 It has been said, through the ancient tracts of the Catharic, that pride cometh before the fall. There are often tales, tales that ring throughout the ages, even after those who pen them have been forgotten. Of personalities whose desires eclipse their abilities, whose ambitions poison their virtues, and whose ignorance blinds them to the truth of matters beyond their ken. Easy plays, really, simple things, meant to keep the downtrodden from developing ideas above their station and threatening the reins of those who hold them. And yet, resilient, nevertheless, for the cardinal aspects of the human character they seem to resoundingly speak to. That we, our benighted, pathetic species, cling to such things as pride and egotism, and seat determination, despite all the evils these emotions have wrought upon history. Ugh, it is a sad thing, really. Humility, the virtue opposing such sins, seems all too readily discarded when one's id is in ascendance. Just as the morning star of the Catharic rose to challenge the divinity, so too can a human challenge that which is beyond them, and just as the seraph of old fell to damnation, so too can a human plummet to their personal nadeers. A tale seemingly as old as time, and one whose drama holds an impossibly ancient grasp upon us. It was a time in our history where this tale played itself out upon a story unimaginably large, painting in strokes upon the canvas of all reality, consuming in its monstrous magnitude a galaxy in an apocalypse of impossible nightmare. Such then is the tale I must commit of such a time. Know then that this, finally, is the record of the fall, the moment upon which all futures perched, and when the terminal descent of an angel doomed the fate of everything that ever was. The fall of the Warmaster. The Horus Lupercow that emerged from the Inter-rex Affair was not the same one who had entered it. The experience with that lost human regime, the circumstances of its extermination, they have been chronicled by yours truly in a previous record, which I would encourage you to parse. But suffice it to say that the disaster had caused a fundamental shift in the Warmaster's character. Those closest to him, whose journals are private logs one has been granted access to, speak of a darkness that had fallen across his humours, a hardening of purpose, all accompanied by a certain death of optimism. The Inter-rex were an incredibly divergent society from the laws of the Emperor. They had knowingly and deliberately integrated the Xenos Kinnebrack into their society, and had avowedly consorted with the Eldari on multiple occasions, indeed naming that perfidious species as a great friend to them during the long millennia of the Age of Strife. Many within Horus' attached Mechanicum Tagmata too suspected the regime of continuing to employ abominable intelligence. Despite all of this, and the bellicose warmongering of senior members of the 16th Legion, first Captain Avedon prime amongst them, Horus had made peace and indeed integration with the Inter-rex a priority and a challenge for himself, wrought seemingly out of an innate desire to prove, just to he alone, that it could in fact be accomplished. It was a task that many with the benefit, or curse, of hindsight would declare impossible. The differences between the Imperium and the Inter-rex were too fundamental to ever consider peace, let alone an alliance or integration. Acolytes must, however, consider the time. This was post-Ulanor, the Halcyon days of the Great Crusade. It was a period of boundless optimism for the future of humanity, and the Imperium had time and time again in the two centuries previous defied the odds and risen to overcome all challenges arrayed against them. Capitala Kali Camus, in her work Unto the Galactic Forge, the stars captured anew, essays upon the later Great Crusade and sundry observations of its participants, has observed that to Horus the Inter-rex represented a mountain unlike any he had previously submitted, for the challenge was not military, but beyond that. Horus was a consummate diplomat and state crafter, and it is likely, in the views of Kali Camus and others, that brokering peace between the two parties would have marked for the Warmaster an achievement unlike any other, making him a true master of all the fields necessary to be considered the greatest of leaders. It was by those metrics a calamitous failure. Inter-rex broke down with the Warmaster planet side, forcing the 16th Legion to engage in a fighting retreat from the Inter-rex's border territories in the aftermath of the regime alleging treachery and other worldly corruption. No further communications were received after this, with the Inter-rex placing itself firmly on war footing and the Imperium dispatching numerous expeditionary fleets to engage in its extermination. Despite all of Horus' efforts, the Inter-rex Affair reached the seemingly inevitable conclusion all imperial contact with notably divergent human polities arrived at. Extermination and conquest at the business end of a bolt gun. Beings such as Primarchs were perennially unaccustomed to failure. It is the opinion of many a biographer to the progeny of the Emperor that such times that they encountered instances of it during their lives were uniquely challenging for them to overcome psychologically and emotionally. While the iterators at the time would be at pains to assure any and all who would listen of the Warmaster's superlative character and skills, Horus was nevertheless quite unmanned and substantially so by his failure to broker the Inter-rex's compliance. His ambition, as peerless as his other traits, had seemingly gotten the better of him. As he was noted to have at not insignificant points during negotiations, remarked to Senior Lunawolves Astartes that his father the Emperor may in fact be wrong in the strictures he demanded of newly contacted human regimes. While such comments at the time were immediately downplayed by his attending brother Sanguinius, they nevertheless spoke to a Horus that had begun to become unmoored amongst the foundational pillars of his existence, and one who was seeking answers to questions and indeed problems that had previously not needed addressing. In his questing, the Warmaster had found the Inter-rex, and in the Inter-rex he had found little but frustration, torment, and catastrophe. It has been generally assumed that, given the timing, this disaster was the prime motivator for Horus's accepting of the Emperor's request to change the designation of the 16th Legion. The Lunawolves were no longer thus in the aftermath of their retreat from Inter-rex space, and no longer would their reignment be the bone white of Terra's natural satellite. Now instead, the galaxy would feel the sea-green tread of the newly reforged Sons of Horus, widely considered a mark of supreme honour for the paramount legion of the Imperium. Legion names had changed previously. The Warhounds had become the world-eaters following their unification with their Primarch, as the Duskraders had become the Death Guards, and the Imperial Heralds, the Word-bearers. One, however, had ever been granted the singular pride of bearing their Genesire's name in their formal designation. Horus, with his ascension to Warmaster, was now first amongst equals. His delaying of the name change was considered by Cali-Cammus and others to be humility, a desire for the Warmaster to not alienate his brothers, or place himself above them, despite the decision of the Emperor having accomplished just that regardless of the Primarch's feelings upon the matter. Petronella Vivar, the tragically lost author of Horus's unpublished biography of his tenure as Warmaster, laterally recovered by agents of the Sigillite, was present in the halls of the vengeful spirit during this particular time. Indeed, her earliest notes paint a very different picture of the Warmaster to those of the iterator's speeches. Her arrival had coincided shortly with the renaming of the 16th Legion, after all. While Horus remained charismatic to a thought, a dynamo of boundless energy, she noted a hardening of the character of the man she had expected to meet. Vivar painted a picture of a Horus who had seemingly discarded the elements of optimism that had driven him during the Inter-Ex Affair. The Warmaster, this Warmaster, was now one concerned with his legacy, but also angry towards it, musing out loud to his equary, Malogirst, that surely the Emperor would not have created a being such as him to be fleeting, rather to be a titan for whom history itself would be shaped by. Ten thousand years from now I want my name to be known all across the heavens, said Lupacal, and only through the painful irony of later calamities can we ever consider such a statement. This change in character was noted by senior 16th Legionist Arties too, most notably 10th Company Captain and member of Horus's advisory Mornaval Council, Garville Loquen. Loquen wrote how, troublingly, the Warmaster had ceased to find the humor of his fellow Captain Tariq Torghadan pleasant, instead reacting to the 2nd Company Captain's jests with irritability and outright anger. Particular target of the Warmaster's ire, one that was making itself more and more present across the galaxy during this particular time in history, were the Exector Agents of the Adeptus Administratum, ordered out into the still young Imperium by the Civilian Council of Terra, itself a recent creation of the Emperor following his formal withdrawal from frontline combat. The reasoning was fundamentally solid. After two centuries of leading and funding the Great Crusade, a formalized system of taxation would be required for the tens of thousands of planets now rebuilding themselves towards the Imperial future. The appearance of the Taxman has never been, throughout the vast sum of human history, ever considered a good thing. And certainly the introduction of the Imperial Tithe, Terra's dew, or as some would call it, the Emperor's Blood Guelt, met with scant welcome and far more frequent hostility. Many worlds, and their precariously positioned governors, protested that one or other faceless bureaucrat upon Terra could never properly assay their planet's ability to pay what the throne apparently now demanded, and that the levies the Imperium were placing upon them were resulting in untenable situations. Many a world was only recently won, only recently compliant, and barely capable of standing upon its own two economic feasts, let alone supplying the Crusade. The governors of these worlds cried bloody murder that they would be facing riots and uprisings, outright sedition should the tithes be implemented as demanded. The vast majority were granted no clemency by the Administratum. The Exectors Imperialis were stringent in their application of the Lex, speaking plainly that the Emperor's realm needed more than simply Terra or Sol could muster at this point. For the Primarchs, used to commanding by personal fears, the appearance of taxation officials amongst their fleets, and across planets they had conquered and were being governed by former military officers they had appointed, well, the move met with deeply mixed reactions. Robert Gulliman, Primarch of the Thirteenth Legion, and Lord of the Realm of Ultramar, hailed the move as a maturing step taken by the Emperor's realm to become the society it was destined to be. Pertorapo of the Fourth Legion mocked it as lacking both the skill and the spine to properly tax the galaxy, while Russ of the Sixth plainly called the scheme a disaster in waiting. Horus, it would appear, sided with his Fenrisian brother upon the matter. If I had my choice, the Warmaster, was recorded as having told Garvia Loken during discussion of potential means of delaying taxation, I would kill every Exector in the Imperium, but I'm sure we would be getting tax bills from Hell before breakfast. Loken wrote that he had initially laughed at such an absurd suggestion, but that the laughter had died in his throat when he realized he was unsure if his Primarch was in fact joking. This disconnect between Horus and the ideals of the Crusade were minor at first, but noticeable to Astartes of character and conviction, as Garvia Loken is often considered by historians of the era. An admitted idealist, Loken was patently disturbed by what he was perceiving amongst his Primarch and indeed amongst many within the upper echelons of the Sons of Horus, especially his fellow Mournaval member, First Captain Abaddon, who had begun to openly disdain the presence of baseline humans, especially Remembrancers, amongst the expeditionary fleets of the Imperium. Attention was making itself apparent, a sort of delayed morning rising from the triumfinal rush and hangover of Ullinor, as Loic Garentius put it in the introduction of his seminal Lamentations upon the Age of Darkness. It was amidst this tumult that the 63rd expeditionary fleet was summoned to a mission that was for the Sons of Horus unprecedented. An imperial world was apparently undergoing an issue with a treasonous governor. Davin, or 63-8 being the 8th world brought into compliance by Horus' fleet, had been an easy victory for the then Lunawolves. These people, comprised of tribal bands formed around a primitivistic and shamanic shared culture, had surrendered upon putting up initial resistance, for all the world appearing to embrace the secularism of the imperial truth with enthusiasm once it had been shown the sheer power of the invaders. Their eagerness, indeed to accede to the Emperor's Creed, prompted Horus to delegate in the aftermath of conquest a detachment of the 17th Legion word-bearers under 1st Captain Cor Phaeron to minister to this newly compliant world, having deemed the Davinites model new imperial subjects, as well as likely considering them potential aspirants for future Astartes ascension. Sixty years later, his compliance was being called into question by the alleged actions of the then governor. Eugen Temba had been appointed to the royal as a personal friend of the warmaster, as was a common occurrence during the Great Crusade. While his reports upon his barbarian subjects were generally praiseworthy, Horus was now informed by Erebus, 1st chaplain of the word-bearers and current emissary of that Legion to the sons of Horus. The Temba had frequently petitioned the War Council for aid in bringing full compliance to the tribes of Davin's moon. These requests had been formally denied in every instance, apparently prompting a desperate Temba to personally lead the planetary defense force on an expedition to the moon to suppress the recalcitrant satellite by force. This had, to Horus' absolute fury, apparently occurred decades before it had reached his ears. What had become of this force, and Temba, and the planet's monitor frigate the glory of Terra, was at the time of the Primarch's arrival unknown, that is, according to Erebus. What the 16th Legion found upon Davin's moon is a matter of record, both by Legion horologues and the presence of Petronella Vavar in the Drop Assault cadre. But at the time, it defied explanation by conventional means. The moon had been recorded by the cartographic, as being made up wholly of an arid savannah. But as the stormbirds of the Legion plunged into its curiously storm-shrouded atmosphere, they found only a choking, stinking mire, endless bogs stretching into mist-wreathed horizons, caked in a mud that sucked at the power-armored grieves of the Astartes that attempted passage through it. As a crowning, sinister oddity, they're loomed over this quagmire, the rotting, rusting carcass of the glory of Terra, wrecked upon the shore of this benighted moon, and seemingly being consumed into its depths. Borsbeck's readings showed the vessel to be an advanced state of decay, and the Primarch was recorded at having raged further at how seemingly long this situation had gone on, unnoticed by either Imperium or himself. The matter was becoming a personal one, causing Horace to move with a brashness that the senior members of the 16th cautioned against, but which the Primarch rebuked in favour of leading a boarding expedition personally, accompanied by Astartes of the 19th Company led by their captain, Virulum Moi. The Primarch's hot-headed manoeuvre appears to have been counted upon in this instance. By the orchestrators of the trap. For a trap it most certainly was. Coming across the central stratigeum of the downed warship, Horace and his sons were set upon by the seemingly deceased, yet alive, Eugen Temba. While outside in the bogs, the defensive perimeter of Astartes, accompanied by Petronella Vivar, found themselves attacked by corpse-like creatures that rose from the waters of the very swamp surrounding them. Vivar painted a vivid picture of the attackers, bloated maggot-infested bodies, recognisably human, recognisably imperial, but appearing for all the world like water-rotted cadavers. Nothing about them suggested the ability to move, let alone fight, but both they did, and the latter, with enough strength to resist and in numbers overpower the Astartes they set upon. Things that would kill a man dead in seconds did not even slow their progress, and it appeared that nothing short of full dismemberment would halt their attacks. The only common feature amongst these horrific assailants was a bizarre trend for their eyes to mutate and melt into one cyclopian organ, set in the middle of their face, milky and pus-caped, but alive, with an impossible vitality. Tamba, by all accounts, was apparently worse, but even more alive. He appeared in full possession of his faculties, speaking to horrors directly from a corpulent, swollen body that, by any physical standards, was too large to move under its own power. Such a supposition stayed in the Primark's hand that, and for the love that he bore for his former friend reduced now to corruption and rot, but it would be this compassion that doomed the galaxy. Tamba, or rather, the thing that had once been him, assaulted Horus and his accompanying Astartes, slaying Verula Moi and the Escorts, comporting himself impossibly well against a Primark in single combat. The blade he bore appeared to have a life of its own, weaving and ducking, subverting the defences, and it was too late that Horus, blinded by his grief and rage, would recognize it for what it was. The Anathemae, a weapon created by the Xenos Kennebrek, the self-same thinking sword that the Interex had accused the Sons of Horus of stealing from their Hall of Devices upon Zenobia. It appeared, essentially, to be animating and guiding Tamba's cackling body, and despite the superlative skill of Horus, it sank itself into his left shoulder. This, of course, gave Horus the opening he needed to mortally wound Tamba's warped body, but it would cost him dear. All that his former friend could do was provide Horus with a warning that a force, unlike anything he could possibly comprehend, was moving against him. Those were his last words. Returning to the Sons of Horus outside the crashed vessel, Horus shrugged off their questions and calls to aid him before collapsing into the mire. It is perhaps difficult, impossible even, for those of us removed from this event by the crushing tides of history to grasp the sheer magnitude of so apparently simple a thing as a primarch collapsing. We must for the sake of simple understanding of what is to follow assure ourselves of that emotional impact of that event. In a previous Chronicle 1 has committed to record, your humble servant explored the psychological consequences of the death of Ferris Manus upon his sons in the 10th Legion Iron Hands. While Acolytes may parse that record at their leisure, although one would of course recommend it, within I elaborated upon the nature of Astarty's psychology and how, given the sheer amount of psycho indoctrination and neurological restructuring that is inherent in their genetic ascension from baseline humanity, the space marine mind is fundamentally incapable of processing grief in a manner that the broader human species would. They are programmed things whose world is structured upon fundamental psychological pillars and in those days of crusade and imperium, with their gene sires walking amongst them and leading them into the fires of battle, the primarchs held an importance that simply cannot be understated. It is recorded by Petronella Vavar that she, of all people, was the first to Horus' side following his lapse into unconsciousness. None of the 16th Legion present, she wrote, were even capable of movement at the time, so stunned as they were by what had occurred. Needless to say, her screams eventually roused them and the Warmaster was rushed back aboard the vengeful spirit. In the time it took for his stormbird to ascend, word of Horus' fall had reached the fleet in orbit and spread like wildfire amongst the human and Astartes' crews aboard. Crowds had rushed to the embarkation deck to witness his return, wailing masses of humanity pressing in from all sides to confirm with their own eyes what their ears had heard. The situation was a powder keg, and into it strode the explosive that was first Captain Abaddon and his grief. The Astartes plowed through the crowd that blocked their passage, the Apothecaryon, with no remorse, crushing the crew of their own ship under ceramite boots and tearing them apart bodily to carve a passage for the felled Warmaster. It was butchery, as one Anlukr was recorded as having said, mindless murder, regardless of their state of mind. For many of those who witnessed it, it was a terrifying prospect that this tenuous relationship they appeared to now hold with their erstwhile champions had taken on an altogether new yin. Horus' injury, examined by the Apothecaryon of the 16th Legion, was unlike anything they had ever encountered or had the capabilities to treat. Primarch Physiology is a system beyond the comprehension of any being save the emperor himself, but by general understanding, it should be immune to effectively all pathogens. Yet inside Horus' body, pathogens were emerging, replicating, collapsing, and reforming at speeds and varieties akin to nothing on record within the span of human knowledge. One could explain why the Primarch's body was not able to defeat them, for it appeared at every moment that victory was at hand only for the disease to reformat itself and attack again. As the medicaid attempted everything they could, the fleet, the Legion, they fell into absolute disarray. The sudden loss of a senior command authority is generally a difficult thing for military expeditions to cope with, but for a figure such as a Primarch, the effect was replicated a thousand fold. Within the halls of the sons of Horus' warrior lodge, furious arguments flew back and forth over what should be done, what was to blame and what could be tried. The Astartes were rudderless without their commander, and grief, shame, even primal fear ruled them for the first time in their long lives. Into this conflagration strode Erebus, offering, it seemed, hope. The serpent lodge, down on the planet Daven, was known as a house of healing amongst the tribe's people of the world, a place of, as Erebus put it, medical miracles. The wound Horus received was clearly of Daven. He claimed whatever the treachery of Temba and his ilk, and that in Daven, the secret to its rectification could no doubt be found. It was a mark, perhaps, of how myopic the sons of Horus had become in their grief, that the first chaplains decidedly spiritualistic words did not alarm. Quite the opposite, it was hastily decided amongst many of the lodge, thus the senior captains, that the Primarch would be brought to the serpent lodge. Only Garviel, Loken and Tariq Torgadan raised their voices in opposition to the move, calling such a thing wild recklessness and base superstition beneath that of the sons of the Imperium. But they were overruled by the fury of Abaddon and the helplessness of the fourth Mornaval member, fourth captain Horus Axiomand, not to mention the overwhelming majority of the other captains. What happened within the lodge of Daven will now be imparted to record, with as much veracity as one is able, but it must be noted at the outset that the sources are but two. The writings of Petronella Vivar before her untimely death, and it is difficult for one to admit, but I must, the surviving journals of Magnus the Red, called the Crimson King, Lord Primarch of the 15th Legion, Thousand Sons. Obviously the writings of so fallen an angel as he are to be considered with the most skeptical of minds, and many would no doubt argue for my immediate execution for even imparting them to official record. In one's defence, Magnus, despite his status as Tritaurus Perditia, fallen son of the Emperor Demon thing of hateful nightmare, was nevertheless at one point in his cursed existence a scholar. It is not for me to editorialise merely to record for the purposes of this chronicle, and I would be remiss to omit one of the only potential sources we have into the mind of Horus Luprachal at this pivotal moment. Proceeding apace, the course of events following the Warmasters' surrender to the priests of the Serpent Lodge is unclear. Erebus, for one, disappeared from the sight of the sons present after conducting an accord with the Davonites, and Horus was committed to a chamber at the heart of the Temple Fane, with his astartes formally forbidden from entering lest they disrupt the process. It would appear that, given all we know, what little we know of what followed after, Horus's psyche was subjected to a malefica, removing his soul presence from his body in order to be granted psychic communion with... well, that is uncertain. Suffice it to say, the Warmaster embarked on a journey most eldritch, his being taken across time and space and soul. By Horus' own word, he was apparently guided upon this quest by a specter of the Lunar Wolves' captain, Hastor Sajanus, beloved by the Primarch but dead to these many years. Sajanus spoke of an impending tragedy, before the Imperium, the root of which was the Emperor's own arrogance. Sailed by visions of this nightmare future, Horus was apparently unable to believe his eyes. Cyclopean architecture containing within it uncountable, heaving masses of humanity, wretches in bloody rags, wailing adulation at the statues of the Emperor, as priest things moved amongst them, bellowing psalm rites at volumes that deafened those pilgrims nearby. Round this mad devotional cavalcade, he beheld statuary of his brothers, Gilliman, Dorn, Lacan, Korax, Vulcan, Russ, Ferris Manus, the Lion, beloved Sanguinius, yet no others. Horus could not find himself upon the plinths, yet everywhere, lionized as the God he so rigorously claimed not to be, was the Emperor. Sajanus was blunt, this was the future, for the Emperor was planning in his malice to betray Horus, to discard him as a tool once his usefulness had expired. He was not loved, he was merely a means to an end, a product, and a device to proliferate an ambition that eclipsed a galaxy under its abominable shadow. It was then that the Sajanus thing revealed to Horus yet another revelation. The ambition of the Emperor was set against intelligences, powers older than time itself. The Pantheon, a collection of four pillars of metaphysical energy whose domain was the warp itself. These gods, for gods they may as well be, said Sajanus, had forged a pact with the Emperor, a bargain of universal power, one the Lord of Terra used to create his twenty sons, but then reneged upon, much to the fury of the Pantheon. The Imperium, alleged Sajanus, was founded upon a lie. The Emperor secretly desired worship, that same worship he professed to deny. The Great Crusade was merely a way to eliminate the rivals to his eventual divinity, to deny the Pantheon in his duplicity, to ascend beyond mankind and rule it eternally as fuel for his godhood. He had deceived Horus, deceived all his sons, lied to them for their entire lives, said Sajanus. Surely this crime most unspeakable, this hypocrisy most base, surely this could not go unanswered. It was, at this point, that Magnus the Red claims his intercession took place. His warp presence strong enough to force its way into the visions of his brother, albeit with the aid of senior members of his thousand sons. Magnus revealed the Sajanus thing was nothing other than Erebus wearing an arcane glamour, naming the word bearer a duplicitous coward and a liar. Erebus, for his part, begged Clemency, stating the deception had been necessary in order to show Horus the truth of things, but none of what had come before the Warmaster was anything other than the truest visions of the future as it would come. Magnus begged his brother not to listen, professing that he, better than any, understood the powers within the warp, their dreadful bargains, their honeyed words, their barbed promises. Fell things they were, continued the Crimson King, self-aware hurricanes of emotion and hate that desired nothing but to usurp control and corrupt. Horus must trust their father, Magnus pleaded, trust the Emperor, beloved by all, that he knew what was best for humanity and his sons. These words it must be said were perhaps an ill-advised choice, given the timing and manner in which they were imparted. Magnus the Red had no scant years prior before the entire conclave of Nekia sworn to give up the practice of utilizing his psychana and never again to dabble in the arcane that was now outlawed by Imperial writ. Yet, here he was, in full breach of the Emperor's edict, using those self-same powers to bring what he was claiming was the light of truth and honesty to Horus at a time of crisis. Horus raged against his brother, accusing him of the same treachery he was professing to be there to save the Warmaster from. This, then, was Horus' choice, as presented by these two figures. Erebus, present in the Primarch's mindscape under deception, yet professing to tell a truth beyond imagination, and Magnus, present in self-honesty, yet with deceit all of his own, professing that all had been lies and that truth, filial piety, loyalty, these were the only means by which Horus could do what was right. The word-bearer pleaded that the universe must know the truth of the Emperor's lies, and the Crimson King, that there were things at play beyond Horus' comprehension, and that only by staying true to the Imperium, to its Emperor, to their father, would the future be assured. Whether or not the above occurred, as written none can actually say, there are aspects to Vivar's account that are questionable, not least how many of her interviews with the Primarch took place during his fevered moments of lucidity before and after his internment within the Davonite Lodge. Similarly, the crimes of Magnus the Red are legion, as are his deceptions, to say nothing of the vile serpent that is Erebus of the word-bearers. What can be established, given no knowledge of later events is as follows. Erebus, and the word-bearers as a legion, had fallen many decades prior into the thrall of that darkest of Pantheons, and had been seeking, since that time, to bring the worship of the foulest of gods to the Imperium. While the circumstances of this fall should be detailed in a subsequent record, the faith of the Primarch Lorgar Aurelion was now fully depraved, a veneration of nightmares beyond reality, and Erebus was acting under his father's explicit instructions to bring his brother Horus into the corrupted fold. It had been Erebus who had stolen the anathemae from Zinobia, who had planted it with the poor Eugen Temba to wound the Warmaster and prompt his delivery to the Davonite priests. Given the timing of the word-bearers' delegation upon the planet following its compliance decades prior, it is almost certain that Corpheron, a devotee of the oldest fates of Calcas, even as he professed the singular truth of the Imperium, had uncovered evidence of the Pantheon's worship within the Davonite culture, and had nurtured it as eventual fruit that was to be borne for the Warmaster's fall. The Davonites were a cursed people cavorting with the demonic and the fowl, and the sons of Horus in their grief had delivered their Primarch into such hands. Such had been apparently ordained as the outcome of a conspiracy decades in the making. The monstrosity of such a plan is obvious, but it appears that ultimately the decision, the final call, rested upon the mind of Horus Lupacal himself. Given within recovered records of the 17th Legion, there appears to have been no certainty of outcome, but despite the machinations of Lorgar, fate rested upon a precipice that night on Davon. It is, of course, known what would come of it, what destiny awaited the galaxy when Horus emerged from the Serpent Lodge, a changed man possessed of new convictions. In whose fire the galaxy would soon come to burn. But before any such conflagration could flare into horrendous life, it would require a spark. That spark? A distant planetary system, unknown to many, but whose name would soon resound with infamy unparalleled. Istvan Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.