On Saturday, Games Workshop capped off its Warhammer Day preview screen with a tantalizing glimpse of the logo for the Emperor’s Children, Chaos Space Marines pledged to the dark prince Slaanesh, with the promise ‘Coming 2025’. This almost certainly indicates a new Warhammer 40k Emperor’s Children miniature range, with interesting implications for the game and the setting.
The teaser shows the Emperor’s Children as it looked before the legion fell to Chaos, so there’s a chance that GW is hinting at new releases for the Horus Heresy, not for Warhammer 40k. We just don’t think that’s the case. When the firm released the most recent Warhammer 40k Codex for the Chaos Space Marines, it removed the few Emperor’s Children specific units from the faction and shunted them into a free index, a move that sets them up to receive their own ‘dex this edition – and with it, a refreshed model range.
During seventh, eighth, and ninth edition Warhammer 40k, GW released new independent army lists and models for the Thousand Sons, Death Guard, and World Eaters armies respectively, covering three of the four legions aligned to specific 40k Chaos gods. An Emperor’s Children release in 10th edition will complete the set.
Emperor’s Children models
Because the Emperor’s Children use a lot of the Chaos Space Marines armory of vehicles and warmachines, we expect them to receive relatively few unique kits when they make their debut as a standalone Warhammer 40k faction. Similar to the Thousand Sons and World Eaters, we expect them to launch with about six new kits.
Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor’s Children will be the centerpiece of the range. Fulgrim was the first of the Primarchs to ascend to daemonhood, and there’s already an incredible resin Forge World model of him in this form during the latter days of the Horus Heresy – a winged serpent with four arms in fine armor. As the scion of the lord of decadence, we expect his new model to have strayed even further from his pre-corruption perfection.
The Noise Marines are the mainstay of the Emperor’s Children forces. While GW made a special edition Noise Marine model for Christmas 2018 that is still available to order directly, we expect new models to hew a lot closer to Jez Goodwin’s 1990s concept art. That combined motifs from punk and glam rock like studs, belts, and suspenders, with armor designs from 70’s sci-fi illustrations, for an almost insectile vibe.
An updated model for Lucius the Eternal is also guaranteed. This smiling monster was introduced late in Warhammer 40k 3rd edition to complete the cycle of god-aligned villains, alongside Khârn the Betrayer, Ahriman, and Typhus the Traveller.
We consider all of the above to be pretty much guaranteed, but that won’t make for a full range release. There’s likely to be at least one other character model. First Captain Eidolon is still around and swinging his massive hammer, so he may come out of retirement to wreak havoc.
Before their fall to Chaos, the Emperor’s Children fielded several elite units. The Phoenix Guard were elite Space Marine terminators in light Tartaros pattern armor wielding two-handed power-spears, both Fulgrim’s bodyguard and the vanguard of the Legion’s assaults. Their corrupted descendents would make a great elite unit for a new army.
Each of the god-marked Chaos Space Marine legions is accompanied by a unit of human(oid) cultists or similar disposable fodder. Fabius Bile’s mutant ‘new men’ are possible, but we think a classic mutant rabble is more likely. Human and bestial followers annihilating themselves through frenzied worship is a major theme in all the art and fiction about the Emperor’s Children, way back to the 1988 Slaves to Darkness supplement, and an insane carnival or bacchanale would be a good fit.
Lore implications
Each time Games Workshop has released a daemon Primarch model for Warhammer 40k, it has been connected to major plot events. These characters have spent thousands of years in the domain of the gods, and the release of their models coincides with their return to the material universe.
Magnus the Red made his return with a new invasion of Fenris, and used the ritual energy to teleport the Planet of the Sorcerers out of the warp and into realspace above the ruins of Prospero. Mortarion’s return to reality coincided with the fall of Cadia and the opening of the great rift, and his invasion of Ultramar was explored extensively in the Plague Wars novels by Guy Haley. Angron announced himself by single-handedly annihilating the fifth fleet of the Indomitus Crusade.
Fulgrim is by far the most indolent and self-absorbed of the daemon Primarchs. There’s a whole Horus Heresy book about how hard it was for Lorgar to get him to actually show up for Horus’ invasion of Terra, and he ultimately abandons the siege in a fit of pique because he’s upstaged, not because he’s defeated. Something that could draw his attention away from the infinite gardens of Slaanesh must be truly profane.
Fulgrim also has unfinished business with Roboute Guilliman. For almost 10,000 years in the 40k universe, and from 1995 to 2017 in the real world, Roboute Guilliman was a part of the Imperium’s history, locked in a stasis shrine on the verge of death having suffered a mortal wound to a daemon blade: a wound inflicted by Fulgrim.
Then of course there’s the Aeldari. The chaos god Slaanesh is a manifestation of the lost Aeldari empire’s most terrible excesses. Its birth pangs murdered their gods, dragged the center of their empire into the warp, and gnaws on their souls to this day.
Two factions of the Aeldari actively fight against Slaanesh. The Harlequins follow the surviving Aeldari trickster god Cegorach, while the Ynnari are a new faction, attempting to bring about the incarnation of Ynnead, a new Aeldari god of death and rebirth. Meanwhile the Drukhari‘s extra-dimensional torture city Comorragh, has been breached by the warp, with ongoing battles to hold back the daemons of Slaanesh. The Emperor’s Children returning could drive all those plots forwards.
Lastly, there’s Fabius Bile. The former chief apothecary has split ways with the legion, but he’s still connected to them. Towards the tail end of ninth edition he was hunting for Adeptus Custodes genetic material, and – spoiler warning for the Warhammer 40k book Fabius Bile: Manflayer – he recently acquired the progenoid glands from Alpha Primus, Belisarius Cawl’s still living (and almost certainly heretical) prototype for the Primaris Space Marines. Whatever he’s got planned, it can’t be good…
In short, though we don’t know what the Emperor’s Children will bring to Warhammer 40k in 2025, we can be certain that it’s going to be incredibly cool. We’ll obviously keep you in the loop as more things are revealed: follow Wargamer on Google News to make sure you don’t miss anything!
Source: Wargamer
