The Champions of Slaanesh Army Set is available to pre-order on Saturday, and inside it you’ll find a copy of Codex: Emperor’s Children. It’s the first dedicated Codex for the sons of Fulgrim, a sumptuous tome filled with rules, lavish art, gorgeous photography, and over 30 pages of lore. Let’s take a look at the beautiful excesses within.
Codex: Emperor’s Children covers the rich pageantry of the chosen champions of Slaanesh, with information that documents how the Legion wages war, while pursuing the tapestry of sensations on offer in the galaxy, covering everything from their origins to their wargear.
They are an egotistical and fractious bunch, with some warbands building obscene and outlandish fortresses on planets both in and out of the warp, while others race through the stars as fleet-based hedonites. Deadlier still are those who form transgressive pacts with powerful Daemons, bringing ruin to countless worlds in order to thin the veil between real and the Empyrean with an orgiastic display of violence.
The Codex goes into fine, filigreed detail, explaining how the degenerate duellists known as the Flawless Blades alter their bodies and faces to look more like beguiling daemons before pumping themselves full of stimms and hurling themselves into barbaric assaults.
Special attention is also given to those who look less ostentatious at a glance, like their Terminators. These unorthodox warriors crave the embrace of ancient and venerable suits of tactical dreadnought armour, often gleefully tearing them from still-warm corpses in battle. They battle under the influence of a dizzying paranoia, fighting to their very limits in a constant attempt to establish their superiority.
Specifics of sonic wargear and a number of psychoactive substances are explored. If you’ve been wondering what those canisters on Screamer Pistols, Sonic Blasters and Blastmasters are, then you’ll be delighted to learn they’re full of compressed death screams and other gnarly ingredients – though you’ll have to read the book to find out what exactly…
Noise Marines partake heavily in stimulants like Siren’s Veil, which engorge their auditory canals and fill them with iridescent pus that mainlines audio sensations right to the deepest pleasure centres of the brain. Langour’s Riposte is the preserve of choice for those who profess mastery of their own bodies – a semi-sentient draught that attempts to reconstitute into the form it held in life, turning the drinker’s body into a warzone of warping bones and shifting flesh.
You can also look forward to discovering the debauched components and dizzying effects of Skorflense, Skalathraxine Dust, Salviqine Tears and Sanctus VI – all popular elixirs – alongside dozens more detailed unit descriptions, narrative vignettes, and summaries of Fulgrim’s and Lucius’ characters, all on pages festooned with graphical grandeur.
This is just a thin, delicately flensed slice of the in-depth background on offer in Codex: Emperor’s Children. You can immerse yourself in it soon if you are champing at the bit for the Army Set, or wait with monastic self-restraint for the opulent Limited Edition with all the trimmings.
