 The horrors spawned by the heresy of Horus Lupacal are innumerable. The descent of the Age of Darkness upon the galaxy heralded the unleashing of things from the depths of imagination most dreadful—blasphemies that appeared torn from the pages of the most lurid of prescribed historical texts. Horus broke the rules of the world with his actions. The profundity of his betrayal shook the foundations of not just the Imperium, but of reality itself. As in their rush to supplant the Emperor, the traitor legions willingly sought pacts with and dabbled the inn—powers, powers beyond the realm of human thought, eldritch nightmares of utter anethema. If the Astartes, the most noble of humanity's champions, if their primarchs could fall to such things, what hope was there ever for the poor, heaving masses of the human species? As the second year of the war dawned great and terrible upon his many reaches a still unsuspecting Imperium, it was to bring forth a wholly new aspect of heresy, revealing the full extent of the warmaster's reach. So then, that this is a record of the mere humans who threw their lot in with the banners of Lupacow—the lunatic hordes at the traitor's beck—a record of the warp cults of the Horus heresy. The history of warp cults forms in many ways a secret history of the human species. Not to indulge in wild fantasy, you understand, but just as how the greater intelligences of primordial annihilation have always been whispering their honeyed lies from beyond the veil, there have likewise always been those that choose to listen. During the Great Crusade, the secret Arcanists, operating under the purview of Malkador the Sigillite, frantically collecting, archiving, and rebuilding the vast histories of barely reunited humanity, identified striking similarities between the creatures and organizations of Terran myth and the common minor emanations of warp entities, and those who precipitated their incarnation into this plane of reality. Just as humanity has always been possessed of the conviction that monsters lurk in the darkness of the forests, so too have we often been convinced that cabals of the learned or the fanatical, or indeed both, lurk within dark rooms, casting their eyes across forbidden tombs of sorceries. Indeed, these cults were, not infrequently, encountered by the Imperium during the two centuries of the Great Crusade. Typically, they were located in close stellar proximity to a warp storm or anomaly, a region of space where the Immaterium and Materium have merged in ways that defy all physical laws. Elsewhere, emergence was noted in populations that possessed a greater than average tendency of producing psychers. There were also documented instances of Xenos exposure, leading to memetic contamination through forbidden lore or corruptive practices. Or finally, whole populations swayed by a messianic alpha or alpha plus Great Psycher whose fall into thralldom by the powers beyond the sky was simply inevitable. In many cases, the impact these cults had upon military or compliance operations was minimal. It was basic crusade policy that, in instances where significant warp breaches were present upon a planet, that whatever remained was simply subjected to exterminatus. The world was lost to the Immaterium, and it was accepted fact that such places were beyond all hope of recovery. This was the word of the Emperor himself. The warp was anathema to humanity. Its only use means of faster than light travel. Whatever other properties it bore were placed beyond the scope of anything the general population, and indeed many, many others were to even consider. There were, however, examples where direct confrontation with a warp cult formed the basis of an entire campaign or compliance operation. Whatever possible, efforts were made to ensure that their prosecution was dealt with only by branches of the Imperial military that were, while not specifically designed for the purpose, of a character whose discretion could be assured. The first legion Dark Angels, for example, were frequently utilized for the purpose in their role as annihilators of the most horrific and unspeakable monstrosities the galaxy could spawn. As the great crusade's most diligent and far-flung pathfinders, the fifth legion Star Hunters, later the White Scars, would often run a high chance of discovering debased and hostile corrupted societies before the juggernaut of the Imperial vanguard did. The 17th legion Imperial Heralds, later the word-bearers, could also be candid upon to absolutely expunge all traces of a culture enthralled to the warp, albeit doing so in ignorance of precisely the reason for this. As they did, the society they were obliterating to simply be ideologically opposed to the Emperor and his works. It was inevitable, of course, that in the grand tableau of the great crusade, but unfortunate instances occurred where unprepared Imperial forces encountered things utterly beyond their ken. Perhaps the most famous immediate example was penned by Garville Lo-Ken, then 10th captain of the 16th legion Luna Wolves, when his squad encountered a warp emanation of supreme lethality on the world of 6319. There were others. The 8th legion Night Lords, for example, fought a protracted campaign against the Gathora warp witches as late as the 970s of M30. At Nova Andrus, the 20th legion intervened in a sudden upsurge of psychic phenomena that appeared within a previously thought compliant population. And in perhaps the largest example in terms of sheer scope, the 9th legion Blood Angels, 7th legion Imperial Fists, and extremely carefully selected Imperial Army regiments, fought a three-year-long Mariposa campaign, liberating 34 entire planets from hordes of mutants under the control of a sinister cabal whose very name has been utterly expunged from Imperial records. The utilisation of the legion as a startys was, of course, a means of last recourse, undertaken only if cultic elements of a society had usurped it at every level. The startys were blunt weapons of destruction. Should the issue be one of simply rooting out a yet-to-developed corruptive cancer, the Imperium had subtler means at its disposal, and almost all of them were under the direct command of the Sigillite and his office. The assassinorum clades were the most direct of these weapons. One operative was often capable of completely demolishing a cult's operation single-handedly. Should Sycanna be an issue, the Divisio Investigatis of the Astro-Telepathica, the so-called Null Maidens of the Sisters of Silence, were ever ready and ever vigilant. Then of course there was the Order of Lucidatum, Malkador's secret police. This organisation did not survive the heresy in any form, although, of course, its application and formation… well, we can see the seeds of the Inquisition contained within. The Order, colloquially known as Elucidators, or Tallymen, amongst the few within Imperial society that were even aware of their existence, operated publicly as members of the Adeptus Administratum, cogs within the mighty bureaucracy of the Great Crusade. In this form they were freely able to move not only within compliant space, but also further afield, embedding themselves within expeditionary fleets, operating as everything from scribes, archivists, historiators, censors-takers, munitorium officials, assistants to iterators, or even planetary governor candidates. This granted them the widest possible access to raw data gathered during every compliance operation. The records, histories, practices, and demographics of newly conquered civilizations. Publicly, they used these reams of information to support the Crusade. Iterators were guided in the best means of approach to sway populations to the Imperial Truth through identification of specific cultural markers and practices, for example. In truth, an Elucidator was scrying this wealth of information for signs of corruptive religious practices, and assessing the risks posed to continued compliance by any systems of faith that the Imperium had in their wars suppressed or destroyed, according to the tenets of the Imperial Truth. Elucidators were key figures in the identification of such risk factors, an instrumental in the assassination of potential demagogues, the seizure of esoteric, arcane, and proscribed texts in the obliteration of libraries and archives deemed to contain memetically hazardous information in the destruction of holy sites of significance, and the capture and suppression of any individuals deemed to have excessive knowledge of the warp or contact with the entities that dwelt within. The Tallymen, though appearing under the guise of simple adepts, were in fact highly trained in specialized combatants themselves, more than capable of defending themselves or undertaking hostile actions. As possessors of the Sigillite Seal, they were equally able to commandeer any arm of the Imperial Military, other than the Legion as a start is, to accomplish an objective. Elucidators were, universally, highly independent in both their actions and their selection of objectives. This was everything Malkador expected of them. While full reports were expected by the Sigillite's office, it was a rare case that a Tallyman would ever be able to explicitly receive an assignment. It was an understood part of their brief that they were to seek out their targets individually, much like the inquisitive individuals that would later succeed them. Indeed, in another similarity to the Holy Ordos of later millennia, the Elucidators held no trials. Be their targets newfound Imperial citizens or yet to comply enemies, recidivists or state enemies, none were subject to the Lex Imperialis. Their very beliefs marked them out as targets bereft of rights. As a secret police force, the existence of the Ordo Elucidatum was never openly acknowledged nor even alluded to. It was only due to the discovery, archiving, and lateral sealing of the Library of Aesir Locus that the Logos Historic Avertia has any knowledge of them. Yet, as with all secret police forces in history, their presence was felt and known for the dark deeds that marked their passage. To conquered populations, the Tallymen were the most potent and wicked arm of their occupiers. They were the figures seen leading the destructions of their temples. They were the ones who supervised the burning of their books, the ones whose firing squads executed thousands for deviances of belief. Their name, or the dozens of bywords that became attached to them, were synonymous with genocide. They alone, amongst the unaugmented agents of the Imperium, were sanctioned in the use of seratoxin, a nerve agent said to be the product of the dark age of technology. Capable of being dispersed as an aerosolized substance, seratoxin was used to expunge all memory of those who had witnessed an immaterial incursion, or manifestation of a warp entity. Be they adult or child, the nerve agent was indiscriminate. The individual's recollections were purged, along with essentially all of their higher faculties. Seratoxin left those exposed to it as human husks, capable only of the most basic of functions. Bereft of the personality, the person they once were, but still capable of serving in a field, or in a factory line. Indeed, in accordance with the tenets of the Imperial faith, elucidators frequently took it upon themselves to exterminate early sects of emperor worship, those following the Lectitio Divinitatus' tenets of the Master of Mankind's Godhood. In shall we say, what can only be a supreme matter of historical irony. Despite this, and as history has taught us so wretchedly in retrospect, the Imperial Truth, the Emperor's lie, was simply not possible to enforce on a galactic scale in the timeframe the Emperor demanded. Despite the best efforts of iterators and elucidators, worship of the warp survived in the dark corners of the worlds brought under the Aquila. For the most part, the truth of such worship was rarely seen as having actual meaning. For the most part, worship of the Dark Pantheon, the so-called Gods of Chaos, was cloaked in everything from rudimentary animism to elevated polytheism. If one thing a history of the more esoteric aspects of reality will demonstrate quite aptly, it is the ability of the greater intelligences of the warp to usurp systems of belief for their own gain, suckling like parasites upon the belief of humanity. That so many systems of worship endured, even in scraps and fragments to be later rekindled, speaks to abysmal failure on the part of Imperial iterators and indeed elucidators in actually getting to the core of religiosity, of the populations they had rendered supposedly compliant, systematic incompetence, impossible timescales, and a grand conspiracy. All play their parts. Perhaps in time, the starvation the Emperor had hoped for would have had a profound effect on the course of history, but this was not to be, thanks to the intervention of one of his own sons. Lorgar Aurelian, in the aftermath of his fateful pilgrimage to the Oculus Tyriblis, the Eye of Terror, set his legion, the word-bearers, upon a campaign of both conquest and subtle conversion. On worlds the 17th legion brought into compliance, conquered populations were not denied their beliefs and convictions, rather they were encouraged in them, or had those beliefs subtly altered so that their essences would flow to the warp, into the maws of Lorgar's new dark patrons. Later, as the cancerous worship of the dark gods spread to other forces of the Emperor, as the warmaster Horace Lupercal's forces were turned, so too did their new faith find its way into worlds they were ostensibly bringing into the Imperial fold. For decades, the rot of the word-bearers grew and festered across the Imperium, cancerous corruptive ideology seeping into its worlds and its organizations. When the moment of betrayal came, when the death of Istvan III announced the beginning of the Age of Darkness, these cults began revolutions, rising up against systems of Imperial authority from without and within. Manufactoria were smashed, precinct houses burned, scolums cast down, populations now reveling in the heathen fates of their ancestors, born anew in the fires of Imperial destruction. That the pattern was always one of bloodshed, in varying degrees of wanton horror speaks to the underlying root cause of these cultic uprisings. It was never simply an opportunistic renewal of faiths demolished by compliance operations. These were long-stoked embers of worship of something altogether malignant. Whatever the reasons these cults aligned themselves with the servants of the warmaster, the end result was always that of atrocity. Whatever the source of the original taint, the word-bearers or later Horace's own legion or his agents weaponized it for the cause of the traitors and the primordial annihilator. Even deities which had previously been benevolent slowly were turned into aspects altogether more violent and vengeful. Sacrificial practices were bent away from the metaphorical to become altogether more visceral, demanding not just emotional contrition but very real offerings of blood. The very nature of the people involved in these cults were myriad to say the least. Feral worlds, debased and fallen from their pinnacles during the dark age of technology, were a frequent focus of early post-heresy scholarship. Blame was sought, apportioned aplenty in the Imperium's new age of relative peace, and these feral worlders were easy targets. It is simple, indeed far too simple, to blame supposed primitives for their beliefs, when the supposed ignorance of those in tribal societies somehow made them more susceptible to worship of the dark pantheon. It is true that animism was a system more readily turned to worship of the dread fore, but worship could just as soon be derived from populations on supposedly civilized worlds. Feral humanity on the planets such as Forman C2 or Oran stand as an example of traitor cults gaining control of broader society. But we had best not forget hive worlds such as Cado, Avalorn, and Gamma Horgan that returned to the traitor cause just as easily through massive uprisings of hive citizenry at all levels, not least the forgotten wretches of the underhives. Even the most civilized of imperial society, the educated archivists and conservators who sought to preserve aspects of conquered societies fell to worship of things they simply should never have, just by virtue of exposure to materials they were cataloging. Many indeed who had fallen to such practices through everything from malicious intent to simple curiosity leaked this information, previously sealed under writ of those far higher than them, spreading their corruptive influence to others, seeking to become a magus of cults in their own right. During the Betrayal at Calth, warp cults of the Age of Darkness took on a wholly new role, that of auxiliaries for the armies of the traitor Astartes legions. Astartes had, of course, made war alongside the vast hosts of the imperial army throughout the years of the Great Crusade, and this did not change with the advent of the heresy. Thousands of regiments previously loyal to the throne of Terra declared for the warmaster and fought alongside the traitor legions. Warp cults, however, now provided the traitors with a ready-made and easily replaceable source of pure manpower. They were quicker to raise and, quite frankly, far more disposable than any conventional military formation. They, of course, lacked much in the way of training or equipment. For the most part, a cultic auxiliary was no better than a civilian handed a weapon, and not even necessarily a firearm. They were herded onto a starship, with as many of their fellow devotees as could be mustard. The virtue of the long years of their corruptive indoctrination and malignant beliefs, their strengths lay in the devotion to the pantheon and their Astartes masters. They could in large part be counted upon to follow almost any order, no matter how wretched, inhumane, or suicidal it was. This was first observed in the opening betrayals in later hours of the Battle of Calth. Cult units, claimed by the word-bearers to be auxiliaries in training, made planetfall with the 17th Legion during the mustering phase of the conjunction, and were supremely well placed to attack ultramarines, solar auxilia, exertus imperialis, mecanicum tagmata, and civilian populations when the betrayal unfolded. As the battle became less a one-sided slaughter, cult formations were herded into battle as cannon fodder by their word-bearer overseers, used frequently to bleed loyalist forces of either ammunition or stamina ahead of a 17th Legion Astartes assault. They were additionally used to hunt down survivors of initial betrayals, especially civilian or unaugmented human forces against which their rabid, murderous intent proved altogether gorelly effective. Quite besides this, the wanton disregard for human life, as evinced by the word-bearers, served that Legion's plans entirely, in fashions altogether more esoteric. The vast hideous ritual that was Calth, or its secondary objective at least, would eventually give birth to the ruined storm, and the sheer death toll simply greasing its proverbial wheels. Every ounce of Vitae spilled either by the warp cults or by their deaths, contributed to the roiling tumult of immaterial energy that gathered in the warp around Calth, the torrent of psychic death simply needing utilization by the hands of word-bearer esoterists. While the ritual would not be fully concluded until the events of Nusiriya, to be related in a separate record, it is significant to mention here in the context of an exploration of the cults. Their service was not simply that of body. Their beliefs, during their military service, and in the actions they committed on behalf of their masters, were in many ways just as important to the lords of the Traitor legions as their bodies were in stopping loyalist boat shells. The callous exploitation of the cultists by the word-bearers, and latterly the Warmaster's hordes in general, was a staggering thing for many Imperials to behold, despite the veterans of the great crusade having taken part in sundry genocidal operations against non-compliant human populations. The cultic auxiliaries, given all that we know, or rather are better's know of the reasons why anyone would sell their soul to the powers of the warp, can be assumed to be made up of a blend of victims and victimizers. In the case of the latter, those who were willing participants within the schemes of the traitors, those who had been promised power or rewards for their service to the dark pantheon, and those who ardently believed in the inevitability and imminence of these boons. There were no doubt some whom, through ignorance, gullibility, or simple lack of status, were press ganged into their beliefs through intimidation, extortion, or absolute lack of options. It is, of course, unfashionable to unwise to acknowledge that this is even possible, as those of an inquisitive mindset are wont to say, innocence proves nothing. It should also, of course, be acknowledged that it would be impossible to inculcate the displays of behavior so often observed within the warp cults, without the devotion of these cultists themselves being anything other than fanatical and unquestioning. For a baseline human armed with little more than a spear to throw themselves at a warrior of the legion as a starty, that takes a suicidal religiosity that is quite beyond. Many a helm log from the Ultramarines serving upon Kalth captured instances where cultists would shield their word-bearer masters from boltar fire quite willingly, howling out devotional tracts as the bodies of their fellows detonated into bloody scraps around them. Kalth and the Betrayal serve as a prime case study for any examination of warp cults from the age of darkness, as it marks the first large-scale employment of them by one of the traitor legions. While it is true that the 20th Legion Alpha Legion made significant use of human auxiliaries during the Great Crusade and, following their clandestine betrayal in the immediate years prior to the heresy, it was of course the 17th Legion word-bearers that first deployed cults alongside conventional military forces. Four primary cults, each no doubt containing minor ideological or cultural subdivisions themselves, were cataloged by the Ultramarines during the Betrayal and in its aftermath. The Ushmatar Kaul, the Mandari, the Tsensvar Kaul, and the Jahar Wanate. Of these, the Ushmatar Kaul, who low-gothic translation is roughly termed Brotherhood of the Knife, were by far the largest. The majority were deployed to the surface of Kalth during the Conjunction, under the auspices of being a second-line auxiliary division of the Exertus Imperialis. They were even present in Divisio Militaris records as such, their regiments granted the ident tags Light Infantry slash Terrestrial Subtype slash Feral Feudal Regressive. Nominally, they were organized into around 10 to 20 regiments, referred to in most period chronicles as subsects, of approximately 10,000 individuals each, almost all of which had been serving alongside the word-bearers during their compliance operations several years hence. Their feral world appearance, and the patronage of the word-bearers, appears to have allowed the Brotherhood some significant dispensations from expeditionary fleet commanders to engage in pre- and post-battle ritualistic behavior, often of the most bloody variety. Sacrificial livestock was used in pre-Battlefield ceremonies, while subsequent to combat there were reports of Brotherhood members desecrating the corpses of their enemies, arranging bodies into seemingly significant configurations, or daubing their clothes and skin with the blood shed by their foes. That these practices were allowed by their word-bearer masters speaks volumes, and that the 17th Legion would firmly shut down any protests from Imperial iterators, or even expeditionary commanders, says even more. The true nature, of course, was revealed upon Calth, and even the tenuous veil of secrecy that the Brotherhood had worn before the Betrayal was utterly torn off. Hours into the conflict, these cultists were covered in all manner of blood and clawing viscera, spelling out eldritch symbols on their very bodies. There is significant evidence that points to open displays of cannibalism, as well as self-inflicted mutilation, both of apparently ritualistic natures. Included in urban environments, from Talanco to Numenius, the Brotherhood's thousands strong divisions were ever in close coordination with their word-bearer commanders. Typically, they served as either expendable Battlefield chaff when the 17th Legion faced off against ultramarine resistance, and provided their significant manpower in other forms, for example rounding up prisoners, both military and civilian, for debased sacrificial offerings. The Brotherhood, for all their feral aspect, were at least able to ape the appearance and coordination of a military force. The Senzvar Kaul and the Jeharwanate, the Recursive Kin and the Ring by respect of translations, were far more debased, being both formed of little more than hordes of abhuman mutant strains. Seemingly seeded with rogue psychers in possession of some element of free will, these two cults were simply cannon fodder of the most base variety. It is believed these forces in particular were held in secret from the Ultramarines, or at the very least, aboard their own ships prior to the betrayal. The Brotherhood of the Knife would claim to be feral world levies, but the Recursive Kin and the Ring would have been marked for extermination by any imperial standard, due to their incredibly pronounced physiological deviances from standard human baseline. The final verifiable major cult present on Calth, the Mandari, or so-called Jean-bound, were perhaps the most unusual, and of whom the least is confirmable. What can be deduced about their practices comes primarily from scraps of devotional scriptures recovered from deceased cult members. Such texts, of course, were only examined under the most rigorous of cognitohazard protocols, and in many cases only by ranking inquisitors of the Ordo Melius. But the picture it forms is of a cult bound through a strange combination of technology and genetics. Whether their roots lie in a mechanical forge world, or perhaps a more advanced crusade era planet, is impossible to ascertain. Under its origins, the cult was possessed of an unshakable conviction that their aberrant combination of sciences, in conjunction with the patronage of the primordial annihilator, had rendered them immortal, and that in the moment of the death of their original body they would be reborn in the mortal plane, but in an entirely ascended form. Such beliefs are, of course, not uncommon amongst warp cults. Indeed, many of the departed are incarnated again after a fashion, as their corpses are worn by lesser emanations of the warp intelligences, serving as incarnation points for the wicked never-born. The Mandari, however, proved far more than simple dogmatists. Records from the years-long struggles of the Underground War, subsequent to the betrayal at Calth itself, speak of incidences of certain bodily mutations amongst word-bearer auxiliaries bearing sigils associated with the gene bound. These were noticeable in their sheer extremity. They were far more pronounced and rapid than anything broadly catalogued by imperial adepts in the centuries of the Empire's existence. It included complete revivification of dead human bodies. Examination by legion apothecaries of fallen members of the cults noted several implants of unknown provenance, as well as genetic coding within the bodies that did not conform to any recognized strain of genetic humanity. Study of this proved impossible. Within minutes to hours of the cessation of bodily functions, the implants and gene sequencing activated, stimulating the flesh of the corpse into unholy innervation. Damaged tissue reformed, in many cases growing far beyond the body's original mass. Broken bones would repair themselves, and the mandari cultists stirred into what can only be described as a mocking semblance of life, its movements jerky and unnatural, but its speed and violence quite startling. These reanimated bodies were astonishingly resilient, apparently impervious to pain and capable of enduring significant trauma owing to the increased body mass. Only through sustained and disciplined arms fire could one be brought down, a lesson that was hard learned by ultramarines and loyalist auxiliaries alike. This rapidly evolved into a combat doctrine of ensuring the utter destruction of mandari cultists on site. Their bodies could not be given the chance at reanimation, and were thus annihilated where at all possible. Naturally this meant further study of precisely how their debased rituals were even possible was rendered inviolable. But perhaps in this case that is not an altogether bad thing. The ignorance of the Imperium at large was a significant factor in the rise of, and difficulty in combating, warp cults during the Age of Darkness. Knowledge of the ritualistic practices, typically present in such cultic activity, was restricted to members of the Order Lucidatum, the Sisters of Silence, and the Ligio Custodes, sealed by explicit writ of the Imperial household and wholly banned under the Imperial truth. Yet even the knowledge of these august bodies was limited. They were far more concerned with the more dangerous aspects typically present in their investigation of cults and warp activity. Thus it was only through later investigations at patterns in origins, in esoteric practices, and in numerological significances, were discovered and catalogued by agents of the Imperium concerned with such matters. Even within these are of course contained innumerable variations, rendering any effort to wholly quantify them impossible. Nevertheless, enough commonalities were finally identified that it warranted dedicated Imperial resources being made available. And these came from the office of the Sigulite. Silent Sisterhood, and the Custodes, had for most of the heresy, seen their resources wholly dedicated elsewhere. So these, chosen of the Sigulite, were granted access to Malchador's own archives, and those of the Imperial Palace, within which to conduct themselves. While the vast majority of such labour was thus sifting through reams of reports delivered from Imperial front lines, correlating them with others, and comparing them to historical documents of nigh forbidden provenance, field deployments were occasionally required to obtain primary sources and first-hand observations. From the writings of Malchador's chosen were formed the tenants by which which hunters to this very day used to identify cultic organizations across the Imperium. The Sigulite's chosen discovered that the overwhelming majority of cults followed a same basic pyramidal structure, a singular individual leader at the apex, from whom all power and knowledge would flow. As with most organized religions throughout human history, the individual in question was either the founder or an appointed successor in direct lineage. They were invariably highly charismatic, or in possession of a device or psychic powers that allowed them a high degree of ideological or even direct mental control over their subordinates. It has been hypothesized that this leader, typically known in Imperial terminology as the Magister, was usually the only member of the cult that was aware of other cults. In some instances, the belief that only a specific cult was in possession of true knowledge or the correct path to revelation was singular to their own convictions, while in others the awareness of their part in a greater clandestine movement to overthrow the non-believers was likewise deeply motivating. Which path a cult took was idiosyncratic to the Magister and the society they were born from. They appeared to always prefer the option that allowed them access to further power over their own cultists. That being said, the Magister was invariably the only member of the cult that had any direct contact with outside powers. In the case of the cults of the Age of Darkness, this was almost always a representative of one or other of the traitor legions. Such communication was typically coded, contained within secret languages or ciphers, and usually ensured that the Magister could count his power secure, less likely to be challenged or usurped from the lower ranks for fear of reprisal from the Magister's patrons. The leader could also often count upon an inner circle, typically referred to as a coven, formed of trusted individuals that served as lieutenants, viziers, bodyguards, and enforcers. The coven were often responsible for the leading of a cult rituals, the recruitment of new members, and the protection of the cult's interests, generally speaking. When warfare erupted, they would also be expected to serve as a rudimentary officer corps, leading cultic masses in battle. Although this would invariably have the effect of quite rapidly weeding out those who were wholly unfit to the task, and promoting those who displayed themselves as superior war leaders. Indeed, these masses were perennially drawn from the great citizen masses of the Imperium. Their backgrounds were as diverse as the stars in the skies, but yet all were in possession of an apparent hatred for the empire they were subjects of, or at the very least, said empire's representatives. During the Age of Darkness, as upon Calth, the cult served the armies of the war master in one of two fashions. First, as with the recursive kin of the betrayal, was cannon fodder. The wordbearers continued the practice in abundance, and the sons of Horus were not far behind. The fleets of these legions always included transport ships of bizarre provenance. Their stifling holds packed the brim with cultists from all corners of the Imperium, and the war master's dark empire. No matter their origins, or a special idiosyncrasies of their beliefs, all were sworn to Horus' banner and ultimately believed in the same hideous pantheon. They were swept up by Lupercow's armies during their rampaging conquests and advances. Their deaths served the traitor legions just as well as their lives, even if all they had done was prevent a bullet from chipping Anastartes' power armor. In the second fashion, warp cults were instrumental in the grand clandestine conspiracy that was the heresy. They were the crucial elements of enactment of occult stratagems far beyond the ability of loyalists to either comprehend or combat. Warpcraft and forbidden psychic powers were typically the linchpin here. Denied the legion as a startys by the edict of Nicaea and severely regulated by the adeptus Astra Telepathica, the Magi of the cults were freed from such constraints by explicit encouragement of their masters and their new faiths. On worlds far beyond the front lines, cult activity spiked in previously compliant populations. Magisters who had inveigled their way into positions of power threw off their disguises and rose in an open rebellion. These were often marked with significant displays of psychic phenomena, up to and including the summoning of Neverborn through debased rites. Time and time again, the slaughter perpetuated by occult uprising was precipitated by the sacrifice of their own members in grand rituals designed to induce the so-called demons of the warp into the mortal plane. Even lesser emanations were wholly lethal things and such incursions invariably caused utter devastation amongst unsuspecting imperial populations. Sadly, even combat against the cults and their Neverborn allies was typically insufficient to stem the tide. As the Imperium learned all too quickly, the slaughter of humanity, loyalist or traitor, would always draw more emanations in from beyond the veil. It will never be possible to catalog the myriad cults that served the arch enemy during the Age of Darkness, just as it will never be possible for a loyal subject of the God Emperor to comprehend precisely why anyone would throw in their meager lot with primordial annihilation. For all their convictions in the righteousness of their cause and the beneficence of their patrons, the fate of the cultist was always the same. Death in all its myriad horrors claimed their lives with gluttonous abandon. Whether as a flesh shield against loyalist arms fire, a skin puppet for the thing of the darkest warp, or a blood bag offering in a ritual beyond their comprehension, the cultists of the heresy all had an inevitably horrific death in common. They were ammunition in human form, expended as such by the traitor legions. They were frequently deployed, but rarely redeployed unless they somehow managed to get themselves into orbit with the legions. The sheer uncaring of their masters troubled them not. Theirs was a fervor born of utter devotion, a thing of such power that mere callous mistreatment could not help to shake. Suffering martyred them, it was a point. Entirely expendable, these human souls went chanting and howling tears upon their faces to the ends of their lives. Such it seems is the fate of the traitor Ave Imperator. Gloria in excelsis terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.