 To some, treachery comes in a burst of rage, a storm that blows in almost out of nowhere. In others, it is a terrible culmination of a buried issue, a doubt, a hatred. In yet others, it is a pollutant, nurtured over many years, a contaminant of the soul that saw no attempts at healing, for none were desired. It is treason wholly embraced, wholly desired, kept clandestine until the time is right for a blade to be plunged into a back. For some, treachery is tragedy. For others, it is a sin that must never be forgiven, never forgotten, for there can be no absolution for such craven perfidy. Know then that this is a record of the fanatical. Once the incarnate bearers of the Imperial Truth now laid as low as any can fall through basest duplicity and heinous deceit. The slow poison at the heart of the Imperium of Mankind, the 17th Legion Word Bearers. To many of the Ligionesistates, founded as they all were amongst the fires of the Unification Wars on ancient Terra, their purpose was initially unclear. For these legions, it appeared that only through blooding themselves in catatlysmic conflicts did purpose become extant, that in the reunification of their homeworld could they find their truest purpose. Destiny, it seemed, was only to be discerned through the savagery of battle. Not so for the 17th Legion. The grand aspiration of the Emperor, so-called even during those days, was not simply the lunatic whimsy of another Terran barbarian warlord. Many a petty king had desired to rule the homeworld. None save the Emperor, wished to unite it in the truest sense of the word. His was not simply a war of conquest and control, but ideology. As the Thunder Warriors had carved a path through the mad warlords grasping glomerates and tinpot despots of Terra, the Emperor brought the conquered masses his imperial truth, the foundational tenet of his grand imperium. Superstition and ignorance had plagued humanity for millennia. The darkness of the Age of Strife, mankind had regressed into the feckless depths of witless adoration for the divine. Plagued now we were at the parasitic spiritual suckling of a myriad of gods and spirits. Shunned did we the light of science as dangerous, choosing instead to place faith in the unknowable, damning ourselves to trifling lives spent in the benighted reaches of fantastical delusions. The Emperor sought to banish these, but not simply as countless such men have throughout history to supplant them with another faith in their place. No, the Lord of Lightning strove to cut through the gloom of barbarity with the shining swords of rationality, superseding all religion with the pure light of science. Under the Imperial Truth, there were no gods, no demons, no heavens, no hells, no spirits, no afterlife. The rational, atheistic ideology promulgated by those who fought for unity was unlike any that had been seen on Terra since the Dark Age of Technology. And it was for this war, the struggle for the human mind, that the Emperor created his 17th Legion. From its inception, the 17th were a legion apart from their fellows, both in terms of operational remit and their own humours. All the starties fought with devotion and duty. They are, and were, fundamentally psychoconditioned to do so during the mind-demolishing processes of their ascension. The 17th, however, did so with an onus subordered on the fanatical. Despite zalatry being, nominally, the enemy of the Imperium, the legion were rapidly becoming the embodiment of secular extremity. The starties of the 17th were deliberately recruited from the remnants of populations that had been exterminated by the Emperor's armies. These shattered nations and regimes produced children raised to know the crimes of their ancestors. Early Imperial iterators ensured that none were under any doubt that their continued existence was owed purely to the master of mankind's mercy. Ironically, given their futures, they shared similarity with the nascent 13th Legion, the so-called war-born, who were likewise raised from ravaged kingdoms. The 17th took their obligation, born of a birthright unasked for and continued in violet thanks to the Emperor's military regime, and turned it into a dour yet intense devotion to their duty as genetically enhanced soldiery. While other legions may have granted acknowledgement to a spirit of defiance present in a foe as something admirable or misguided, the 17th saw the enemies of the Imperium as nothing less than traitors to the human species. They were to be regarded not with pity, but hatred. Useless things deserving of nothing but extermination, unless complete repentance for their pig-headed ignorance be offered. There was to be no negotiated surrender to the Legion, no terms of capitulation. The Legion asked for none. Only when the foe prostrated themselves and submitted wholly to Imperial mercy would any quarter be offered, so that they could begin to atone for the crime of standing in the way of human unification. Unique amongst the legions of the unification wars, known only as they were by numerical designations until much, much later, the 17th were granted upon their creation the name Imperial Heralds. One legion amongst twenty, not for a special honor, but a statement of purpose, where they lay in the Emperor's vision. There were enemies of the Imperium that stood against the Emperor by what they perceived as divine writ, foes fueled by their convictions to whatever religion animated their misbegotten hearts, or who simply could not dwell within the world of secularism the Emperor's hosts imposed. To these wayward minds the Emperor presented his Imperial Heralds, and with them the ultimate demand. Recant or face annihilation. The Imperial truth brooked no exceptions. All religions were to be annihilated under the Emperor's word, for if even a shred of belief in their supernatural natures remained, it would be akin to the roots of weed in the soul of mankind. Pay, of course, no heed to the Treaty of Olympus the Emperor was to conduct to it the Mechanical of Mars, and the preservation of the worship of the Machine God, and he himself as the Omnisire. This is, of course, an altogether more political move. To the vast majority of the Imperium, the Imperial truth was the literal only path. The purpose the 17th were crafted for was one it took to heart with the conviction of, ironically, the zealot. Upon the eve of battle, the 17th would dispatch a single warrior, clad in black, to demand the foe's surrender, one final time. To be chosen to be these bearers of the word was a supreme honour to the Astartes of the 17th, a mantle, once given, that was never removed. Many of these heralds would die in the conducting of their duties, dragged down by fanatical hands, even as they slew dozens of their deluded attackers. However, some could, and did, deliver a total surrender upon the power of their oratory alone. The exaltation of the Imperial truth, the visions of the Emperor, and the glory of what was to come, delivering a cowed enemy into the hands of waiting iterators for further psychological conditioning and cultural editing. However, should war fall upon the 17th to prosecute, it was a duty they undertook with fire and fury, leaving none standing in their wake. Those that observed them in battle spoke of a methodical functionality within their war-making, a rigorous destruction intended to wipe all traces of enemy's existences from history. This extended too long after the final shot had been fired, final soldier slain. When the foe had been utterly broken, the Imperial heralds turned their attention upon the culture itself. They turned libraries into massive pyres, immolating millennia of knowledge for the crime of having belonged to a society in thrall to wayward ideals. Atop these conflagrations they melted the false idols of the fallen foes and burned heretical figureheads alive atop grisly stakes. No traces of the beliefs were allowed to remain, whether in the physical or ideological realm. Decenters and recidivists found themselves kindling for the pyres just as their books were. War for the 17th Legion did not begin and end on the field of battle. It extended far beyond that. The Imperial truth was their greatest weapon. This earned them a newer and informal cognomen, one by which they were known far more wildly than their official title, the Iconoclasts. With a cold fury born of unshakable convictions, the 17th Legion cut a swathe through the barbarian beliefs of old night, conquering religions as well as nations. The result was an armed force of total cultural genocide. Unlike other legions that simply contented themselves with or or ordered to defeat the enemies of unity in military body, the 17th warred against this and the civilian mind. Conquered populations were instructed in the errors of their ways or, more often than not, the ways of their leaders through incredible brutality. Post-conflict ideological scouring was as invasive, methodical and total as the most fanatical of religiously motivated regimes. Enemies of the Imperial state, judged so by the 17th, were myriad, pernicious and omnipresent. After a fashion, they were something of imperial pioneers for a later concept that would flourish within the minds of more inquisitive individuals. Innocence proves nothing. Civilian populations were culpable, no matter the level of theocracy they lived under, be it an autocratic regime that demanded constant, never-ending worship or a cabal of spirit-worshipping aristocrats, the fate of human populations under them would be the same for the 17th, damned for the crime of resisting unity either actively or passively and treated in precisely the same fashion as their rulers. They were the ideological foot soldiers of the Imperial regime like no other. The bearer of the raptor and lightning bolt banner as an object of, effectively, devotion rather than nationhood or political function. Unity was the destiny of the species. Resistance to it marked you as unworthy of personhood. The binaric view of innocence versus guilt, the fanatical application of the ideology prescribed to them by an authority figure, these would be continual tenants for the Legion as its history wove onward. Elsewhere in the galaxy, onto the Arab scrublands of Colchis, to the 17th Primarch, Lorgar, Plummet. Scattered along with his brothers by an unknown catastrophe deep within the Emperor's laboratory on Terra, the infant Primarch's gestation pod was flung through the warp before reaching its final destination in the sands of that world. The Primarch was discovered by Desert Nomads and laterally by exiled members of the Covenant, a polytheistic religious organization that ruled the planet. The leader of the exiled band, a priest by the name of Core Phaeron, recognized the boy as a singular being and offered him the role of a disciple and foundling within his particular sect of the Covenant. On Lorgar's acceptance, a Phaeron had the nomad band murdered, to wholly disguise the truth of Lorgar's origin. Returning to a Covenant temple and professing repentance for the hard-line beliefs that had seen him and his fellows exiled, Core Phaeron resumed his place within the priesthood with Lorgar as his student and adoptive son. In perhaps one of the greatest ironies in human history, the Primarch of the Imperial heralds was raised in an environment governed entirely by the strictures of the Covenant's old faith. Bligeon suffused all aspects of life on cultures. The entire planet was dominated by the faith and the Covenant's theocracy that governed what was and what was not doctrine. Worship centered around the veneration of a quadrinity of deities believed by the Covenant to govern all aspects of the human soul and the physical world. Lorgar's childhood was saturated with these beliefs. The morning sun was a gift from the gods as was the bounty of food upon his table, the knowledge in his books, the very life that had been granted to him, an orphan in the desert and now sanctuary within a temple. Core Phaeron was not a loving parent for the growing Primarch. He was demanding, expecting more from Lorgar than any other foundling within the temple. He was abusive, both physically and emotionally on a daily basis. The priest was thorough in his attempts to mold the boy into an emotionally dependent state. Lorgar was an empathetic and good-hearted child, one Phaeron wished to break to his will that he may harness the boy's undeniably prodigious talents for later in life. Despite sustained abuse, the Primarch was an ardent devotee of the gods, a willing subject of the Covenant and a misguided son to Core Phaeron. He possessed an insatiable appetite for theology, doctrine and scripture. Lorgar devoured the sacred texts of the temple's library, seeking as best he could resources from other nearby temples and even as a boy, debated theology with the most learned of the priesthood. In his unnaturally quickly reached adolescence, his standing was such that others within the Covenant looked upon him with jealous eyes. Throughout his youth, Lorgar had been stricken with regular visions of a mighty figure clad in shining armor, descending onto the surface of cultures from the heavens themselves. In retrospect, the first signs of his latent psychic abilities, Lorgar himself could only view these dreams through the lens of the religion and the world he was raised from and determined that they were the sign of the coming of a one god, referenced in some of the Covenant's most ancient texts. Monotheism was heresy to the modern Covenant and Core Phaeron was quick to disabuse the Primarch physically of these notions. Despite the sundry beatings of his foster father, Lorgar was even at this stage a subtle being and knew after years of living within the sifting morass of politics that was the Covenant, that his approach must be equally subtle. His proselytizing began small, focusing on the conversion of figures close to him and then figures of influence within their own circles and so on and so forth. Lorgar's oratorial skills were simply unrivaled. Depthlessly compassionate, benevolent and sympathetic, the Primarch had a supreme ability to read and connect with the hearts of his fellow humans. There were seemingly none he could not simply talk to and sway to the essential truth of his beliefs. It was of course only a matter of time before knowledge of Lorgar and his sect of God sworn drew the attention of the Hierarchs of the Covenant, that theocracy viewed with growing alarm those amongst its own priesthood, not to mention the laity, who joined the Primarch's cause. Seizing their opportunity, Lorgar's rival stormed his temple to arrest him only for the attack to be repulsed by the physical fury of a demigod unleashed. The planet was plunged into a holy war the likes of which it had never seen, religious convictions split armies, temples and families alike. For six years, the Crusade ravaged Colchis until finally Lorgar cast out the Covenant's hierarchy from the Cathedral of Illumination in the City of Gray Flowers. Preaching to the assembled masses, the new arch-priest of the Covenant Reformed declared that a year from then the Golden God would return and that he would be known as the Emperor. The Primarch's psychic foresight would prove accurate. A year after he ascended to the rulership, lights were seen in the night sky above the City of Gray Flowers. The Emperor of Mankind descended upon Colchis, his lander wreathed in re-entry fire, his son Magnus the Red, 15th Primarch, beside him. Lorgar met his father at the landing field and it is said upon catching sight of the Master of Mankind he flung himself prostrate in a heartbeat, the force of his devotion cracking the earth itself. His followers did the same and wept to see the prophecies of the Primarch made real. Records show the triumphant celebrations lasted for months, but details of precisely when and how the Emperor removed himself and his newfound son from Colchis are inexact. Some point to him remaining to speak to the population who were so devoted to him, whereas others, possibly recorded by Magnus, recount that he left as soon as was deemed viable. Unease at such blatant and ill-placed worship writ large, if not upon his unknowable visage, then at least upon his actions. What became of Lorgar's faith in the being that was now revealed to his own father and creator? Did conversations with his sire yield any change in the Primarch's belief in that divinity, in religiosity? Sadly no. It must not be said that Lorgar was a simpleton, for that could not be further from the truth. He was a being of phenomenal intelligence, as evidenced by the kinship he shared with him and Magnus the Red, who he spent a great deal of time with in the aftermath of his departure from Colchis. The two were known to have debated matters of theology, philosophy, history, culture, society, politics, and even metaphysics for days on end. Lorgar, ever insatiable for knowledge, devoured every library and archive he came across, often under Magnus' direct tutelage. He did not ignore scientific knowledge. Rather, in it, and the countless records of religions and beliefs long dead, his mind found common threads of underlying holiness. Metatax to all pointers the Primarch believed spoke to the underlying spiritual condition of the universe as it existed. Lorgar, even when presented with the emperor's own imperial truth, was at no point dissuaded from his convictions in the divinity of reality. And indeed, of his father's own inherent godhood. Paradoxically, the more Magnus and the emperor himself denied this to Lorgar, the more it reinforced the persuasion. As who else but a one true god would claim that he was not divine? Inherent in this, are we seeing, quite visibly, the most fundamentally human aspect of Lorgar, that no matter the evidence, no matter the piles of persuasion, hours of conversation, should the emotional core of a belief remain intact, then that belief is essentially inviolate. Such a belief did not spring from Lorgar alone, of course. Since the emergence upon Terra, there had ever been those amongst his subjects that named him a god. The sheer psychic and material power he commanded, the utter singularity of his being, it left few paths for the human mind in rationalizing the simple fact of his existence, even after all the species had suffered through in the millennia of the Age of Strife. In fact, even because of it, the secrets, the knowledge of the Dark Age of Technology was benighted, lost, hoarded, destroyed. Lorgar, at least, had the sense to read the proverbial room. He did not deny his father the Imperial Truth, acceding to it quite publicly, naming all those that denied the Emperor's secularism, idolaters, and unbelievers. It was, of course, a facade. One can happily spend time denouncing the worship of other gods while bearing within yourself the belief in your own true deity. And given what remains of Lorgar's copious personal writing output, this was entirely the case. Amongst the endless praise the Primarch heaped upon his father for his vision for the human race, there is not one scrap of denial of the Emperor's divinity. Perhaps seeing the faith of his son as something that would pass in time, an adolescent fancy, maybe, the Emperor bade Lorgar take command of his genetic progenies, the 17th Legion, and induct the strongest and most capable of his Calchician warriors into their ranks. What exactly Lorgar thought of being placed at the head of a legion charged with the extermination of religion is unrecorded, but it is known his personal beliefs were not widely known at that point beyond, it seems, the Emperor and Magnus. As mentioned, Lorgar was not stupid. He recognized that his faith was not amongst receptive ears, nor bearing fertile ground within his father's atheistic Imperium. The belief that the Emperor was a god was not a new one, yes, and it is doubtless that many within the Imperium believed it so, but did so privately for fear of social ostracization or political persecution. The Primarch never openly spoke about it, but never outright disavowed it. Entrined now amongst his sons, Lorgar was ever quick to deride the worship of other beliefs, false gods, false spirits, false idols, and took part in their extermination now at the vanguard of his Astartes Legion. Where exactly the change within the Legion first began is something chroniclers such as oneself can only theorize about. The details, such as they are, are mired in conflicting tides of zealotry, fanaticism, redactionism, and simple political expurgation. It is nonetheless possible, given later events, to make educated inferences. Lorgar's adopted Colchisian father, Cor Phaeron, remained a close companion to the Primarch. Too old to undergo full Astartes elevation, the priest was instead given a range of genetic enhancements and physical implants, organic and cybernetic both, to render him as close to an Astartes as it was possible for a mortal to become, and yet survive, done upon the insistence of Lorgar and Phaeron himself. The priest was deeply unwilling to surrender his hold and proximity to the Primarch, even under the new Imperial Order, and took the role of first captain within the new Legion. Erebus, an ambitious Colchisian preacher, was likewise ascended, although unlike Phaeron, was capable of surviving the genosequencing to become a fully fledged Astartes, and, laterally, the 17th Legion's first chaplain, ever by the Primarch side. Given these men's role in the horrific history that was to unfold, we can infer their importance during this period of the Primarch's internal theological deliberation, and indeed, in the spread of the faith of the Emperor throughout the Legion itself. It is known from surviving personal records that the High Herald of the 17th, Halic Gar, was one of Lorgar's first converts, as were Majro Vassar and Ustan Cho. Similarly important Terran-born Astartes in the 17th Legion's upper echelons. The Legion's devotion to the Imperial Truth was not so much usurped as insidiously repurposed. Ever devoted to the truth of the Imperial Purpose, the 17th were now thought that the devotion itself was not simply enough, that only in faith could true devotion be found, and there was no higher faith than that in the divinity of the God Emperor. Just quite how Lorgar usurped the passionate non-believers of his Legion can only be guessed at. He was, of course, their genetic sire. They were built from his own makeup. The Primarch was also far renowned for his skills with words, his incredible and truly genuine human warmth, and, most importantly, his patience. Such is the conviction of the zealot, so sure that he is in his cause, so sure he is that it is incontrovertible, that he merely has to persist with fortitude, and all will come to see the world as he does. It is also important to consider within this context how such ideological swings can take place within the context of mass movements. Masses are not swayed by facts, debate, or logic. As cleanly empirical as the Imperial Truth avowed to be, it is an ideology that the 17th Legion accepted with the righteous fury of the fanatic, a mindset that is inherently prone to usurpation. There is no belief that does not conflict with their actual experience. The 17th Legion were responsible for a significant amount of the Great Crusade's most thorough genocides, often caused by the purged population's mere questioning of the tenants that these astartes had come demanding. The reality of slaughtering millions upon millions of their own species did not for a second conflict with their beliefs. This was good work to them, despite the bloodshed, despite the death toll, despite the tides of blood. It was good. All that was needed to sway the masses is internal consistency within the system they are a part of. Repetition, as horribly simple as it may seem, combined with tugging on the emotional roots of their still-so-human psychology was what allowed the pathogen of Lorgar's convictions to seep into the Legion's psyche. The change within the 17th took decades, but it was a span of time their Primarch was entirely willing to commit to. Nothing was more important to him. In incremental subtle changes and additions, the 17th warped from the solemnity of the Imperial heralds into something infused with the religious blood of Colchis. The black-armoured herald astartes that have previously delivered the Imperial truth to the hated enemies on the eve of battle were now dubbed chaplains by the Primarch. To be the spiritual heart of the Legion, warriors who could minister to the thoughts and hopes of their battlebrothers just as well as they could lead them in battle. Ritualistic behaviour became commonplace. Ash from the pyres of torched civilizations was now scattered upon the bowed head of Legionaries. Con fraternities of astartes, terrible precursors to the warrior lodges Lorgar would infect other legions with, sprang up in large numbers. Fertile ground for theological debates, as well as a relentless application of peer pressures. The chaplains were insidious, subtly altering the counsel they gave to their brothers to include shards of Lorgar's Emperor divine teachings, laying the groundwork brick by brick over conversation after conversation. Those of old cultures were, of course, the most amenable to the new faith, many of whom had grown up under Lorgar's rule as Archpriest, or in the fires of the Holy War. Recruits from newly compliant worlds offered to the 17th as fives were simply taught their faith from the get-go and accepted it as the only truth they had ever known within the Imperium. The Terrans, those who lived and breathed the Imperial truth, were a tougher prospect, but as the early conversion of Halak Gar had shown, hardly an impossible one. Combat losses within the Great Crusade would, of course, dilute the Terran elements of the Legion even further, and it is likely that the Primarch and his inner circle used the most hotly contested war zones as a means of easily disposing of the most obstinate Imperial truth adherents. Eventually, Lorgar deemed his great work complete. A move that, unbeknownst to all outside his Legion, which represented his secret victory, he renamed the 17th Legion the Word Bearers. To the Imperium, this was a cosmetic change. It reflected what they believed the Legion's role to continue to be. For Lorgar, it was altogether different. It was now a statement in how he saw himself and his sons as an itinerant preacher, a holy man whose divine role was to bring the true faith of the galaxy to all the humans living within it. Faith in secret is never a satisfying thing, however. The believer is driven by a pathological need to spread dogma, to bring more under what they believe to be the truth. The Word Bearers and their Primarch now had a mission. Upon the broken worlds of the forefront of the Great Crusade, they beheld populations they perceived to be in need of spiritual sustenance. How could they so aflame with their surety of purpose, not pass such rights on to the newest worlds to enter the Imperial flock? So was it that the expeditionary fleets of the Word Bearers began to linger longer and longer upon worlds they had conquered? Chaplains, line-a-starties, converted Imperial iterators, all moved amongst the peoples of these war-torn planets, preaching the Emperor's Divinity. Millions upon millions were swayed to Lorgar's faith in this way, many by the Primarch himself, renowned by his sons for his own ministry, conducted in the manner of a priest of Colchis. He would walk amongst the people unarmored, clad only in a simple robe, his golden tattooed skin showing no signs of heat or cold, his smile warm and completely infectious. He rebuilt their homes, he broke bread with their families, he played with their children, all the while honey-ing their ears with tales of his Heavenly Father and his holy works. When Word Bearerships eventually hauled anchor, they left in their wake planets that were fully compliant and utterly loyal. Cities had been rebuilt on the ashes of those cast down, and within them were raised mighty cathedrals dedicated to the worship of the Emperor. These worlds undeniably prospered. They complied with every order Terra bade them heed, paid their tithes regularly and often in excess of the demands placed upon them. Their spiritual piety, however, did not go unnoticed. Word spread, as Word is want to do, of the religious worlds left in the wake of the 17th Legion. Rogue traders arriving on Word Bearer worlds were astonished, horrified even to be cajoled with naked religiosity. Imperial forces, Mechanicum, Astartes, or otherwise, that had served alongside the Legion could not ignore its overtly ritualistic behavior, nor ignore the words that had crept into the Legion's vocabulary, so redolent as they were of spiritualism, words like creed, apostate, ministry, heretic. Some openly opined that the iconoclasts of old had surrendered to the same superstitions that they had been created to annihilate. However, when such Word did eventually manage to work its way to the highest echelons of Imperial command within the Divisio Militaris, it provoked no rebuke. For such was the nature of the Emperor's great endeavor, and the sheer scale of it, that the actions of one Legion amongst the remaining 18 engendered little notice, at least initially. Owing to the vagaries of astropathic communication and the distances Word had to travel, simple warped travel chronological disparities as well, in many cases the actions of the 17th were dismissed as simple rumour. Absolute knowledge was rare, is rare. The Great Crusade had greater and more pressing concerns than curious practices that swirled around one of the Emperor's legions. However, starkly disturbing it may have been for the original eyewitnesses. The 17th were, additionally, far from the worst offenders when it came to ill behavior amongst the Legion as a startys, at least by commonly held Imperial standards. The 8th Legion Night Lords routinely flayed the skin of their enemies. The 12th Legion were simply unrepentant butchers. The War Council turned its attention elsewhere, and for a full century, the word-bearers converted unhindered, with no censure and no rebuke. Perhaps fittingly, it would be numbers, not words, that would be there on doing. Whatever the commitment of time it took to conquer a world, the rebuilding of one took far, far longer. This was why it was not a task to be left to a startys. The Imperial's logistics delegated reconstruction efforts to the Adeptus Administratum and the Mechanicum of Mars. The Legion as a startys were not to be burdened by being builders of roads and haps. They were to be the deliverer of worlds into the Imperial fold, not their administrators. Despite this remit, the word-bearers would never leave a newly compliant world until they were satisfied that the society they left behind was prosperous, secure, and most importantly, pious. Their pace of advance over this century slowed to a crawl, while other legions tore ahead of them by comparison. Divisio-Militaris officiants came to notice that their charts were displaying massive gulfs in Imperial volumes, and those gulfs were almost always centered around word-bearer-led expeditionary fleets. One legion alone may bring a hundred worlds into compliance, in the time it took the 17th to ming a mere handful. The Divisio, and ultimately the War Council itself, could not ignore the disparity any further, and in tandem with the reports they had been receiving for decades, dispatched agents to assay the worlds that the legion had left behind. There, they found damning and readily apparent proof. The word-bearers had not been slowed by intractable enemies, but by their own voluntary efforts. Every one of these agents reported the same findings, deeply loyal societies, but loyal on the basis of an entirely outlawed worship of the Emperor as a God. The news was deemed of sufficient importance to bring to the Emperor himself with all possible speed, yet he did not react immediately. Thanks to the records of the Imperial household, we know that he dispatched expeditions of his own, his most trusted Ligio-Castode's agents, to verify these reports. Perhaps he did not want to believe that his son could still be possessed of the delusions he had found him wandering in. Or perhaps... they were simply there to gather more evidence to compile final damning reports from the most scrupulous agents the Imperium could muster. The actions of Lorgar were in direct contravention to the Emperor's own wishes. The idea of a legion slaughtering those who opposed them on the basis of religious conviction was a stark echo of the holy wars that had so poisoned humanity throughout its entire history. It was a crusade in a literal term, spitting in the eye of the Emperor's ostensibly secular repurposing of the word. The very foundation of the Imperial truth was meant to liberate humanity from the yoke of superstition and ignorance, and yet here was his own son and his own legion, damning new Imperial citizens to the blinkered constriction of religious thought. Word 2 had reached Lorgar's brothers. The relationship between the 17th Primarch and his kin was never an especially warm one. He counted only one of their number, Magnus, as a close confidant. Sightlops of Prospero, having been his tutor for the first years, Lorgar had spent following his reunion with the Emperor. The others, to greater or lesser degrees, viewed him as something akin to the runt of the litter. Lorgar was by a long stretch the least marshal of the Emperor's sons. He took no pleasure in the violence his genetically crafted physique was capable of, almost always delegating actual combat to his legion, rarely taking to the front lines except for the most dire of circumstances. He was the Primarch that was most unsure of himself, the one least comfortable with his gifts, the one most prone to doubt, questioning, and introspection. He filled entire volumes with his musings upon all aspects of life, desperately seeking answers to questions far, far larger than even he. His brothers, notably Ferris Manus of the 10th Legion, Angron of the 12th, and Mortarion of the 14th, were often disgusted by their soulful and intellectually inclined brother, viewing him as contemptably weak, a squanderer of his heritage and a betrayer of the role the Imperium had cast him in, and indeed required of him. The Lorgar was preaching the Emperor's divinity, did nothing to him prove his standing in their eyes, merely becoming another facet that was the ultimate waste of him. The Emperor called upon the services of one such Primarch, the Lord of the 13th Legion Ultramarine's Rebut Gulliman, the Lord of a stellar realm of nearly 500 worlds. Gulliman and his Legion were exemplary for having brought thousands of planets into compliance and leaving in their wake thriving civilizations perfectly loyal to the tenets of the Imperial Truth. They bore many similarities to the 17th, but in many other ways were completely different. When these factors were undeniably the path the Emperor wished the word bearers to be set upon. The 13th were architects of incredibly loyal worlds, peerless in their devotion to the Imperium, and unmatched in their productivity within the fledgling Empire, but this never came at the cost of their pace of conquest. If anything, the Ultramarines were fueled by it. Records show that their victory tallies only increased in both quantity and rapidity as the number of worlds they conquered grew. Perhaps it was for this reason he chose the 13th Legion for what was to come. But if so, the subtleties of the choice appear to have been lost. The Emperor's task force, comprised of his custodians, a significant proportion of the Ultramarine's Legion, and led by his own will, entered orbit around the planet Kerr, a world brought into compliance by Lorgar himself decades beforehand. In the wake of the conquest, the Primarch and his Legion had constructed Monarchia, a so-called perfect city, a model of the cities of old cultures, Kerr having a markedly similar climate to the planet on which Lorgar had been raised. It was not the Legion's homeworld, nor the city of Lorgar's foundling, but it was a potent symbol, nevertheless. The Emperor's fleet annihilated it. In an orbital bombardment of purist indiscrimination, the city was raised to ash, the very soil turning to glass from the heat of Starship Lance strikes. The wordbearers, summoned by the distress calls from the world, assembled in their 100,000 strong entirety, only for the truth of the city's annihilators to be revealed to them. By command of pure psychic will, the entire Legion was forced to kneel before the Master of Mankind in contrition, their armor staining with the ashes of those they had once ministered to, and of that which they had built with their own hands. Witnessed by Robot Gulliman, and the Ultramarines, and the Ligio Costones, with tears upon his face, Lorgar once again prostrated himself before his father, but now in shame. The only Primarch in living record to have failed the Lord of Lightning so utterly. The Emperor declared that the 17th had too failed him and humanity. Never again must the Legion profess that he is divine, for he was no God, and would suffer no such worship in his Imperium. That Lorgar was a shattered man in the aftermath of Monarchia is without a doubt. Records show that the wordbearers fleet remained in orbit around Kerr for a substantial amount of time, even to the point that barbed communications threatening further censure were sent from the War Council. Just before this was escalated to the Emperor's attention once more, the fleet splintered and dove into the warp. In the years that followed, the 17th Legion burned a trail through the galaxy as rapidly as any of their cousins had. They seemed, on the surface, to be possessed with a penitent fury, a wholehearted desire to atone for their mistakes and make good on their censure. Relentless momentum typified these years. Some of the Legion's previous critics were for the most part silenced, and many now sang their praises. Satisfied that in their shaming by the Emperor's hand, the veil had been lifted from their eyes. All were, as history has made brutally apparent, utterly deceived. The truth of the matter is beyond horror, but it remains the truth nevertheless. Monarchia had broken Lorgar Aurelian beyond all repair. Everything he had dedicated himself to since his childhood days, the Golden God he believed in so ardently, was as dust upon the mind and as ash upon his tongue. Rebuke, cast out, cast down. The Primarch, had in his despair, cast about for anything that could bring him some measure of purpose in a world that had shorn him of it. Rudderless within a raging storm of his own wounded emotions and ego, Lorgar was counseled and consoled by his closest, Corpheyron and Erebus. From what history can gather? It is these two that carefully chose this moment to introduce into Lorgar's tortured mind the sliver of doubt. Doubt in the Emperor's Divinity. Doubt in the way of all things. And with this, an alternative. Was it not the virtue of the theologian too, on occasion, be compelled to reshape his worldview? Should the faith call for it? Should God be unworthy of worship? Or was it not possible that there were other divinities yet willing to accept it? Lorgar had of course done this before. It had been he who had swayed an entire world, cultures in its magnificence, away from the old faith. From polytheism to monotheism with the Emperor at its center. Well, yes, there was pain in the wastage of that effort. The struggles of the Primarch were not for naught. In the revelation that the Emperor had so painfully bestowed upon his son, could not a truth be discerned? Perhaps mused Phaeron and Erebus. This was confirmation, revelation in the veracity of the old faith. Enduring as it had for countless millennia, ancient beyond record. Was this the truth of the universe? We of the present era know this for what it truly is. The faith of Colchis was the worship of the Dark Pantheon. The so-called Chaos Gods. The greater intelligences of the Imitarium itself. Lorgar's acceptance of this was not without its violence. The Primarch wrote in his journals that he initially lashed out at his counselors, almost killing them for the supposed heresy they were attempting to enveigle into his brain. The issue, if one may present one's own opinions upon the matter, appears to be one of simple spiritual necessity. Lorgar Aurelion was a creature possessed of a pathological need to believe in a purpose. To believe in a being or beings higher than he. The supposed empiric coldness of the Imperial Truth was anathema to him. It is lightly he did not even feel horrified by it, because the concept of a universe bereft of divinity was simply impossible to him. Driven to serve, driven to submit, driven to believe, Lorgar would not have been capable of living without something other than himself to drive him forward. The Emperor, in his ineffable wisdom, had created the Primarchs to fulfill roles. This is about as close as objective historical fact as it is possible to ascertain. The mystery of Lorgar Aurelion is a troubling one to scholars for the apparent contradiction it represents. Why create a child incapable of believing in the ideology you seek to promulgate? One cannot spend too much time musing upon the Emperor's aims. Such a thing is folly of the most extreme sort. It is morose truth, but historical truth, that Lorgar's desire to submit himself to gods drove behaviors, inquiries, and ultimately a pilgrimage. That would lead to nothing less than utter damnation. Approximately forty-terrain years standard. The word-bearers tore out of the galaxy with the frenzy of the repentant. Their work was no longer the steady, almost gentle path of those who wished to build. It was as if the Imperial heralds had been born anew. For all the seventeenth now left in its wake were broken and bloodied worlds smashed into compliance with utter ruthlessness. In place of the considerate, open and eager Astartes that had preceded the censure, the seventeenth were now typified by those that served alongside them as possessing a stern comportment, a dour dedication to duty, and a resoluteness that bordered upon the self-annihilating. This was, of course, only visible to their contemporaries on the ground, to the Divisio Militaris, to the War Council, and to the Emperor. All that was discernible was a healthy uptick in the conquests and system reclamations delivered by the seventeenth Legion. In the grand arithmetic of the Great Crusade, the rebuke of the Legion had succeeded. The numbers were going up in reality. This was far from the truth. Lorgar, despite operating now under the watchful eye of a detachment of the Ligio Custodis themselves, had led an expedition from his Legion into the space known as the Great Eye, a massive warp storm in the Galactic North, in search of revelation, as spoken of in the most ancient of Colchisian religious texts. While the full record of that particular endeavor will wait for a later chronicle concerning the Primarch himself, it is safe to say that, based on all that was to transpire later, that Lorgar Aurelian found within the Eye the truth of primordial annihilation contained within the ancient dogmatica of his adopted homeworld. The second conversion of the word bearers was likely far less formidable than the first one had been. Every Legionary remembered the pain of Monarchia, and those newly raised were taught its enmity from the first days of their induction. What seeds of belief the word bearers now sowed to worlds they delivered to the Imperium was not of a God Emperor, but of the Eightfold Path, of the True Four, of Divinities, of Universal Annihilation, pledging themselves wholly to the Dark Pantheon of Chaos, the word bearers, over the course of nearly four Terran decades, sowed the seeds of Horace Lupercow's grand betrayal. While the Warmaster fired the first shot of the war, it was the word bearers, beyond any shadow of historical doubt, that were the first to fall from grace, and that they did so with total willingness, precisely their role within that rebellion. Well, those dread records must wait until a future day for the Telling. Until such a time, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com. 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