Did Lorgar not get the memo?

[Wade Garrett]

Just to reiterate:

Lorgar got chastised for his worship, meanwhile the Space Wolves believe that the AllFather will take them Uppland if they die in battle in his service, and the Tech Priests of Mars are throwing up the sign of the Cog to respect the Omnissiah, chosen Avatar of the Machine God.

 

It's that special way Emps blends blatant hypocrisy with declarations of moral superiority that make me a fan of Chaos.

[Rain]

That's the thing about Lorgar that made me like The First Heretic so much. He cared, he really cared. Lorgar genuinely wanted to find the truth and to enlighten the people of the Imperium to it, and to make the world a better place essentially. Most the primarchs only cared about conquest and personal glory, it was really only Lorgan and Alpharius that cared at all about the bigger picture, and Alpharius was a cynic, Lorgar initially had a wide eyed enthusiasm you just have to feel some empathy for.

[Legatus]

That's the thing about Lorgar that made me like The First Heretic so much. He cared, he really cared. Lorgar genuinely wanted to find the truth and to enlighten the people of the Imperium to it, and to make the world a better place essentially.

Indeed. And isn't that what all fanatic religious crusaders want?

"The Progress of the Word Bearers was slow, but complete. None escaped the crozius or the bolter. Entire worlds were scoured of teh living for their refusal to submit to the will of the Emperor. When the Emperor took note of Lorgar's slow advance across the stars, he personally reproached his Primarch. He informed Lorgar that his purpose was not for faith, but for battle. The true mission of the Space Marines was to conquer and unify the galaxy under the banner of the Imperium, not waste precious time in vast displays of fealty and piety."

(3rd Edition Index Astartes Word Bearers)

Ah, but then that was the Lorgar of the 2nd and 3rd Edition. You probably refer to the Horus Heresy Lorgar. That's a different guy.

[Rain]

Yeah. That's why I explicitly mentioned the HH book whose version of the character I was referring to. I've read the IA articles, I know that the fluff has changed in both tone and substance since then, but generally speaking I would assume that the most current stuff is "canon" however you want to think of that. Even then, I'm sure Lorgar still did that, all of the primarchs did when all was said and done, but most did only that, and at a faster and more indiscriminate rate.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

Just to reiterate:

Lorgar got chastised for his worship, meanwhile the Space Wolves believe that the AllFather will take them Uppland if they die in battle in his service, and the Tech Priests of Mars are throwing up the sign of the Cog to respect the Omnissiah, chosen Avatar of the Machine God.

 

It's that special way Emps blends blatant hypocrisy with declarations of moral superiority that make me a fan of Chaos.

 

I would point out the Wolves kept their beliefs to themselves, where the Word Bearers forced it on everybody they came across.

 

that is a subtle but very important difference.

 

WLK

[yhta]

Just to reiterate:

Lorgar got chastised for his worship, meanwhile the Space Wolves believe that the AllFather will take them Uppland if they die in battle in his service, and the Tech Priests of Mars are throwing up the sign of the Cog to respect the Omnissiah, chosen Avatar of the Machine God.

 

It's that special way Emps blends blatant hypocrisy with declarations of moral superiority that make me a fan of Chaos.

 

I would point out the Wolves kept their beliefs to themselves, where the Word Bearers forced it on everybody they came across.

 

that is a subtle but very important difference.

 

WLK

 

like the way they still have their rune priest because they belive that their powers are from fenrir? yeah i can see why they kept from themselves

 

legatus:kind of. the diferent is like the crusaders use zeal and fury and lorgar is more naive in a really twist sense of the world:he really belive that people need faith to stand in the galaxy. also look the emperor. is really powerful and supiror to mankind in every sense of the world. and he alredy lie before. when lorgar find everything he belive destroy in douche way. he went in kor phaeron is close friend. and as far we know in almost every primarch have a closed conections that shaped their codes. so for me the acts of lorgar have sense

[Ubermensch Commander]

Oh really? Has it not been pointed out that the Emperor failed to mention anything on his stance while he was with Lorgar on Colchis? Above the board with glowing neon lights indeed.

 

A 3 day indulgence of a wayward son on his home planet, before taking Lorgar to learn the Imperial Truth does not excuse decades of willful blindness and ignoring the personal refutation of divinity by a father, liege lord, and "god." BTW, "No means Yes" has never been acceptable, in any situation. The fault lies SOLELY on the head of Lorgar to ignore what each and every other Primarch understood.

 

Also. IIRC Lorgar was already looking into the Dark Gods (as the great entities of the Warp with Magnus) before Kor Phaeron and Erebus told him that they had let the old faith live. So when they do tell him, he uses his mind of a primarch and puts two and two together and decides that it's worth looking into.

 

Finally, I'm kind of tired of people saying that Lorgar being upset over the Emperor's censure is childish. Again and again it has been said this is what Lorgar dedicated his entire life to. He lived and breathed his faith in the Emperor and raised his legion to do the same. He took so much extra time and effort into putting that same faith into the worlds he conquered that he got into the trouble at all. Don't dismiss that out of hand; anyone who's ever mastered any art knows that it requires time and dedication to make something truly worthy and Lorgar cared enough about the Emperor that he turned every single world he conquered into a work of art, many many masterpieces of faith and each and every one was dedicated not to himself, but to the master of mankind.

 

And how does the Emperor respond? With brute force and pure humiliation. This is a primarch, who has spent his entire life creating cities, worlds and even entire star systems with a care that no-one else could come close to, and the person he dedicated it all to tells him it means nothing.

 

Presuming that extra time and effort spent presumes was worthwhile. Yet in the eyes of the Emperor tt was not, more importantly, nor was it asked of Lorgar. If a boss requests a car be made, and instead the builder goes grossly over the deadline to make modern art out of the pieces of the car, they should rightfully be criticized.

Add on the fact that Lorgar was doing PRECISELY the OPPOSITE of what the Emperor wanted, ignoring the message promulgate throughout the Imperium, and it becomes rather like making modern art by destroying the completed car.

Lorgar was not given the Emperor's gene-crafted soldiers or the Imperium's resources to be spent on those pursuits, especially when those pursuits got in the way his appointed mission. If Lorgar truly lived and breathed faith in the Emperor, he should have heeded the Emperor's decrees and desires, not his own psychotic need to worship something.

 

" With a care no else could close to" False. Again, ignoring the presumption that such "care" was appropriate or worthwhile, other Primarchs also took care with the worlds they conquered. Guilliman left exemplar worlds in hiswake, leaving each one sustainable and loyal in a much shorter time. Magnus stopped to gather knowledge on each conquest he led, preserving information and limiting the destruction if things were deemed worthwhile. Vulkan is inferred to have done so as well, through descriptions in the IA and HH books, though we lack explicit quotations due to low screen time in the current novels.[/b]

 

And he decides its worth looking into...on the words of liars. Very well. But upon looking into it, and seeing the Chaos Gods violate all the tenets of truth and uplifting humanity he claims to value, he should have turned elsewhere. But again, rather like his unwillingness to listen and obey the Emperor demonstrated the lie of his claims to devotion, so too does his acceptance of the Chaos Gods give a lie to his claims of being a seeker of truth.

 

To top it all off, the main concern the Emperor has is not that he's been leaving a vital element out or that he's failed to adequately protect the places he's built up. No, that's not what really matters. The issue is that he's not going fast enough. The Emperor has the greatest fighting force in the galaxy. There is truly nothing that can resist the Legions, so the Imperium can spend as much time as it wants conquering the Milky Way. But despite that, the master of mankind has decreed that his most dedicated follower must speed things up and he must be humiliated in the process. Why? Because the Emperor can, that's why.

 

Yes, yes he can because he is Lorgar's liege and gave Lorgar all that power for a purpose and instead Lorgar works at cross purposes to it. When someone is wasting resources doing the opposite of what was asked of them them they most certainly should be called on it. Now take into account the entire fate of the Human race hangs in the balance and suddenly it becomes even more dire.

 

The humiliation was necessitated because NOTHING ELSE WORKED.

The orators and educators bringing the Imperial Truth aboard the expedition fleets did not get through to Lorgar. His studies on Terra remained insufficient to induct him into what the Emperor wanted. Even the PERSONAL REFUTATION of divinity did not suffice.

After all of that it is not the Emperor's fault Lorgar did not understand or act properly. The blame lay solely at the feet of Lorgar.

 

Devotion and loyalty does not matter much if you act in opposition to their desires of that veneration nor does it excuse the betrayal and murder of your brethren. If Lorgar had been truly faithful and truly devoted he would have LISTENED to what the object of his veneration said. A samurai or knight must serve their liege lord as a general must listen to their superiors and a priest must obey the scriptures of their god. Lorgar failed to do these things, proving the hollow lie behind his indignation.

Even if he somehow missed the memo the rest of the galaxy, including his brothers, received such faith and veneration would have allowed him to change his ways. But again, he crumples like a house of cards after one chastisement.

 

So yeah, Lorgar is totally weak and pathetic. He's the real moron here, right? :)

 

Ignoring the words of an empire for decades to centuries, refusing to listen to the god you claim to be devoted to, murdering your brothers while listening to those that lied to you, and then betraying any pretense of being a "seeker of truth" or "caring for mankind" by following entities that use mortals as playthings and demand blood sacrifice without so much as a second glance.

 

Lorgar revealed himself to be a delusional hypocrite, claiming love of humanity and truth yet betraying both claims by throwing humanity under the bus when he could worship something and be patted on the head for it. Good qualifiers for the "weak and pathetic" handle.

[Wade Garrett]

Ignoring the words of an empire for decades to centuries, refusing to listen to the god you claim to be devoted to, murdering your brothers while listening to those that lied to you, and then betraying any pretense of being a "seeker of truth" or "caring for mankind" by following entities that use mortals as playthings and demand blood sacrifice without so much as a second glance.

 

Yes, those awful Chaos gods, launching their galaxy spanning war that killed BILLIONS while spreading false beliefs that damn an entire civilization to being meat for the Warp beasts. Oh, wait. That's a description of what the Emperor was doing during the Great Crusade. But hey, he warbled on and on about how he was building an empire, not for himself, but for all mankind. The fact that he will rule said empire from his giant palace that is visible from MARS is a mere coincidence, I'm sure. Kor Phereon and Erebus lied to Lorgar his whole life? WRONG! The Emperor was the one who lied, not just to the Primarchs, but to the entire human race, about the nature of the universe and the existence of the Chaos gods. But of course, Emps had some vague and mysterious reasons, which he has not seen fit to reveal to anyone else, but we can take his word for it, because the word of a would be galactic conqueror should always be taken at face value. And his armor is shiny!

 

Speaking of Mars...whilst we castigate the Word Bearers for their "religious pogroms" (according to Collected Visions, which I personally am sceptical of, considering how they got the Battle of Calth and the Fall of Prospero wrong) what do we call it, when, say, the Crusade-era Dies Irae levels an entire planet because it was commanded of them by the Omnissiah? Yes, Machine Cult, I am the avatar of your Machine God...by the way Lorgar, to punish you for worshipping me as a god I am going to have the Ultramarines orbitally bombard the planet of Khur back to the Stone Age.

 

Mixed messages much, Emps?

[Legatus]

The main purpose of the Great Crusade was to liberate the human worlds that had been isloated during the Age of Strife and were now under Chaos or alien oppression, and to unite all of the human worlds into a united Empire, so they no longer would stand alone against invaders.

"Warp travel became increasingly difficult as the horror-torn dreams of Slaanesh became more intense. (...)

As a result, space travel became almost impossible, and many worlds were isolated for long periods of time. Human society broke apart and Earth was cut off from the rest of the galaxy altogether. This was the Age of Strife in human history - an age of anarchy and madness which even the New Man was powerless to prevent. (...)

The whole structure of the warp was affected by the growth of the Chaos Powers, so that everywhere in the galaxy the psychic energies embodied by the Chaos Powers began to corrupt the natural energies of living things. While Earth was cut off by warp storms it was also protected from the malefic influences of Chaos which were already corrupting much of the human population of the galaxy - both in mind and in body.

It was, as the New Man knew, only a temporary respite. Once Slaanesh awoke, the incredible disturbance to the warp would disrupt its already enfeebled flow. (...)

Over a hundred years before the waking of Slaanesh, the Emperor sought to establish his rule over the Earth and began to mould its people into a loyal army. He started to plan the re-conquest of the galaxy in anticipation of the dispersal of the warp storms around the planet."

(Realms of Chaos - The Lost and the Damned, p. 177)

 

"By the time that the warp storms were ended, the Space Marines and other Imperial forces were ready to begin their reconquest of the galaxy. The forces of Chaos were already strong, and many human worlds had been taken over by Chaos Cultists or other aliens. It was a long hard struggle, but with every victory the Imperium grew stronger as new warriors joined the Great Crusade.

(...)

With the help of the Primarchs the Great Crusade swept across the galaxy. Humanity rose to the task of rebuilding its ancient heritage, and everywhere the alien oppressor was defeated and driven out. Chaos retreaited to its own realm, to the zones of warp-real space overlap such as the Eye of Terror."

(Realms of Chaos - The Lost and the Damned, p. 178)

 

 

Edit:

The Emperor was the one who lied, not just to the Primarchs, but to the entire human race, about the nature of the universe and the existence of the Chaos gods. But of course, Emps had some vague and mysterious reasons, which he has not seen fit to reveal to anyone else

Are you talkign in character now? Because while the Emperor's decision to hide the existance of the Chaos Gods may be incomprehensible to a contemporary of the Great Crusade, we as informed outsiders should know why he did it. We know, or at least have a good idea, of how Chaos works. How better to fight space gods who thrive on worship, and who can gain dominance over someone based on his thoughts and dreams alone, than through ignorance?

[Wade Garrett]

But the Chaos gods don't feed on worship, they feed on rage, ecstacy, ambition, and despair of every living thing as it resonates in the Warp. While it's true that directly worshipping, say, Khorne will cause you to feel rage more often and so feed him more, the rage felt by non Khorne worshippers is likewise an offering unto him. ('Cept for things like Pariahs, of course).

 

And going by the Heresy novels, the Emperor "liberated" the various worlds from the yoke of xenos and Chaos oppression by placing them under the yoke of Imperial oppression...in the case of worlds like the interex, Diasporex, and the "false" Imperium, not necessarily to the betterment of the inhabitants. Sure, there were some wars that needed to be fought (the Laer, the Nurthene, the psyker worms with lighting powers the War Hounds faced) but there were many more that were a lot less "White hat good guy Imperium rides in to save the day", heck, look at the Megarachnids in Horus Rising. We have a world with few useful resources wrapped in a perpetual storm, crawling with giant killer bugs....drop Astartes from three different Legions on and conquer that thing, no matter the cost! FOR THE EMPEROR!

[Legatus]

The war against the Interex could have been avoided. Horus had no intention to fight them. The war was initiated by an already corrupted Erebus.

 

Upon contact with the "false Imperium", the Lunar Wolves had extended a hand in friendship two times. And two times the false Imperium had responded with violence. It was then that the Lunar Wolves declared war against them.

 

The Diasporex' misfortune was that their fleets were based within the borders of the Imperium that had just been established when the Iron Hands had incorporated the local worlds into the Imperial fold. The human population of the Diasporex was offered to join the Imperium, but the Imperium would not incorporate alien elements.

 

From what I can gather about the Megarachnids, the Emperor's Children had sent an expeditionary force to the planet which then went missing. For one thing this can be seen as a hostile act and merits a response. But it also seems that the Emperor's Children saw it as a matter of pride to rescue/avenge their attacked brethren.

 

In most of the cases mentioned above, you can hardly blame the Emperor. The Lunar Wolves behaved diplomatically in two of the cases, but war was provoked by the opposition or by an agend of Chaos. The Emperor's Children acted out of hurt pride in another. Perhaps a better arrangement could have been reached with the diasporex.

 

 

But the Chaos gods don't feed on worship, they feed on rage, ecstacy, ambition, and despair of every living thing as it resonates in the Warp. While it's true that directly worshipping, say, Khorne will cause you to feel rage more often and so feed him more, the rage felt by non Khorne worshippers is likewise an offering unto him. ('Cept for things like Pariahs, of course).

For one thing, the 4th Edition Codex Chaos Space Marines does mention that souls of died followers are absorbed by the Chaos Gods (4e C:CSM, p. 8). And another thing is that a normal human being will be violent in only some stages during his life, while a follower of Khorne will be violent every day of his life.

[Wade Garrett]

While Horus wanted to make peace with the Interex, most of the Luna Wolves officers were chomping at the bit to go to war with them, most vocally (not yet Chaos corrupted) Abaddon. Tellingly, they couched most of their objections to Horus's stance in terms of "The Emperor wouldn't want us negotiating with a bunch of filthy xenos!" And my understanding was that the Luna Wolves diplomacy with the "False" Imperium consisted of repeated attempts to get them to surrender their status as an independent power and be absorbed by the Emperor's Imperium and I need to find some better terminology or this whole post will sound like a Zen koan.

 

Admittedly, this one could go either way, but I believe that Sejanus probably got his Astartes on and told them in no uncertain terms that they could either kneel or be knelt, and violence followed. Of course it's possible that the Fake Emperor simply twirled his mustache and had his bodyguards murder the diplomat in cold blood, we lack enough information to say for sure one way or another.

 

I will admit that there is some inconsistency here...the Word Bearers are described as slaughtering an entire planetary population because they spliced alien DNA into their genes at some points in the past (and their operations are supported by the Custodians who are watch dogging their fleet, so it isn't a case of them indulging in mass murder because they are deranged religous fanatics), but in Fulgrim the notion of making the Laer an Imperial protectorate is bandied about, because the Administratum feels conquering them outright might cost too much blood and treasure. Fulgrim takes this as a personal insult and vows the Emperor's Children will crush them in a month, which really makes me glad the Emperor put the prosecution of a galaxy wide war in the hands of men with sound judgement.

 

Granted, in this case Fulgrim's egotistical posturing was the right course of action due to the Laer being a society of Slaanesh worshippers, but still.

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

A 3 day indulgence of a wayward son on his home planet, before taking Lorgar to learn the Imperial Truth does not excuse decades of willful blindness and ignoring the personal refutation of divinity by a father, liege lord, and "god." BTW, "No means Yes" has never been acceptable, in any situation. The fault lies SOLELY on the head of Lorgar to ignore what each and every other Primarch understood.

 

Really? Don't be so hasty as to dismiss that 'three day trip' - that means he had three whole days to say "This is nice and all but I'm not a god. Sorry." It's not like he couldn't have handled whatever the result was then. But he failed to do so. So Lorgar, who has had his fair share of religious experience, goes and starts conquering the galaxy. At which point the other Imperials start to say things like "There are no gods", "Atheism is the Imperial Truth", etc, Lorgar simply treats that as a particularly large sect of the worship of the Emperor. A similar example is the division between Catholicism and Protestantism in the real world - both are labelled Christian despite having very different viewpoints. As a result Lorgar doesn't see himself at odds in beliefs with the other Primarchs and Imperials, simply different. If he had been wrong, why hadn't the Emperor told him so on day 1?

 

 

 

 

Presuming that extra time and effort spent presumes was worthwhile. Yet in the eyes of the Emperor tt was not, more importantly, nor was it asked of Lorgar. If a boss requests a car be made, and instead the builder goes grossly over the deadline to make modern art out of the pieces of the car, they should rightfully be criticized.

Add on the fact that Lorgar was doing PRECISELY the OPPOSITE of what the Emperor wanted, ignoring the message promulgate throughout the Imperium, and it becomes rather like making modern art by destroying the completed car.

Lorgar was not given the Emperor's gene-crafted soldiers or the Imperium's resources to be spent on those pursuits, especially when those pursuits got in the way his appointed mission. If Lorgar truly lived and breathed faith in the Emperor, he should have heeded the Emperor's decrees and desires, not his own psychotic need to worship something.

 

But he was doing exactly what the Emperor told him to do. He was conquering the galaxy alongside his brothers. Look at Angron. All that was left in his wake were shells of planets, and in the process many astartes were lost. The World Eaters were a huge drain on the Imperium's resources, and the Word Bearers were giving back with every world they took. So who gets censured? The one who's making the best product there is. Surely you cannot fault Lorgar for trying to do the very best for the Imperium.

 

Do you not realize that he thought he was spreading the Imperial truth? Do you not realize that Lorgar was doing this for the Emperor? It may not have been what the Emperor wanted, but the Emperor had failed to make that clear.

 

 

" With a care no else could close to" False. Again, ignoring the presumption that such "care" was appropriate or worthwhile, other Primarchs also took care with the worlds they conquered. Guilliman left exemplar worlds in hiswake, leaving each one sustainable and loyal in a much shorter time. Magnus stopped to gather knowledge on each conquest he led, preserving information and limiting the destruction if things were deemed worthwhile. Vulkan is inferred to have done so as well, through descriptions in the IA and HH books, though we lack explicit quotations due to low screen time in the current novels.[/b]

 

See my above post. I'm not saying the other primarchs didn't put effort into rebuilding their conquered worlds, I'm saying that they didn't devote all their time and energy into building up the Imperium.

 

 

And he decides its worth looking into...on the words of liars. Very well. But upon looking into it, and seeing the Chaos Gods violate all the tenets of truth and uplifting humanity he claims to value, he should have turned elsewhere. But again, rather like his unwillingness to listen and obey the Emperor demonstrated the lie of his claims to devotion, so too does his acceptance of the Chaos Gods give a lie to his claims of being a seeker of truth.

 

Really? The Chaos Gods violate all tenets of truth? Truth according to the Emperor, which we already know is a lie. The Emperor claimed there were no gods in the universe. He lied. The Chaos Gods never hid their nature, did they? Remember in TFH, when it is asked whether or not the Chaos Gods were worth worshiping? The response was simply that that was a question worth asking.

 

Lorgar himself was not sure of the worthiness of the Dark Gods. But they were the truth. Their very existence was in direct opposition to what the Emperor claimed, and they didn't need to lie to convince Lorgar of that.

 

 

 

Yes, yes he can because he is Lorgar's liege and gave Lorgar all that power for a purpose and instead Lorgar works at cross purposes to it. When someone is wasting resources doing the opposite of what was asked of them them they most certainly should be called on it. Now take into account the entire fate of the Human race hangs in the balance and suddenly it becomes even more dire.

 

The humiliation was necessitated because NOTHING ELSE WORKED.

The orators and educators bringing the Imperial Truth aboard the expedition fleets did not get through to Lorgar. His studies on Terra remained insufficient to induct him into what the Emperor wanted. Even the PERSONAL REFUTATION of divinity did not suffice.

After all of that it is not the Emperor's fault Lorgar did not understand or act properly. The blame lay solely at the feet of Lorgar.

 

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

 

The first and second points have already been addressed. The third point - the personal refutation of divinity - happened... when?

 

Devotion and loyalty does not matter much if you act in opposition to their desires of that veneration nor does it excuse the betrayal and murder of your brethren. If Lorgar had been truly faithful and truly devoted he would have LISTENED to what the object of his veneration said. A samurai or knight must serve their liege lord as a general must listen to their superiors and a priest must obey the scriptures of their god. Lorgar failed to do these things, proving the hollow lie behind his indignation.

Even if he somehow missed the memo the rest of the galaxy, including his brothers, received such faith and veneration would have allowed him to change his ways. But again, he crumples like a house of cards after one chastisement.

 

Did he not listen? He 'crumples like a stack of cards' because again, everything he had strived for was worthless. Imagine yourself from the future, or your father, or whoever you look up to, coming to you, forcing you to kneel before someone you hate, and tell you that your every effort had been in the name of a falsehood. And this could have all been avoided had that figure mentioned it in the very beginning.

 

Tell me you wouldn't break. And tell me that you would not search for something else to believe in, if only briefly enough to distract you and let you get past the pain so that you can get on with life.

 

The only catch is, Lorgar actually found gods to believe in.

 

 

 

Ignoring the words of an empire for decades to centuries, refusing to listen to the god you claim to be devoted to, murdering your brothers while listening to those that lied to you, and then betraying any pretense of being a "seeker of truth" or "caring for mankind" by following entities that use mortals as playthings and demand blood sacrifice without so much as a second glance.

 

Lorgar revealed himself to be a delusional hypocrite, claiming love of humanity and truth yet betraying both claims by throwing humanity under the bus when he could worship something and be patted on the head for it. Good qualifiers for the "weak and pathetic" handle.

He did love humanity and truth. That doesn't mean he appreciated compassion or kindness. The Ultramarines loved humanity and truth and killed billions in the name of a liar. At least Lorgar thought for himself.

[Kol Saresk]

To be honest, I share a some of Thirst's opinion. Okay, most. Look at everything we have. Literally, everything in all of its tiny vastness. The Emperor had plenty of time to tell Lorgar to stop. Hurting his sons' feelings wasn't exactly at the top of his list. After all, there was the Nikea Edict that told Magnus to stop with the sorcery. So the reality is that the Emperor didn't care that Lorgar worshiped as a god. On one condition, he conquered the universe. The one main complaint the Emperor had when he censured Lorgar wasn't the worship, it was the fact that Lorgar was too slow. The empire wasn't being built fast enough. The reason the worship was censured was because it was the reason that Lorgar and his Legion was conquering so slow. Even the Thunder Warriors in the Outcast Dead agreed on one thing that has been pointed out across the entire Horus Heresy series from John Grammaticus to the Daemon Ingethel: the Emperor is a bloodthirsty Tyrant who only cares about forcing the whole of Humanity under his rule. Granted, it's supposedly for the greater purpose of protecting Humanity and bringing it into ascendance and all that. But the way he wanted to do it required a scalpel to the Thunder Warriors' hammer. That scalpel was the Astartes. And why did he need a scalpel? Because instead of bending a planet to his will through mass murder, this time he needed something that would strike fast and hard and destroy the government, but leave the people relatively intact. More specifically, leave the human race relatively intact already spread out across the stars so he wouldn't have to go through the problem of recolonization.

 

But, he had the Administratum to take care the rebuilding process. No, the Astartes were meant only for war. And as long as they fought his war, he didn't care what they did. He didn't care what the Imperium did. Why do you think the Cult of the Lectitio Divinatus was never extinguished, never purged like the cults found on other words? Because it served his purpose. It bound Humanity to him. So no, he didn't censure Lorgar because of atheism. He didn't censure him because he believed that religion made him weak. That simple fact was proven wrong by the fact that the Word Bearers started moving at a faster race than any other Legion and went further and further, pushing the boundaries farther than even the Ultramarines had. Probably why there was such an extensive rebuild plan presented in Aurelian. No, it wasn't because religion made him weak, it was because religion made Lorgar slow. Where some Legions would take enough time on a new planet to allow the Administratum to take root and began the integration into the Imperium, the Word Bearers were doing so much more. They were staying and educating and converting the population of each new world. This process most likely involved years. Those were years in which an entire Legion was spending its time not doing its job, not waging war, not bringing more and more new worlds under the Emperor's banner. Lorgar wasn't censured for his religion. He was censured because he wasn't doing the job the Emperor made him for.

[Legatus]

While Horus wanted to make peace with the Interex, most of the Luna Wolves officers were chomping at the bit to go to war with them, most vocally (not yet Chaos corrupted) Abaddon. Tellingly, they couched most of their objections to Horus's stance in terms of "The Emperor wouldn't want us negotiating with a bunch of filthy xenos!" And my understanding was that the Luna Wolves diplomacy with the "False" Imperium consisted of repeated attempts to get them to surrender their status as an independent power and be absorbed by the Emperor's Imperium and I need to find some better terminology or this whole post will sound like a Zen koan.

 

Admittedly, this one could go either way, but I believe that Sejanus probably got his Astartes on and told them in no uncertain terms that they could either kneel or be knelt, and violence followed. Of course it's possible that the Fake Emperor simply twirled his mustache and had his bodyguards murder the diplomat in cold blood, we lack enough information to say for sure one way or another.

In the case of the Interex, the officiers of the Luna Wolves calling for war argued that the Interex were too opposed to the core tenets of the Imperial culture as declared by the Emperor. But then Horus too argued that his decision to not attack them, or at least to wait and learn more about them first, was in the best interest of what the Emperor would expect of him.

 

In the case of the false Emperor, he too expected the Luna Wolves and their civilisation to join his human Imperium. And it just so happened that when those terms were exchanged, it was a small party of Luna Wolves standing before the false Emperor in his realm, so the false Emperor had them killed for the outrageous suggestion that it was him that should join the terran based Imperium. If the roles had been reversed, the Luna Wolves might have drawn first blood, who knows. In Horus Rising, it is the false Emperor who makes the first act of aggression. He demands the Luna Wolves' fealty, and when the small envoy party had "not offered the correct fealty" and indelicately "suggested there might actually be another Emperor", he had them killed.

 

 

If you think of further examples of ruthless acts of the Primarchs, consider this: Would Dorn, Sanguinius or Guilliman have acted the same if they had been in their place? And if not, should it then be considered a fault of the Emperor for how the Primarchs in question dealt with the situation? Is it the fault of the Emperor that Lorgar was extremely intollerant of even the slightest aberrant traditions? Or that Curze, Angron or Manus were particularly harsh in their dealings with incompliant civilisations? After all, the Emperor did reprimand several of those Primarchs for their actions. You could accuse him of not enacting enough control over the Primarchs. But that would not make him the cause of bad things you seem to try to make him out to be.

[Legatus]

Do you not realize that he thought he was spreading the Imperial truth? Do you not realize that Lorgar was doing this for the Emperor? It may not have been what the Emperor wanted, but the Emperor had failed to make that clear.

*sigh* Yes. That does not sound very likely, does it? And that is because (as Kol_Saresk has pointed out) originally the Emperor was really indifferent about whether the people would worship him or not. What he cared about was that the human worlds that had been lost during the Age of Strife were reunited with the Terran Imperium. Lorgar's habit of converting the population and erecting huge monuments to the Emperor slowed him down, so eventually the Emperor told Lorgar he should stop the useless religious habits and should focus on the Crusade.

Edit: However, in 'The First Heretic' this was changed. (Or perhaps earlier in the Collected Visions books.) Here Lorgar is reprimanded specifically for promoting religious worship of the Emperor.

 

 

Really? The Chaos Gods violate all tenets of truth? Truth according to the Emperor, which we already know is a lie. The Emperor claimed there were no gods in the universe. He lied. The Chaos Gods never hid their nature, did they? Remember in TFH, when it is asked whether or not the Chaos Gods were worth worshiping? The response was simply that that was a question worth asking.

 

Lorgar himself was not sure of the worthiness of the Dark Gods. But they were the truth. Their very existence was in direct opposition to what the Emperor claimed, and they didn't need to lie to convince Lorgar of that.

Erm, if the Chaos Gods were not deceptive, and if Lorgar only cared for the truth, not for worship for the sake of worship, then how on earth did he come to the conclusion that worshiping bloodthirsty gods of darkness would be in the best interest of mankind? There is a disconnect here between the proposed premise and the eventual development. The matter of fact is that the Chaos Gods are not quite as forward, and that simply "knowing" is not really the most important thing for Lorgar.

 

 

---

 

That simple fact was proven wrong by the fact that the Word Bearers started moving at a faster race than any other Legion and went further and further, pushing the boundaries farther than even the Ultramarines had.

Hm. Does it say that in TFH? Or Aurelian? Because that is quite unlikely. Implausible, even.

[Kol Saresk]

TFH. And not meant in the way you are thinking. Basically, they just stopped caring. They would conquer the planet and leave, moving onto the next. They were doing their best to achieve their secondary objective of finding something else to worship that they were trying to go where no Legion had gone before so they could do so outside of the watchful eye of the Imperium. This required them to move at a faster and harder pace than any other Legion simply so no one could see them when they find the end of their Pilgrimage. This meant that they had to move faster and farther than even the Ultramarines. The Sons of Gulliman may have been many things, but they were neither the best nor infallible.

[Legatus]

The Sons of Gulliman may have been many things, but they were neither the best nor infallible.

The reason why I had interjected is that they are documented to make faster progress than any other Legion. Back when they were only the size of a normal Legion. And then they grew to two and a half the size of a standard Legion.

 

Could the Word Bearers have sped up to exceed the speed of progression of the original Ultramarine Legion? Possibly. But could they also keep up with the Ultramarines commanding twice as large a force? That is where things become a bit iffy.

[Kol Saresk]

Read your words. When the Ultramarines were the size of the a normal Legion, they did like every other Legion and operated by a simply method of attack, conquer and move one. Then Gulliman came along. Roboute Gulliman, son of Macragge and Lord of Ultramar. Suddenly, the Legion no longer operated by the same exact tenets, rules and doctrines they had before. Someone pointed out earlier(I believe it may have been you Legatus) that the Ultramarines helped to rebuild the worlds they conquered. This resulted in them slowing down because they also did something no other Legion is recorded doing except maybe the Dark Angels, depending on how you look at it. They reinforced, strengthened and improved their homeworld. But their homeworld wasn't just one world. It was several systems. Dozens and dozens of planets. They were doing the same thing on two different fronts. What saved them from the same censuring was their steady progress and the sheer number of arms they had at their disposal. They could afford to split the Legion on two fronts.

 

The Word Bearers didn't have that luxury. So they gave up on restructuring until they ended the Pilgrimage. So yes, they were able to move faster and farther. But faster and farther doesn't mean as many worlds. So don't worry, the Ultramarines tally is still safe from the Word Bearers Lorgar.

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Erm, if the Chaos Gods were not deceptive, and if Lorgar only cared for the truth, not for worship for the sake of worship, then how on earth did he come to the conclusion that worshiping bloodthirsty gods of darkness would be in the best interest of mankind? There is a disconnect here between the proposed premise and the eventual development. The matter of fact is that the Chaos Gods are not quite as forward, and that simply "knowing" is not really the most important thing for Lorgar.

It's simple. Somewhere along the line, Lorgar became corrupted. He sought the Dark Gods to find truth. I'm guessing he joined them out of a mixture of the previous, and the desires for vindication and vengeance. At the end of the Horus Heresy, however, he was just their pawn and most probably a daemon prince.

[Kol Saresk]

Maybe something to do with the fact that most people are scared of bats for no reason at all? Maybe to do with the fact that they've been associated with vampires, witchcraft, darkness, black magic, ghosts, death, disease, and the coming of night, the very thing that all mammals fear for it is in the darkness that our imaginations wonder and wander, just what goes bump in the night. Or it could be keeping in touch with the whole "Batman" theme everyone slaps on.

[Legatus]

Read your words. When the Ultramarines were the size of the a normal Legion, they did like every other Legion and operated by a simply method of attack, conquer and move one. Then Gulliman came along. Roboute Gulliman, son of Macragge and Lord of Ultramar. Suddenly, the Legion no longer operated by the same exact tenets, rules and doctrines they had before. Someone pointed out earlier(I believe it may have been you Legatus) that the Ultramarines helped to rebuild the worlds they conquered. This resulted in them slowing down because they also did something no other Legion is recorded doing except maybe the Dark Angels, depending on how you look at it.

Ah, I am sorry if I had been unclear. The documented description of the Ultramarines conquering worlds faster than any other Legions referred the the Ultramarines after command had just been given to Guilliman, but before the first influx of new recruits from Macragge started. It was specifically explained to be the result of Guilliman's leadership and their construction of defenses and supply routes that allowed them to progress faster than other Legions. They were not faster in smashing the opposing forces or anything like that, they simply never had to wait for reinforcements or had to double back to help defend an already liberated world from new threats. They established stable supply routes and well defended worlds as they went along, essentially building system and segmentum wide infastructure (not unlike how the romans could move armies incredibly fast because they built durable roads wherever they went). They were free to advance at all times, without having to wait for reinforcements or be called back, which may have happened to other Legions. They also did not stay behind on the conquered worlds until they were rebuilt, they only left behind instructors.

Essentially, they made faster progress due to their logistics, Guilliman's logistics, not necessarily for being better fighters. And then they started getting more and more recruits from Ultramar and grew in size, which would have increased their speed proportionally.

 

As a counterexample, the Luna Wolves were known to occasionally move on to the next world as soon as the military of a world was crushed, leaving behind a world with possibly unsufficient military capacity to defend itself and with an unhappy population. On several worlds, new rebellion would flare up. So while the Luna Wolves initially made quick progress (quickly advancing to the next world), they may occasionally have had to return to a previously conquered world to establish order (though they would sometimes use other Legions for that purpose). Since they also did not set up safe supply routes, they would occasionally have to suspend their advances to link up with supplies and reinforcements.

The Luna Wolves were possibly able to subdue a world faster than the Ultramarines could have. And they may have conquered more successive worlds within a shorter amount of time. But there would be times where the Luna Wolves would have to double back or wait for reinforcements. The Ultramarines, while maybe not being as fast to subdue an individual world, were able to press on with little to no down time.

 

Sorry, this description of the Ultramarines MO went on longer than I had anticipated.

[frostclaw222]

There are some good thoughts in here, particularly the idea that the Divinatus cult might have been known and ignored as long as it stayed underground and bound folks to the Emperor, and, through him, the Imperium of Man. This makes the Emperor's smackdown at Khur more of a "Stop building churches, start speeding up conquest" kick in the pants, and even builds a little support for Lorgar's confusion over the Emperor's possible divinity.

 

For those of you thinking of the Emperor as tyrant, I think the ignorance of the warp argument equating to diminished worship of warp entities thing plays into this. Sure, he didn't tell his sons the whole story about the warp. Even Magnus, who knew more than he was supposed to, understood that Pops didn't want them to know some of those things. I'd argue the reason for this is that the Emperor had his eye on circumventing the warp entirely in short order, via the Webway, and this dovetails nicely with the appointment of Horus at Ullanor, and the Emperor's return to Terra to focus on the larger project of the Webway portal.

 

I think the Emperor had the goal in mind of establishing a beachhead in the Webway while Horus mopped up the last chapter of the Crusade, and that, thereafter, the primarchs and the legions (or at least the majority of them) would begin the second conquest, in the Webway, so as to remove humanity from a great deal of direct exposure to the warp. Hence the primarch mansions we see when Corax returns to Terra. Maybe they weren't primarch retirement homes, but places for recovery during respites during the Webway War.

 

The idea that the Emperor was eying Magnus (no pun intended) for the Throne suggests that he thought he still needed a free hand to lead his forces in some endeavor, and the Webway War fits that bill. Establishment of large Webway possessions would also allow for holdfasts shielded from the warp wherein psykers could take shelter, at least in theory, over and above the greater safety of interstellar transit and command and control cohesiveness it would have brought to the Imperium.

 

So, why didn't Dad spell all this out for the kids? To avoid exposing them to the Dark Powers, who'd already had a little too much influence on his sons? Any acknowledgment of them might have given them more power, and risked the loss of a primarch to their service. Heck, maybe one of the missing primarchs had already discovered the Chaos Gods, and that's why he had to be destroyed? I mean, we know it wasn't minor mutation (Sanguinius) or modification (Angron), or even serious psychological damage (Angron and Curze). So, either this mystery primarch was already a worshiper of the Dark Gods or had allied with xenos, possibly xenos who worshiped the same.

 

The Emperor's behavior suggests there was a clock ticking in the background. The whole Crusade and his actions during it seem rushed, as if he's trying to complete everything by an established deadline. Perhaps he knew humanity was on the cusp of evolution as a psychic race? Perhaps his internment in the Throne has slowed that progression somehow, or the rise of Chaos worship has somehow stunted human evolution in and of itself?

 

So, that being said, while I do see him as rushing to get things accomplished, and not minding a few broken eggs in the process, I don't think the Emperor is nearly as bloodthirsty right-out-the-box as some folks here suggest. I really do think it was a "by any means necessary, as long as it's done by Tuesday, because Wednesday's Webway D Day" sort of thing. Now, why he wasn't more forthcoming with his sons about the subsequent phases of his plans for galactic conquest after the Crusade, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the simplest explanation? Why keep moving the goal posts on your generals when they're close to finishing the first phase of the plan? Let them finish, then tell them there's another war to be fought, after they've had a chance to enjoy the victory, recharge, etc.

 

EDIT: Also, I agree with Legatus (we're both probably shocked there), that the reason the Ultramarines were so efficient at expansion was logistics and nation-building. Most of the expedition fleets relied solely on Mechanicus fleets to resupply them. I get the feeling that Roboute did them one better, and had Ultramar forge worlds and extra-Ultramar Mechanicus deliveries all routed through central supply depots, then took over dissemination of the supplies within convoys and task forces under his command. This may have also made it easier for Roboute and his sons to stay supplied once Horus and Khelbor Hal started "accidentally" under-supplying loyalist legions.

[Deathwatch/Grey knight]

Lorgar changed the definition of god from deity in heaven (or equality such as Olympus) to a being who eclipses the power of all of those around him. However, that was... not exactly the brightest move and he failed to communicate his intent to the rest of the Imperium. As a result, TFH.

 

 

but it did end up spreading to the Imperium just only before the Horus heresy started

[frostclaw222]

Just finished re-reading the judgment at Nikaea. I read it a different way because of this conversation.

 

The big E almost admits fault here, basically saying he screwed up by letting some info slip, thinking they (the primarchs, presumably, but potentially, others as well) would take it as a warning (this far, no farther) instead of encouragement to explore the warp further. So, Pops basically admitted that he might be partially responsible for them going astray with this warp stuff. I mean, he still puts the blame on Magnus directly, but he takes his share for saying he didn't take action sooner or wasn't clear enough earlier.

 

Perhaps this situation with Lorgar was similar? Happening before Nikaea, perhaps the Emperor felt he needed to be stern with Lorgar at Khur, to disabuse him of the notion. Perhaps the worship was either pushing the Emperor towards godhead more quickly than he wanted, or screwing up the Crusade's timeline, or both, so he had to put his foot down, emphatically. That regret might actually have led to some of the mea culpa we see suggested in his edict at Nikaea in A Thousand Sons, then. It also might explain how/why he came to the decision he did about the Librarius departments, despite their utility. He needed to pause or delay the development of psykers for some reason, and slowing the Librarii might have been a good place to start. I mean, at this point, other psykers beyond astartes, navigators, and astropaths weren't widely tolerated in the Imperium at large, right?

 

I get the sense that maybe the schedule of the Crusade and the Webway War were being dictated by something else the Emperor had less control over. The idea of him possibly being forced closer and closer to ascension to the position of a warp god or humanity's next step in evolution as a psychic species (or both, either separately or in some strange conjoined advancement) might have forced him into certain decisions, like the Monarchia dressing-down and the Nikaea verdict.

 

This is literally sort of forming now in my mind, so I'm sure I've overlooked some things that either might derail it or form broader support for the theory, so feel free to contribute. But maybe the stern-yet-sympathetic treatment Magnus receives from the Emperor in A Thousand Sons, particularly when the Emperor reveals a glimpse of his plans to Magnus as they fall apart in the Throne Chamber beneath the palace, is somehow tied to Lorgar's humiliation. The deification of the Emperor and the development of the human species into psykers might have upset his timetable somewhat, and steps--drastic and possibly dissonant ones--might've need to be taken. It'd explain the vacillation between not caring about Lorgar's worship and the Librarian pilot program suddenly getting unplugged. It might even explain some of the Emperor's other interactions with psykers throughout the series.