Horus Heresy

The Horus Heresy.

The Horus Heresy is a war that features in Warhammer 40,000.

History

The Horus Heresy was a devastating civil war that afflicted the Imperium of Man in early M31. By the 30th Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind who was the founder and head of state of the newly constituted Imperium of Man, had become a major proponent of order in the Milky Way galaxy, and one of the most formidable enemies of Chaos, its forces, and the various hostile aliens that inhabit the galaxy. In the past, mankind had colonized the stars and had reached an intellectual and technological golden age. However, after being exhausted by a large scale rebellion by artificial intelligences, and when warp storms cut off interstellar travel, humanity's previous civilization collapsed and left its colonies vulnerable to attacks by daemons and aliens during what is known as the Age of Strife. After consolidating his rule on Terra (Earth) and genetically engineering Legions of superhuman warriors the Space Marines, he embarked, in late–M30, on a Great Crusade once the warp storms receded. The objective was to reunite the millions of human space colonies scattered throughout the galaxy under the Imperium's banner. The Imperium proclaimed an Imperial Truth of science and reason, and against religion and superstition – by extension, weakening the influence of Chaos on the human race and its evolution. Promoting the notions of Order and Truth from a strictly human perspective as put forth by the Emperor, the Imperium had declared the Milky Way the exclusive, rightful domain of Humankind; it maintained that ruling the galaxy was the species' "Manifest Destiny".

While the Emperor was the Supreme Commander of the Crusade's many Expeditions, the Space Marine Legions and the rest of the Imperial military forces were eventually led by his genetically engineered progeny, a group of twenty Primarchs, who were in every aspect even mightier than Space Marines, as well as their progenitors. When the great Warp Storms that had cut off Terra since the end of the Dark Age of Technology subsided, and the Age of Strife came to an end at the dawn of the 31st Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind deemed it time to begin his Great Crusade, a massive campaign to conquer the galaxy by which he and his armies would free all human-settled colony worlds from alien oppression or primitive ignorance and reunite the human race across the galaxy under the single banner of the new Imperium of Man. To execute this plan, the Emperor created the primarchs, his god-like, genetically-engineered superhuman offspring. The primarchs were still in their infancy, growing to hyper-accelerated maturity in their special gestation tanks, when they were snatched away from the genetic laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian Mountains on Terra where they had been created and gestated by the Emperor using His own DNA. The cause of this disappearance was the Chaos Gods, who were fearful that with the primarchs, the Emperor would be able to impose His new order across the galaxy and weaken their own firm grip on the collective unconsciousness of the minds of Humanity, which was the source of both their existence and the growth in their power within the Immaterium. Uniting their powers under the leadership of Tzeentch, the Dark Gods opened a portal from the Warp and broke into the laboratory where the primarchs were gestating through the potent psychic wards the Emperor had erected. Unable to destroy the primarchs outright because of the protections the Emperor had laid upon them, the Chaos Gods instead chose to scatter them across the galaxy through the Warp. The superhuman infants eventually came to rest on diverse, human-inhabited worlds. It was at this time that the Ruinous Powers first touched the souls of those primarchs who would eventually turn to the worship of Chaos, infecting them with a shard of corruption. Certainly the fact that each of the primarchs was ultimately cast ashore on an inhabited human world was no accident; the Chaos Gods may have hoped that by having the primarchs raised among Humanity without the direct guidance of the Emperor as they grew they would display more of the human weaknesses that would make them easier to corrupt when the time came. During the course of the Great Crusade, the Emperor encountered each of the primarchs on their scattered homeworlds in turn. To fill the gap in His military plans for the Great Crusade wrought by the primarchs' absence after they had been stolen away, the Emperor had instead created 20 Space Marine Legions, several of which, such as the Ist Legion, had been raised even as the Unifications Wars still raged. The Emperor used the Primarchs' individual genetic material still in His possession to craft the genetically-enhanced transhuman warriors of each of the Legiones Astartes, creating 19 gene-seed organs that could be implanted within an adolescent Human male to transform him into a Space Marine. After the Emperor rediscovered His sons scattered across the galaxy, He deemed it fitting that each primarch should lead their genetic offspring as the master of the Legion whose Astartes bore their DNA. However, in time this decision would prove a critical mistake, as the Space Marine gene-seed creation process made the Emperor, the primarchs and the Space Marines analogous to grandfather, fathers and sons, respectively, in their genetic inheritance and superhuman abilities. In time, many of the Space Marines in the Legions, especially those recruited from their primarchs' homeworld rather than from Terra before the primarchs' rediscovery, would come to venerate and feel more loyalty for their primarch than the Emperor of Mankind.

Though the Heresy was ignited by the product of a conspiracy by the forces of Chaos, there were precipitating factors that helped push many of the Legio Astartes towards rebellion. The first was the Emperor's return to and seclusion on Terra, working on a secret project that he refused to share with any of his Primarchs, including his most favored son Horus, whom he had named Warmaster. This apparent abandonment of the Great Crusade, for something he would not even share with his sons bred mistrust, resentment, and disappointment towards the Emperor amongst many of the Primarchs.

Another contributing factor was the formation of an administrative body known as the Council of Terra. Many of the Primarchs viewed these human bureaucrats as usurping their rightful place as rulers of the Imperium they had fought so hard to create. Worse still, the Primarchs were denied a place on the Council and the notion of an Imperium dominated by human bureaucrats, not the sons of the Emperor and their Astartes Legions, became a cause of concern for many of the Primarchs.

In addition, the Emperor's disciplining of Lorgar and the Word Bearers was a contributing factor to the Heresy and the event which set it directly into motion. After Lorgar and the entire Legion were publicly humiliated, scolded, and forced to kneel in front of the Emperor for spreading their belief that the ruler of mankind was a divine being, the pious Word Bearers felt betrayed and desperately sought any power in the universe to worship. This eventually led Lorgar and his Legionaries to the Eye of Terror, where they pledged themselves to the forces of Chaos and began to conspire against the Emperor. Thus the Word Bearers had secretly become the first Chaos Space Marines. Secretly planning to make war on the Emperor, the Word Bearers quietly established Warrior Lodges with their Chaplains throughout the rest of the Astartes Legions. Though harmless at first glance, many of these lodges would become hotbeds of support for Horus' rebellion in the war to come.

According to First Lord of the Imperium Malcador the Sigillite, the Heresy's causes may have been deliberately put into motion by both himself and the Emperor. According to Malcador, both deliberately agitated the Primarchs and turned them against one another, with the resulting war purging certain unmanageable Primarchs and their respective Space Marine Legions just as they had the earlier Thunder Warriors. This would lead humanity, not bio-engineered superhumans, as the rulers of the galaxy. However, the Ruinious Powers intervened before their plan could be fully formulated, leading to disaster in the Horus Heresy. This account may be either a partial or total lie, as Malcador himself seems to keep its validity ambiguous.

The Primarch Lorgar of the Word Bearers Legion came to already commit himself and his Astartes to the service of the Ruinous Powers. Lorgar was a puritanical religious zealot who was said to have experienced visions that foresaw the coming of the Emperor, who he believed to be a living god. This belief resulted in a series of bitter religious wars as Lorgar fought to impose his new religious doctrine worshipping the Emperor on his homeworld of Colchis. When the Emperor finally arrived to reclaim his lost son, the entire world was already enthralled to Lorgar and his cult of the Emperor. The people of Colchis united behind their new God-Emperor. The elaborate celebrations and displays of piety lasted for solar months, although it was said that the Emperor did not approve of this, wishing to rejoin the Great Crusade as soon as possible and being greatly dismissive of organised religion in general as a vioilation of the Imperial Truth. The Emperor had not begun the Great Crusade to reshackle Humanity within the chains of superstition and ignorance but to spread the light of reason and science. At the conclusion of the celebrations, Lorgar was made master of the XVIIth Space Marine Legion, the Imperial Heralds, who were renamed the Word Bearers after they embraced their primarch and his religious beliefs. Kor Phaeron, Lorgar's adoptive father and religious advisor, survived the augmentation process to join the Word Bearers as a rare adult Space Marine, though he would never be a true Astartes. Kor Phaeron became Lorgar's chief adviser, lieutenant and the commander of the Word Bearers' elite 1st Company as the XVIIth Legion's first captain. Lorgar led his Legion throughout the Great Crusade, as the Word Bearers sought to eliminate all blasphemy and heresy within the new Imperium of Man. Ancient texts and icons of other faiths were burned. The construction of vast monuments and cathedrals venerating the Emperor as the God of Mankind were supervised by Lorgar and the Word Bearers on many of the worlds they brought into Imperial Compliance. The greatest Chaplains of the Word Bearers produced enormous works on the divinity and righteousness of the Emperor, and gave grand speeches and sermons to the masses of conquered worlds. The progress of the Word Bearers was slow in bringing new worlds into Imperial Compliance, but the Imperial domination of those who were defeated by the XVII Legion was always complete, as religion proved to be a potent tool in securing Imperial loyalty. At some point during this period, Lorgar penned the work known as the Lectitio Divinitatus, which laid out the case that the Emperor of Mankind was a divine being and was worthy of worship as the rightful God of humanity. This book would later, ironically considering the identity of its author, become instrumental in the founding of the Imperial Cult and the Ecclesiarchy.

Overview

In appearance, the Horus Heresy was a galactic conflict fought all across the Milky Way galaxy between the Loyalists and Traitor forces. In time, it also came to be referred to as the Age of Darkness.

Combatants

• Emperor :
• Malcador :
• Horus Lupercal :
• Lion El'Jonson :
• Sanguinius :
• Roboute Guilliman :
• Rogal Dorn :
• Angron :
• Fulgrim :

Notes

• The Horus Heresy was created by Games Workshop where it featured in the setting of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Appearances

• Warhammer 40,000:

External Link

• Lexicanum Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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