Word Bearers: cowards, dupes or something else?

[Schultzhoffen]

I struggle to understand the motivations of Lorgar and the WB leading up to the Heresy and beyond. Were their motivations in worshipping the Chaos gods purely for the chance to progress on the path to daemonhood, temporal power or something else?

 

Lorgar (and I'm assuming at least some of the Legion - those who don't may well be dupes) seemed to understand the nature of Chaos and what waited beyond the veil of death (terror, agony and destruction - if the gods of the warp are to be believed). Surely this is an incentive to fight against Chaos, not side with Chaos. Is Lorgar interested only in trying to save himself by attaining power and daemonhood and the "hell" with his legion?

 

So, are the WBs duped by the lies of Chaos into betraying their Emperor or are they so frightened of what lies beyond death that they'd grasp at any straws to avoid that fate? It seems to me that they are motivated by a desire for daemonhood (Erebus?) and/or terror. If they had an ounce of bravery they would have fought the Chaos gods, not simply succumbed to an ephemeral notion of maybe avoiding the horrors of the afterlife/gods.

 

If the Eldar can fashion spirit stones to protect the souls of the dead, could not Humanity do this too? Granted, the level of tech is different but the example is there.

 

I think I'm trying to understand the concept behind worshipping something that promises nothing but horror and death (in this life) and the agonising destruction of the soul in the next (unless you're the one in a billion who becomes a Daemon Prince). I know sanity is not a part of 40K but sanity really demands that you fight this monstrosity not submit like a coward.

 

Thoughts?

[Apothecary Vaddon]

I think they just perceived that as the truth and nothing but, assuming that Emps couldn't ever do anything to prevent souls from getting om nom nom'd for eternity. Wasn't there a source stating that Emps had isolated part of the Warp as a 'utopia' or sorts?

[Schultzhoffen]

Yes, but a truth is also that smoking can lead to lung cancer. This doesn't mean we all rush out and smoke 2 packs a day - we try to eradicate it from society (at least in New Zealand). A clumsy comparison but you see what I'm saying? Simply following something because it is the truth is not enough for me. Surely a truth can be something to fight against?

[Lord Marshal Ragnrok]

apoth vaddon - excellent name

anyway, if you have not already, i would highly recommend reading the HH books involving the WBs to a significant extent. they shed a lot of light on the motivations of Lorgar and his legion in siding with Chaos. also the words of the Book of Lorgar, well what little we have access to, are pieces of Lorgar's beliefs on Chaos and his motivation.

but to provide some basic info now, the WB were motivated more by their hunt for "the truth" - the existence of gods. they believed that the emp and imperium had lied to them and mistreated them. Erebus, the real Arch-Traitor, used this and his own lust for power to lead his primarch and legion to Chaos over the course of many years. the WB were more easily swayed because they were known to swing between extremes, which was their great weakness.

[Jehoel]

A planet of fanatics, leb by a primarch, focused their fanatism on the worship of what they saw as a living god. So, when that worship was rejected, they searched for and embraced the first thing that could promise them a new focus for their worship. Shocking, I know.

 

Fanatics will always be fanatical about something and they don't really think about what it is. The Wordbearers were the true traitors of the Horus Heresy and Lorgar (and his lap-dog, Erebus) will always be the most hated enemy of my DiY chapter (assuming they know who the real enemy is). Did Lorgar or Erebus know what they were getting into? Erebus may have and didn't care, while Lorgar (I believe) embraced Chaos with open arms.

[Lord Marshal Ragnrok]

Erebus was loyal to Chaos from an early point it seems.  Lorgar was converted, but seems to have done so under the hurt of the emp rejecting his worship and for his search in "true" gods.  his writing in the Book of Lorgar definitely support the idea that Lorgar was less willing to join Chaos than Erebus.

 

"All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth."

[Wade Garrett]

So...we can go with the Imperial Truth, and everyone gets eaten by daemons when they die. No happy endings.

We go with the Primordial Truth, and almoste everyone gets eaten by daemons when they die...but SOME people get to be Daemon Princes. Some get happy endings

Some > None.

Math doesn't lie.

Worship Chaos.

[Schultzhoffen]

Pardon me, Wade Garrett, but that's a shaky reason. You are effectively saying that when we're confronted by evil that we should give in to it (i.e. when the NAZIs come knocking we join them immediately). Surely the struggle is more important than the outcome? Wouldn't you try to avert your fate by struggling against the evil instead of hoping to become a Daemon Prince? Basically the difference between heroic bravery and self serving cowardice.

 

I agree that the Emperor/Imperium is no bowl of cherries but they're a heck of a lot better than Chaos.

 

However,I don't want this to evolve into a good v evil debate, I want to try to understand the WB motivations. Was the so-called truth of Chaos that compelling a reason to go all medieval on the Imperium? Was it something rooted in their psyche?

 

It just seems to me that they wouldn't get a lot from it except for a deep-seated desire to worship something, anything, regardless of consequences (golly gee?!). Is this their weakness? Is this their strength - to abandon sworn oaths for a "truth"?

 

Were they bred like this?

[Conn Eremon]

 

Though they were horrified by the truth, the fact that it was truth mattered the most to them. And, to be honest, the horror of chaos wasn't much worse than the horror of 30k`s reality. To some, like Lorgar, it was freeing.

[Wade Garrett]

Surely the struggle is more important than the outcome? Wouldn't you try to avert your fate by struggling against the evil instead of hoping to become a Daemon Prince? Basically the difference between heroic bravery and self serving cowardice.

Struggle? Indeed, dear boy. Struggle to your heart's content! Steel your resolve, screw up your courage, hurl yourself into the breach with bullet and blade! And with every blow you strike, every drop of blood you spill, the incarndine ocean that marks the ebb and flow of the Blood God's kingdom rises a little higher.

 

Well, then. Perhaps you won't act openly. You'll scheme, you'll plot, you'll deceive, you'll turn enemy against enemy and never dirty your own hand. And with every plan you craft, the Shaper of Fate folds you deeper into his own design.

 

Do you enjoy it? The thrill of standing defiant against an unabashedly evil foe? The joy of triumphing over fearful odds, of gaining your victory? Of course you do! And I'm sure you'll enjoy it just as much when you realize that all of that ties you ever tighter to the Profligrate One.

 

Or perhaps you'll do none of that. You'll resist the Throne of Skulls, the Prince of Pleasures the Lord of Lies, you'll engineer a society that feeds neither of them and you will NEVER. LET. IT. CHANGE. Come what may, you will endure, unchanging and forever in stasis. And in the depths of the Warp, the Grandfather laughs and drinks his fill.

 

Fight the Ruinous Powers? A most droll jest. The Warp won this war long ago. Now choose: will you serve as an acolyte...or as dinner?

[Schultzhoffen]

I didn't say it matters if you win or lose. What matters is the resistance. Therefore, the struggle is important. What's the line from Tennyson? ..."strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." In other words, this dinner won't just offer my neck like the lamb to the slaughter (read: acolyte).

 

So once again : were the wb so terrified that they couldn't even consider a doomed struggle? True courage is to fight even when you've lost. The wb do not seem to have this courage.

[Lord Marshal Ragnrok]

Pardon me, Wade Garrett, but that's a shaky reason. You are effectively saying that when we're confronted by evil that we should give in to it (i.e. when the NAZIs come knocking we join them immediately). Surely the struggle is more important than the outcome? Wouldn't you try to avert your fate by struggling against the evil instead of hoping to become a Daemon Prince? Basically the difference between heroic bravery and self serving cowardice.

 

I agree that the Emperor/Imperium is no bowl of cherries but they're a heck of a lot better than Chaos.

 

However,I don't want this to evolve into a good v evil debate, I want to try to understand the WB motivations. Was the so-called truth of Chaos that compelling a reason to go all medieval on the Imperium? Was it something rooted in their psyche?

 

It just seems to me that they wouldn't get a lot from it except for a deep-seated desire to worship something, anything, regardless of consequences (golly gee?!). Is this their weakness? Is this their strength - to abandon sworn oaths for a "truth"?

 

Were they bred like this?

 

well yes their desire for spiritual belief is the extreme i was talking about. its in their geneseed itself.

 

Though they were horrified by the truth, the fact that it was truth mattered the most to them. And, to be honest, the horror of chaos wasn't much worse than the horror of 30k`s reality. To some, like Lorgar, it was freeing.

 

from what we can tell, yes cormac is exactly right about what the evidence says about Lorgar's conversion.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

I didn't say it matters if you win or lose. What matters is the resistance. Therefore, the struggle is important. What's the line from Tennyson? ..."strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." In other words, this dinner won't just offer my neck like the lamb to the slaughter (read: acolyte).

So once again : were the wb so terrified that they couldn't even consider a doomed struggle? True courage is to fight even when you've lost. The wb do not seem to have this courage.

Ah, someone taking their first steps on Father Nurgle's path, unyielding in the face of tyranny

In the Grim Dark world, human emotions (good and bad) fuel the chaos gods.

However, good and evil are normative concepts, labelling the chaos gods 'evil' and the emperor 'good' is to miss the nuances of the SF universe GW has created.

I fear you are mixing this fictional work too readily with our own world.

If you have read Betrayer then neither 'coward' or 'dupe' describes the actions of the WBs. 'Realist' or 'pragmatic' might be more appropriate.

Regards,

[ChaosLord Leon Enaek]

The Word Bearers had been betrayed and spat on by the Emperor and all of their brothers for their faith in the Emperor, when faith was an inherent part of who they are. For Lorgar it was even worse - he had killed thousands, if not millions, on his home world for following the Old Faith, and had put a hundred other worlds to flame for their similar religions. Then he discovered that the Old Faith was real - the chaos gods existed. So as well as being humiliated by his least favourite brother in the ashes of his greatest achievement on the orders of a father he had worshipped as a god (an act which shattered Lorgars world because it revealed to him that the Emperor was blind to his sons and thus not a god) he also has to deal with the guilt of putting billions to death for being right where he was wrong. In this fragile state the Chaos Gods whisper to him, and he decides to set humanity on the right path - the path of the gods. Regrettably that will mean genocide and regicide, but Lorgar now knows that these deaths will wash away the mistakes of the old, because they will be for real gods.

 

A lot of people think that the Word Bearers are weak because they see the Chaos Gods and blindly worship them because they like praying, but that's inaccurate - the Chaos Gods lied, hid the worst of their nature from Lorgar and his so s until it was too late, and gave them what they needed: a path to redemption, ironically - the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[A D-B]

Enaek, Durfast and Wade have said it better than I could, but to add a little frosting to the cakes they made:

 

It's 40K. Everyone is wrong. Everything is perspective, but every faction is as wrong as they're right. The Word Bearers 'serve' the Chaos Gods, and could be considered to be 'dupes'. But the Imperium's oppression and tyranny fuels the Chaos Gods to perfection, as well. It's just as easy to argue that while the Imperium beat the Traitor Legions in the Horus Heresy, Chaos itself 'won' the war. The Imperium is a harsh, disgusting, murderous and bigoted totalitarian regime that makes the Nazis look like angels. It needs ignorance just to survive, because 99.9999% of humanity can't imagine even a fraction of the truth we know from the rulebooks - and if they were aware of it, they;d be twice as vulnerable to its predations.

 

Yes, from one perspective the Word Bearers were duped. On the other hand, they were also intelligent, illuminated, and courageous enough to face a dark truth, rather than live in ignorance. It's all about perspective, and "good" and "evil" have practically no place in the discussion, because they're relative / subjective / normative terms. They're not absolutes that can be defined in such stringent terms.

 

Look at the Iraq War. Outside of America (and even there, to an extent) most Western nations' populations were heavily against the conflict, and the reasons for going to war were seen as spurious and outright false even to the United Nations. For the posters advocating a "doomed struggle" as the only brave option, one could just as easily argue that the Iraqis defending their nation against what patently looked like an illegal invasion by a vastly, vastly overwhelming force are fighting the good fight (because "what matters is resistance") even if they were doomed from the beginning.

 

What mattered to the Word Bearers was the truth, and to their eyes, they found it. The Emperor was, after all, lying. It doesn't matter that it was a white lie, for 'the good of the people'. In terms of those who want the truth, at any cost, it was still a lie from a man that just decided he would conquer a species because he was powerful enough to impose his will on a million worlds, no matter whether they wanted to join or not.

 

If you want to understand the Word Bearers, look at it in this wider context. Everyone is wrong. You can look at Chaos and say "it's a heck of a lot worse" to you, but then the Word Bearers would consider you weak, cowardly and spineless, fighting for a lie to protect yourself in ignorance because you're too weak to face up to the realities of the universe. The Word Bearers may not like the reality, but they acknowledge it, and could never admire anyone who considered ignorance and blindness to be virtues. You consider opposing Chaos to be a noble goal, even if it's doomed. They'd consider embracing Chaos to be intelligent, pragmatic, and something only the most enlightened and courageous souls could do. And they'd be right, because the beauty of 40K is that no one is more or less right and wrong than anyone else. 

[Captain Idaho]

And let's not forget a little hint of personal power mongering from influential individuals in the Legion helped push the Word Bearers, together with their Primarch, down the path of dark glory.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

What he said ;)

[Vesper]

 

True courage is to fight even when you've lost.

That's not courage, that's stupidity.

[A D-B]

 

 

True courage is to fight even when you've lost.

That's not courage, that's stupidity.

 

Naw, I mean, that's courage, too. It can be courage, stupidity, both or neither. It's all subjective, and that's why every faction is objectively right and wrong at the same time. If you read something like Druss the Legend, by David Gemmell, it's considered the highest form of nobility and courage to stand and fight the invading Nadir barbarians even through the guarantees of destruction, because it's "right" that they be opposed by men fighting to defend their families and way of life. 

 

That presumes a lot, of course. That their way of life has more value than whatever would replace it, and so on. But that's what usually happens with invaders and the invaded. The defenders tend to prefer their way of life. Again, to cut back to recent events, the Iraq War is a good example. A vastly overwhelming foe shattered a nation that barely had an army, in a single week, and most political propaganda cites that the Good Guys 'gave' freedom to the poor, oppressed Iraqis. It doesn't take into account the tremendous 'evils' of killing 150,000 innocent people to achieve it, or whether the population wanted to be invaded and have another culture's notions of The Greater Good imposed upon them. But the "insurgents" / Resistance still fought, and still fight. That's courage to some, stupidity to others, and futile to most. 

 

That level of moral ambiguity, which exists in any war or society even if many people refuse to see it ("facts don't stop being facts even if you ignore them"), is one of the things I love most about 40K. It's all shades of grey. That's the principal reason I don't understand people saying their favourite faction is "right" or enlightened above any other. It's the absolute equality of ignorance, faith and fury in grim, unknowable darkness.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

 

True courage is to fight even when you've lost.

That's not courage, that's stupidity.

Perhaps you should play Night Lords rather than Black Legion ;)

[Vesper]

Losing is fine if you live to fight another day. That's what the Sons of Horus did when Horus died.

Or you could fight to the last man even if you don't stand a chance. Then the spirit that makes you fight dies with you.

To be brave, you must think about what is the best thing to do, and stick to it. Useless sacrifice is not something that makes you greater, it just makes you dead.

[Legionator]

- Are Word Bearers cowards and dupes?

- Is the world turning?

[A D-B]

Losing is fine if you live to fight another day. That's what the Sons of Horus did when Horus died.

Or you could fight to the last man even if you don't stand a chance. Then the spirit that makes you fight dies with you.

To be brave, you must think about what is the best thing to do, and stick to it. Useless sacrifice is not something that makes you greater, it just makes you dead.

 

That's one way of looking at bravery, and it's absolutely valid. Another would be the Spartans and Thespians at the Thermopylae, or the young men charging onto the beaches during the D-Day Landings. Those sacrifices are seen as incredibly brave, and just as valid, by other people.

 

I don't say either way is right or wrong - just that they're both right and wrong to different perspectives. Because it's a relative human construct with no absolutes, you can't just say something like "Yes" or "No", because that hugely misses the point. It's also, with respect to anyone wanting to see it in those terms, a little ignorant of the wider nuances. To be polite about it. There's a lot of depth in this setting; if you're approaching it with the mindset that "Chaos Marines are duped and cowardly", and not seeking any further answers, then your perception of the setting (and the world) are probably never going to line up with mine. (I'm not saying you were doing that, Vesp.) But the OP asked about it, and is genuinely interested in debate. No better thread, in my eyes. 

 

I find that as I get older (and I'm now a mighty 32, so I clearly know everything...) that my perspective on what's brave and admirable changes with my priorities. I think that's a universal truth for everyone, too. To illustrate the point: I wouldn't give my life for my government or country, but I try not to disrespect those people who find that life a valuable expenditure of their blood and time. If I lived in a different country and had different values - or lived in a different time - that might change. Conversely, I would fight even in futility - if it would offer greater gain - (or simply die) for my family, and suffer any humiliation or pain for them to be safe. Before I was a father, I had a lot of difficulty understanding why parents saw certain things in certain ways. Now my morality is vastly altered by having something new to lose, and new experiences to shape what courage and morality is, and how it applies to us personally; as a society; and as a species.

 

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

Tis true, parenthood certainly encourages you to view the world, and yourself, in a different way. Maybe that was where the Emperor went wrong, non of his super warriors could be fathers...

[Vesper]

Relativism ain't my cup of tea.

I think there is a supreme, universal truth, and even if we can't get to it, we should try to come closer to it in everything. That is how we could hope to achieve wisdom. And that is how I try to live.

Morality blurs things quite a lot (that's why I don't have any ! ), but I strongly believe in an absolute truth. So perceptions are irrelevent to what things really are.

EDIT : But perceptions are relevent to who people really are. What do they value most, what is their moral background and so on !