. Almost all of them, to be, to be fair, did not take part in that. They were just created and sent out. Yeah, they were formed in the after effect.

And one of the key pieces about this when they were formed is the people that they pulled from were aligned with the genetic makeup or kind of the genetic testing that they were going to have. So, for example, the night lords were all pulled from the criminal elements. The iron hands came from these like really super high-tech wastelands. The imperial fists came from this like builder sections where it was like all the architects. And the world leaders came from all the people that failed a psychological assessment from the other legions. Weird that those weird that those two guys ended up falling to chaos,

huh? Crazy. By the world eaters one, I'm only half kidding about. Anyone who's taking a job that either got a psychological assessment, but they should at most jobs, by the way,

if they don't, good for you. But the world eaters effectively were like, yeah, these guys are all completely insane. World eaters. Just extra violent. No,

they were also completely insane. There's a level of extra violent. What's the difference? Like between the difference between a world eater recruit and a night lord recruit Six one and a half dozen of another. Well, the night lord one was like, I stab someone, but then I run away. And the night, the earlier one's like, I stab someone. They stand over the body to see if anyone else wants some stabbing.

You want some stabbing. I'm giving it away free here. Two for one. Knife still sharp. What you got? That's basically the world leaders. You know, there's not that, though? The emperor's children.

Let's talk about Pinky. When you say Emperor's Children, you should have to say it with Pinky's Out. Yeah, so Emperor's Children, this point, the Third Legion, came from the nobility of their conquered enemies, specifically those that weren't slaughtered by the Thunder Warriors. It's actually an interesting history because the Emperor effectively informed all these noble households that he was imposing an imperial tithe on them and that they were all to supply their children to fill the ranks of his new armed. armed forces. But I want to part of this is a little bit different than the custodes, because the custodes have a similar history. The custodes come from the nobility of terror.

The custodes come from those who were loyal to the- Exactly. I was going to get custode fans jumping through the window doing a-ya on us. Oh, yeah. And there was a big difference. These are the remnants of the noble houses that the emperor beat the snout out of. Yeah, these were conquered. Yeah, custodes were all the loyal. Well, that's a big deal, though, because the custodes are considered the most loyal since the beginning.

And that's because all the custodes can draw their lineage back to the first people who ever aligned with the emperor. The Third Legion draw their lineage back to the people that the emperor, for whatever reason, didn't murder. That's basically where they come from of nobility. The fun part about this, though, is that in the imperial records, all of these families were super happy to hand over all their children to be the emperor's warriors because they wanted to atone for daring to stand in opposition to him. And I view this more as a, like, less of a desire to atone and more of a desire not to be visited by friends of Malkador in the night. Yeah. What did you want? I gave you twice as much as you asked for, mainly because, please don't.

Yeah. We lost so badly. I don't want to see the bad guys. Yeah. Like, well, we lost so badly. Then you murdered all the people that murdered us. And so, and then the people who murdered all the people who murdered all of us are just floating around somewhere.

I don't want to meet that person. Anyway, because their noble background, the emperor's children took on an interesting role within the legions. And it's that of leader. not as like a literal leader in the sense of like, oh, we're in charge, but a spirit leader. And they handled themselves as if they were the nobility within the emperor's legions. And in a couple kind of key ways. So we don't mean this in the sense of they were the leader of the legions, because within the legions,

they would have just been told, yeah, go to hell. It was what the emperor utilized them for. You know, as we said, the dark angels were used for kind of like horrifying engagements, no one can never know about. You know, the world eaters, the spacewolds, were used for sending a message. You know, everyone had a purpose. The Third Legion were actually interesting.

One of their biggest piece was emissaries because they carried themselves with such nobility. Exactly. Well, they were the poster boys also. So they got the engagements that you could put on movie reels when you were doing propaganda pieces. The Emperor's Children showed up with perfect precision. Everything looked perfect when they came.

man, and that was one of their driving things is always to be exactly, perfect looking, too. Everything. Their armor was crisp and clean, all that stuff. But they would even use them just to send, like when the emperor would go to bring a world into imperial compliance, for example, when he brings them into imperial compliance, not all the times, actually most of the times it wouldn't open with hostilities. He would send down an emissary. It was usually the Third Legion he would send in.

He also would do it in a weird way, by the way. that's also written in the codexes, when he asked, like, send an emissary to other members of the Imperium, he would send the Emperor's children, like, carrying a letter, which made me think, maybe laxed. I think about the Emperor being this

being so old that he's actually sending things certified mail instead of, like, just sending a text message or an email. He's actually sending a certified letter. Just one of those weird things he does. That is funny, though, because you could actually send the most encrypted thing. Yeah, and instead, he

hands a letter to a dude with like, they'll wax. I mean, it probably was, he was hoaring a tablet that was impossibly encrypted, and like five space marines would deliver it to like the other Lord of Terra.

And that guy probably would get it and go, hey, thanks, open, read it, and then email his buddies what the emperor told him. Because, you know, that's how you function. But it's the emperor and no one can talk crap and the fact that he's like,

you know, 30,000 or 50,000 years old, however thousand years old at this point. And they're just like, look, he's old. don't send them a PDF. Another area that the emperor's children took on really well was leading the Imperial Army. And this was kind of cool because space marines are at their core super soldiers.

That's really that, you know, when GW wrote this outright, many, many years ago, the goal was to write a super soldier. And truthfully, like the level of super is pretty insane. But that's, you know, we've covered out in different casts. they, but they served alongside regular dudes, right? And a lot of the legions in the lore hated this because they viewed the imperial army. Yeah, they were just slow, dumb. I mean, again, these weren't dumb people, but compared to a space marine, they're a moron. You know, and they were most importantly really, really squishy.

And so this meant that for the most part, the Space Marine Legions saw the Imperial Army as just getting in their way. more than anything else because they had to run around them or wait for them and do all these things. And we covered this a bit. We talked about how Lehman Rus

lost his mind over having to carry remembrances with him into battle and how they all just kept mysteriously getting shot by the enemy. Yeah, like a thousand times shot by the enemy because he was making random dudes

without power armor run across the battlefield. And the enemy went, well, that dude's not killing me. Thump. In a huge contrast to this, the emperor's children, because of the fact that they were from nobility took on this task. They were super, actually very, not a little prideful.

Wow. All of the prideful. Wildly prideful. Well, they took him on, to be fair, I feel like they looked at him as servants. Yeah, I think the comparison, we did the Knights cast, so it makes it really easy. It's very similar to the way the Knight pilots. viewed the people of their planets, where they viewed them as weak and squishy. And so they actually took pride in leading them to success in combat, whereas the other

Space Marine Allegiance would just say, cool, cannon fodder. And they would send them out to kind of do whatever and make their lives easier. The Emperor's children actually took pride in helping the Imperial Army succeed and succeed well. They wouldn't share the glory by any means, any means. But that was kind of their way of getting even more glory was like, look, I took the these like pseudo-morons, and I was able to have them be successful. How amazing a leader am I? I think it's also they wanted to go, hey, did you guys all see how awesome I was about 10 minutes ago? Now, the irony of this to me is that as an imperial soldier, your best possible situation was to be

garrisoned with the emperor's children versus obviously space wolves or world eaters. But this takes a rough turn later in this episode. becomes the worst one to be stationed with. You had a few, you had hundreds of years of good before you had, oh my God, 10,000 years of awful. So the other guys are shoving nails in your skulls. Yeah, that's actually better. I'm going to go ahead and admit it.

That's actually, that's better. Hold on, John. You had the opportunity to say, nails in your head, luxury. What we had was. Luxury. What I wouldn't give to. have nails beshipped into my head. Exactly.

So let's talk on to why they became eventually known as the emperor's children. This is a title given to them later actually by Fulgram, but they became the emperor's favorite early on in the campaigns. And so during the onset of the crusade, the Third Legion, like everyone else, were sent all over the place, sometimes they're diplomatic, sometimes for force. On one world was a world called Proxima. This is where they actually gained their ultimate notoriety of any space Marine Legion. They, and we'll get to it in a second, but these guys become more important to the Emperor than even the Ultramarines for a period of time.

One of the key worlds in this was Proxima. And so Proxima was brought into imperial compliance by force. The Emperor was actually on the planet with the Third Legion and a force of this custodes when a full-bone rebellion breaks out. And during this rebellion, a rebel or multiple rebels, who cares, through a vortex grenade. And the black hole that created hits the emperor. And all we know is it drops him. There's no details in damage or anything stuff. It's entirely possible that the emperor was actually killed on Proxima.

But because he's a perpetual, he just pops back up. He will pop back up later. Highlander style. It's pure Highlander. It's just why I kind of wish the emperor was dressed in that weird. Was it red armor that Sean Connery was wearing? And that was a very strange Sean Connery. The accents were all wrong.

Everything about that was odd. He was a Spanish Egyptian, Matt. Yeah, he was a Spanish Egyptian with a Scottish accent. Which he has in every single thing he does. Yeah. Russian submarine commander. Scottish accent. Well, no, Russian Scottish accent.

So we had a Russian, Spanish, Egyptian accent. So for those of you who haven't seen Highlander, see it. See it. It won the Oscar for greatest movie of all time. It ever made. It's so cute. It isn't a great movie.

Like, just letting you know if you're watching it with a spouse, they may walk away. It's okay. But it's still decently okay. Anyway, so whatever the reason, the emperor is now out of commission, and the hordes of rebels just come tearing down the Third Legion and the Custodes. The Third Legion hold their ground,

shoulder to shoulder with their stoats. And they do. Every single one of them perishes. Just as the rebels, though, get to the emperor's body, he gets up. And he was in a mood. Oh, the emperor definitely put on his boots of mighty ass kicking. Because he just got hit by a black hole. And again, more props to the emperor for being the baddest dude around.

Bad dad, awful plans, unbelievably powerful, hardcore guy. Yeah. He stands up and goes, no, ain't going out like that. The note I wrote was Proxima still exists as a planet, but all of the people who are on it at this time and their descendants do not. Actually, the emperor went hardcore on this too, because not only does he just eliminate everyone in front of him and all the rebels, he then leaves the planet, turns to the Third Legion and says, hey, that planet just killed a bunch of your friends and brothers. why don't you go kill every single person there? And they went, and that's what happened.

And they didn't virus bomb it. They went door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. Because the planet still retains strategic. And I believe it was an agriculture world, but it was a very healthy world. So they couldn't risk virus bombing it. But they also couldn't risk anyone on the planet still being alive. So they just murdered them all and brought in new settlers.

Is this also when they got awarded the right to wear the Aquila? Yeah, this is cool. So the emperor's children have, if you look at like old pictures of them, where the emperor's aquila on their chest, just like anyone who plays modern 40K, that's there, they were the only ones who had this. No other legion wore the symbol of the emperor on their armor. Actually, maybe the custodos aren't a legion.

So it was them and the custodes. This actually did create a lot of, I wouldn't call it animosity, but jealousy from the other legions, because everyone else was like, I mean, it wasn't like the, all the other legions were like, well, I don't care about the emperor. Well, maybe Alpha Legion and the nightlords. But most of the other ones, I don't think Alpha Legion gave any crap, if I mean, perfectly.

Alferius has been loyal to the, still. Well, no, I'm not saying, I'm not saying a lack of loyalty, but I'm saying is I don't think Alferius cared if he was wearing the Aquila of the emperor or not. He was always in disguise anyways. That's my point. Whereas, like, you know, like the blood angels would have like, I want to wear that. That thing's cool. You know, the ultramarines, it would have been super into it. And for everybody that played with modern, if you haven't looked at this, this is, everybody has it now. It's just period. But at the time, yeah, at the time, this was a big, a huge deal. And a huge source of pride, which we will probably say that word quite a bit because it is wildly by far, not even close. their biggest. Pride is their jam. Now, an interesting thing happens to, and this one I like, because we're about to tell you a story that just got,

not retcom, but I got new information recently. During the endless conflicts on Mars, I'm going back now into the dark age of technology, cloning became really critical. All humans on Mars are vat-grown, and heavily genetically modified, because the radiation and toxin levels there are insane. And the mechanics like to tinker.

I was just by to say, and the bonus, why would we not screw around with it? This just makes sense to us. So when the emperor got to Mars, one of the main areas he took, aside from all the weaponry, was also what they were calling gene cults. These were the groups who, they used the term cult, by the way, a lot in 40K. Cult doesn't mean like small group of people doing weird things. It's more like job. So these were the guys who's job it was to work on the genes.

So he took these gene cults under the imperialists. And this was going to be massive for him for growing the space marines because they were, it's not just they were more advanced. They just had more technology, more capabilities than were on Terra. What are the things that they was a big deal, though, I think was they had hands on. They had people that had been doing this. It wasn't even just the, they were better technologically. They had people that had been doing this for a while. Well, yeah, the difference is the emperor obviously had the Thunder Wars.

he'd done this stuff back on Terra, but he was taking, you know, normal people, people who were born naturally and converting them over, whereas the, every single living being on Mars was genetically created. You know, it was VAT grown, all this stuff. So they were just better at it. They were just better at it. Yeah, they had hands on. You just go, hey, I was going to do this, but I've got Ted over here, who's got a hundred years of this particular machine. Yeah, I'm going to let Ted do it. So over time, the emperor moved each of his genetic experiments to terrorite. He did them one Legion at a time, you know, and she would kind of get him going. And what happened was at one point, what happened was, the transit ship carrying all of the

third Legion genetic material got destroyed or disappeared. It actually changes. The lore, there's no, nothing was written forever about what happened. They just said that there were, all there were were rumors. There were some stories that some rebels turned an orange. Orbital laser on the ship. There's a story. We're going to get there.

Yeah. Others were like a warp event just caused a ship to crash. But yeah, and he was a Necron fan knows what really happened. Trazen knew about the gene seed, thought it was cool, and he just went and took it, all of it. Yeah, I was saying the entirety of the legion. He took the ship, basically. Somewhere in Trasian's giant labyrinth, there is all of the gene seed for the third legion. What is he doing with it?

Nothing. It is... Exhibit 1,862. It's the guy who has an entire gene... Well, he had an entire genius dealer cult. All of it. Just hang... With patriarchs and everything else,

just hanging out in a pocket dimension case it came up. Turns out C-Tans don't like them. Anyway, really good book, guys, by the way. Really, really good book. The Infinite and the Divine. So, this loss, though, is catastrophic for the Legion. because they lost really all but just a small sample that was left back on Terra.

And what was stored back in there was minuscule in comparison. It would take this, well, it will take them centuries to kind of to compound that formula and grow enough to be equal to what was lost. What makes this a lot worse is that we've covered before with gene seed. Yes, you can preserve gene seed in battle. You know, the apothecaries are equipped to actually extract the gene seed from, a deceased space marine. But this requires two big things. One, there has to be a body left.

And this is an arrow with Volkite, plasma, melta, vortex. So there's not always something left you can pull gene seat out of. And second, they had to win the battle. And the truth is, the space marines didn't win every battle. They did retreat a lot.

They would go into an engagement. They would lose soldiers and they would retreat back. That means that that space marines gone. So in every single conflict, Like the Third Legion, it starts reducing their numbers every time. So they're effectively a dying Legion at this stage unless they can find a new source to pull their gene seat from. And, you know, I'm not a big, you know, I'm not Freddie foreshadow over here. Let's do Fulgram.

You should have waited until. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's just jump into it because it's fun. We'll be right back after a quick break. Fulgram. Like every other prime, Fulgram has an origin story and it kind of sucks. Hemos, Kemos, it's C-H-E-M-O-S. I'm going to pronounce it Kemos and Kemos randomly as we talk about it, so sorry about that,

was this colossally crappy place in the galaxy. It was a mining planet that was settled during the age of technology that fell to disrepair during the age of strife. It's surrounded by a nebula dust cloud and had this very minimal binary star. And for those of you who listen to our age of technology, age of strife, my immediate thought when I hear that is cybernetic rebellion. I don't believe the Imperium settled a planet in the age of technology that was a colossal piece of garbage with a crappy sun and surrounded by a dust cloud.

I firmly believe it was a wonderful world where the star probably got hit by the men of iron and the nebula dust cloud used to be a moon or another planet that got blown up. And that's why it's so shitty. As usual, it was not great. Yeah. So, Kemosis problem is they actually can't produce enough materials or food to feed its populations. They had these vaporizers and synthesizers, GW's words, not mine, all over the planet, but only a few of them were working. And so they had to work all day and all night, and even then they couldn't produce enough.

And so it's written that to keep the factories functioning, the population of chemos worked all day. They would do nothing but work and sleep. So there was no art. There is no leisure. There's no joy in their lives. They wake up. They go to the factory. They work.

And then they go to sleep because there are no extra resources. And even with all this, the population was just destined for extinction. Every day, the factories were aging and decaying. And so no matter how much rationing they did and what changes they made, eventually, really every factory would cease to function, the population would starve and die. So one day, scouts who are out looking for parts to repair a factory stumble across a pod that's crashed,

and inside is little baby fulgroom. And just like with Sanguineas, the thought was, let's murder that baby. It is so crazy on that. Yeah. And honestly, whereas Sanguineas was, it's a mutant, look at those wings, let's kill it. This was, we can't afford to feed this baby,

someone murder that baby. But he was a very attractive baby, not in a creepy sense, but in a sense like he looked, there was a perfection to him that no one had ever seen. And so they decide not to murder the baby. Long story short. And he's pretty of a baby do you have to be so that someone goes, we're going to kill that baby. There's no resources. That's a good looking baby. Like, is he the Gerber baby?

Just giving double guns? Honestly, my guess is. Did he give him a primark? I think he was a prime mark. I think it was jacked, and they were like, eh, let's not, I also still think, same thing with Sanguineas. I think, I think someone did try to kill dead sanguinius baby, and there's like, like, 11 dead bodies just ringing the baby,

and everyone's like, let's not try to do that again. I don't know how these people died, but I don't want to be the next. Yeah, but the common denominator is that baby in the middle, and I just want to go ahead and let's just, let's be nice to the baby. It's kind of, but anyway, so for whatever reason, they decide he's handed over to one of the people that found him, and the person names him full, who's after like a former deity of the people of chemo's from the age of strife.

And Fulgram does the exact same montage every other Primark does. He makes everything better for the people of Chemos pretty quickly. But he doesn't, you know, they'll do it in a special way. Not every Primark, my friend. Not every Primark. Well, every Primark improves the lives of the people. Well, no, I mean, everyone, even Conrad. Well, Conrad, to his group of people, made life better.

Sure, I guess. Oh, for the people of the planet, it's a nightmare zone. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I was like, Fulgram actually makes things pretty boss mode, actually. Yeah, I mean, Fulgram's up there with, well, Bobby G just is obviously the perfect and the best. That's all that ever happened. Again, one of us likes one of the leads, just a little bit more. Just slightly more.

I might be kind of a fan. I'm not sure how we could have, how we're going to do an ultramarine cast, if it's just going me going. Seriously, why don't all of you love them so much? But let's go into this. So what Folgram does, though, critically, is he drastically improves the output of all the factories. Primarks, you know, are geniuses. At their core, they are geniuses. And so diagnosing and kind of improving machinery is easy for them.

I mean, these are tactical geniuses. This is machinery. They can kind of see how all the pieces go together. And within a couple decades, Fulgram turns this planet around. And like a series of events, the last one's kind of the key one. The first thing he does is he fixes all the existing machinery to, like, the optimum output. So the planet goes from a deficiency in production to a surplus. He then helps the people kind of spread out from the few factories they have left and reclaim even more of them,

turning all the factors across the planet into these things, which then turns the entire planet into a manufacturing hub, which then produces enough resource to grow interstellar trade. and the planet then goes from this like dying hellscape to being a prosperous world, which interestingly is the next step from here really sets Fulgram up for a lot of his fall, which is now that they've had a surplus and they've got all this stuff, they can start doing things like art, music, theater, leisure enters their lives. And Fulgram loves this. All in.

Fulgram goes and just becomes obsessed with beauty in all forms, but also he instantly becomes pinkies out snob about it because he's obsessed instantaneously with only the best, the most beautiful, the perfect. You had to be perfection in what he was. And he's kind of short-tempered about it. They make a little bit of it, but he's almost instantly a little bit. If you're not bringing me the best, why are you here? Exactly.

With all of this. And this happens. This starts fueling his entire life. And it gets a lot worse when the emperor shows up. So when the emperor comes to chemo's, it's actually very anticlimactic, whereas, you know, other people, the emperor had to challenge them or there was some fight or some this or some that. The emperor shows up, Fulgram looks at him and immediately takes a knee and bows and fealty and declares his undying love. Yeah. He saw in the emperor what he thought was perfection.

He immediately went, yep, that's what I want to do. That's where I want to go. So the emperor grabs Fulgram and they head back to Terra to unify him with his legion. And along the way, he starts teaching Fulgram. The emperor, by the way, the emperor has one dad moment with each of the prime marks. And it's right after he grabs each of them. He has that like, let's go play catch in the yard. And by playing catch in the yard, I mean, I'm going to teach you all about my worldview.

Actually, I usually said it's not Catch in the Yard. It's pure indoctrination of my worldview, and I hope you follow through. He might have been played catch while he was doing this. Yeah, but there was a lot of it. How you indoctured people, the Catch might have been part of it. So he explains, so Folgram learns about that the only thing basically standing between humanity and extinction is the Imperium. The galaxy is full of horrifying Xenos, all this stuff.

Nope, never mentions chaos one time. It's just Zenos and imperiums who don't understand how great the emperor is. I can't tell you my hard sigh about that so much. Horace heresy prevented by a series of quick emails. Yeah. So Fulgram takes all, but Fulgram takes all this in and really believes it. He feels, because, let me don't forget, this is, his Legion cares about protecting the weak. Man, do they stop doing that later?

but they care about protecting the weak. He views the entirety of humanity as the weak and himself as the strong, and he is going to save all of them. And specifically, his Legion is going to save all of them. Well, let's talk about his Legion, because he gets back to Terra, and his Legion is a small crowd. There's 200 of them. At this moment in time, there were 250,000 ultramarines. He had 200. I mean, they could have met at a Chili's.

Split a few appetizers, you know. I have actually been to house parties that had more people at it than this. The cops showed up, but I have been in-house parties that had more people than Fulgroom's entire Legion. Now, none of them were nine-foot-tall super soldiers, but, you know, this, that or the other. So Fulgram is told that they need to use him to extract a fresh gene seed, and that from there they could start implanting new recruits. And thanks to the people of chemos and the nobility of terror, they've got a good number of these recruits,

but it's going to take decades to get the Legion back to strength. At least that's what it should have taken. I was saying, weirdly, it did not. Yeah, this GW timetables are, everything's a montage. That's how I, it did give him, it did give him time to do two cool things. One, he started going on random side quest to level up apparently. Yeah. But they were super cool.

Also, he is a badass at this point in time. And he could also do shenanigans because one of the things that Fulgram has, every Primark has their superpower, basically. Even before he's demon Primark foreshadowing, he's got basically regeneration more so than anybody else does. Because he just takes it. It improves. Well, he can just get, he finds that out in those side quests, though.

When he starts going out and doing shit, he's, yeah, I'm invincible, funding to learn. Kind of. Fun thing to learn. Not a perpetual. But, I mean, actually, obviously, he's basically perpetual light because he keeps getting his ass kick later on.

We'll cover this more than the next couple episodes. I think he's bad and perpetual. He definitely has regeneration, though. Yeah, it's died a lot. For sure. I'm more joking, he constantly loses, loses almost all the way and then gets the comeback.

That's kind of, that's what, that's why he's a perpetual light. He's a highlander who doesn't get his head chopped off just gets stabbed. No, he's just gets stabbed. He's a recurring villain on a show. Oh, you're right. Let's go there.

So let's go with one of his side quest, though. The first one is him hanging out with Ferris Manus. So while on Terra, because Fulgham gets kind of bored, is not much to do. He can't take his Legion out on a campaign. He's got to be locals so they can keep extracting gene seeds out of him. They don't explain how they do that, and I don't want to know. It could be, that could be a bad part of the writing. So he just starts taking on stuff.

And the first thing, one obviously is art and culture. he's Folkir starts just traveling around Terra visiting every art museum and every gallery and every fashion show and all this stuff

he's doing it like a rock star though because he also has like magical beauty you know he's people are seeing magical 80s beauty

I mean let's call this out like he is a nine foot tall he's a nine foot tall ultra jacked dude with like long platinum hair That's what he is. I mean, that's what he was. He's chiseled and with perfect facial features. So what he does is he starts dressing the part too. So he's, everyone sees him. He's always wearing like robes and cloaks, even while armored. If he has his armor, he still has like,

he was has like a high cloak around his neck so that everyone can see him. And he gets his reputation of like this like high fashion like space marine. And he also becomes quite the patron of the arts. He's going around judging sculptures and paintings and all of these things. He becomes, in a lot of ways, like, breath away, he's a rock star, but like more of a cultural rock star. He's an icon. He does. And this does continue, by the way.

Later on, when they leave Terra to begin to take part in the Great Crusade, he brings all this art with him. He even brings artists. Yeah. Yeah. I was to say he brings artists, musicians. He puts on, they put on full theater play plays. in his flagship. Yeah.

I mean, full. He's doing like Cirque to Saleh and he's got huge stuff going on. While on Tara, he makes his first

like real friend. And so Fulgram's desire is in perfection. He wants to go make a perfect weapon that matches perfect appearance. And so he goes to this great forward

under Mount Narondina, N-A-R-O-D-Y-N-A. And while, as he walks in, there's a dude in there banging away on a sword and it's Ferris Mattis. And by dude, I mean a prime mark. He's a prime mark of the iron hands who's crafting weapons.

The most apt name. It's the worst one. I hate the fact that, and we'll cover him later, but his hands were made of metal. And so he has iron hands and then his legion are the iron hands. Like, come on. Don't be a hater, John. Come on. No one else got that treatment.

That's more what I'm saying. No one else got done that dirty. They were the only ones who got dirty. I mean, I guess the ultramarines are kind of bad because they wear blue armor, but it's not like they were all blue, and then they named them ultramarines. Like, it's just lame. Anyway, Fulgroom tells Ferris that, hey, I need to use your forge, because I'm going to go, I'm going to make a weapon.

I'm going to make the greatest weapon ever. And Fulgram just looks at him. You know, this is a guy who's dressed like, you know, like highfalut in fashion, like Will Smith's kid walking in, right? And then I look at his hands. All I keep seeing is Zoolander. Oh, you're right. You're right.

This is a better example. It is Zoolander. I have the black lung. Ferris looks at him. He looks at his hands and points his hands and says, not with those you're not. And Ferris gets upset. So Fulgram challenges him to a forge off because Ferris has now informed Fulgren that the forge was a little too forged for him. And Fulgram informs Ferris.

was going to forge, it was to forge him off because he could forge off anybody. Ferris disagrees and tells him that, no, I could forge you off. And if you don't get that reference, I'm sorry, because that movie was awesome. And this entire scene is how I envisioned that scene from that movie. So the next part, though, is purely canon, and I would have skipped it if it wasn't canon. Folgram and Ferris, in their face off for their forge off, decide to take their shirts off. No reason given.

stripped down to the waist and begin working the forge together. It's the same as those of you who've seen Commando, which I hope is all of you, one of the weirdest scenes the whole movie is he lands his seaplane, he then strips down to a banana hammock, rose to shore in a banana hammock, and then puts on the camo clothes and paints his face to go fight, you know, actually go save his daughter.

There's no, like, I guess he didn't want to get sweaty. I cannot figure it out. I mean, that being said, if I was built like a Greek god, which I'm not, I can't say I wouldn't find it every moment to be in a banana havoc. They're also just working the forge in front of a shit ton of people. Oh, yeah, that's also the funniest. This isn't like his forge off to the side. Yeah. This is a full works project.

It's gigantic. They also mentioned that all the other people in the forge to invert their eyes in all of these two incredible beings, banged. away with hammers making weapons. Anyway. The best. This was some there's some hardcore montage happened to this moment.

So anyway, three months later, the two Primarks finished their work, of course, at the exact same time. Folgram has built a giant warhammer and Ferris built a sword. And they both hand each other the sword and they cannot find any flaws in the only one's

sort. And they both declare the other one, the winner. And to commemorate the event, they both give each other the weapon they made as a gift. And they become best friends at this moment. And this is, man, John, you missed a 10. Did we just become best friends? They were always best friends. That's the difference.

I mean, that one. I'm just saying the stepbrothers one. I guess it is true. Yeah, you're right. Well, I was more saying, like, the stepbrothers one, they tried to murder each other first. It's one that they didn't. They did a three month forge off. Yeah, they're trying to forge each other off pretty hard.

Yeah. So I really do like the Barbie movie. If you guys don't, I'm sorry. It just, it was funny. Anyway, more importantly, though, their bond is stronger than anything because every Primark, you know, viewed each other as a brother, but there was a variance to it. Like, you know, Conrad and Angron, whereas everyone's brother, but they weren't the first invite you sent to the party. When they say brother, it's always me, has the implication that there's a question mark at the end of that. Yeah, we're having an event. Everyone's invited. I mean, you guys, but hey, if you guys can't,

make it is totally cool. That was that part, that little extra bit was added to their invites. But this is, you know, right, surely they're after these two build their friendship, the emperor's children, you know, reach a large enough to be deployed, not deployed independently, because they weren't large enough yet for a solo engagement, but they could, they could now take some losses. And so they were assigned to the Luna Wals. The goal here was not to like make them subservient to the Lunarrels, but actually help them learn from what was at this point the best chapter. Because Fulgrim now gets to learn from Horace, and he really learns. Because Fulgroom is a fast learner.

Well, it goes beyond that, though. Fulgram is obsessed. And what I mean, obsessed. He's Eldar-level obsessed with perfection in all things, be it beauty, whatever, in battle. Every time there's a flaw, he wants that erased, and we will never do that again. And the key thing with Horace is he goes and he learns the best way to do battle for the Imperium. and Fulgram takes it, learns it, and immediately begins to improve on it. He looks at every, and the cool thing, and this is like this is the early part of the emperor's

children is this area here. This is what made them so good. After every battle, no matter how successful they were, he would come back and he would find the flaws that occurred, both in troop placement, movement, weapons selection, even the action of the troops themselves. His, the soldiers of the emperor's children would spend more time in dueling and practice. than anyone else. They were looking to be absolutely perfect,

as opposed to the space wolves. This is why I want to draw us out. There's no question that the space wolves were an incredibly efficient Legion. They would decimate their, like decimates the terror board. They would destroy their opposition. But the space wolves, after victory, would go home and high-five each other and celebrate.

The emperor's children would have the same event at the space world they have, go home and, like, yell at themselves. They're studying game tape immediately. Yelling themselves in the mirror about how you should be, how you could be better. So really it would be, it's fair to argue at this stage, the emperor's children were the best legion in the entire, as far as a soldier-to-soldier combo, were the best legion in the entire military. Yes, but they're really on the precipice for a fall, even before chaos comes into this,

because you can't maintain this. Yeah, this desire for perfection is going to be an issue. And what ends up happening is the emperor's children, enough to start doing some solo engagements, and they start moving around the galaxy. This leads them to a big one, which is the lair. So the emperor's children take their place in the Great Crusade, and, you know, Fulgram is teaching his legion over and over again. Nothing short of perfection is acceptable. No matter the achievement, you can always do better. So he's basically a worse dad than the emperor. One challenge for them is that as the Great Crusade continues,

every legion gets their like moment to shine. they all gain some sort of renown and all the other legions hear about it. Each of these moments, though, motivate the Emperor's children more than anyone else to be better. Every time the Blood Angels are successful, the Ultramarines, Iron Warriors, whoever, every time they succeed in a major engagement, the Emperor's children look at that engagement and think to themselves, I could have done it better, I could have done it faster, and I could have had less loss of life and less loss of resource every single time. And so their goal is to always, so every chance they get to do an engagement, they then strive to outperform everyone else. It was such a big deal because every time they heard about the accomplishments of another legion, it wasn't that they had envy towards it. It basically damaged their pride that someone else was doing something better than they were. Why weren't they doing better than that?

Not only just that, but we should always be better. And when I don't, if anybody else does anything, it shows on how I'm worse and should be. No one should ever be better than me. And again, this wasn't like, and I will just get them, I have to give them the credit here. This was never done in a way to undermine the Legion. They never, ever, ever tried to undermine anyone else, hold anyone else. They were just, it was totally, it was actually, it was, this is the healthiest form of competition that exists. I mean, where, you know, I was an athlete for a very long time.

I didn't care about losing. I cared about not improving. That was always my issue. Sometimes someone gets you, that's okay, but you need to improve. I always make sure when I lost, it was my fault. Side, side of time. But anyway, random ocean world. Out in the expanse of the galaxy,

there's this reptilian species called the lair. And the lair live on a collection of floating structures using anti-grav technology. It's never written why the Imperium wanted this world, but I assume because there's nothing on it but water. I assume it's because they just wanted to soak up all the water to supply the fleets and colonies because the layer are 100% zeno. There's no way they were not going to be exterminated by the emperor.

But it just says the world mattered. The problem, though, is that the layer are two problems. One, highly technologically advanced. And two, Slinash cultists. Pretty serious Sleinish cultists, too. Oh, yeah. Like all the way. And one of the bigger things about this is, let's backtrack just a smidge.

Slanesh has been peeking over the wall trying to figure out its in. Like someone needs to introduce me to Fulgrim and his Legion. I really want to be part of that. Problem solved. Because, remember, Fulgram doesn't know what chaos is. I mean, the Emperor could have told anyone. I mean, not even all. I mean, to Brad's point about, like,

You could send an email about, hey, this is chaos. He could have just told, like, three of the primarks. You don't have to tell Kurz or Angron. You could just tell, like, hey, tell Bobby G. You know, the lion, Horace would have been helpful. Like, hey, this is this chaos thing. If you see it, burn it to the ground. The planet is called Laren, and the people there are called Lair,

which is not easy for me to do. But anyway, upon entering the orbit above Laren, the Laird attack. And Fulgrim and his Legion decide, screw that, we're killing every single one of these. The fun story on that, though, is that for whatever, this was, the way they write this, the chronology doesn't work very well, but it's written that the Council of Terror said, oh, no, just skip them. It's too much work to conquer it.

But it also says that basically they attacked the fleet in orbit and then right away, Fulgram attacked them back. So I don't understand how that's there, but just if someone doesn't call me out and say, well, actually it says this. Yeah, it does, but just doesn't make chronological. sense. Effectively, and there's some other people in the Legion who are known for this. The Emperor's

children, by the way, did have a reputation for this of someone who would say, oh, that battle's not winnable, or the resource expended in that battle wouldn't make it worth it. You shouldn't do it. And the Emperor's children go, hold my beer. They go and do it, and by the way, preserve all

the resource. They basically prove the naysayers wrong when they do this. And so that's what was happening on Lair. Fulgram was being told, don't bother with it. They're too. technologically advanced. We'll just nuke him from orbit later. Don't worry about it. And he goes, no, I don't need to do that. Watch this. Me and my Legion are so good. We're going to take the bad odds and we're going to win by a landslide. And I took that personally.

Exactly. So upon landing on the planet, the emperor's children find that their senses are kind of getting overwhelmed. The entire planet has just this like really blaring, not music, just noise, colors. Both. Yeah. And it's, but it's a, it's a, it's. It's offensive to the senses, the way the colors are together because they're so extreme. It actually makes it hard to focus. This is actually the one time, Brad, you being colorblind would be helpful.

Now, your migraines... I was going to say, I don't think that my migraines would really do... Your migraines and the noise would drop, you'd be in the ball crying on the ground. But the visuals wouldn't be that bad. If they got some good noise-canceling headphones, you just kind of wander through, like, why is everyone so upset? because the lair are long fall into chaos. They are basically where the Eldar were at the fall. So everything for them is an extreme for them, every visual, every sense.

Now, like, you know, the fulgram, like any good prime arc knows badly, knows where to go. So he figures out pretty quickly that there's a main fortress in a capital building. And so he directs his forces there. And they're just rushing there and they're killing every layer on the, way, but the goal is to cut the head off the serpent, ironically. This is a really, really cool story. We're going to try to do a little bit of justice. The book here is called Folgram.

It's just the book is called Folgram. Get it. It's one of the, I think it was released after flight of Eisenstein, but it kind of covers both very good fall story. It's one of the best ones. So this battle is awesome. Yeah. So Fulgram rushes in and at the center of the temple is a giant sword. just floating in the air.

And the Laren are hurtling themselves at the emperor's children to kill them. Again, the Laird, by the way, were not being influenced by Slinash to kind of like trick them into a deep battle. They were just, they were slenish cultists and they just were enjoying the party. So the space range slaughtered them. Folgram walks over and he sees this blade just sitting there. And it's perfect. I mean, true perfection. handle is perfect. The curve of it is just the right curve. Even the placement and the color of

the gem and the hilt is absolute perfect. Which it also became all these things for him, specifically. So Fulgram picks it up as a war token, and it's to commemorate his great victory. Fun story. This is technically a blade, it's a power sword, but it's also a vessel that goes between them, and the imitarium, the imitarium, and inside, because the blade itself was a chaos demon, or inside the blade. It's kind of hard to grasp it exactly. Inside has a demon inside of it. Yeah. It's a, it's the, if you were playing a game, this would, when you, when you picked up the

sword, it would have been named unbelievably cursed sword. This is obviously a cursed weapon. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to, you don't have to cast detect magic. We're good. So what happens is he being is carrying the sword around him with him everywhere. And a couple things occur.

Because like any cursed weapon, anyone who's done any sort of sci-fi or fantasy knows, the longer you're around a cursed item, the more effect it has. So Fulgram starts off by just kind of hearing whispers in the back of his mind, which he actually assumes is his own conscious, like talking to him. Because the whispers, they're all designed to kind of drive his thinking more towards Lanesh. But don't forget, Fulgram naturally kind of goes that way. So he doesn't really view this as someone trying to manipulate him one way. He views it as just a reinforcement in his own thinking.

Because the demon, like all demons, are trying to send him down a path of ruin. Because if it can do that, then it can take possession of him. And this happens right about the same time the Horace heresy begins, starts to begin in earnest. So... Yeah, this is close to Devin. is coming up really quick here. Yeah, so shortly before Davin, Fulgram and his Legion

are sent to a place called the Diasporax. The Diasporax were a civilization of human Xeno alliances that dated back to the age of strife. The Iron Hands were sent to the sector to spread the imperial truth to them, which really consistent, and by imperial truth,

what they mean is all the humans who are part of the Asporics need to go murder all the Xenos who are part of the Esporax, and all those humans were like, well, we didn't, we wouldn't have survived the long night. If it wasn't for them, we don't know who you guys are.

How about you, you know, get the hell out of here. This is our neighborhood. Yeah. And this, these two obviously go to battle. And the issue is, as we, as we, as we, is why I'm glad we did the coverage of the age of technology. The DS Borax are someone who survived the age of strife because they preserved and had most of technology equipment, which meant they were actually better equipment. which meant they were actually better equipped and better armed than the Space Marine Legions.

So the Iron Hands immediately run into problems. They are not getting, not necessarily losing, but they're not winning. So they call in for reinforcements, and Fulgram and his Legion come to assist his best friend and these enemies in the emperor. And so for Fulgram, this is awesome. This is a twofer. He gets to wage war with his best friend and be a savior for humanity by destroying the enemies of humanity.

But during the battle, we get the first glimpse of chaos kind of affecting Fulgram. Because the D.S. Borex, sorry, it's a space battle. The D.S. Borex attack the Fulgram's ship, the firebird, and start wrecking it to the point where the firebird probably, like Fulgram might die here. The ship is completely getting ruined. Ferris sees this and turns his ship and hits the afterburners and slams in the D.S. Borax ship, saving Fulgris. Fulgram and his crew. Farris just saved Fulgram, but Fulgram just takes this as a personal affront.

He doesn't say it, it's not outward, by the way, in the book, no of this is outward, it's all internal. He's rage. But his internal, remember, his internal monologue isn't his internal monologue. It's the possessed demon sitting there, talking to him and going, because originally he's, oh, he saved my brother, save me. wait, did my brother just try to steal my glory? Is he showing me up? Is he trying to show that I have flaws? Is he trying to show my flaws?

Why would he do this? And that's the big shift, because Old Fulgram would have seen his, Ferris saving him as a failure of himself and a desire to improve himself. But now he sees intent in what Ferris did to try and stow a doubt throughout, not just throughout the entirety of the imperium of the superiority of fulgram right about this exact time horace and his legion land on devon and you know to deal with eugene temba horace gets stabbed by a demon blade and he ends up you know in the serpent lodge giving himself over the chaos fulgum's not aware of this but this is all happening right at the same time this is a big deal in this though because fulgram makes a almost

quick flip because he's been being corrupted this whole time. But right as of this point, he goes from, I want to make myself better to be better, to I want to show everybody and push them down. Yep. And he has wild in me. Well, yeah, let's talk with. Fulgram is going to go meet one of Brad's buddies. And Brad's buddy screws this up royally. We'll be right back after a quick break.

So Fulgram goes to a maiden. They don't know it's a maiden world. The world Tarsus, which is a maiden world, aka former our home world. And while walking along there, he bumps into a small group of little elves, one of which is Eldred, the farseer of the

Oldth Way. Who is, just one of points out again, supposed to be the greatest farseer of all the Eldar, so he can scribe all the way into the future. All right. I'm defending Eldran on this one. There's no defending. Eldred was also...

He saw his meeting. He knew that Horace had been corrupted. Oh, yeah. And he went to tell Folgulow about it. Let's keep going. Eldred's also one of the most powerful psychers in all of them. So he has a better connection to the warp than any other Eldar. What's Eldred do?

Well, he starts explaining to Folgram how Horace, you know, to Brad's point, is being corrupted as we speak, giving himself over to chaos, this long and passion speech. And at no point in this speech does he notice the demon blade hanging from the waist of the prime guy who's talking to, or notice the primark who has demonic corruption inside of them. That all just gets missed. I mean, potato, potato. I mean, sometimes you're going to miss the most important piece.

Yeah, sometimes you miss the most important piece. There was a blade with a demon prince inside it, like 10 feet from Eldred. And he just ignored that feature. I kept going on. I think it's a bigger thing that he foresaw his meeting with Fulgram, but he didn't foresee the fact that Fulgrim didn't. did not take this news well. No, Fulgram attacks.

And I'm not going to ruin what is it, an epic fight scene, but it does involve an avatar of Kane. So, again, the book is Fulgram. Just go ahead and read it. I mean, Eldred did have a backup plan, which was that. Yeah, and how'd that go? Not great. Anyway.

I mean, he's still alive, bro. He is still alive, but he's so bad at foresight. I mean, he's just so bad. It is like, I can see you to the future kind of sort of, but not with a lot of detail. So, real foggy. Yeah, very foggy. Man, it needs some glasses. Clouded by the dark side of the future is.

Yeah, man, it's getting some readers. All right, he's an old man. It's okay. Like, I have to wear readers now. He can wear readers. I'm pretty close to having to have to turn a light on when I read a menu at a dark restaurant. Yeah, 40. By the way, for all our young listeners, that happens in your 40s.

It's BS, man. It's BS. Anyway. 40s. Put that in the rear of you. Oh, you, but come on. I, I entered my 40s healthy. How did you do? I glimped in. I was there. I'm still here. Yeah. I mean, you're doing fine, but just... I didn't hear no bell. Exactly. I'm just saying other two of us, my 40, my 40-year-old heart

is better than your 40-year-old heart was. Not saying much. My 40-year-in heart isn't even all my heart. That's true. Yeah. It's true. You did come in with with extra pieces. That's right. I didn't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Mine's all just me. Yeah. I am bonus. I'm Admac. Exactly. All right.

So upon leaving Tars, Fulgram makes haste to head over to Horace. Because he does, he doesn't want to believe what Eldred says, but he also doesn't not believe it. And when he arrived, it's way too late. Horace has already made his dark pact, and he's full down the path. But one thing about Horace, and this is important, is he's a master negotiator and orator. Whoa. Yeah. That's his superpower.

Remember, his charisma on this. But also, I actually think that right now is peak Horace power of being Horace still. Because he's way more powerful by the time he gets to Terra, but that's not even. Yeah, he's more powerful. He's chaos power. He's still at this stage very much so horace. Because the truth is, to defend him and defend the story, that's because right now all the chaos gods are pouring all their energy into him, as opposed to later on when they're all trying,

they're all playing the great game. So they're putting energy into it, but they also want to win. And so there's a lot of other stuff going on. This stage, everything is about, we have to get this guy to fight the emperor. So let's just make sure he's there. So he's operating at 12.

They're convincing, they power him up. Yeah. Yeah, he's so jacked right now. And he was already, anytime Horace came to negotiation, he won. Yeah. Negotiate was over. And now he's superpowered with that ability.

I think Fulgram had no chance. And they do go over, like, what he says. The short story of what he says is he just appeals massively to Fulgram's natural tendencies. He points out that, you know, the emperor didn't just betray the primarks. He betrayed all of humanity. So that's a big check for Fulgram right there. Humanity could be this perfect force in the galaxy, a shining light against the darkness. But the emperor wants to puty small men make decisions.

And if the emperor is left to do this stuff, there will be. bickering and fighting. This is the kind of Fulgram just can't handle. And the last... In perfection. Everywhere. Exactly. He's saying, if we could do this, we could overthrow the emperor and we could create a perfect humanity.

And Fulgram just goes, all right. It doesn't hurt. By the way, there's a demon blade just cheering him on the background the whole time. Like, yeah. You know, just that hype kid. This is the best idea ever. So at the end of this, Fulgram is convinced, and he... And Horace says, hey, I need you, we need more allies, though.

Can you go talk to Ferris Manus and sway him over? Fulgrim does this. And I want to make a quick side note here, because Folgram is not the only one who does this. We've seen this with Mortarian. We've seen this with Magnus. We've seen this happen over and over again. With the exception of, like, Alfarious and maybe Petarabo,

all of the primarks that were turned to chaos were already pretty heavily affected or influenced by chaos gods. in one way or another. They didn't know a sure, but it was there. And so I bring this up because all the Trader Primarks, they all flip pretty quickly. And this is because they were being manipulated even beforehand. The problem is that when you then believe in something so easily,

like, oh, well, this just makes objective sense. And then you go and tell someone who's not being influenced by chaos gods, it doesn't go great. Right. And also, you're not Horace. Yeah, you're also not Horace. But even if it was Horace, I don't think Horace, flips Ferris.

I mean, Horley, we'll skip sanguinius. He at least gets him to listen. That's true. Yeah. We'll skip sanguinius in like Gilliman, Lyon,

they were never flipping. But even like Ferris, I don't think, I don't, Ferris, Corvax, your, your buddy,

none of them, I think flippier. I'm just trying to think to myself, you heard this wildly supernatural charismatic guy explain, you know, this pyramid scheme.

And then you try to tell the next person. You're like, you should let him tell you. It was way cooler. The example I use is actually Radiohead, and I use it because if you know anyone who, if you like Radiohead or you know anyone who really likes it, people who like Radiohead, it is like, it speaks to their soul.

They talk about listening to Radiohead, like it's a mind-changing experience. But if you don't like Radiohead and you hear it, you go, yeah, man, that's music. Okay. And that's what it is. And that's what this was for these guys. So Folgram gets this speech from Horace. He's just like, it's chicken every box from.

He's feeling it all the way in his soul, like, yeah, let's go. I can't wait to tell everyone else about it. And everyone else is like, I mean, it's a good song, man, but like I don't want to listen to it again. So anyway, Fulgroom and Ferris meet, and they meet in the actually inner sanctum of Ferris's flagship. And Fulgram does this whole speech about all these great points, all this stuff, how, you know, how the emperors betrayed them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. at the end of it says, right? And Ferris basically punches him the face. It's a big deal, though, to get where Fulgram is at this point in time.

Fulgram is, when he comes in here, is 100% convinced that he's, I've got this. My best friend is going to totally do the thing I did. And Ferris's response is to tell him, F you, how dare you. Now, by the way, not only do I disagree with you, I'm going to kill you now because you are an enemy to the emperor, you are a traitor, and these two have the fisticuffs. Oh, it becomes so much better because in true 80s movie, Mojo, each pulls out the weapon that the other had forged for them. And they begin fighting with it.

And it ends, and the fight, but this is, again, this is where Fulgram's fall starts moving into the tragedy piece. So Fulgrim goes to swing down on Farris, and Farris grabs the sword, because Ferris does have iron hands. And he crushes the sword in his hand. When he crushes it because it's a power sword, it explodes. And the explosion knocks them both across the room, you know, 80s, 80s movie, maybe anime if you want for that.

And as Brad mentioned earlier, Fulgram's got some kind of super healing capabilities. So while they're both unconscious, Fulgium just gets up and walks over. And Ferris is lying unconscious in the ground. Fulgram picks up the hammer that he built for Ferris and goes to kill him with it, and he can't. While he's got it above his head, though, the demon blade is screaming in his ear. Kill him, kill him, kill him. And Fulgram can't. He just drops the hammer and walks out. Now, when he walks out, he does have his personal guard murder all of the people on the bridge. Everyone on the bridge. So he doesn't kill Ferris. Everyone else dies. And then he gets on his ship

leaves and it has his ships turn on and just destroy the fleet. Not kill again. Not killing Ferris. but wrecking his fleet and heading back to go hang out with horse. So, as you can imagine, this is not, the Fulgram now is going pretty quickly down the path of chaos. But we've been talking about him for a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about not just him, but the people around him. Because when a prime arc, everyone falls differently,

but this whole Legion falls. And so we talked before. And an awesome play. Well, there's a lot of steps. Listen, man, this is two. This is actually two books. This is a book, Full Grum, and I think it's the second book of the Horace Heresy, whose name I'm escaping me right now.

But it's a second book is where a lot of this stuff takes off, I think. 80% is a first second book. I mean, we've got a little bit more to go, but the play is pretty awesome. Yeah, I'm sure to tell everyone, honestly, read the first five books of the Horace they're just, if you read the first, they're all, they're all out of the park. And the storyline is exciting. Read the first five. Just don't ask me, like, people always ask, which book is this?

just read the first five, because a lot of this is just memory bouncing between those books. So anyway, so when, back to the Space Marine Legion itself, gene seed is more than just genetic coding to a primark. They actually share a piece of the soul of their primark, because as we learned from Corex in the War, primarks aren't humans who are made super. They are actually warp entity brought together and then crafted to appear human by the Emperor. That's what they really are.

So when you do a gene seed from the primark, it actually is effectively warp that you're putting into the space marines, which creates an attachment. So what this does is that when a primark gives themselves over to chaos, that part of them then seeps in to all of their legion. It doesn't always convert them over instantly. It did in the case of the thousand sons, but it's more it gives the chaos. They were all sorcerers already. That's true, yeah. I think that's why. But that would make sense, but it gives chaos away in.

now the influence of Slaneh is able to spread throughout the Legion. And they see it throughout the whole Legion, uncontrollable jealousy towards each other. One by one, the most loyal and exemplary members of Legion, start turning to Slenesh worship. But it's done in these ways where it's always an extreme. And we're going to get to someone in a minute. But the first thing I want to talk about is that with this transition, it's not just with the space marines who are switching over. It's anyone even in the presence. And this, and this, well, and remember, all of the Space Marine legions have all of the helpers.

They have everything going on. Horace has an entire ship full of artisans. He's got painters. Bullgroom. Borghum has. Sorry, Fulgram has, as I'm bouncing around. But these people become entranced by Slamesh. And entranced, I think, is the actual right word for that.

It is. because they can't think of anything else. Slenish is awesome at this, because what happens is the road to corruption, they start focusing on that thing that they can't achieve, and Slanesh kind of dangles the carrot of, you should only be thinking about this, and I can make it so that you can do it.

Let's talk about it, because this is really well drawn out in the book, that's why we're going to spend time on it. Serene DeAngelis. So Serene was a painter that, Folgram brought with him on the Great Crusade. And Serene was told to make a giant painting for Folgram, for his main room, whatever you want to call it. No, no, no, call it what it is, though.

She was told to make a masterpiece for Fuller. That is a line from the book on that. It isn't they went, we need you to do a painting for Full Girl. No, you need to make a masterpiece for Full Girl. And she had writer's block for like 20 years. But she was present when they invaded Lair, or Laren, and actually walked through the great temple there. This is not a space marion.

She is instantly corrupted by slowly. She's like, boom, done. I'm now on it. And being there, she sees the very heavy air quotes beauty here, goes back to her studio and gets to work. But she, before she's where she takes all her paints, all her paints, all her oils, and throws them in the garbage, and she begins cutting herself, cutting pieces of herself off and starts using them.

As after a while of manipulating herself and cutting herself, she begins murdering other people and using them in this masterpiece. To the point where when this whole thing is done, it is horrifying. It is a giant painting of blood, decaying body parts. Looking at it would actually cause corruption. But if you are corrected by Slanesh, it's one of the most beautiful things ever. It's unveiled to Brad's comment earlier at this massive banquet on the eve of the Istvon battle. So there we go.

At the same time, there's another person named Kinska. And like Serene, Kinska was also present at Lair, but Kinska was a composer. Kinska heard the noise. It was like that was being that was planning throughout layer and copies it and makes that in. Everyone walks into the room and this, this symphony. It's a huge. Yeah, I mean, thousands upon thousands of space marines, you know, just regular army, whatever, everyone is in the room.

And this music is blaring. And by the way, most people think the music sucks. It's pretty rough. This stuff is, unless you're all the way corrupting. Yeah. But as it's going, this music, though, actually is a beat. that creates a connection into the immaterial. And as it begins, gets to his crescendo...

Well, they read, I'll say they're leading up to the crescendo because the whole time there's a performance going on with this. People are dancing, and then at the crescendo, the painting is unveiled. The music becomes insane, and boom. There's now a flip, and now the imaterium has access to the materium. Noise, this is actually where the first noise marines come in because there was a special instrument that actually shot noise,

but demonettes appear. They possess people, come bursting out. They possess all the people on stage just explode and Damonette start coming out. And there's a massive slaughter. And this is the next day is, I think, I can't have with Istvon 3 or Istvon 5 was the next day. But it was one of the Isthmans. I love, you got to read this book. So the whole time, Fulgram is just sitting there with like a glass of wine.

Just, this is the greatest symphony with people are just getting killed around him. This is perfect. The other one I want to spend time on, because he's going to come up a lot more in our next cast, is Lucius the Eternal. So Lucius is a very, because he's a good example of the space marine fall. Lucius is a space marine who was, he was human born on Camus, uplifted up. He went through the gene seed process, becomes a space marine. And he is arguably the greatest duelist in all of the space marine legions, non-primark. Non-primark.

I was just going to say, he also gets wrecked a bunch. No, not in this era. Later, he does. Not in this era. True. That's the thing in this era. And so, like, it gets stated that for multiple solar months of engagements, he never took one step backwards.

However, he was kind of also a prick because he's not only the greatest. I know. Yeah. I mean, a little bit. Because he's not just the greatest duelist. He wanted to make sure everyone knew he was the greatest duelist. So in every battle, he would, like, leap to the front. and just to get the most kills

or even just playing with his opponents, like just to get the most wounds on them before killing them. He didn't really care what the battle plan was. So this was where he wasn't a very good emperor's children because while being a perfect warrior himself, he undermined them being a perfect legion in their combat. He was personally responsible for so many casualties. He got in a lot of trouble because he was a captain,

but he'd get in a lot of trouble because he wouldn't follow the plan. So he was like this liked and disliked guy. One thing that was interesting about him, though, was that Lucius, his turn to chaos predates his prime mark. He starts to go, yeah, he goes well before. Because his obsession with perfection made him an easy target for Slanesh, and she gets in there pretty well. We don't really know when he does this, but there's a big flip in him. So Lucius was beautiful, like all unpertual, long, flowing, beautiful hair, great facial features, tall, strong man. At some point, other soldiers begin to comment about, and it's meant to be a compliment that, wow, he has, like, more kills than anyone else, but he's still flawless.

He has no scars. Most soldiers have scars because you do get shot. You know, you do get stabbed. Stuff blows up. Not Lucius. Lucius was clean. So it was amazing to see this person who had almost dainty features, and you're saying, oh, yeah, that's the most dangerous murderer in our entire Legion.

And everyone's like, really? That guy? Lucius, though, rather than taking that as a compliment, takes it as an insult. And he decides that he should have scars. And he starts off, like just literally cutting himself with his blades, deep two, not like a little happy supervisual stress. He's shoving it like an inch or two into his skin, like down to the bone in the case of his skull. he at some point during this period meets serena before she you know goes all the way nuts but she has

begun mutilating herself so he asks her well why are you doing this why are you mutilating yourself and she says well every one of my mutilations is for one of the victims that i've killed to make this great painting again lucius has already corrupted so he's not like oh that makes sense lucius goes well i've killed a lot more people than she has the people i've killed were a lot more impressive than the ones she's had, so I should have some pretty cool marks. Lucius goes from... She also carves effectively chaos icons all over him. Yeah.

Lucius goes into, yeah, he goes from this beautiful figure to all his hair is gone. He is scarred, head to toe, completely. The part of this, that's funny, though, to me, is what happens next with Lucius. So we're going to close this episode out with a little. a couple quick bangs. Istvon 3 and Istvon 5. Very quick recap. Horace, Istvon 3 was because Horace

was ready to turn against the emperor. He's got an issue. He has to go against the emperor. He has a bunch of legions that are not with him. And even within his own legion, he has a bunch of people who aren't really with him. So he has to go purge his legion, and then he has to take out as much of a chunk

of the loyalist legions as he can. He sends Gilliman, Lehman, the line, and Sanguinius to the other side of the galley. because they're the most dangerous for him. But he has the other bits he has to do manually. So the first thing he does is Fon 3, where he's going to purge half of all of his legions. So there's a planet...

It's still my favorite who he sends down, though. It's just... Well, no, because it's, you know, he sends the death guard down. He sends Amper's Children down. And then you're looking at it, and you're like, and he sends the six guys from the world leaders that didn't... All the world leaders, they were like,

Look, it's Eric, Sean, Tim, and Bob. Like, those, those, you've got, you've got a hundred thousand of us are on you. Well, you know, it's 99,99,997 of us are totally online. But those dudes, we don't trust those dudes. So you can send them down. A little bit of a problem. That'd be kind of cool for us. Just, let's kick them down here.

That's just one of my favorites. Just because of that, like half the Legion is being sent down and these. And these dudes and the role leaders. They were just like, we just, they looked, man, the butcher nails just didn't take. That's all I could take. I would tell you. But interestingly, one of the people sent down Nistvon is Lucius, because despite being covered in scars that he inflicted on himself, ones that had like, they're chaos symbols.

They're like, we can't. He's covered in chaos. But his best friend, but his best friend is Saul Tarvitz, who is the inverse of traitor. Oh, no one's more loyal than Saul until the very end. So Lucius is stuck down there on Istfan when the whole battle breaks out. And the battle comes in, like it would come, like we've all discussed before, they're going to bomb them from orbit, but then Angron screws that up, so then they have to do manual combat. But the cool, and the important, Pete, about, the important part about Lucius at this moment is

Lucius gets a note affected from chaos saying, if you will kill your brothers, you can rejoin your legion. So he goes, okay, and slaughter's 30th start. an instant, and then walks over to the chaos line, says, I'm with you guys now, and they all go, cool. And then he now has joined chaos. But you're like also joined a while ago. Yeah. Like, I don't know why I had to do that, but totally cool with it, but don't know why I had to do it.

But let's finish up with the big one, which is Istvon 5. So in Istvon 5, salamanders, the ravengard, and the Iron Hands arrive, and they're there to to kill Horace and Folgram. I think there was just those two. At the end, they knew, yeah, it was just those two. Oh, and Angron, I think. And Angron. And they're supported, unfortunately, by the night lords, the iron warriors,

Alpha Legion, and the word bears. Supported in heavy air quotes. Yeah. In the battle, Ferris leading his iron warriors comes upon Fulgrim and tells him, I'm here to kill you this time. And they begin fighting. But as they're fighting, Fulgram starts smiling. And Ferris, by the way, is beaten the cross.

crap out of Folgram. So Ferris-Kevirr, well, why are you smiling? And at that moment, the trap is sprung. And Ferris looks around and watches as his legion is just demolished by traitors. They're being shot at from behind, from everywhere. Everything, this is now, the battle is lost effectively. And he's looking around watching just like horror as his Legion is destroyed. The other legions are destroyed. And seeing pure traitors. And he turns to Fulgram and he's just that it just is like that's it and he attacks and starts beating the ever-living crap out of Fulgram I mean beating him into the ground just as he's about to give a fatal blow Fulgram just gets up and draws the demon blade because he's been fighting with a different sword

and he parries with the demon blade he takes the demon blade and he slashes Farris across the chest and Ferris drops he's not dead but he's harmed And Fulgram is at this, picks up the demon blade to kill Ferris and has that moment of pure clarity, where he looks around and sees the battle and sees what's happening. And he's looking around and realizes he's about to kill his best friend. All of the legions. Also, brothers are killing brothers everywhere. This is the inverse. He, remember, he was one of the most loyal members.

And he's looking around at this. And as he's surveying it, his hand begins to move because the demon blade is just like, I'm having. having enough of this. And the sword cuts Ferris' head off. And Folgram just stands there above his decapitated best friend and is just in sorrow. And so... He's broke. Yeah. Fulgram falls to his knees, basically in tears as to what's going on. And the demon, inside the demon blade, tells him, don't worry about it. I can release you from all of this. Just say the word. So Fulgram says the word. And upon that word, Fulgram is now, his soul is sucked out and goes into the demon blade the demon takes over his body and fulgram is now imprisoned within this

sword for now and the demon has taken control of his body nobody gets possessed more than four no and that's where we're going to break because next week we're going hard into the emperor's children the horse heresy which they do a lot of and then some of the post i think this is going end up being a three-part cast guys because this was you know this one went we're not even we got the istvon five in over it took us like almost an hour and 15 hour and 20 I was saying we're not even a demon private. Yeah, so we're not, yeah, we have a lot to get to with him. So it might be a three-part caster.

And we also, we also, we'll love to cover Fabius Bile. So, me, probably be a three-parter, but it's actually pretty good. And especially the new codex coming out. I'm excited about this. So, you know, next week we're going to be doing a bunch of Fulgram getting super weird. That is Legion getting super weird, including more stuff with Lucius, some stuff with Fabius Bile, where these guys really embrace Slanesh. barred.

But until then, this is John Barcati and Bradchester. See you next week.