Shortly after this, troubling news reached the Throneworld of Terra – Lorgar was openly espousing worship of the Emperor as a divine being, in direct conflict with the atheist teachings of the Imperial Truth.

Worse, they had taken the world of Khur and raised the “perfect city” of Monarchia, which was full of graven idols of the Emperor as a god, where the populace sang hymns of worship to His name. The Emperor could not allow this to continue, and took His son Guilliman to chastise Lorgar for these foolish beliefs. In the Censure, Monarchia was levelled by the XIII Legion, and the populace reduced to ash. Lorgar and his Legion were forced to kneel before Guilliman and the Emperor, and accept that their belief was wrong, and the Emperor was no god. Lorgar seemed to accept his humbling punishment, and fought ever harder afterwards in the name of the Emperor.

However, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the razing of Monarchia was the first domino to fall in the Heresy, and Lorgar would stop at nothing to prove the Emperor wrong, and that divine beings did exist among the stars. “For over four decades the XVIIth Legion wore the false face of loyalty and planted the seeds that would eventually bloom into civil war…”Īfter Monarchia, it is clear that Lorgar spent a significant amount of time systematically purging his own Legion of any dissenters – a slower, more methodical version of the betrayal at Isstvan III.

Horus heresy word bearers