Word Bearers: The Omnibus

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As a result, Lorgar was determined to spread his own faith in the Emperor to every world that his Legion encountered in the course of the Great Crusade, a policy that would be in direct contradiction to the principles of the Imperial Truth. Yet Lorgar also was never respected by his brothers, largely because he was never comfortable with his own gifts and less prone to violence than they.

Fulgrim refused to leave his delights and return to the war effort, forcing the two sides to battle. As Lorgar held off Fulgrim, Zardu Layak uttered the True Name of the newly ascended Emperor's Children Daemon Primarch. For the Warhammer enthusiast, I can't imagine that this omnibus would not be loved for the content of the stories alone.The gravely wounded Guilliman escaped from Nuceria, unable to face or even fully comprehend what both of his brothers had become through their corruption by the Ruinous Powers. The World Eaters completed their purge of Nuceria until not one human life remained on the benighted world. Angron, now the very embodiment of the Blood God's Eight-Fold Path, shook the dust of the world from his feet and did not think of it again. Lorgar believed that he had "saved" his brother. In his mind it was the only way, for he alone had sought to save Angron from the implants that were killing him by degrees. Only Lorgar had found a way to free Angron from an existence of unrivalled agony, and he alone had acted to save his tormented brother. Now the Shadow Crusade could move on from Ultramar and rejoin Horus. The next target for the Traitors would be Terra itself. Those of the Covenant who came forward to arrest Lorgar were killed by his followers. The Covenant split into two factions, and a holy war of immense proportions erupted, eventually forcing the entire population of the world to choose a side. This war lasted six standard years, ending when Lorgar and his Godsworn supporters stormed the temple of the Covenant known as the Cathedral of Illumination in the heart of the City of Grey Flowers, the world's capital of Vharadesh, at which the Primarch had trained, killing the monks within and eliminating the heart of the conservative religious resistance to his ideas concerning the One God. Lorgar, now the Archpriest of the reformed Covenant, promised the masses that their new God would arrive on Colchis no more than a year after their victory and that they would know him only as "The Emperor." Kor Phaeron expressly explained to his adopted son that he remained a believer in the other gods of the Old Faith, but that he also believed that the One God was the most powerful of their number. This continued belief in the Old Ways, also maintained by many other Colchisians after the Godsworn's victory, would lay the foundation for the Word Bearers' eventual turn to Chaos. When the Emperor and the Great Crusade's Expeditionary Fleet reached Colchis, and He descended with Magnus the Red at His side, there could be no doubt in Lorgar's mind that he knelt before his god. Beside him a planet knelt and believed the same. Lorgar saw this preordained meeting as the confirmation of his many visions and prophecies, and so, the Primarch and his people wholeheartedly embraced the ruler of the Imperium as their promised messiah and God-Emperor.

Lorgar grew to maturity upon the planet Colchis, a Feudal World under the sway of a single, all-powerful religious caste known as the Covenant. The priests of this primitive faith preached that one day, a supreme being would come to lead them into a new age. Lorgar was raised within the Covenant's greatest temple, learning all its secret rites and texts and compiling a vast body of his own wisdom that came to be known as "the Word."

Primarchs

The Word Bearers are among the most skilled practitioners of all the Traitor Legions in the dark art of summoning and binding Daemons to suitable hosts – after all, Argel Tal and the Gal Vorbak were the first examples of this practice during the Horus Heresy, so it’s fair to say that the Legion set something of a precedent in the field of possession! The omnibus also introduces somebody I consider to be the coolest character I've read so far, Burias Drak'Shal. Burias is a bloodthirsty madman who is possessed by a demon. He can transform into this demon at will to cause mass bloodshed. The demon however can easily take over Burias and cause him to lose command of his own body... maybe for eternity. Burias even gets his own little short story at the end of the omnibus to fully flesh out his rise and fall. In a way, the book is just as much about Burias as it is Marduk. In the end, Kor Phaeron had been defeated when Ultramarines reinforcements from Macragge translated from the Warp above Calth and drove the Word Bearers Astartes from the surface of Calth. Kor Phaeron retreated all the way to the Maelstrom, a turbulent Warp rift much like the far larger Eye of Terror where the Immaterium of Chaos seeped through into the material realm of the universe. Rhino • Predator • Infernal Relic Predator • Vindicator • Land Raider • Land Raider Proteus • Land Raider Achilles • Land Raider Hades Diabolus • Relic Sicaran • Sicaran Venator • Maulerfiend • Forgefiend • Defiler • Brass Scorpion • Blood Slaughterer • Decimator • Blight Drone • Kytan • Plague Hulk • Venomcrawler • Whirlwind Scorpius Vox Dominus — Carrion-class. An extremely huge ship, commanded by Dark Apostle Nahren. Lost in the warp for a few seconds while most of the 3rd host were aboard, and returned to real space with all the ship's crew dead and with the Garden of Nurgle taken root on the ship. [20]

The change of the XVII th Legion's soul took decades to complete. A large Legion even before it was reunited with its Primarch, Lorgar was not fool enough to attempt such a project in one stage. The golden Primarch had a genius for speaking to men's hearts, and his campaigns to win those hearts were as subtle and thorough as those fought by the likes of Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children and Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines on the battlefield. Bit by bit, the faith in the Emperor's divinity was spread from brother to brother. The Chaplains, Lorgar's new vanguard of faith later copied by all of the other Legions following the Council of Nikaea, subtly altered the counsel they gave their brothers. New structures of organisation sprang up beside the old military hierarchy; fraternities that seemed to have much in common with those of other Space Marine Legions but, in truth, were devices for the propagation of the faith through the ranks of the XVII th Legion. The echo of this grand, yet slow, conversion can be seen in the steps by which Lorgar would later corrupt half of the other Legions, and pull the Imperium into the darkness from which he had once sought to raise it. It might seem strange that warriors who had fought to cast down gods would embrace those same beliefs, but this ignores the basic nature of the fanatic. At their core they need a cause around which to build their world. What that cause is can be always be easily changed, so long as the heart of its fire fills them. In their hearts the Astartes of the XVII th Legion fell into the grasps of religion because part of them had always wanted to, part of them wanted there to be more to belief than mere rationality.

Adepta Sororitas

The Word Bearers are the scions of the Primarch Lorgar, the Dark Apostle of Chaos and first of the Primarchs to be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. The Word Bearers sought a being worthy of their veneration, but when the Emperor denounced such practises during the Great Crusade, they turned to the Warp and the Powers of Chaos within. Stories included in this omnibus Dark Apostle, Dark Creed, Dark Disciple, Torment (Short Story), Vox Dominus (Short Story), and Dark Heart(Short Story). There are six other Prayers to the Dark Gods to choose from and an additional prayer dedicated to each of the four Chaos Gods if your Dark Apostle bears their mark. One example is Omen of Potency, which will turn your Dark Apostle into a frenzied killing machine! The Word Bearers are one of the nine First Founding Space Marine Legions that betrayed the Emperor of Mankind during the Horus Heresy. They became Chaos Space Marines, their allegiance pledged to their Daemon Primarch Lorgar and to Chaos Undivided. The Word Bearers were also the first Space Marine Legion to be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos many solar decades before their counterparts turned to the service of the Dark Gods.

The Legion does not venerate any single Chaos God, but instead draws strength from multiple sources, enacting vile pacts and inviting possession by any power they feel will serve the Word. The Legion remains to this day a relatively coherent grouping unlike many of the other Traitor Legions, structured after the fashion of a vast, hierarchical religion. The Word Bearers are renowned for the demagogues who rise within their ranks, their oratory able to inspire entire populations to overthrow the oppressive yoke of the Imperium. The most famous of these is Erebus, who became the first of the Dark Apostles – a rank now commonplace among the Traitor Legions* and especially within the Word Bearers. greatest extent of their ire. Jealous of the favour they believed the Emperor to have unjustly shown Roboute Guilliman's Legion, the Word Bearers set in motion plans laid down many Terran years before. At Calth, a world in the Ultramarines' domain of Ultramar, the full fury of the Word Bearers was unleashed, and it was only after much death and destruction that the Legion was repulsed.Warhammer Community: Andy Clark's Bearers of the Word – Article One (Posted on 19/02/2017) (Last accessed on 15 July 2020) It was a pattern they repeated across Ancient Terra in the last days of the Unification Wars, earning themselves a second name. Few spoke of the XVII th Legion as the Imperial Heralds. To their brother Legions and the people of the newborn Imperium, they were the Iconoclasts. Alone of all of the Traitor Legions, the Word Bearers field Chaplains, called Dark Apostles, though these Arch-heretics preach not the glory of the Emperor but of the Ruinous Powers. One of the greatest perils the Word Bearers present to the Imperium is the taint they so actively seek to spread. While most other Traitor Legions fight for their own ends or simply to spill blood, the Word Bearers continue the crusade to unite the Materium and the Warp their Primarch began in the aftermath of the Emperor's censure so long ago. an awakening. The Emperor, who the Primarch had counted a god, had denounced his own divinity, denying the tenets of the faith in which Lorgar had been raised.