 It is the calling of many of our race to seek the truth, to discern verity from the ever-shifting morass of universal mysteries, has ever preoccupied both the greatest and lowliest minds of humanity since the days when we simply gazed at the stars from the ancient ground of old earth. Each of us, in our own way, is an explorer upon this path, as each of us endeavours to see things as they truly are, and to make sense of our own place in the grand workings of reality. Why this insistent, relentless urge? Our abiding concern for what is real leads us to question constantly, to explore ceaselessly, and is seemingly an integral part of the human condition, a longing for comprehension, a hunger to make sense of what is. This is both the greatest virtue of our species, and perhaps, in this galaxy of ours, our greatest weakness. For while the search for truth has led us to shuck the skines of our barbarous past, to cast off the earthly shackles of a single world upon which we grew, to reach out into the stars themselves, our need for verity is so pitifully easy to usurp. The human mind, in its frantic rush to find a meaning in reality, can be led astray by ideas of cloying comforts, by honeyed lies offering easy answers, or by those who simply seek power over others and are willing to speak whatever falsehoods they must to achieve it. Despite the claims of objectivity common amongst through-seekers, our own lives burden us with biases and experiences we are often entirely unaware of. Sometimes, even the most earnest of men, do not see the path their quest is leading them down until it is far, far too late. What happens then, when such a man possessed of such fiery convictions, is unable to see that it is his own search for truth, that is blinding him to the true, horrible veracity of things? No then, that this is a record of one such man, whose zealous and desperate quest for answers beyond the ken of mortals would damn us all. No then, the tale of the pilgrimage of Lorgar Oralian. Lorgar, the 17th Primarch, was born unto a world that infused every aspect of daily life with the doctrines of an old faith. Religion, common to every single human world and every single human community, was a way of life for every man, woman and child upon the arid planet of Calcas. It was, if the histories of the Imperial Remembrancers who visited are to be believed, one of the most remarkably rigid theocracies in the species' history, although an atypical one, as it was at its core polytheistic, worshipping a quartet of universal aspects as gods under the purview of the ruling covenant. Deviance from the norm was unheard of, although it is likely that, in common with all theocracies, heresy was punished swiftly and decisively, and more importantly, quietly. The infant Primarch was found by a local high priest by the name of Cor Phaeron, who swiftly recognized the boy's uniqueness, for he grew at a rate unheard of and possessed a seemingly genius level intellect. Even as an adolescent, Lorgar had stunning charisma and skills of oratory, and he devoured the sacred texts of the temple's library, debating theology with the most learned of the priesthood. His standing was such that others within the covenant looked upon him with jealous eyes, for it is ever the way of religious systems, rigid as they are, to be wary of those who may usurp the very real control over the fateful that their belief systems afford them. Throughout his youth, Lorgar had had regular visions of a colossal figure in golden armor descending upon Calcas from the heavens. Given the environment of his childhood, Lorgar could only view these dreams through the lens of the religion he was raised in, and determined that they were a sign of the coming of a one god, as referenced obliquely in some of the covenant's more ancient and proscribed texts. Monotheism was heresy to the polytheistic covenant, and as Lorgar began proselytizing his newfound faith, the theocracy viewed with growing alarm those amongst both its own hierarchy and the laity who joined his cause. Seizing their opportunity, Lorgar's rival stormed his temple to arrest him, only for the attack to be repulsed by the demi-god unleashed. The planet was plunged into a holy war, the likes of which it had never seen, with religious convictions splitting regiments, temples, and families alike. For six years, the war ravaged Calcas, until finally Lorgar cast out the covenant's hierarchy from the Cathedral of Illumination in the city of Gray Flowers. Reaching to the assembled masses, the new Archpriest of the Covenant Reformed declared that a year from then, the Golden God would return and that he would be known as the Emperor. While the ultimate reunification of father and son will be covered in a future record upon the subject, it would be remiss of one not to explore the impact it would have upon the Primarch. Lorgar had been for his entire existence a man of unshakable belief in the divinity of reality. Investment in the tenets of the religion, those of belief in higher powers, in supernatural aspects, in the nature of faith, all were central to his being. His very visions of the Emperor descending onto Calcas had proven true, even if the Primarch himself was ignorant of the psychic powers from whence this foresight had come. The Emperor, however, saw otherwise. The Master of Mankind had founded his Imperium upon a creed known as the Imperial Truth. The ultimate expression of the concept of atheism, the Imperial Truth expressed that there are no gods, no spirits, no souls, no afterlife, no heaven, and no hell. Reality operates upon the principles of science, with its more exotic aspects such as psychers or the beings of warped space, merely aspects humanity understands ill. To apply a supernatural aspect to them is facetious, for it hinders exploration of their true nature behind ignorance and superstition. The Emperor envisaged his Imperial Truth as a means for humanity to shuck the skins of their barbaric religious past, casting off the chains that faith binds the mind with, to strive for a greater understanding of our place within the cosmos. It was an ideology born of a being that had seen the catastrophes wrought by demagogues, evangelists and fanatics of all kinds, over thousands and thousands of years of human history. When one lives as long as the Master of Mankind has, one discerns patterns unknowable to baseline humanity, and the Emperor, in his clandestine existence throughout the Age of Strife, had seen the human realm wrought, regressed and relapsed into base superstition and comforting fantasy as their worlds burned around them, trusting in the words of men who only desired control and power, and submitting to brutal regimes on the promise of an eternal life or salvation at the hand of some God or other. In dark times, too easily does the species run to the comfort of the fantastical. When the world is collapsing, it is easier to expect the promise of redemption through simple belief than it is to attempt to solve the problems one faces. The Lord of Lightning banished religion and faith from his new Imperium, retooling the apparent need of the species to invest belief in a higher cause, to focus upon the unification of humanity under the worship of science, progress and unity. Those who could not submit to this new order were to be put to the sword and the bullet, for the Emperor would no more brook resistance to the Imperial truth than he would to the manifest destiny of the Imperium to rule the galaxy. Not all citizens of the Imperium, however, accepted the truth of the Emperor's writ into their hearts, some within the Empire, clove to an altogether more radical belief that the Emperor himself was in fact divine. While those who remember the purity of the Imperial truth can scarcely conceive of this point of view, it is perhaps understandable given his nature. The Emperor was and is the mightiest Psyche to have ever existed, or likely will ever exist. His origin is unknown, and it has only been through his leadership the Imperium exists as it does now, as a galaxy spanning dominion, with him as our shield and our protector. In person, his very presence was known to exude an almost physical sense of awe, and his charisma and oratory could sway entire sectors to his cause. It is beyond doubt that he, before his internment, was the most dynamic being in the history of our race, yet one who denied his own divinity relentlessly. His latter insistence led to an only deeper conviction in the minds of his worshippers, for as the Primarch Lorgar himself was oft to say, only the truly divine deny their own divinity. For yes, Lorgar Aurelian was a staunch believer in the godhood of his genetic progenitor. To him, his visions had been revelatory, proof that both he and his father were beings destined for a higher purpose. Just quite what the Emperor knew of this or his reaction to it was initially unknown. Lorgar's piety was obvious to any, however. The celebrations that followed in the wake of the Emperor's arrival on Kalkus were said to have lasted weeks, quietly frustrating the master of mankind who wished to place Lorgar in command of the 17th Legion Imperial Heralds, and resume the work of the Great Crusade with all haste. Both he and the 15th Primarch, Magnus the Red, were descendants during Lorgar's education of the wider Imperium and his new place in it. And it is frankly impossible to believe either were ignorant of the level to which Lorgar worshipped his father. Much more palatable is the theory that, owing to his own wishes to expedite the Crusade, the Emperor simply chided his son, denying his divinity and trusting in the years of experience to come to wean the Primarch off his need for faith. Quite frankly, the very opposite was to happen. When Lorgar assumed command of the 17th Legion, he renamed them the Word Bearers in honor of what he saw as their new writ, to spread the gospel of the Emperor divine to the Imperium. To the outside observer, the Legion remained unchanged initially. The 17th pursued an altogether similar path to that which they had done prior to their reunification with their Primarch. Their targets remained the religious societies they were famous for eradicating, and if anything, they became even more dedicated in exterminating the stain of apostasy from the galaxy. Even the Legion itself, however, was unaware that this was not being done for the glory of the Imperial Truth, but simply to install the faith of a different God in the minds of the now compliant populations. A large levy of Caucasian neophytes had been brought with the Primarch for Astartes' ascension, including his adoptive father, Cor Phaeron. Although too old to receive full Astartes' status, through Lorgar's own insistence, Phaeron received numerous biological and cybernetic enhancements to render him close to an Astartes, remaining by his foster son's side, even as the Legion headed for the stars. The word bearers cast down idolatry wherever they found it, but instead of instilling in these new Imperial subjects the values of science and reason, they turned them to the constructions of great new cathedrals. Legion chaplains preached the divinity of the God-Emperor to conquered populations. Legion remember-answers moved through these populations, ministering to the newly reclaimed, not upon the promise of the Imperial Truth, but upon the benevolence of the Emperor himself, the God of humanity. Imperial dominion over these worlds, claimed now by the 17th Legion, was always assured, although it was not the unity of secular purpose as envisaged by the Emperor, but through the insidious control of religion. It was, known during that time, that Lorgar penned the Lectitio Divinitatus, the dogmatic text outlining the tenets of belief in the Godhood of the Master of Mankind, distributing it throughout the wider Imperium, through means both clandestine and underground. Ironically, it was not the word of his Primarch's mendicant Preacherdom that brought the eyes of the Emperor onto the actions of the 17th Legion, but rather simple numbers. The word bearers, in contrast to their fellow legions, and even in contrast to their record before reunification, were advancing at a crawl. When the Emperor discovered the reason for this was of a nature he expressly forbade, his reaction was nigh apocalyptic. Selecting the city of Monarchia upon the world of Kerr, the Emperor bade his 13th Legion ultramarines to annihilate it. The Metropolis was Lorgar's perfect city, a conurbation of citizens immaculately loyal to the Master of Mankind, of cathedrals, faines, and statues all dedicated to the worship of him upon holy terra. All was rendered to dust by the guns of the 13th Legion. When Lorgar and the word bearers, summoned in their totality by his father, were bade to kneel before him in the ashes of their pride, they were stunned, humbled, and lost. The word bearers were directly ordered to give up their faith in the Emperor, to never again preach his divinity and to turn their efforts to those befitting one of the Legionnaires' Astartes rather than continue as gutter preachers. The events upon Kerr left Lorgar almost catatonic. He and his sons had been reprimanded as none had ever been before, and were still, just at the hands of his own father, whose denial, in such a fashion, upended Lorgar's entire life's work. The Primarch fell deeply into melancholy, refusing to entertain any audiences save for his most inner circle, primarily Corpheron and the Legion's first chaplain, Erebus. This is perhaps the period when the ruinous tendrils began to enveigle their way into the Primarch's mind, and it was likely yet still that it was the direct result of the consolation and council provided by the two aforementioned Astartes. Both were Caucasian, both were steeped in the old religion of that world, despite having followed Lorgar's faction in the Holy War preceding the Emperor's arrival. Men of deep spiritual conviction themselves, they sympathized with their Primarch's longing for deeper meaning and his unrequited longings for knowledge of the divine. Worse yet, however, was the personal ambition these men had, that through their ruthlessness and venal natures, was nonetheless patient. While no doubt bitter from their treatment at the hands of the Emperor, the secret devotion both had to the old faith of Caucus, or at the very least their intimate knowledge of it, speaks to a plot long ingestion, or at the very least the hedging of bets and ultimate vestment in a religion outside that even of worship of the Emperor. To what extent their devotational convictions ended and personal ambitions begun is impossible to say, for the two are so deeply intermingled within these two men, as in so many demagogues throughout the history of our species, as to become nigh inseparable. Through gentle cajoling and suggestions, they turned the wounded soul of their Primarch from the belief in the Emperor and towards another question entirely. If the Emperor was no God, then were there in fact beings in this universe worthy of such worship? If the Emperor of mankind did not meet with the standards of divinity, were there entities that did? What ultimately lay beyond the veil of our reality? It would be easy for one to belittle the Primarch's intelligence and to pass judgment upon a being utterly beyond one's own level of existence. However traitorous and hated he rightly is. It must be noted that if only the prospect of turning Lorgar's mind were a more difficult task than it was, then the history of the galaxy may have been very different indeed. Primarch of the 17th was unlike his brothers. Of all the twenty sons of the Emperor, he was by far the least Marshal. No warrior was a Raelian, for though he did not lack for superhuman strength, speed and endurance, as all he and his brothers possessed, he was loathed to use his gifts in the pursuit of violence. Far more at home was he in conversation with another, in contemplating a book and speaking to a crowd, or simply in breaking bread around a table. More scholar than soldier was the gentlest of the twenty sons, a fact that sat ill with the master of mankind who needed generals, not men of the people. Indeed he already had a scholar for a son in Magnus the Red, whose 15th Legion thousand sons had a record of conquest despite their size that vastly outlipped Lorgar's word-bearers. What the Raelian perennially needed, as his humbling at Curr was to prove, was something to believe in. Whatever the Primarch's other flaws, this one in particular could be seen as the sole one that doomed humanity. Lorgar Raelian could not live in a universe devoid of a calling, a cause, an existence on a level higher than his own. This cloying need, this abject desperation, this is what led him upon his damned path. Lorgar needed to believe, and whatever his protestations to the contrary, was blind to what this meant. To him, faith was inextricable from the human condition, a viewpoint so breathtakingly and diametrically opposed to that of his father, who had been seeking to annihilate the concept of faith through the promulgation of the Imperial Truth. Lorgar would stop at nothing in his quest to pierce the veil and gain an understanding that he so pathologically craved. Where this would ultimately lead? Well, that is a record for another time. Until then, dearest Acolyte, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. See you in the description and on the channel page.