 What does it mean to lead? What does it mean to be the guiding hand that steers the course of a people, a nation, an Imperium? What does it mean to truly shoulder the burden of rulership? For 10,000 years, a sole institution comprised of just 12 individuals has governed the Imperium. They, across the many generations, have been charged with all the greatest decisions of state guiding our species through its many trials and challenges. No greater power existed within the many layers of the Imperium's seemingly endless web of bureaucracy, for these are the individuals who interpret the will of a god. From the Golden Throne, the Emperor rules, but not materially. These 12 are his regents, his intermediaries, his stewards, who, by utilisation of their Emperor demanded roles, interpret his word and his law to enact his rule. Consider that burden. Consider the sheer weight that must place upon all two human shoulders. I dare say you cannot even imagine the scope. To even attempt to assay the Imperium's population would drive a man insane, let alone having to consider each and every one as a soul in need of rulership, guidance, and protection from the myriad of threats to their existence. What would having that power do to someone, I wonder? There is an ultimate paradox of power possessing the ability as it does to a noble and corrupt in equal measure, contingent on the being who wields it, and what they wield it for. To be a simple mortal in charge of the life of an entire species, well, rarely in the history of our race has that been a thing. To that end, one proposes a two-part study into the nature of those that preside over the fates of you and I, encompassing both their early history and the stunning events of recent times that have shaken the foundation of such an ancient institution to its core. Know then that this is a record of the Twelve, the pinnacle of the Senatorum Imperialis from whence all power flows. The High Lords of Terra The High Lords of Terra are a group of twelve individuals upon which the responsibility of ruling the Imperium in the God-Emperor's stead has been placed. It is they who are charged with the interpretation of his will, and it is they who make the decisions that guide the fate of every single soul in his immortal majesty's domain. Upon their word move the countless armies and navies of the Imperium, by their writ do the wheels of holy bureaucracy levy the Imperium's dues from its innumerable subjects, and by their attentions are the hands of the Imperium steered through its trials and tumults. The High Lords form the pinnacle of the Senatorum Imperialis, or by its full name, the Lord's temporal, martial, and eclisiacal of the most divine and righteous Imperium of mankind. While the Senatorum is, as diverse a collection of the Empire's most powerful individuals, can be imagined, representing as they do every aspect of his Imperial Majesty's realm, the twelve highest are drawn from only the most select of the Imperium's most powerful bodies, and while the Senate total may advise, it is ultimately upon the will of the High Twelve, as they are colloquially known, that all business turns. While ostensibly any member of the Senatorum can rise to become a member of the Twelve, there are certain organizations within the Imperium whose sheer size or utter importance to the functioning of Imperial affairs make them permanent members of the Council, with the leaders of each representing them at the Senate's table. These are nine in number, and the offices are as follows. The Master of the Astronomican, Lord of the Hollow Mountain, to whom falls the care of the Emperor's light itself, the holy beacon by which all human ships sail the tides of the warp. The Master of the Administratum, they who count the books, fill the ledgers, file the forms, by whose hand the Imperium ponderously but inevitably turns. The Inquisitorial Representative, the delegate of the Ordos Majoris and Minoris, they who speak for the secret watchers that shield the souls of humanity. The Patronoval Envoy of the Navis Nobility, representative of the secret and secluded households of the Navigators. The Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Lord of the Red Planet and Master of all Humanities' Machines. The Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum, Holiest of Holies, patron of the Church of the Emperor Deified. The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbitets, Supreme Enforcer of the Lex Imperialis and the Emperor's Peace. The Grand Master of the Aficio Assassinorum, the Hidden Knife of the Imperium and Keeper of its most supremely lethal human weapons. And finally, the Grand Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, to whom falls the cultivation of those damned and blessed psychers that bear the words of the galaxy across the gulfs of space and time. The remaining three seats are typically filled from a collection of other organizations, perhaps less omnipresent than the above, but no less vital. Although the power of these offices has waxed and waned over the council's ten-thousand year history, members of the High Twelve have been drawn from any number of the following at any one point in time. They are as follows, the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium, the Speaker of the Chartist Captains, Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, the Lord Commander of the Segmentum Solar, the Captain General of the Adeptus Custodes, the Lord Militant of the Imperial Guard, the Cardinal of the Holy Sinod of Terra, the High Abyss of the Adeptus Arbitus, the Commandant of the Scholar Progenium, the Lord Consible of the Sinopticon, and the Mistress of the Terran Catacombs. One role that may be considered a wild card of sorts, primarily due to recent events, is the Lord Commander of the Imperium, the supreme military authority within the Empire, second only to the Emperor himself. Originally held by the Primarch of the Seventh Legion Astartes, Rogald Dorn, this was laterally ceded to the Thirteenth Legion Primarch, Rebut Gulliman, in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy and the Emperor's Ascension. Armed by the Primarch, during his extended regency over the course of the scouring, the title laterally passed to mortal men, who nevertheless retained the ceremonial name of the Lord Gulliman in honor of the fallen Primarch after his mortal wounding and placement in Stasis. In addition to being the commander of the entirety of the Imperium's armed forces, the preeminent nature of the role necessitated it serving additionally as the Chairman of the High Twelve. Until the aftermath of the War of the Beast, when owing to the severe failings of its last mortal title holder, Udin-Makt Udo, the role was abolished permanently. Or at least ostensibly so, but this must be elaborated upon in a later record. The history of the High Lords and the Augusta body that they represent stretches to the foundation of the Imperium itself, as do many of its most domined roles. The earliest incarnation of the High Lords were known as the Magisters Temporal, originally seeing their foundation as the civilian arm of the Emperor's military regime upon Terra during the late stages of the Unification Wars in M28. The Magisters were a temporary wartime measure to oversee the rebuilding of large swathes of Terra devastated by the wars and the regimes they had deposed. They were ultimately replaced by the Lord's civilian, who in turn, were overseen by the four High Lords civilian. In those early days, the four High Lords were the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium, Pelops Dravigor, the Master of the Administratum, Naum Retravia, the Grand Provost Marshal, Uoma Candawire, and the Lord Militant of the Imperial Armies, Cleesan Wea. The civilian rulership crisis, instigated by Provost Marshal Candawire, elaborated upon in one's own record upon the history of the Unification Wars, was in many ways the Imperium's first real governmental challenge, and precipitated a period of Imperial history where the civilian government was once more placed under the direct rulership of the military regime. During the Great Crusade, the High Lords civilian saw the scope of their rules broadened immensely, nonetheless, with the spreading of the Imperium beyond the bounds of the Sol system. They were now set to overseeing not just a planet and its satellite, and numerous orbital plates, but an entire galaxy, with more and more systems and planets being added to the Emperor's temporal domain daily. The High Lords civilian persisted as an entirely subservient body to the War Council, for the aftermath of the Ullinor Crusade in 0000 M31, and the Emperor's tectonic reforms. With the mightiest Xenos Empire yet extant within the galaxy conquered, and the deliverance of mankind's manifest destiny of galactic dominance at hand, the Emperor retired to Terra to complete his greatest work yet, naming as Warmaster his Primarch son Horus Lupakal of the 16th Legion Lunawolves, and placing the War Council under his supreme command, albeit with a new caveat. The War Council would now only oversee military affairs, with the newly created Council of Terra presiding over the actual day-to-day Imperial proceedings. The formation of this body was not without contention, rather there was quite a lot of it, especially from the more belligerent of the Primarchs, including Demon Russ of the 6th Legion, and Pertorabo of the 4th, who decried the petty rule of bureaucrats as besmirching their honour and sacrifices, respectively. To them and those who felt similar, the replacement of the direct rule of the Imperial household with a vast body of representatives, both elected and directly appointed, none of whom had ever so much as held a las rifle, let alone led a crusade to reclaim the heavens. Such a move could not be countenanced. Despite the vociferous objections of many of his sons and generals, the Emperor was adamant. Not only would the Council of Terra help focus the Imperium's various branches to their duties, be it military or administrative, the body would also be the first foundation of a true civilian government, meant to pave the way for the ultimate renouncement of the supreme power of the Primarchs themselves. For the Emperor's vision to come to fruition, it must be baseline humans, not transhumans, upon whom the burden of rulership should fall. It should be noted, however, that this must not be seen as a return to the true democracy, such as it was known to have existed in the ancient past of old earth. With the Emperor guiding by his hand the fate of the entire species, such a noble goal could not be considered. He still very much held the reins, no matter how many of his new Council could be considered fairly elected. Malkador the Sigillite, as the Emperor's right hand, was appointed First Lord of the Council, in addition to his role as Regent of Terra during the Emperor's sojourn deep within the Imperial dungeon in his laboratoria. The original four roles of the High Lord's civilian saw many, many additions, including amongst others, the High Lord of the Imperial Chancellery, the Master of the newly developed Astronomican, the Captain General of the Ligio Custodis, Constantine Valdor, and the Chirurg in general. Both the Sigillite and the Captain General remained members of the Emperor's War Council, reinforcing the separate but inherent subservience of this new body, but at the same time granting it an authority that no other Imperial civilian organization had ever wielded. In addition to the day-to-day governing of the realm, the expansion of reconstruction and integration programs on newly compliant worlds, the upholding of the auspices of the Imperial truth, and the overseeing of newly forged trade corridors and crown corporations, the Council of Terra is perhaps best remembered, in some cases infamously, for being the first to implement the Tithe, a bureaucratic designation of the Administratum that determined the quantities of raw materials, either natural or human, that an Imperial world must supply to the Empire to meet their commitments to the cause of the species. This Tithe took in a sum total of a world's productivity and applied the most rigorous of demands, including everything from simple minerals and crops, to the human contribution to the Exertus Imperialis, to the horrible levy of psychers for the black ships of the adeptus astra telepathica. As has often been the case throughout the history of our species, taxation was not met with delight, quite the opposite. The Primarchs who remained openly opposed to civilian rule decried the move as overly ambitious, stating that it placed too much of a burden upon thousands of worlds already struggling to simply meet reconstruction timelines that had been meted out rather cruelly by the Administratum. The planetary governors of these worlds, desperate under the best of circumstances, were similarly furious, openly stating that the demands placed upon them by distant terror were liable to ruin their tenuous grasp on civil rule and push their worlds into a state of open rebellion. Numerous Historicors of latter years, and indeed several contemporary Remembrancers, have posited that this apparent overreach was a facet in the rebellion of the War Master, and the defection of almost half the Imperium to his banner during the Horus Heresy. While such a thing is of course a subject of a record in its own right, one should note here that if these chroniclers were in any way worth their salt, they would be aware the taxation for the sake of the furtherance of a society's aim and goals is older even than the cogitators they pen their works upon. To speak of it as if it is some new tyranny in and of itself, childish ignorance. The Council of Terror continued its existence throughout the wartime years of the Great Heresy, albeit in a role that functioned more as damage control than anything else. With the War Master's hordes abroad across the void, it fell to the Imperium civilian rulers to maintain as much order amongst the general population as they could, with a sizable portion of this being reduced to refugees and war victims. They were, to their deepest credit, instrumental in maintaining order on terror during the crisis, in implementing the binary succession, and in defending civilian interests during the siege itself. In the aftermath of the Heresy and the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, the Primarch Rogaldorn abdicated his responsibilities of Lord Commander of the Imperium to his brother, Rebut Gulliman, as mentioned earlier. Gulliman's reforms of the Imperium, sweeping though they were, all were intended to repair a fundamentally broken and rudderless empire in the aftershocks of the greatest conflict in human history. Despite his own position, one of his most strident aims was the removal of the Astartes, and indeed transhumans in general, from all aspects of the highest echelons of Imperial rule. Despite the Primarch's their Astartes, and laterally the Custodes, being the true genetic inheritors of the Emperor's lineage and ultimate goals, the damage of a full-scale Astartes war was everywhere, and had brought untold ruin to the realms of man. The majority of Gulliman's moves here must be viewed through that lens, of a Primarch aware that only his own gene-forged capabilities and talents could save the Imperium his father had built, but also painfully aware that it had been transhumanist creations like him that had brought it so low. The Codex Astartes, the sundering of the Legionnaires Astartes into the various chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, the self-removal of the now penitent Ligio Custodes from active duty, these were the beginning. But it was in the creation of the Senatorum Imperialis that Gulliman truly sought to instill civilians at the head of the Imperium. To the highest twelve of the Lord's temporal, martial, ecclesiarchal, of his most divine and righteous Imperium of mankind, now fell the task of interpreting the Emperor's will in his stead, and while Gulliman would guide these first High Lords in their initial years, he would be an ever looser hand upon the tiller. These first twelve were largely drawn from the bodies that had made up the Emperor-created Council of Terra, although with notable differences, such as the removal of the Captain General of the Ligio Custodes, with the disappearance of Constantine Valdor, the abolition of the post of First Lord of the Council, with the death of the Sigillite, and the secondment of the Chirurgian General, to be now replaced by a more powerful personage. The Administratum wielded the most power in those early days, central as it was to keeping the wheels of the Imperium turning, but it was soon to be rivaled for power by the Adeptus Ministorum, enshrined as the first official state church of the Imperium. While the rivalry was initially quite politically fraught, especially as the last bastions of the Imperial Truth died with the Emperor's secular dream, church and Administratum eventually reached an equilibrium, becoming close allies in power, twin heads at the top table, sharing, as it has been rightly noted by some, a similar institutional view on such feared human qualities as open-mindedness, innovation or individuality. The history of the High Lords in the 10,000 years since formal enshrinement can be considered to an acolyte of such things as a history of human power in a microcosm, for the Senatorum has at one point or another embodied the full spectrum of virtues and vices of the species, shepherding the Emperor's flock from triumph to disaster to victories to catastrophes, the cataloguing of which would simply be impossible in a single record. Certain notable highlights exist, the names of those who excelled or failed, ringing truly loudly. The War of the Beast is perhaps the most infamous example, a horrific testament to the folly of petty politicking and the hideously venal ambition humans are capable of, not to mention being one that ended with a literal coup from the office of the Grand Master of Assassins, Draken Vangoric, despising as he did the ineffectual and corrupt High Lords that had delivered untold suffering through their inactions and incompetence. Thousands of years later, the fallibility of the highest offices of the Imperium were once again laid bare by the seizure of both the role of Master of the Administratum and High Ecclesiarch by Goge Van Dyer, he moved that forced the hand of the then Fabricator General of Mars, Gastaph Hediatrics, to call upon his fellow High Lords to execute the prospective tyrant. Van Dyer's retaliation saw the full dissolution of the High Twelve, and during his subsequent reign of blood in the Age of Apostasy, the Senatorum ceased to be. Only the downfall of Van Dyer led to its re-establishment, undergoing its most sweeping reforms since its foundation to ensure that such a situation could never re-occur, including the formation of a new Ordo Majoris of the Inquisition, the Ordo Hereticus. On and on the histories go, reeling off the names of luminaries long dead, yet all of whom were titans of their times, for whatever their failings, we must remember that they were, and yet are, the most select of the select, precious dozens amongst the literally uncountable decillions of humanity in this galaxy of ours. For all the sundry inadequacies they may display, do not fool yourselves into believing them all to be simpering idiots. For a seat at the highest of tables could not be held by any save those who are quite literally unmatched at what it is they do. Many have been venal, corrupt, narcissistic, power, hungry, vicious, psychotic, sociopathic, uncaring, and simply vile. Several have quite lightly been utterly mad. But for all these traits they rose above their own scheming and plotting and deviousness, to a position of supreme executive power, to become the hand that guides the tiller of the species through troubled waters. It was they who coordinated every response to every heretic rampage, Xenos invasion, and arch enemy crusade. It is they who have by their guidance allowed the Imperium to withstand rebellions, civil wars, uprisings, and schisms. Yes, they have failed. The Imperium endures because of they. And I can say from the point of view of one who has read the histories that were it not for the high twelve, the Imperium would simply cease to have been millennia ago. It is, however, quite possible to be supremely talented at skilled and completely and utterly detached from all that any sane human would call, say, the conscience, morality or empathy. A positive of the high twelve, so utterly removed from the common herds of humanity by virtue of everything from wealth to office to simple intelligence, are just that removed. Should their actions to save billions harm thousands, then that is the price they have elected to pay with the human coin they deal in. As abominably callous as it may be, we are cattle to them, but numbers on vellum, line items to be moved around, added to, subtracted from, or simply stricken. They deal in matters so completely beyond the scope of the quadrillions of people they share the throne world with as to be frankly ludicrous. The average Terran has a lifespan of four decades. They may live for centuries. The average Terran may never leave the corridor into which they were born, may never see the choking air outside the hive stack they dwell in, while the High Lord may sail the stars, command whole sectors to move upon a whim, and see first hand that which threatens the soul of every single human in existence. The average Terran may know nothing more than how to accomplish their labor duty, and the sundry prayers beaten into them by the electrogolds of their scollum ecclesiarchy disciplinars. While the High Lord will ken the entire scope of the Imperium's history, and be privy to secrets that would shatter a mortal mind a thousand times over, were it not for their sheer force of will to rule, to lead, to decide. We decry them as tyrants, monsters, murderers, and a hundred other titles just as bad or worse. Perhaps they are. But they are also all we have, and they are the best of us. Throne, they truly are the best of us. What does that make us? Truly damned or delivered? Well, the Imperium yet endures. I suppose that must count for something. Until such a time as I may return to this subject, with an update upon the present situation of the High Lords of Terra in the aftermath of the Hexarchy, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Help keep the lights running, and the scripts flowing.