The 40k Lorecast - Episode 86 - Emperor's Children pt 2 - the Horus Heresy to Modern Era

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

On today’s cast we conclude our coverage of the 3rd legion of the Space Marines, the Emperor’s Children. We open with Fulgrim having to clear his possession by the daemon blade. From there we move over to the Fulgrim’s ascension to Daemon Prince. After that we cover the descent of the legion into just partying in the warp. From there we move to the hilariously uselessness of the Emperor’s children at the siege of terra (they did more for the loyalists than the traitors in function). After this we jump to the Emperor’s children post heresy with a focus on Lucius and Fabius Bile. We then close with the return of Fulgrim to the materium and the game of 40K.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 Barcati and Bradchester. The sky. On today's cast, we'll continue our dive into the Emperor's Children, starting with the outset of the Horace heresy, into kind of about modern 40K with them. For those who are new to it,

40K lore cast is a weekly podcast, focusing the lore of the 40K universe, releasing every Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. If you go to our show notes, you'll see links to our website, our YouTube channel, our Patreon, and a few other areas. namely our Discord.

Yeah. I love a few other areas. Few other areas, everyone. Well, it's because I never know. 40K Lourcast after dark, a few other areas. Yeah, just some random things that are there because it's called future-proofing, Brad.

It's called future-proofing. Like, we're recording this now in, like, in May 2025, but someone may be listening to this in, like, February, 2026, and there's some different stuff there. So I'm just trying to hedge my bets. For those of you who enjoy the cast,

please like and subscribe as always. Also, please join our Discord. If you're looking for a place to interact, it's a completely free server with everything really 40K related. The cast obviously is a big part of it, but so is video games, literature, etc. It's designed to be a place

that not only interact with us, but other people who like the cast and about topics that kind of this encompasses, the 40K universe and all its different realms. So we have thousands of people currently in there as it is today. I think we're close to 8,000 right now with a lot of interactions. So if you're looking for a place, come on, give it a shot. Big shout out to our mods who all stop naming so they don't get hunted down.

I'm kidding. But big shout out to our mods for all their help. Nothing to possibly happen bad if you just keep putting out your information. It's never back far enough. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe we should be, I should start. That'd be a fun one. On today's cast, Brad reads the personal email addresses of all the mods of Discord.

And then I just go, what? I thought it was going to be a great idea. This is why people can reach out to you guys directly. Like, this is what? Am I not helping? So, let's get into the cast then. Quick recap from last week. Our originally known as the Third Legion, the Emperor's Children were drawn from, like,

the nobility classes of the Concord Terra. And they function similarly in a way to the cast. nighthouses do, focusing on martial prowess, perfection, their goal was to show themselves to be the greatest warriors, not the most greatest conquerors or any of those things, to actually be the best and the most exemplary. I would actually argue that of all of the fallen legions, they were the one that the emperor actually liked the most. Emperor liked Horace the most, but I think he liked the emperor's children the most of the fallen legions. One of the biggest things is they didn't put up the biggest numbers because they were also big deal on style points. That is a real thing. They wanted to

conquer perfectly with grace and style. They didn't want to be crude. Like they really didn't like, for instance, how the Space Wolf did things or the Dark Angels because they thought they, both of them were just, you know, non-precise hammers just derping about. Yeah, exactly. So what was nice for them is that they did run into a little bit of a problem in which Trays and the Infinite stole all their gene seed. Fun story though. But right afterwards, they found Fulgram, their prime arc. Fulgram, raised in a dying world like a lot of the primarks were. After uplifting its world, he discovers the beauty that exists in the galaxy because he's able to, for the first time, see art, read literature, see paintings. I already said art, didn't I? But anyway, you guys,

you all get the point. You get all these things. I have to say that we, cover this a little bit the last one, but Fulgram is one of the prime arcs that, well, until he became the fall, he actually made his planet, like, significantly better. He didn't just conquer... Oh, yeah, he actually improved Kamos

quite a bit as opposed to cough, cough, ball. But... Thanks. Thanks, Senguineas. And the thing is, is until he gets corrupted, too, one of the biggest things I actually like about the early stories of Fulgram, he's into art and beauty, but also he really

values artisans, people that are great at their craft, be it weapon masters, armor smiths, you know, all of these things, great builders. He has all of that. So it's not like he just has, you know, a couple guys making paintings. He's, he had really, especially on his command ship, he had everything there. Well, that's actually, that's a great transition. Another key piece of this was his best friend being Ferris Manus. So to Brad's point, it wasn't, it was perfection in everything. So Ferris Manus is, you know, the prime mark of making weapons, basically. I'm not sure what Vulcan does then, but that's a side note.

Important part here is that Fulgram meets Farris Manus, they become best friends, and eventually this best friendship turns to hostility when Fulgram turns toward Horace. At the same time, Slinash has been infiltrating his legion pretty aggressively and twisting and turning them into being more her things, take their strive for perfection and kind of perverting it into a twist and demented version of like first, what really is not true of beauty anymore, but just endless amounts of excess. That's how I like to look at it.

Yeah, they change. She changed her so much. I'm just sorry, I jumped all over that, but just I think that out of the legions, I mean, you could say, you know, Mortarian and the death guard encompassed Nurgo, but they kind of get forced on them. Yeah. This fall is my favorite fall because they didn't mean to go to chaos. They slowly, because of their pride and all the faults that they had, came into Slemesh.

And they just represent Slemesh so well in the lore and in the game. Well, and the way I like to look at it is that they moved from being obsessed with perfection to being obsessed with excess. And those are two very different things, but come from the same place. It's just, it's one became, I care about how other people view me. Other than one became, I care about what I receive. And so, anyway, moving quickly to the end, Istvon three happens, they kill half the Legion. Istvon 5 is the big one. And on Istvon 5, the Trader legions finally, you know, spring the trap.

And Fulgroom, the last thing he does is he and Ferris Manus have a duel. And during this duel, Fulgram kind of kills him. And by kind of, what I mean is Fulgram had a demon sword that he'd gotten from the lair, many a while back a fully Slynesh corrupted Zeno race. And while standing above Farris Manus, the demon sword itself just swung his arm because he was sick of Fulgram's delays and cut Ferris Manus's head off. In doing so, Fulgram stood there and saw his best friend decapitate. saw all the space marines all over the planet fighting and became despondent and the demon inside

the sword offered him salvation and so fulgram took it and the form of salvation he got was to have the demon possess his body and fulgum be trapped inside the body just screaming trying to get out i i would have more juice with this if this wasn't foreshadowing the first of several basically possessions that Listen, it's, it's totally, I'll disagree. He actually doesn't get possessed that, that often. He gets kind of controlled. He's only only two, right? Well, continue on.

There's, like, there's times when you can argue, there's a big time when we can argue when or whether he actually broke free or he got, yeah, there's that piece. There's like repossessed multiple times in this first deal. Yeah. Because he's like, man, I was good all along. We'll get to it. We'll get to it.

Yeah. We'll get to it. All right. So let's take off then. So back to today. So immediately after Istvon 5, Fulgram returns the vengeful spirit and requests an audience with Horace, just two of them. Horace is like super happy about the success. He's looking at Isthvan 5 and saying, you know, this is incredible. And he's giving Fulgram all this pride. At which point, the demon who's possessing Fulgrim says the horace, actually I did that because Fulgram lacked the capacity to do what was needed. But basically, don't worry, I've taken control now, and that he was in lock

step with Horace the next few plans. So Horace, this is a weird moment for Horace, because he immediately recognizes what he's talking to is not Fulgram, but it is, obviously, it's the body of Fulgram. And so, of course, but he doesn't know anything about demonic possession. So he just asks the demon or the Fulgum in front of him, hey, where is Fulgrim? And the demon says him, oh, don't worry, he's trapped inside my body and his screams of agony are actually quite fulfilling for me. Yeah, that was not the correct answer he was going to get it. Yeah, and Horace is just staring at this because he doesn't know what to do. Because Horace, while giving himself over to chaos, doesn't really understand chaos.

And so he's worried that if he just kills this thing in front of him, which he could have done easily, he'd kill Fulgram. So he makes a vow privately, and by privately, I mean, in his own head to himself. So the most private one you could possibly make that he will free Fulgram from this imprisonment. Yeah, he puts that on this calendar for a future date. Also, to be fair, this is the Diet Coke version of Fulgram. Because while being possessed, this demon is not even remotely as badass as Fulgram. We'll get to that. Yeah, let's get there.

We'll get there. Well, I'm saying Horace realizes this also. Not only is someone possessing his brother and he'd like to do something about it, but this is also Diet Coke, Fulgram. So moving forward, he's like, I don't really... What I do like is that we have a bunch of listeners. We'd be like, but I like Diet Coke. Like, why does this have to be the bad version?

Like, hey. I mean, I was just, because I would actually really call it the RC Cola fulgram. You know, I think Diet Coke, people are like, you look, the Diet Coke's lovely. I would probably call it R.C. Cola. What are some, some sodas you guys drink in Ohio? Vigo. No, Fago. that's here. All I knew about insane clown posse

before I moved to Michigan was Fago soda. And then I moved here. And I was like, and I go to a grocery store. I see Fago. And I'm like, why is that in a grocery store? And my wife's like, well, of course, it's Fago. And I'm like, oh, insane clown posse must just be from here. I thought it was insane clown posse soda. I thought they made that soda. And so I walk in, so I'm in like, you know, a major grocery chain. I'm seeing a large collection of what I believed was the

insane clown posse soda going, did I just move to a place where everyone listens to insane clown posse? This could have been interesting. So, anyway, fun side note of the day. So many juggalo's. Yeah, won't be the last side note today. All right. So shortly after this moment, all the primarks who took part in the Istvon massacre,

joined Horace and the vengeful spirit, and those who weren't present kind of Remodian via hologram. And I do want to actually, funny joke on that. My brain, I remember that when I first read this, This is many, many years ago. Now, in like it's 20, 25, the thought of this happening, when the writers were doing this hologram in, I'm sure they were thinking it was a perfect, like, sci-fi holograms

where, like, the Magnus holograms are staying there. It's clean as hell. But I keep thinking about, like, a Zoom teams or Google Meets call that we're all in, where, like, you know, Angron can't find the mute button. You know, you've got, yeah. There's just so much noise in the background. Guys, like, can so, oh, could someone mute? Angron, please, you know, Alfarious is like, like, like, where are you exactly?

It would be Alfarious, sorry, it'd be Curz. Like, curse, where are you? And he's, like, he's, like, in, like, a duct to, like, sneak up the murder. Or he's murdering someone, like, you're watching him actually kill somebody while on the call. Like, that's now, thanks to the era, how I view this moment, you know? Or someone's, like, someone's, like, someone's, like, you're using him to ass man, 2000, like, type thing. Because they didn't know how to change it because, like, their kid got in there ahead of time or, you know. So, so, anyway.

So the primarks, but the more important part of the story is all the primarks who are present enter the room. Lorgar is one of them. And remember, Lorgar, unlike everyone else, knows everything about chaos. Because he wrote the book on it. Second, to be fair, of the episode, to be fair, he also wrote the book on worshipping the emperor that they still use to this day. That is true. Yeah. He does have two books.

And they're very different. Yeah. It's a weird dichotomy. But, I mean, he walks into the room. and effectively goes, oh look, demon-possessed. It just immediately does. So, Lorgar walks from him,

looks at Fulgram, grabs his mace, and just starts running at him to go kill him. Horace steps in between them. And Lurgar, to his credit, just goes, because Lurga just goes, whatever, and assumes that Horace doesn't, that Horace thinks he's trying to kill Fulgram. And he doesn't, and it's not until

Horace says to him, you know, I know, leave it. alone, at which point, Lorgar, to his credit, gets super pissed off and walks out of the room. And the reason he does, though, is interesting. Lorgar, you know, Lorgar loves chaos corruption, loves it more than almost any other prime mark. But what Lorgar knows is that in order to be chaos corrupted, you have to be weak. It requires a weak soul for a chaos entity to take over your body. And so his viewpoint was twofold.

One, he first thought that, you know, no one's aware we have, we have a demon presence, so I'm going to go walk that thing's butt. And then two, Fulgram doesn't deserve to be here with us if he was able to be this easily possessed by a demon. So. But anyway, we'll actually know. So the last thing, one more thing. Lorgard then, after realizing Horace won't let him do what he wants to do, says, okay,

I'm going to leave now to the Fulgram, but I'm going to go figure out your true name. and when I come back, I'm going to banish you forever. Well, there was also a lot more of the plan coming on because Lorgar went, I'm also going to come out with a plan to backstab you eventually because I'm comically evil and wildly by far my least favorite prime art. Continue. It's not saying much. Well, is he really wildly your least favorite prime mark?

I don't even put him in the running. When I talk about the people I don't like, I'm like, well, yeah, you don't count Lorgon. That's fair. that's fair he might lorgar is just i i like i like lorgar is from a from the plot narrative standpoint he doesn't really he's he's critical for it

whereas like i mean is he is he or is arabas no lorgar lord gar is critical arabas takes over a little bit more versus jagged icon if we removed all jagged icon from everything that ever happened what's the it's like his stories are good i'm not saying the books aren't well written and the stories about him aren't good but he's so non-critical

in the development of the of the narrative that i really want to play you with a seventh edition white scars allied tau detachment. Ugh. Anyway. So, at the conclave, Horace gives each prime mark their marching order. And each of them are basically have to go out, solidify the war effort in one way or another, and then join him for the final assault on terror.

The emperor's children, he gave a very simple task through because, again, they're not really, don't really have a true prime mark. And he knows this. He just says, go to Mark. and help the dark mechanicum in their war against the mechanicum so that we solidify this space. And the demon infused, Fulgram says, yeah, absolutely. And makes zero effort to do that whatsoever. All I have to say is, in my mind, all I saw was Guardians of the Galaxy.

And Fulgroom gave the rocket wink with it. It just goes, yeah, going to Mars for sure. And he's like, you just winked at me when you did it. Yeah, I'm definitely going to Mars. Yeah. We? 100% what I'm going to do. Yeah.

You're like, so you're definitely not going there. Okay, got it. So, Demon Folgram decides that he wants to go to a mining world called Prismatica. Why was it called Prismatica, you ask? Because it mined a very special crystal there that was extra reflective and shiny, like a prism. Not all GW naming mechanics are winners, guys. I mean, let's be honest, it's Prismatica 5, and at least they're not mining unobtainium.

Oh, it's okay. I mean, I'm sure this is all, this falls into the iron hands thing. Well, he's got hands of irons, so we'll just name ourselves that. But the reason the demon wanted to do this was it wanted to take these crystals and build a giant structure out of them because they're so reflected, it was a giant temple of mirrors that you could walk through for nothing but self-adoration. But as they're doing this journey, the Legion starts to get a little suspicious of their leader. So let me side on this, because this is, this is. story's actually pretty cool. However, he's wildly not Fulgroom and everything that he does.

And it takes them so long to recognize this. And you're just like, dude, come on, man. Like, when you hover your mouse over the Fulgroom, it says clearly not Fulgrim on his title. It's just. Yeah, holding down alt so you can see all the

pieces and it's just like, yeah, demon. Oh, interesting. So, yeah. So his Legion starts noticing that Fulgram's off because normally, like, he's hanging out with him. He's laughing and cheering and joining their company. Like he was, Fulgram was a very active leader. Not, I mean, probably on par with Lehman Russ as far as like. And he's also wildly a charismatic guy.

And he wanted to. He had his, he had his fingers involved in a lot of things. Remember, it wasn't just his warriors. He was involved with all the, the artist and the mason, you know, everybody that he had on his ship, all these people he brought. He was, had his fingers in everything. And all of a sudden, he just, just didn't do any of it.

Yeah. Fulgram now all of a sudden it's like a loner. Like he's wandering around elsewhere and not interacting. And the truth, like the other one too they talked about is he used to take a big part in all of like their traditions and all their customs. You know, like all of these guys, especially when they get uplifted off of like Kamos and some of the ones who came from Tara, they've got these like ways that they have like big meals and all that stuff. Fulgram won't take part in them because of course the demon doesn't know them. When the demon possessed Fulgram, it didn't take over his mind. It did the inverse. It just took the body and shoved his mind and his thoughts down in to look out.

It's kind of my thing of when they don't recognize it because he's just going, hello, random citizen as he's walking down the halls. And I'm like, it's like those comedies where the aliens are trying to act as people. It's like, hello, fellow earthling. Like, what are we doing? In my mind, he's just got the Steve Bouchemmy. Hello, fellow students. You're like, so like, every.

Everybody realize that's not Fulgram, right guys? Okay, I just want to make sure we're on the same page. The last little piece that that kind of starts pushing it over the edge, he gets really short-tempered with his Legion, which he's never been before. Like he would, Fulgram would always, because he wasn't one to like their scold or criticized, because he was a noble. He would inform them of any mistake they made, and, but he would then, but his goal is to show them his superiority by saying, this is what you did wrong.

Here's what you, here's what I would have done. You should have been trying to do it that way. Said Fulgram's just a dick. He's just yelling at people, screaming at them. And it's probably, let's go a little bit farther. He was a dick, but he was a tyrant dick. He was starting to lord over people, not in a noble way, in a, I'm a warlord and I've grabbed power. And you should all be subservient.

Yeah. And I think where this really came to a big head, get it in a second, is when Lord Commander Idalon, it's one of his top Lord Commander, starts protesting when they're on Prismaticus. saying, we were told to go to Mars. We're nowhere near Mars. What are you doing? Like, we shouldn't be here. We need to go help the war effort.

And Fulgram starts screaming at him, accusing him of mocking him and challenging his knowledge and his this. And Adelaan starts back and down pretty quickly. Like, whoa, I didn't. I just, you know, what the hell? And then Fulgram cuts his head off and then holds his head above a bunch of wine. And then everyone drinks the wine, which is just, weird. Although compared to, I'll say back this up. Yeah.

Look, whoa, current. This is weird now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Weird now. Once we get down the road, like, you would be like, I can't believe they did that. And right now, they'd be like, why? Because it's so lame and not even a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. In like seven years, this is going to be like total normal. Fun note, though, on Idleon, he did after cutting his head off, McFavius Biles, sew it back on and reanimate him. And then Idleon's a weird character. We're actually not going to talk about him very much because he's a very strange character in 40K lore because he kind of moves all over the place in power and knowledge. Because at some point, let's be honest, he got written by multiple authors. That's why.

Yeah. And so some authors, a version of Idleon post having his head cut off was no change. And some of them were like, oh, he's basically like a person. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, Lucius, though, starts noticing the primark's really different. And he starts being a bit more strategic at it. Lucius's big thing was that he started beating the primark when they were dueling. And like Lucius is the best swordsman in the Legion.

He's punking him too. Yeah, but that's the point. But Folgroom used to beat the crap out of him. Yeah, because he's like the primark. Yeah. Lucius is dancing around and playing with him to a point where Lucius starts getting concerned. he's going to injure the primark in sparring that level. Around the same time, Lucia starts having these dreams showing the primark trapped in a painting.

So he decides, he gets a few of them together, of his brothers together, and they capture Fulgram and knock him out. How you do this, I have no idea. This plan is horrific. If you, I, because he's like, again, the Diet Coke of Fulgram, it works. But like. R.C. Cola. Stop.

Stop. Lots of people drink Diet. You drink diet Pepsi and you're like, oh, it's the diet Pepsi. I drink diet Dr. Pepper. I drink diet Dr. Pepper. This is from Dr. Evil. He calls him the Diet Coke of Evil. Come on.

I know that, but I know. I'm just still giving you the whole. Like, let's call it really is. But I'm just saying that like this plan is terrible. Yeah. It makes no sense. Yeah, he's like, hey, man, let's get like two or three of us. You're like, it shouldn't Fulgram just completely wreck us when we try to jump on his back like children getting on dad?

You're like, yeah, 100%. but they instantly knock him out. Yeah, it goes with nothing. They take him to Fabius Bile, and Fabius Bile has this great plan. And we're going to cover Fabius Bial later in this cast, but Fabius Bile's plan is, of course, simply, it's simply let's just torture him until it gets better. That's his whole plan.

As they begin the torture, Fulgroom just goes, no, no, guys, it's cool. It's me, Fulgroom. Don't worry about it. And he informs them all that he's been, that he actually freed himself a while ago. And he used this knowledge to banish the demon inside him into the painting. And what Lucius's dreams were about was actually the demon in the painting, trying to trick all of them to knock Fulgram out so that the demon could repossess him.

To Brett's point, this makes absolutely no sense. And this is Fulgroom's words. I think any one of us who's read this book and read this story goes, so basically the torture worked perfectly, the demon got upset, you repossess. it. But rather than say, hey, thanks guys for saving me because I gave my soul over to a demon, you had to go with, I was in control the whole time. Really? Then why are we on Prismatica 5? Exactly. Like 100% he did not gain control and do his stuff. You were sad. You got possessed. Just say thank you to your most loyal of people in your Legion and embrace it instead of going, dudes, I already was escaped. I'm fine. It's a master plan. You're like, no, no, no, you're an idiot.

So at this point, Fulgram retakes control of his Legion and they begin sort of doing weird stuff, let's say the League. Sort of. Now, I, Eber's children fans, I know I'm shitting all over Fulgram when he's doing this. However, that was a terrible plan and a bad story you're telling. next plan is actually legit. He's got layers on layers of this plan. It works really well. This one does work. Actually works perfectly, if I'm being honest. So Petarabo. So Petarabo, Primark of the Iron Warriors, was kind of always the odd man out in this traitor campaign. He just wanted to go stick it to Rogal Dorn. All of the other ones, Conrad Kurz. Yeah, of course, chaos. Angron. Yeah, of course chaos. Mortarian, it was a bit more of a tragic story,

but yeah, chaos. Same with Magnus. Yeah, chaos. Lorgar, yeah, chaos. Am I missing anyone now? Yeah, Horace, obviously, chaos. I think that's all of them, right? Yeah, that's, right? They didn't miss any. Yeah, that's all them. Petarabo is the weird one. And so Petirabo is kind of like just actually taking this revolution seriously. He's like, yeah, we're going to wage a war campaign, do all this stuff. But Petirabo also does have a little bit of an inferiority complex within all these legions. Oh, sorry, I forgot about Alpha Legion. Sorry. Also, Alpha just is Alpha Legion. Like, they weren't a chaos legion. They were just a like, meh, independent. They were neutral.

They were a gray Jedi. Yeah. So anyway, Fulgram goes to Petarabo and says, hey, I got some good news for you. I've got a way to actually make you guys, you and your legion's perfect. You'll never lose. You'll never fail. You know, basically you'll stop being second fiddle to everybody else. Just come join me because there's a special weapon within the eye.

of terror called the angel exterminatus. Help me get this weapon and we can power our legions to a level no one's ever seen before. So Petarabo, because he's an idiot, says yes. They traveled to an Eldar Kroen world that was destroyed during the creation of Slanesh. Fun important notes can jump up later. They're being pursued this whole time by a group of survivors of Vistophon 5, which there's more survivors of Vista von 5 than you'd expect. But anyway, on a ship called the Sisyphium, which was just Astardis who were on a, we covered this, by the way, guys, I should mention, some of us up we're going to cover. We covered in, like, episode three or four, but I'm not going to sit there in episode 86

and say, as you remember, an episode, an episode, an episode came out a year and a half ago. I would definitely do that, though. Yeah. So some of us, we're going to recap some stuff pretty quickly. I'm keeping it shorter, but just letting you, we're going to recap some stuff. So people don't have to go and listen back to an episode from like a year and a half ago where I didn't like the audio as much. So this other group of Astardis are on a suicide machine.

On a suicide, that's funny, on a suicide mission. There's a band-goed suicide machine. We're keeping it suicide machine, baby. These guys are on a suicide machine to get, damn it. These guys are on a suicide. Damn it. Hold, I've got it, John. Everybody wears this, this who's on a suicide mission to get revenge.

And also, the- The ship was on a suicide machine. No. So upon reaching the crone world, the planet is vacant. Petrobo immediately is suspicious and starts moving forward really slowly, like basically trying to fortify his position as they're going because he knows that this shouldn't be vacant. Soon as they breach the most inner sanctum, the Eldar protectors wake up.

And this is one thing that happened a lot of crone worlds. Any sort of spirit hosts that were there, they were all in. incredibly dormant. But should they detect Slanesh, they would wake up and attack in order to protect whatever relics they had there. So out of nowhere, they're under both Petarabo, his Legion,

Fulgroom and his Legion are under attack. It was not the full Legion of them, obviously, but a large number of them are under massive attack from some pretty heavy duty Eldar at this point too, because these are all very motivated spirit hosts. Well, go back to what happened before they

went down because this is so comically awesome on this. Petarabo's an idiot. I made something for you. Just wear this. Well, it's just random too. So fine. Before they go down to the planet, Folgram walks to the Petarabo and, you know,

it says, I gave you a gift, which I assume came off with the skill of, hey, I made you this, wear it. And it was a cloak with a special stone in it called the Malgator stone. And of course, Pettero puts it on, the stone is not decorative at all. It's instead meant to sap the life and energy out of Petarabo and transfer it over to

Fulgrim. In my mind, there's just an actual visual, like, tether going straight to Fulgram from him. Well, and what's interesting is they talk about the entire time they're together. Petarabo notices that Fulgram and his Legion look odd. The term they used it, like they were sweating light. They were just, it was energy, like a light kind of just shining off all of them. It looked weird to him. It probably was the stone he was wearing, sucking his life force out.

He's watching it, go into them. So, Petarabo doesn't fully trust Fulgram. I mean, he trusts him enough to put on the cloak he gave him and keep following. And go into a dark alley with him. Yeah. Hey, man, meet me behind the building in the alley. Don't worry. Also, wear this when you go back there.

And could you hop in that ice bath right there and just to keep your kidneys cold? Yeah. So out of nowhere, of course, Fulgram attacks Petterabo. And with his life force just sucked from him, Fulgram just beaten the ever-living hell out of Petterabo and knocks him to the ground. Fulgram tells Petterabo that the weapon he's searching for is actually himself, Fulgrim. And he was going to ascend to a perfect being by using Petterabo to get him there. So Fulgram-

It was kind of a cool speech, by the way. It's a good speech. Pederabo is not about that and decides to use his remaining strength to stand up and confront Fulgram. And he takes off the cloak and his gift and throws it across the room. That was his great move. Yeah. Anyway, at the exact same time, the Sisyphian crew attack. They basically let Fulgroom and Petarabo take a little bit of a beating from the Eldar.

And they shoot and they kind of swoop in to kill as many of these traitor, start as they possibly can. One of them, though, while standing there, shooting around, looks down and sees the Maugatar stone, just kind of there on the ground, and decides just to shoot it. For no real reason, just sees

a glowing rock and shoots. I'm getting my chi together here because I'm going to rage just a second. Just a tiny one. Why is the soul-sucking gem made of cheap glass? Yeah. It takes one bolter shot.

And he destroys this soul-sucking stone. Really? It's just completely... I have another piece of that, so couldn't Petarabo have just broken in his hand? He might have accidentally broke it with his hand. Yeah, we threw it across the room. Yeah.

Yeah. If he threw it against a wall, it would have shattered. So anyway, that happens. And suddenly all of... It's weird. Apparently, the energy transfer to Fulgram wasn't permanent. So as soon as the stone breaks, all the energy comes out of Fulgram

and goes, right back into Petarabo. And Petarabo gets up, picks up his Warhammer, and just decides to beat Fulgram to death. And he does. He actually kills Fulgram with his warhammer, sort of.

Yeah. Well, this is where I think it's a cool plan, though, because this was Fulgram wanted the entire time. But he had to be here. I think he had to have that much power juiced up in this place for his ritual because he ascends into a

demon primar. He jumps up, transformed into what he is now. A forearm purple snake that looks amazing on the table. It's pretty cool. But he shows up in his new form, and that's what he wanted to be in the first place. He needed this. He needed his old body who was struck down. He needed to be here with the power. This is all ritualistic on this. Yeah. The way it's described is that he shed his mortal shell because he became, now don't forget, the lair, who were the ones who were the ones who corrupted him the first place were a reptilian race. So it's almost like Fulgram now has become a lair. He is now a reptile.

He has shed his skin, and now he is a new version of himself. So upon achieving this goal, quick little side note, Fulgram just teleports out. He just, him and his entirely just go doces and disappear. Pederabo can't do that. He has to flee. And to Petarabo's credit, as they're trying to flee a black, this whole planet turns into a black hole.

And he can't escape the gravity of the black hole. So he says, Iron Warriors never move backwards. They always move forward. He turns his fleet around and shoots itself into the black hole. And then obviously he doesn't die here. So it's a good move. But I also want to point out that the next time

Petrobo sees Fulgrim, he doesn't beat the ever-living hell out of him. He just sees him like later, they're on the bridge of the vengeful spirit together. And Petirabo doesn't just pick up a thunderhammer and beat the hell out of Fulgrim. I mean, to be, to be fair, he is a giant forearm lizard now, and Brerabo has not ascended at this point in time either.

I mean, it's still worth, I don't know. There's a level of, like, have some, have some dignity. I mean, also, Fulgram could have been like, hey, man, don't make it weird. Just let it happen. Oh, I'm sure it's what if Fulgrin's thing, like, hey, man, come on. That was like, you know, six months ago. I don't know why he's still upset about it. Why you got to bring up old shit?

Exactly. So after shedding his mortal form and ascending, Fulgram goes into the warp to join up with the forces of Slanesh inside. He pops out of the warp for little kind of events, but they're really all multi-climactic events that are done

for, it's more for the writers to kind of show how much power Fulgram had gotten. So what I call anti-climactic, what I mean is like, for example, he's doing a battle with, I want to say it was the, it was actually the salamanders. And in this battle,

he actually blows up a Thunderhawk with his psychic powers. He was never that cyclicly power before. The house knights of Davin, who was a night world, he actually corrupted all of them to being agents of Slinash. So he does a lot of of these little things, but they were all not critical to the war effort. Like those things never happened in the story, it wouldn't matter. They're written as a way, if you're reading the novel Folgram, which is a good, which is a good novel and some of the other ones that he just appears in, you just see how much power he gains from being this close to Slanesh. But there is one pretty big one he's part of.

And this involves Lorgar. Well, hold on. Let's give this a little thing of why it's set up. Hey, all this stuff that Fulgram's doing, Horace, not super cool with it since he went, hey, man, go over here. And he went, yeah, got it. And then did everything but go over there. That's a fun part.

So the Horace heresy lasts, I believe, seven years, correct? Yeah. In seven years, on like day five of the Horace heresy, Horace told Fulgram to go to Mars. Fulgram never goes to Mars, ever. Not one. In fact, I actually not aware, correct me, guys, feel free to correct me in gummed discreet. I'm not aware of Fulgram ever going to Mars in the history of whatever. I don't think he's ever even been there.

If you don't buy it. He saw it. I cannot. I don't think he's ever been to Mars. Anyway, just a funny note on that one. We'll be right back after a quick break. So Horace is getting pissed and just says, someone go get Fulgram.

And Lorgar, being the most apt to chaos, knows where he is. And it says, I'll go get him. I know where he's at. And Lourgar goes to basically what is effectively the den of Slenesh and finds Fulgram there happy as a clam.

It explains to him, hey, Horace says you got to go. Basically, anyone who has a kid, it's the, hey, it's time for bed. Let's go. And Folgram just goes, nah. I'm not tired, Dad. I'm not tired. This is, and actually, to its credit, Folgram literally calls the Horace heresy boring. Boring.

Which I love that just moves. Like, yeah, nah, I'm not about that boring stuff. Because instead of, to be fair, as you love to say, Fulgram's having the time of his life. He is over in, he's learned about the great game, which is like the endless war between the gods of chaos, and he is on team Slanesh having a party. He is taking land and messing with stuff.

He's causing nothing but problems for the other chaos gods. And in return, Slanesh is giving him anything and everything he could ever want. You know, just name it, I'll create it for you. This is awesome, way better than going back into the material and having like fight space marines. That crap sucks. So he goes, no. And tells Lorgar to piss off, lest he has to taunt him a second time. But Lorgar actually wasn't there to do Horace's bidding.

He was there to enact his own plan. And the plan he wanted to enact was actually to kill Horace and supplant him with himself. More than that in a second. So while Fulgram's waxing and waning about like how boring the material is and how he doesn't want to go anywhere, Lorgar's associate Laiac sneaks up and speaks Fulgram's true demon name. My favorite part about this, and I'm going to call you out because I love it, I love the fact that you said associate, like he's like a junior executive in the law firm. Well, I'm going to have here is Ted.

That's a very good. point. I do write these notes, like either before work or after work, and unfortunately, you are dead right on that one, because that's how I write, because it work, I will use those terms. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, it's his associate. Of course. Fine. Anyway. But yeah, so Leic does this. And in some ways, he doesn't really possess Lorga, doesn't really possess Fulgram, but he now gains full control of Fulgram. Fulgram is enslaved to him. Yeah. Just again.

Of course. So Fulgram snaps to and him and his entire Legion go to the meeting, which is on Ulanor. Oulinor is going to be the great staging ground for the final assault on terror. Once there, Lorgar's plan was to have Laiq order Fulgram to surprise attack Horace from behind and kill him, because then the chaos gods would choose Lorgar to be the champion. There's a small problem with this in his logic. And that problem is, Lorgar sucks a tornado. Yeah.

He's such a job. No, he literally goes taking over from Horace and everybody went, seriously, dude. I mean, like, you're not even the top. We're super busy here. Like, we're not even acknowledging that they're doing this. There are eight of us on this team and you don't make the top 10. Yeah. Yeah.

So whatever, but what ends up happening is that Layak did, knew this plan was a terrible idea and didn't want to get murdered by Horace. So Leic had released Fulgram like weeks ago at this point. Like as soon as they went into the material. Yeah. They were like, hey man, you still got to go back to Horace, but...

See you later. So Lorgar launches his great plan and Fulgram just basically stands there and waves at him. Like, no. And I think Leic may have given him the middle finger. And then a very, very angry Horace beats the ever-living

shit. He put seven different finishing moves. There's an RCAO on nowhere. He had an old Hogan leg drop. I mean, he's pummeling him. Yeah. And then banishes him. Probably 19th out of the 18 prime arcs and hand-to-hand ability.

And he's facing crime, juiced up Horace. Yeah. It doesn't go well. To his credit, Horace doesn't kill him. He just banishes him. Which I did like because Lorgar then gets banished. So he turns to his legion, says, okay, we're out of here, guys. and the entire lesion just turned and pointed Erebus and say,

no, we're going to hang out with him instead. So Lorgard has to go into the warp by himself. I think his dad even stayed behind. Right? Yeah, because, yeah, Corferon even was like, no, like, I'm out. Like, I'm out. Erebus is just twisting his comically evil mustache. Yeah.

So Fulgar. How did you not see this one? Lorgar literally sent him to all of the planets with plans. to do stuff and he didn't see this one? No, come on. That's Lord Gar. So now let's go to the siege of terror. And this is a fun one to me,

because by the time they get to the siege of terror, the emperor's children are a tactically useless army. No, no, no, no. They were worse than tactical useless because they actually interfere with the plans and eventually just attack the mall. Let's get there in a minute. But the first part's the best. So the first thing that happens is Folgrams,

is on the bridge of the vengeful spirit, everybody else. And he's just bored. That's what he is. He finds this entire thing boring. But he looks over and he sees that Angron is losing his mind over not being the first one down to being able to fight. And just goes, well, this could be fun and wanders over to Angron or slithers over

to Angron and starts talking to him about all the glory in combat he's missing out. And in McMahon, is it basically saying, is like, oh, is it because you and your legion would suck at this? And so, but luckily, you know, the night lords are down there, you know? And, oh, look, the death guard are really doing great. Good for Mortarian. I'm so happy that he's down there's down there doing this. Because if we'd sent you, there's no way it would have succeeded.

And Gras. You don't remember he gave him the actual line of, don't worry, those legions are basking in the glory of this. Yes. Oh, I forgot about that part. Yeah. And Angron, he does this until Angron gets so up that he starts ripping apart his own ship and destroying the ship, to which point they have to take Angron and shove him over into Conrad Kerr's secret labyrinth in his ship, which he also pseudo destroys, by the way. He really didn't pseudo destroy it. He did wreck it. Yeah. I mean, I think Angron took this can of soda and shook it to the highest level it possibly could be shook.

The next part, though, is that once that happens, he's still bored. So Fulgram slithers over to Petarabo, who's there overseeing the entire battle plan and decides to bother him. And they start asking him about, like, why are you resisting all the gifts of chaos and starts just showing off all the cool things he has? Like, literally showing all, like, he's like shadow boxing and doing karate and yelling, hey, hey, Petrobo, check this out. I can also do this now. Oh, and check this out. Look, I could do two backflips now. Like this is, or holding up his sword showing, saying, look how shiny my sword is.

You could have a shiny sword too. Just join chaos. Useless crap. And everyone finally just has enough. I like the best. In my mind, though, Pertharabo has like 700 screens up that he's giving through information. Yeah. And giving information, you know, giving different tactics to each and every one.

And the entire time, Fulgram's behind him, just poking him, going, dude, but seriously. I could throw this ball over those mountains over there. I have a young child. I've tried to have conversations when he needs to tell me something. That was what the writers when they wrote this, that writer had a child and a young child or had multiple young children. And this is what it's like when they want to tell you something. That's exactly how I view Folgram at this point.

So eventually everyone just says, that's it. Get him out of here. And they tell him, all right, Fulgram, Emperor's children. your turn to go. Go down there and lay siege to the castle, which they promptly do, not even in the slightest. They just,

they land, look at the giant wall filled with guns, primarks, force fields, and other stuff, and just go, nah,

and walk the other direction into the horde of unprotected human beings. You have to use what I always use when I'm describing this. Everybody was attacking the most

fortified place in the galaxy and the emperor's children invaded the gap. They basically went to the mall with people folding shirts and they just went, why are you here? And went, it sucks to be you. I mean, you had the entire

populace of earth, but there's a massive populace who were surrounding, you know, the emperor's castle. And their solution was like, oh crap, it's a giant war over there. Let's all just go this other way. And they all went that way. Like, hey, it's kind of nice over here. Obviously, there's orbital bombardments happening, but it looks like these guys really just care about that emperor, dude. Let's just keep going this way. And suddenly a hundred thousand

plus space marines come roaring at them, screaming with chainswords and everything else, ready to do some hardcore killing. So the cities of Terra at this point start to resemble like the Eldar worlds just before the fall, but with demons added to it. There is, torture, mutilation, terror, or unleases population. The emperor's children do so much of this that it actually creates a gap in reality where demons, demonettes primarily burst through and become present on terror for the first time in history. Their descent into this depravity did get stalled momentarily because Abidon, with resurrected Idleon, convinces Fulgrim to go back to the actual battle and fight.

so Abedon, his crew, could sneak in below, you know, for the, we talked about this in the siege of terror. Fills miserly, by the way. Fulgram. He was there. Yeah. Well, because Fulgram originally was like, no, this is more fun. But they inform him the place they're going to go do battle is where Rogel Dorn is. And that was a duel that Fulgrim wanted.

Because Rogel, probably of the primarks there, it's Rogel and Sanguineus, where the two. best fighters and fulgroom wants some of each of them actually so cool thing about this story this is actually one of the ones i liked a lot fulgram for this takes his legion back and actually turns himself back into human form he's not a snake when he fights rogol and this is i expect because he wanted like he wanted dorn to lose to the lesser version of himself problem for fulgroom dorn can throw down guys dorn is a badass yeah don't worry guys we're getting close to it i i'm cast where Brad's got to accept the fact that Dorn is one of the best fighters

of all the primers. It's just true. So they go back to the gate. They're fighting. Dorn obviously does appear. Should have mentioned that. And these two start having a duel. Here's a, the throw it's on

on this, because it's a big deal. I say a big deal too much. But whatever. I'm never going to change. Dorn's winning this fight, but Fulgram, again, his prime power is regeneration. His demon primark power. He always had it, but with a demon primark,

it's even, it's almost grotesque. Right. He's just insta regenerating everything that's happening to. Yeah. Dorn is wrecking him actually. I mean, cutting big holes in and blasts. They're doing a lot of damage, but every single time, they just instantly heals. But the flip side is Fulgroom can't seem to harm Dorn back because Dorn is that bad of a fighter. I also point out Dorn had like, I don't know, 20 hours earlier, single-handed a greater demon by himself. So, you know, up in space. So they're at a standstill. But while this is happening, Abedon's secret plan of attacking under the fortress discovers it was a trap the entire time.

And it fails miserably. Yeah. And so Fulgram, because of his psychic powers, detects this and goes, oh, so this battle is not going to end. All right. We're going back to the pile, guys. And just, it actually gives Dorn the middle finger and leaves. In the middle of their duel, he sends a few guys into Kill Dorn, who Dorn wrecks, by the way. And then him and his Legion go back to the civilian population and just start grabbing every single person they can and loading them onto their ships and head back to the millions.

No, it was easily millions. And by he does this well before the emperor jumps the vengeful spirit. The emperse children just go out. Like, we're good. We're going to get our own thing. And they all leave. Let's talk about that. Let's recap that, though.

How much did you help the siege of Tara? And you're like, negative 40. Because you screwed up the plans. You didn't follow anything. He actually was, he did more for the siege of Tara than Jakatai Dikand. Jagged icon remember remember Jagged icon was standing on the fortress and everyone said just stand here we've got this and he went what if instead of standing behind the force field me and all my buddies run out through a gate to go fight I think it was more terrian at the tarian yeah only to get our

asses kicked so bad that sanguinius has to fly down from the gate and pick me up and bring me back but all my dudes still died. He actually, that was better for the, the traitor forces than all of Fulgram did combined. Anyway, coming forward. The next stage kind of in the Emperor's Children's story is about a couple hundred years after the siege of terror. All the Trader legions eventually end up back in the eye of terror. And once they get there, a new thing begins called the Legion Wars.

and this is because the legions as they're you know no one really wants to go back to the eye of terror except for a couple of them most of them just there's no else to go though they're being pursued at this point the ultramarines the space walls and the dark angels dark angels are at full strength by the way and are just hunting them down so there's really nowhere to go but the one place those guys can't go so they all end up there when they get there though they're pretty badly beaten up they've lost really a lot of their ability. Like, you know, there are no cloning worlds anymore. They're pretty jacked up. So they begin having, like you'd expect, an internal war over power and resources. And this is known as the Legion Wars.

You know, loot equipment, get slaves, whatever you can do. The issue, though, initially, is that the emperor's children are not beaten and broken at all. Full strike. Yeah, total full strike, because they just bailed.

They're like, yeah, we're just going to grab all these things. And so while the other legions were fighting the emperors, we're fighting, the Emperor's Legion were conquering. So all these legions then get back and discover pretty quickly, oh, crap, I now have to fight other traitor legions, and one of them is grossly overpowered. But good news is jealousy and envy are the key parts of the Emperor's Legion at this point,

of the Emperor's children at this point. So while they had the most slaves, the most resources, the most everything, they were the least unified of the Trader Legions, except for maybe the World Eaters at this stage. Barn break up, yeah. That's what I'm saying. We're going to cover that later, guys,

but that's the only only one I could see. And so an interesting thing happens in the warp at this point. The Legion wars begin in earnest. And what happens, a lot of the legions who can kind of sequester themselves into the pockets of the warp that are most protected by their gods, you know, the Death Guard guys go to where Nergel is, world eaters to corn, thousands to Zich. This kept them a little bit safe, but not massively.

And it's a big deal on this, though, because of the fact that when you're in the full zone of your God's area, you were so much more powerful. So, like, these wars were kind of handled in the neutral zones most of the time. That's a great point, yeah, because if you try to pursue me, if you're powered by corn and you pursue me into the realm of Zinch, not only does Korn, Horn's power stop affecting you so your power level goes down, but my power goes up because I'm close to Zines. So you can't actually come in those into those regions. But during this time, the interesting thing is this actually becomes the second founding of the chaos space marines.

Accidentally, because what you have is a whole bunch of chaos, what would be lords, chaos lords and demon princes start to just get war bands. Also, the old rules for creating a warband were fantastic. This is 20 years ago, but whatever. But you start to form these war bands. And they kind of like when we did the rogue trader, there's a huge difference between some of the war bands. Some of the war bands were, you know, not very much stuff. Yeah.

It was Sean, Eric, Mike, Mike, and Bob. Like, oh, okay, well, they're over. It's like a high school click. They're like, yeah, you guys. Yeah, we're going to be best buds for life. Like, yeah, your life's going to be over like three weeks, dude, because there's a real group coming. And others are just gigantic.

They're legion-esque size, you know what I mean? Because they're getting all these. Because, again, we still have the traitor, guardsmen, and everything else. You had all this that they're kind of just absorbing, depending where they're going. Yeah, and it's a super, I think it's a really cool era because what you do get is it becomes the chaos, like war bands become like pluralities. It's whatever, whoever can bring the most success, whoever is the best leader, the best this begins to grow and grow and grow.

because these are, this is true anarchy they're living in. So whoever can provide the most and most success wins until someone, of course, unseats them. And some legions come out of this decently okay, because they happen to have one or two leaders within their legion who have such a powerful cult of personality that they can raise massive people behind them. Typhus is a really good. We cover this with typhus.

Really good example. Effectively the entirety of the death guard. got in line behind typhus. Avedon, once he finished his little sulking pilgrimage, obviously completely turns around, but not only... Actually, Avedon's the most extreme example, because he not only converts over his legion, what was left of it,

but other people then convert from their legions to his legion. Aramon, for some people, but, again, big following. That being said, the emperor's children didn't have that. They only really had a couple leaders. Folgram is completely out of the picture at this point. he couldn't be happier. He's back.

He's hanging out with Slinash and her greater demons. And he is just absolutely the, I think for this moment in time, in the entirety of the materium, the immaterial, there was no one happier than Fulgram. This was the best. Best things ever happened to him. A1 plus. It was like when Gilliman got the newest version of Excel. So he just says his Legion.

I'm like, you guys can go, you know, F off. And everybody gets super, this is where they start getting super focused on the thing that makes them who they are. So they just start ignoring everything else. Yeah. And what ends up happening is over time, the small war bands, if you don't have that cult of personality leader, you just died. because you'd do a raid campaign into someone, and then that person would either come get revenge or another larger group would see you do it

and would come counterattack you. So with the Droucarry deal with all the time. But remember, the Drew Carrey are immortal. These guys are not. So it creates a little bit of a problem, and the Dracari also may have cloning technology. So they're in a bit better spot. It's crazy because the Emperor's children go

from the most powerful to smaller base. and a lot of them got killed. But the guys that were left, you had some super-powered. Well, and we're going to get there in a minute. Because one thing I actually, we just skipped over it. It's my mistake.

So the reason that the emperor's children fell off is actually a very funny story. They came in and they got, remember, as we said, they had all these slaves, they had all this power. Over the course, the Legion Wars,

they just used them all up. Like, they just, they had, you know, they're sitting there saying, hey, we've got, you know, 10 billion slaves. And you fast forward, like, like, 100 years.

Like, hey, what happened? All your slaves? oh, we tortured and murdered all of them. Does anyone know where we can get 100 billion new ones? No, man. Ration! What's going on here?

So anyway, they, so that's what happened there. So they become actually at this, around like this is, I think, I'm going into like early 8th edition writing. I think they were the smallest Chaos Legion. Kind of because they get really banded up. I mean, you could go into World Eaters on that because they were super war abandoned.

But the thing is, is that when world leaders broke up, they just joined other war bands. The Zerkers and stuff did. Yeah. And so it ends up happening, the emperor's children war bands are actually interesting to me because they're not the same as everyone else. Every other chaos war band or at this point, they're really more factions and some of the bigger ones. They're trying to achieve things.

They're saying, we're going to conquer land. We're going to, you know, or I'm going to do something from my, I'm going to go spread plague, I'm going to do, you know, zinchi things. I'm trying to uncover the mysteries of the galaxy. They all seem to be very interested in doing things that had like longer term goals. The emperor's children ones were mostly short-term goals. It was... You mean the chaos got of excess, but also basically immediate gratification?

They didn't have long-range goals? What? That seems crazy, John. All they were doing was just like, hey, let's just have these like horrifying actions. towards Slenesh, gladiatorial pits, pain and torture centers. Basically, it's the Drew Carrey. I mean, that's what they built. It was effectively comor with more comra.

Also, you're real bummed, as always, when you aren't allowed to die because the laws of physics don't apply here in the warp. And you're like, hey, man, it would be cool if I didn't get horribly murdered every day. That's fair. And then somehow I'm not dead. That's actually a good point. So, but let's talk into a couple of the key ones here who did rise a legion. And the first one we'll do is Lucius.

Lucius probably, I think he's the oldest model character for Empress Children. Right? For sure. Yeah. So Lucius, the Eternal, as an emperor's children, the original, was a garbage leader. Didn't really care about the success of his Legion, only his own personal glory. As a Slanesh leader of the Emperor's Children, He's the best thing ever.

And Lucius and his war band become focused in one thing and one thing only. That's bloodletting. They would descend upon worlds usually in the Materium, not to capture, but to just slaughter. They would make planet fall and just start killing anything and everything they could find until, just like we talked about on Terra, they killed enough that demonettes of Slenesh could be bursted out of like the, like, just. piles of bodies and would join in the slaughter until the entire planet has been murdered, at which point they weren't done, then they would build gladatorial pits and have internal fights, either Emperor's Children and Emperor's Children versus Demons, Demon versus Demon, it was just a party, you know, and that's how it was.

Through a rave in a gladiatorial pit. Yeah. Lucius, this was his jam. He wouldn't have been happier because first he's just ripping through people yelling his kill countout as he's just tearing down the street. And then afterwards, he's just seeing, all right, who wants some and stands the middle of a glad of it, seeing how many people are demons he can lop their heads off of. And chaos is loving him. The stories are the demons from inside the warp. It was kind of like watching primetime sports, seeing Lucius play.

So they're just cheering him on. They're super into him, especially, by the way, Slanesh herself. But, as we've said before, the emperor's children now are full of jealousy. Other Lord commanders within it don't like how popular Lucius is. And one of them names Sirius, Cyrus. Sirius Black. Sirius Black. Cyrus.

Is it Cyrus? Yeah. Cyrus decides, I am sick of everyone talking about how great Lucius is. Watch this. So he challenges Lucius to a fight. And Cyrus kills him. It just beats a crap out of him. The whole time they're fighting,

Lucius, for some reason, doesn't take it seriously. And he's giggling while Cyrus is actually landing some pretty heavy blows on it. At the end of the fight, and I'm sorry to kind of ruin this part, but I can't tell you this story without giving you away this really cool. part of this fight. At the end of the fight, Lucius decides to unveil his secret weapon, which is a like spinning double back flip stabbed to face attack. That's what it was. He's like, you know, it's like if you guys ever, man, we're old, but it used to be with a lot of like fighting games, there were combos you could put into the controller that were just unblockable.

And people who knew how to do those would actually mess with you and let you kind of beat them down like less than like 30% health. And they would just, all you just hear is them clip a bunch of buttons together suddenly, and then you got just wrecked. What was the game on NeoGeo? So might have him. Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct. That was a killer incident with the worst for combos. Ultra combo.

Yeah. Ugh. So he decides to break out his killer instinct combo. And as he's about to land it, Cyrus grabs him by the throat in midair, throws him into the ground, and this described as he beat his body so badly, there was nothing left but just blood in the, in the, in the, send. Wait for it. combo breaker.

Bumbo breaker. We are old. So many of our listeners have no idea. They have to go of YouTube videos to see what the hell we're talking about. Anyway. Well, this is awesome because, well, things are going to go badly because there's a thing called the Armor Souls that we're going to talk about a minute here. Yeah.

So afterwards, Cyrus actually, he does get some praise, but he falls really ill pretty quickly. And over a few weeks, like all of his hair starts to fall out in clumps. His eyes change color. His skin starts to look dead. Even the armor that he wears begins to change. He used to have an armor that was, like, you know, adorned with, like, symbols and stuff. Now it looks like demons laughing is all you see on his armor. And the last thing that happens to him is he starts to notice these dark lines appearing all over his skin, all over his body everywhere.

And eventually those dark lines become scars, head to toe. and he begins screaming out in agony. It's kind of like the last night, screaming and screaming. And over the course of the evening, his screams turn into laughter. And finally, the laughter stops. And from where he was, outwalks Lucius.

Because Slanesh was not willing to lose such a great toy. So she resurrected Lucius in Cyrus and Cyrus. And the best part about it is this keeps, he has everyone that he'll eventually do. He does this to his opponents, and they become part of his armor, screaming forever trapped into the armor. It's actually, Lucius, to me, is one of the coolest characters of all of chaos because of this. Because, yeah, you can't kill him.

You can kill him. But if you kill him, you curse yourself. And I want to point out, there's a necron this happened to. There was a necron warrior, I think, or a necron something that killed Lucius with a phaseblade. that necron's necrodermis actually melted away and a very happy Lucius just stood up from inside of it. This is one of the things I want animated because Lucius's armor is constant moving,

screaming faces everywhere on the armor. They float all over it. It's got to look so bad. It's the trapped souls of everyone that he's now taken over, which has made him, by the way, a lot even nastier in combat that because now he is, not only can he not die, but if you kill him, you actually give yourself one of the worst deaths imaginable.

And you juice him up in his power level. Yeah. It's, Lucius is cool. New rules. I mean, the codex is behind me. They're fine. Oh, he's jamming and he's so much better than he is. But it's just the problem is when you tell a story like this, does it come?

I know, but he used to be terrible. Oh, he was. He was. On the board was not even worth bringing it. It wasn't even a cool model. I'll be honest with the old model I didn't really care for. I'm literally looking up. They've juiced everything up quite a bit now.

He looks cool now and they gave him some power level mojo. All right. So he re-rolls hits and wounds and he has 10 attacks at strength 4 minus 1 sustained. He's literally AP3 damage 3. Yeah, but that's six attacks. Six attacks, precision, strength 8, AP3, flat 3 damage. I mean, that's good. Yeah, that's good.

Like rocks. That would. Yeah, I guess, I guess into a character at full re-rolls to hit and wound. Yeah, you know what? Invite first. Fine, fair enough. It's pretty good. All right, he's good now.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right. So let's talk now about, though, one of the most independent bodies, at least until very recently, in all of the chaos factions, Fabius Bile. Fabius is actually funny to me because Fabius at the very start of the siege of terror just left. like straight up went nah and walked out to the point where so early at fulgram got pissed off and fulgram put a price on his head because he was so mad that phabias just would abandon him so

he's being hunted by both loyalist and traitor legions and he basically just went from mad scientist laboratory to mad scientist laboratory doing weird shit and the better part is he kept outsourcing his work. He started contracting with all the other legions and went, I can make your guys better. What are you going to do to him? Don't worry about it. And, hmm, Fabius is...

You kind of made him better. Fabius is cool as hell because Fabius actually is a believer in the original imperial truth. He didn't believe in chaos. Like, he knows he existed, but he's like, that's stupid power. Science is where it should be. And what he does is he pursues

mostly cloning technology to kind of master the world. The first thing he goes about in this cloning technology is recloning all the primarks, all 20 of them. But he doesn't do a very good job of it. We covered this in the Abidon cast that like he actually created a horace and Abidon beat the Everliving piss out of that horace and killed it. Abidon also tracked down all the other. And murdered all the, all but one. Actually one does escape. Yeah. And but they even need talk about it that the other clones were like incredibly mutated, which makes sense because they were all made of warp. You can't clone warp.

You can clone genes, but you can't clone warp. And so Fabius, after this little one goes, yeah, that doesn't work, and throws it in the garbage. And decides instead to perfect humanity. And he makes something new called a homo novice or new man. And it's, I hate the name, but I love what he does with it. So Fabius and his retinue. I've got this.

Fabius is written who leave the eye of terror, I'm traveling the galaxy, but I love how they do this because they start going to settlements, telling everybody that they're healers and scientists, and they can help push forward the advancement and the well-being of the citizens of this planet. Yeah.

And so all the citizens will say, sure, this is great. And he injects them with his special serum. And this turns them into new men. These new men are massively stronger, massively more intelligent than regular humans, and puts them on par with space marines almost. But it's bile. Wait a second.

I think that that serum might have had some bad stuff in it too. Because it super pumps up your greed, your hatred, your violence. It takes everything that's bad and times by 100 in all of these super juiced up guys. it does it, it makes an entire species of supervillains is how I look at it. Like, that's like they're all over. And our entire populace turned into space marine level strength supervillians. So this to me reminds. And he does, he keeps like leaving too.

The best part he does this to everybody. And then he just mic drops and just cruises away. Well, because he leaves before you see the bad stuff. It, this is, it's a bit of a trope because it comes up a lot in like in fantasy, where some evil merchant comes to town, and he brings, like, plying wares, and everyone who buys on the merchant, it's actually cursed.

That's what he's doing. And so these new men appear. They're massively strong. They're massively intelligent. But fast forward within a few weeks, let alone a few months, and they all become kind of mini-dictators that you can't do very much about

because they can murder anyone who gets anywhere near them. And they're also light-years intelligent. So one of the fun stories about this is that the Inquisition, spends a lot of their time tracking these things down because exterminatizing the planet will work to a point, but they're so intelligent that a lot of them can escape

and then they can get somewhere else where they can, if it's more than a couple of them, I assume they can breed. Because they call them new man, but I think it's not gender-specific. If I'm being honest, it's not clear. He just juices up the populace. That's what I think.

I think it becomes like G-Sler-Cold, is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, he goes, The best part about Fabulousness is he keeps going world to world trying a new version of what he's doing. Yeah. He's always trying to. He's aware it doesn't work correctly, but he's totally fine with just testing it out. He's like, test 1,203. Okay. Let's do it. Oh, crap. One thing we forgot to mention. Sorry, guys, now that we mentioned that, the reason, this is about to become very important. Fabius is such a master of genetics because he is cursed genetically. His lifespan's very, very,

very, very short because he basically just decays as a human being. So what he... Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Yeah, so what he does is he clones himself constantly, and then he's able to transfer his consciousness into these clones. And it keeps them all in a lab. And at first, whenever he would die, he would flip into one of his clones. But now he's actually able to transfer his consciousness almost in an instant.

So he's becoming less of an immortal and more of a perpetual. because no matter if you kill him, he just pops up somewhere else randomly. And he's got labs across the galaxy. Exactly. So over the past 10-plus millennia, Bile has risen. And there's actually some cool stories about this

where there was one, I forget who it was, be killed Bile. And then like you fast forward, like a month or two later, he's fighting in some sort of gladiatorial event and he looks over and he sees Bile in the stands just waving at him. And he's like, I physically stood over

his dead body. I know I killed him. And it begins within the Inquisition, because I don't think the Inquisition even knows he can do this. They're trying to figure out, is there more than one bile? You know, who are we killing? Because what they think is, they're killing clones or stand-ins or whatever it is, or body doubles. But in reality, they are actually killing him, but then he's being arisen elsewhere all over the place. And he's perfecting his craft or profiting the air quotes right now. The other legions pay for him, but one of the bigger things is a lot of apothecaries have left their legions to come work with bile. Yes. Because as messed up as he is, he is cutting edge.

There's a reason why we have an entire faction called creations of bile. Yep. And let's talk about them for a little bit. Because, yeah, over the last 10 millennia, 10 plus millennia, bile has risen from this like side figure to a full-blown leader. And Brad's thing is talking about is called the consortium. him. It's a bunch of apothecaries who come together and they formed what's almost a mini legion. Like Fabius Bile is part of the Emperor's children, but the creations of Bile for a while, I should

think weren't even. The new codex they are now, but I think they were independent. He could show up in any, he could, he used to be able to take one unit that Fabius Bile would buff up. Yeah. And so, and these guys have traveled all around the galaxy kind of to working with Bile to get what he wants. And what Bile really, all he really wants is, People give me bodies so I can keep doing experiments. And in return, I'll give you technology. It's either genetic technology. Also, he has a lot of weird weaponry, too.

That's all pretty gross. But let's talk about a couple of quick things that have come up with Bile recently. One of my favorite ones was when he went to Solemnace, which those who've read any of the Trazen books, no, that's where Traism in the Infinite lives. Very long story short there, he ends up trading two Trays in the Infinite. his fulgram clone that somehow survived at Abidon's Purge and the harlequins who were trying to murder him

which are pretty cool trade. He'd be like, oh, those guys over there who are trying to murder me, yeah. You take them and this big dude here and in exchange, he gets back, I think of enough gene seed to make like 18,000 new space marines. Original gene seats.

So no one has this, obviously, except for Trayson. Cool as hell. Later, another fun... Let's go on. I'll say this is the cooler one. He rolls into Camerog and goes up to the homoculuses, the covens. Yeah.

And just goes to the covenant of 13 scars and goes, hey, I want to apply for the intern position. And they just teach him off that they know. Well, they did like it to cut in his gym. Let's call it. That's true. They were like, oh, this guy, this guy knows how to torture. Let's test it. I mean, I feel like the apprentice program to joining, you know, a homunculi

Coven is not a, I'd like to join the Coven. You know, it's probably more like, let's see what you got. And they were like, wow, this guy can sew some flesh together. So while there with them, what his real goal wasn't just to learn to be a better torture. It was to perfect his new men even better. And he gets to a point with the homuncula where he gets enough of that information. And he stages a pretty big escape. This is, I think, around the, like, there's quite a few.

He has three novels, by the way, guys. and he then escapes causing a bunch of chaos behind them and gets pursued by them. Don't spoil this one because the books are pretty easy. Yeah, so I'm not good. Good point, right. These are fairly new also. These are all pretty new books. So Fabius Bile, for those who like to read, it has three novels.

And I'll be honest, I don't love the writing in them candidly, but the stories are really good. There's some novels you read where you just kind of go, eh, skip the paragraph, just calling a spade to spade. You know, but these ones are very, very, the stories are really good. good. And the end is really cool. The very end of the third novel. I'll say the end makes it worth it in the third novel, though. Because a lot of stuff goes on. Yeah. And there's a lot. And there are novels that do a good job of kind of giving you some insight to some backstory of things that have happened. So yeah, Brad's got a good point. I don't want to ruin the end of what is probably 20 hours of reading for people to be like, oh yeah. Let's get this way. So anyway, it does end in a really cool way for Fabius Bile. But let's close out actually. I mean, it's going to be kind of a soft close here, guys. I want to jump back into Folgram real quick. does not much they really jump into yet. As we said... There will.

He just came back. There's going to be a lot more lore. Emperor's shoulder book just came out. Fulgram is back. I'm literally holding the Emperor's Children Codex. There's nothing. I got this for this episode. There's nothing in here on Fulgram.

New. It's just about saying. It was so mad. I think we're getting a new tournament season by the time this comes out. It may or may not be out. And they usually put forward in the lore. And I think we're going to get some more Fulgram. Lord there because he is taking part in a lot of stuff going on right now.

Yeah, I mean, there's some, again, in the codex, well, I'm talking, well, I'm recorded it, open in my hands. And I'll be, it's got some good stuff in here, but we haven't really discussed why Fulgram has a model yet. As far as like, the Warhammer hasn't discussed it yet. Because all we know about Fulgram was that he was back in, hanging out. The only thing that he really did more recently was when Gilliman was, rest of, So, oh, we probably should imagine.

He did kill Gilliman. That was kind of a, that was a big part of his day. And that was his last kind of action within, within the, the material. After killing Gilliman, he goes and he hangs out. Once Gilliman's reborn, he does appear, but not physically. He actually telepathically speaks to Gilliman, telling him that he's going to watch and wait. And when Gilliman makes a mistake, Fulgram's going to come strike. thing.

Yep. And he says when you're basically at your weakest and your most wanting, I will be there. And that's, and now he has a model. So maybe, you know, again, maybe if you listen to this cast like 20, 26, you might be like, yeah, John, we've all read that book. I don't know why you're talking about this. We'll make a new cast by then. But that's a week, that's all we really know.

Folgram is back. He has a model, which traditionally means he's going to get a novel, if not two. That's kind of, it's hit me because the lion got one novel, I think. I think Gilliman got multiple novels, but he deserves that. I don't know if it's moratorium. But they'll move the lore ahead a little bit. But I'm excited because bringing back the emperor's children, that's what noise marines are, which we haven't really covered here because it's like a, I don't have anything else to talk about them.

They have some kind of cool unique models, which is awesome. They've got some very unique and cool rules, which are also really good. Pormantors and the infractors are all cool things, new models too. Yeah. So it's a really good Legion. Flawless blades. There's a lot to talk about with the new units. Yeah, I think from a competitive standpoint,

they're a very interesting army. And painting in pink is always easy. So it's actually an easy color to layer on. Fine. Tell them about what's happening. Here we go. Did everyone hear Brad get sad? It's because Brad saw the bottom of the notes.

So. I already read it. All right. So next week, we are going to just start doing our sandcastle building. We're going to jump into Imperial Fists. people have been asking for a while. I've been saying, yeah, we'll do it. I wanted to do some chaos.

After this, we'll do the Imperial Fists. But we're also going to add to that the Black Templars because can't do one without the other. So we're going to spend... It's probably the most famous successor chapter. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think of successor chapters. I don't think there's anyone that would even, like, right?

There's nobody even... The Black... The Black... The Black... Maybe the flesh tears, but... But the Black Templar, I mean, I could have sworn they got, they even had their own, like, a box. I'm pretty sure that they had, yeah. They have their own box. They have their own book. Oh, that's right. They have their own book, too. Yeah, so no one has that. There's no other successor

chapter that got their own book. And not like, not like the weird, like something we got in eighth edition, random book. Like, they have legitimate books. They had one in ninth. They had one in 10th. So we're going to be doing, yeah, starting off with Imperial Fists. Once we get to the end of Imperial Fist, still move into Black Templars because they, you know, not really more the same. But until then, this has been John Barsoddy and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.