Lorgar Aurelian, the architect of the Great Pilgrimage, was a Primarch who beheld the Warp and its Ruinous Powers as the only true gods. In the ten millennia since the Raven Lord had beleaguered his gates, he had not let the centuries wither in idleness.
To win the favor of the True Gods, the Chaos Undivided he so cherished, he had tirelessly compiled the Book of Lorgar. His "achievement" in corrupting Horus had earned him ascension to the rank of Daemon Primarch, yet the gaze of the Dark Gods had largely drifted elsewhere.
The Chaos Gods are fickle; they prize that which is elusive. Nurgle dotes upon Mortarion because the Death Lord was forced into damnation. Khorne regards the broken Angron with a lover's constancy. Even the Crimson King and the indolent Fulgrim enjoy the whims of their patrons. Only Lorgar, the self-proclaimed High Priest of Chaos Eternal, seemed forgotten by the pantheon. To the Warp, a sycophant warrants little scrutiny, and Lorgar was the ultimate supplicant.
Now, driven by the ideal of perfecting his Truth, he had emerged from the Templum Inficio upon the daemon world of Sicarus. Lorgar had begun to unlock his Warp-born essence, the innate ability to decipher every script in existence.
By the power of the Enunciated Truth, he had narrowly slipped the hunt of Corvus Corax. Leading the Word Bearers, he sought to breach the Materium once more to spread the gospel of Chaos.
"A new god, a new Truth... one day, I shall behold the revelation in its entirety!" Lorgar gazed upon his Book of Lorgar. Its pages, culled from countless nameless ancient tomes, held truths that stripped bare the metaphysics of the Empyrean.
The Book of Lorgar now whispered a new revelation: the western point of the chaotic eight-pointed star had been claimed. Abandoning his immediate designs on the mortal realm, Lorgar led the XVII Legion on a journey to pay homage to this nascent power.
…
The Great Horned Rat felt the vibrations the moment Lorgar offered his prayers to the Lord of Distortion. Just as Nurgle senses the collective plea for rain, the Great Horned Rat perceives any who brush against His domain, even if His name remains unspoken.
"The Emperor's 'chosen' son has arrived. Shall I receive him with due hospitality?" Lucius asked, opening his eyes to address the Emperor, whose ruinous divine might was currently stilling the Warp storms.
Lucius expected the mention of the wayward son to provoke fury, but the Emperor remained preternaturally calm. He turned to depart, his voice distant: "That is your affair. It concerns me not."
"Hmm, the Golden One..." Lucius mused for a moment before the realization struck. The Emperor had no desire to face Lorgar. To see the Emperor in his current state would only validate Lorgar's ancient treachery — it would allow the Primarch to gloat that he had seen the "Truth" ten thousand years ago, casting the Emperor as the ultimate fool.
Furthermore, Lorgar was among the Primarchs the Emperor had effectively discarded. Having prophesied that half his sons would fall, the Emperor had calculated who should be steered toward betrayal. Lorgar had been the prime candidate; the razing of Monarchia, the Perfect City, was a deliberate provocation. The Emperor sought to excise a son whose zealotry contradicted the Imperial Truth and offered nothing to the future of the Imperium.
He simply hadn't anticipated that Lorgar would be the catalyst that dragged the Crimson King and Horus into the abyss along with him.
…
Guided by the Book of Lorgar, the Word Bearers' fleet tore through the Warp toward the Great Horned Rat's domain. Soon, in a place where neither time nor space held dominion, a realm appeared that existed in no chronicle or script.
It was a divine domain as vast as those of the Four, yet it was a charnel house of civilizations. The ruins and relics of a thousand worlds were piled in chaotic heaps, a sprawling, filthy Hive-slum of cosmic proportions.
Neither Lorgar nor his sons were deterred. They had made pilgrimages to the Garden of Nurgle and witnessed the depravities of Slaanesh's palace; little could unsettle them now.
"Disembark! Follow me to pay homage to the True God!"
Lorgar stood tall, clutching the Book of Lorgar as he gave the command. Behind him marched the Word Bearers, led by the twin architects of heresy: Erebus and Kor Phaeron.
Erebus's eyes scanned the stinking wasteland of the Realm of Ruin, his mind already churning with ambition. As Lorgar mastered the power of the Word, the influence of the two advisors had waned. They resented their lost authority, and their only hope of eclipsing Lorgar lay in securing the patronage of a True God. However, the Four were weary of them; if the Gods barely tolerated Lorgar, they had no time at all for his subordinates.
Lorgar, oblivious to the machinations of the two who had betrayed him since the beginning, bowed with the profound reverence of a pilgrim before stepping into the Realm of Ruin.
"Squeak-chatter-scree...!"
The moment they entered, thousands of glinting, ravenous rat-eyes watched from the shadows. The legacies of fallen races lay discarded in stagnant mires while four-legged vermin scurried over shattered artifacts.
Then, figures emerged, lanky, unnerving parodies of the humanoid form. A Vermin Herder, draped in the robes of a Grey Seer, stepped forward. It bore the stature of an Astartes but the twitching head of a rat-fiend.
Unlike other Legions who would have drawn blades at the sight of the xenos-form, the Word Bearers halted. Lorgar spread his arms, his face a mask of solemn devotion as he bowed. "Messenger of the True God, I am Lorgar Aurelian, the Absolute Priest of the Truth. I have come to worship."
The Grey Seer split its muzzle into a fawning, oily grin, rubbing its claws together. "Yes-yes! The Great Horned Rat waits for you-you! Enter-enter!"
Lorgar nodded and followed. He had endured the temperaments of the Daemons of the Four; the unsettling sycophancy of these rat-daemons was merely another trial of faith.
In truth, Lucius had little personal investment in Lorgar. The Primarch was a "Chaos bicycle" — he worked tirelessly to deliver the mortal realm to the Warp, yet the Gods found him tiresome. Lorgar preached Chaos Undivided, which granted no specific favor to any one god. Moreover, a world completely consumed by Chaos was, to the Dark Gods, utterly boring.
Following the Vermin Herder, the Word Bearers traversed a winding stone causeway toward the heart of the domain: a massive black spire housing the Great Bell of Doom.
There, Lorgar beheld a gargantuan, horned silhouette wreathed in shadows. The figure seemed to be tinkering with the very fabric of the realm. Lorgar felt a surge of triumph. For the first time, he stood before a True God without the labyrinthine trials of the other powers. Perhaps this deity would finally validate his works?
"My God… the Truth of all worlds!" Without hesitation, Lorgar prostrated himself before the black spire. Behind him, the Word Bearers dropped to one knee in unison.
"A magnificent sight," Lucius remarked, genuinely pleased to see an entire Legion of Word Bearers kneeling before him. While he had integrated the Alpha Legion, those agents were far too scattered to ever offer such a concentrated display of fealty.
"Lorgar, Bearer of the Word. Why have you come before the Lord of Distortion, the King of Many Tails?"
As Lucius spoke, a carpet of rats swarmed over the Word Bearers, their chattering voices enough to break the sanity of any mortal. Lorgar did not flinch. He allowed the vermin to crawl over his gold-etched armor and whispered,
"O True God, I come only to worship the Truth. Grant me Thy divine mandate!"
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