Don't You Just Want To Punch Him In The Face? (Grimdark WIP)

Hello!

The first Grimdark WIP is here!  Hoo boy, where to start with Mr. Perfect?  I'm going to try and be as nice to Fulgrim at the beginning because everything else will be scathing.  But just to be clear, even though I'm going to commit character assassination on this giant prick, I'll still make him look as cool as any other Primarch I've done.  If you don't want to wade through mountains of vitriol, here's a clip which sums up Fulgrim pretty well.

During the scattering, The Primarch of the 3rd Legion landed on the bleak mining world of Chemos.  Isolated by warp storms, exhausted of its resources, the inhabitants could barely survive.  Scouts discovered the Primarch's gestation capsule after it plummeted to the surface of Chemos and were so impressed by the beauty of the infant within that they begged the Chemos' leaders to spare his life.  This was a big deal because orphans were routinely put to death so they would not further strain a settlement's resources.  A woman actually shot one of the discovery team because they were going to kill the Primarch.  That was how much influence he had over people even as a baby.

Fulgrim was named after an ancient deity of the Chemosian people.  He came to understand their ramshackle mining technology with an intuitive ease that allowed him to begin to modify it with his extraordinary technical acumen, dramatically increasing its efficiency. By the time he was only 15 Terran years of age, Fulgrim had risen from the rank of a simple labourer to become one of the Executives who governed the fortress-factory of Callax.  He was so efficient that planet's mining output skyrocketed, allowing the world to begin to purchase food and other needed materials in large quantities from passing interstellar traders. Eventually Fulgrim became Chemos' leader, bringing back art and culture to the planet.

After Fulgrim reunited with the Emperor, he discovered his legion was down to only 200 members due to a catastrophic accident/sabotage on the 3rd Legion's gene seed which slowly destroyed existing members and made creating new Astartes nearly impossible.  It was here that Fulgrim gave a famous speech to his remaining sons.  It was apparently so inspiring the Emperor named Fulgrim's legion the Emperor's Children and gave him the sole right to wear the Imperial Aquila as his personal badge.  Yeah, this turned out to be a bad idea.  

Fulgrim's contribution to Great Crusade started out well.  He could now be a new source of untainted gene seed so new Astartes didn't have the degradation problem.  And in record time, the Primarch managed to bolster the Emperor's Children to comparable numbers with other Legions and got some notable conquests under his belt.  This was also when Fulgrim got the moniker 'The Phoenician' because he brought his legion back from the brink of extinction.  Since he was never going to catch up to other Primarchs who had a head start, he chose to make his conquests as impressive as possible.  For example, he once conquered a planet with only seven legionaries even though it was highly impractical and actually kind of reckless since he almost blew himself up.  But hey, he pulled it off so a win is a win.

Things only really started going downhill for the Emperor's Children when they were campaigning on the xenos world of Laeran.  It was here that Fulgrim found a strange sword in a temple where the Laer were...actually you don't want to know what they were doing.  Let's just say Fulgrim never learned the lesson that you shouldn't take candy from strangers, especially strangers obviously covered in Chaos STDs.

Anyways, the sword was actually possessed by a Great Daemon of Slaanesh who started manipulating Fulgrim subtly.  Things like signing off on Fabius' sketchy Space Marine enhancements and making Fulgrim and the rest of the legion more prideful.  Long story short, this devolved into all sorts of debauchery that I can't describe here.  But it all culminated in Fulgrim turning traitor and killing his best friend Ferrus Manus on the disastrous battle of Isstvan V (disastrous for the Imperium, great for Chaos).

Here's where events gets sort of confusing.  Fulgrim was definitely possessed by the sword's Greater Daemon of Slaanesh after killing Ferrus in a moment of weakness.  And it looked like the writers were going for a Dorian Grey mirror situation.  But shortly afterwards, Fulgrim claims he purged the Greater Daemon from him in another story although there's really no proof of this (at least I'm not really convinced).  Strange intermission aside, Fulgrim then tricks his other brother Perturabo into sacrificing part of his soul which allowed Fulgrim to become a Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh.  As usual, I'm skipping over novels worth of events but the takeaway here is that Fulgrim is a dick.

So that's Fulgrim in a nutshell.  A cautionary tale about hubris and the disastrous fallout that can happen when a character is a slave to their own ego.  What's the final moral of the story?  Uh...don't do drugs or you'll turn into a giant purple snake thing.

Fulgrim's Career Highlights (Lowlights?):

• Fulgrim is famous for his friendship with his brother Ferrus Manus because they both strove for perfection in their own way.  Ferrus even forged a sword for Fulgrim called Fireblade while the Phoenician made a hammer for him.  That friendship ended on Istvaan V when Fulgrim cut off Ferrus' head.  Daemon Primarch Fulgrim constantly makes clones of Ferrus to try and convert him to Chaos.  It always fails and Fulgrim is pissed.
• Perturabo once smashed a Forgeworld Titan over Fulgrim's head because he's such a dick.  I'm kidding, it was actually a toy titan Perurabo made himself.  It even shoots miniature lasers and moves on its own, way cooler than a Forgeworld Titan. 
• Gets tricked into committing his entire force into at trap during the Siege of Terra.  This decimated the Emperor Children, effectively taking them out of the siege.  Rogal Dorn shows up and gives Fulgrim a beating while telling him he's an idiot (seeing a pattern yet?).  You know you've hit rock bottom when Mr. Stoic bothers to tell you how shit you are.
• One of Fulgrim's highest ranking officers is Eidolon, a character that can be described as 'deep fried dick with a side order of asshole.'  Last seen being tossed off the Saturnine Wall, courtesy of Sigismund.
• Fulgrim finally achieves mainstream status by being completely destroyed in this diss track.  Oh yeah, you can bet Fulgrim's lost balls that the Legion of the Damned rolled out the red carpet for this titanium grade badass. TLDR, the song is about the last loyalist Emperor's Children Rylanor trying to kill Daemon Primarch Fulgrim with a virus bomb.  Knowing it would be completely ineffective, a spectating Thousand Son still lets Rylanor do it because he was so impressed by the Ancient's conviction.  Daemon Primarch Fulgrim never recovered from that slap to the face.  
• Almost killed Roboute Guilliman with a poisoned blade but it didn't stick.  Normally I'd make a joke about getting a participation medal but putting Bobby G out of commission for 10,000 years really hurt the Imperium in the long run.  So credit where credit is due.  Fulgrim probably did the most damage to the loyalists aside from Horus.

Khaine is up next!  Stay tuned!