Lucius the Eternal

Lucius the Eternal is a Space Marine of the Emperor’s Children, the III Legion of the Space Marines, and a Champion of Slaanesh, the Chaos god of excess. He is known also as the Soulthief, Fulgrim’s Champion and the Scion of Chemos, titles reflecting his long service to Fulgrim, the primarch, or gene-father, of the Emperor’s Children, and his continuing favour with Slaanesh. He was born in the late thirtieth millennium, M30, on Chemos, in the Chemos System.

In his youth on Chemos, Lucius was noted for mastering nearly any skill he undertook, a facility that won him sponsors among the planet’s elites. He nonetheless gravitated to the art of war, and above all to swordsmanship, in which he excelled, though as a teacher he proved poor and often injured his pupils. At an annual swordsmanship contest on Chemos he defeated a celebrated champion twice his age. When the champion’s supporters moved against him in consequence, a sergeant of the Emperor’s Children intervened and inducted him into the Legion.

During the Great Crusade, the Imperium’s campaign of military reconquest across the galaxy, Lucius rose to become captain of the Emperor’s Children’s 13th Company, and his skill with the blade became renowned throughout the Legion. Fellow legionaries regarded him as proud and foolhardy, and his closest friend, Captain Saul Tarvitz, was wary of him. The only duel he is known to have lost before the Horus Heresy, the civil war that later divided the Space Marine Legions, was against Captain Garviel Loken of the Luna Wolves, who brought him down with a punch; Lucius won a later rematch between the two. He also duelled Azkaellon of the Blood Angels aboard an oceanic warship, winning the contest by drawing first blood, although Azkaellon had already carried him over the vessel’s side.

Lucius fought in the War on Murder, a campaign against the xenos, or alien, species known as the Megarachnids, wielding an antique sword forged in the Urals of Terra by artisans of the Terrawatt Clan; from a Megarachnid he had slain he took a severed claw, which he thereafter carried as a second blade. Alongside Tarvitz he fought in the Battle of Deep Orbital DS191, against Orks in the Callinedes System, where their two companies relieved the over-extended company of Captain Solomon Demeter.

Before the massacre on Isstvan III, Lucius received a pair of scars across his cheeks from Serena d’Angelus, a remembrancer, an officially appointed civilian chronicler attached to the expeditionary fleet. He later added further scars of his own device, each commemorating a victory in combat. At Isstvan III itself, in approximately 005 to 006.M31, Lucius led the Emperor’s Children’s half of the assault on the Precentor’s Palace in the Choral City, and personally killed the rebel governor Vardus Praal; Squad Nasicae fought at his side in the action. After the Warmaster Horus ordered the world virus-bombed, Lucius fought alongside Tarvitz among the loyalist survivors. Jealous of Tarvitz’s standing among them, he killed the traitor Charmosian, a Chaplain, or battlefield priest of the Legion, then used Charmosian’s helmet communicator to contact Lord Commander Eidolon and betray the loyalists’ position to him. He killed the loyalists placed under his own command and deceived and killed Captain Solomon Demeter. Tarvitz then fought him, and Lucius escaped to the traitor lines.

At the Dropsite Massacre on Isstvan V in 006.M31, where the Traitor Legions destroyed their loyalist counterparts after luring them to the planet, Fulgrim quit the field, and command of the Emperor’s Children passed jointly to Eidolon and Lucius. The daemon then possessing Fulgrim afterwards presented Lucius with the Silver Blade of Laer. He became leader of Fulgrim’s bodyguard of assault troops, with the rank of Lord Commander, and Squad Nasicae was reconstituted as his personal bodyguard, the Cohors Nasicae. Convinced that Fulgrim remained possessed, Lucius led senior officers of the Brotherhood of the Phoenix, the Legion’s inner circle, among them Fabius, Julius Kaesoron and Marius Vairosean, in capturing the primarch and attempting an exorcism upon him; through the attempt he came to understand that Fulgrim had already expelled the daemon by his own will.

On an expedition to the crone world of Iydris, an artificial world of the ancient Eldar empire lying within the Eye of Terror, in approximately 007.M31, Lucius crossed swords twice with Nykona Sharrowkyn of the Raven Guard. The first duel left a scar upon his cheek; in the second, fought on Iydris itself, Sharrowkyn killed him. Lucius awoke afterwards in the apothecarion, or medical chamber, of Fabius. He subsequently sought out the Thousand Sons swordsman Sanakht on the Planet of the Sorcerers and overcame him, but was prevented from killing him only when the sorcerer Ahzek Ahriman shielded Sanakht from the blow. Lucius then accompanied Ahriman’s company in recovering an artefact known as the Iron Oculus and in searching for the shards of the primarch Magnus. At the prison station Kamiti Sona he bested the swordsman Yasu Nagasena, who survived the duel, and killed the Space Wolf Harr Balegyr. On Nikaea he was trapped and swallowed by a Crystal Labyrinth, from which he later escaped. He was on the world Netis when Fulgrim called the Emperor’s Children to return to him in preparation for the Siege of Terra.

After the Horus Heresy, during the Legion’s gladiatorial games, Lucius was killed by Lord Commander Cyrius, an event one account places during the Great Scouring, the Imperial counter-offensive that followed the Heresy. Slaanesh returned him to life, transforming Cyrius into Lucius over the following days, so that only Cyrius’s face remained, set into Lucius’s armour; thereafter, by the same working, any warrior who takes satisfaction in killing Lucius is transformed into him in turn. Accounts of his first death differ: one tradition holds that Cyrius killed him first; another records that he died earlier, on Iydris, at the hands of Sharrowkyn, a death said to have given Sharrowkyn no satisfaction, after which Lucius awoke in the apothecarion of Fabius.

After the Battle of Thessala, Fulgrim withdrew to the daemon world of Callax, a pleasure world given to Fulgrim by Slaanesh, and Lucius, Eidolon and Fabius Bile each led the most prominent of the rival factions that then divided the Legion. Lucius took part in the Legion Wars fought among the Traitor Legions in this period, and fought at the Battle of Skalathrax, where he killed many champions of the World Eaters. His influence within the Legion afterwards declined, until he led only a small warband, the Cohors Nasicae, aboard his flagship Diadem, while remaining Fulgrim’s champion; at the primarch’s instruction he killed a clone of Fulgrim created by Fabius Bile.

Over the following millennia, Lucius defeated the Emperor’s Champion of the Black Templars at Veilfate, the Archon, or warlord, Vraesque of the Drukhari, a xenos species, in Shaa-dom, and the Ork Warboss Two-klaws on Octarius Sigma. The Iron Hands Clan Champion Oros Telemar killed him on an airless asteroid during an insurgency in the Herevok Sector; Telemar afterwards disappeared, and Lucius was later sighted again. On the world Moerpho, Lucius made the Lash of Torment from the tongues of three Fiends of Slaanesh, daemonic beasts that he had hunted down. After reverses had reduced the Cohors Nasicae to some twenty Space Marines, Lucius worked with Fabius Bile to rebuild it, merging it into a larger warband known as the Faultless. During the Thirteenth Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler, he led an army of the Emperor’s Children that slaughtered the population of Belisar, an Imperial hive world, or planet dominated by vast enclosed cities. In the Fall of Medusa V, he commanded the Emperor’s Children and killed the Ultramarines Chaplain Aggripus in a duel at Hydra’s Tooth. He later joined Eidolon’s Phoenix Conclave on the daemon world of Harmony. By the forty-second millennium, Lucius had expanded the Faultless and led it on a campaign of violence across the galaxy; he no longer remembers how many times he has died, and each return is said to wear at his sanity. He bears the Lash of Torment, a daemon-infested whip; the Silver Blade of Laer; the Armour of Shrieking Souls, empowered by the souls of those trapped within it and able to release their cries as a sonic attack; and a combat-stimulant rack of Drukhari make, won in the arenas of Commorragh. Before taking up the Silver Blade, he wielded a master-crafted sword called Nineteen.