The Silenced

### **Primarch**

Lorgar Aurelian, The Urizen, the Voice of Truth, the Bearer of the Word, the Disobedient Son, the Silenced

### **Observed Strategic Tendencies**

Mass Assault, Policing Actions, Gnoetic Purgation, Suppression of Ideological Revolt

### **Warcry**

The Word Bearers march into battle chanting passages from the Book of Lorgar over and over.

### **Legion Colours**

Crimson and Silver/Gunmetal Grey. Gold Trim (Late Crusade)

Of all the legions of the Emperor, few could match the zeal with which the XVIIth, the **Word Bearers**, conducted themselves with throughout the Great Crusade. Even when they stood as the Imperial Heralds, before they were reunited with their sire, the XVIIIth were renowned for their mass assaults of fearless warriors, and the ripping up of even the most ingrained of religious dogma’s within a non-compliant world. In the early days, they also were regarded as an excellent policing force for recently compliant worlds, but in time this role was subsumed almost entirely by the Scorpion Guard and Wisps of Archeron. When Lorgar Aurelian was finally found on the world of Colchis, he saw little need to change his sons, pressing them ever onwards in the name of his father. It is here their zeal took on new heights, and led by their father, as well as the dark figures of Erebus and Kor Phaeron, the legions passion turned to worship itself, until the entire legion went to war not in the name of the Emperor, but in the name of their god...

## Tactics

The Word Bearers and the Imperial Heralds before them did not branch out to the extent of some of the legions in their tactics, holding to the Principia Belicosa first as simply the pinnacle of what a legion should be, and then as something akin to a holy text to be followed without reservation. No method of warfare was unknown to them, and alongside the Watchers of Akhet, they were one of the few legions who could reliably rise to any threat, though lacked the specialisation of their cousins.

## Personality of the Legion

Each warrior of the XVIIth, be they novitiate or ancient veteran, holds a fire in their heart that is only possible for one possessing the unshakable faith of a pious man. Even amongst the Astartes, already renowned for their resolute loyalty to the Imperium and their legion, the Word Bearers stood as a league apart, their fire making them both fearsome warriors, and compassionate rulers, caring for the common man of the worlds they conquered as they taught the new members of the Imperium the truth of the galaxy. Indeed, the Word Bearers would often stay on a world far longer than the military action of the compliance demanded, working alongside the iterators to ensure the world was prosperous before they moved on, ever holding up a single world as the pinnacle of what they sought to emulate; Monarchia.

## Lorgar Aurelian  - The Urizen, the Voice of Truth, the Bearer of the Word, the Disobedient Son

Lorgar, also once called Lorgar Aurelian and the Urizen (Colchisian for "wisest of the wise") is the Primarch of the Word Bearers Legion, their driving light and reason for damnation. Always determined to uplift humanity through a deep belief in the divine, Lorgar defied the Imperial Truth not out of hatred for his father, but of love. Even when the Emperor censored Lorgar, seeking to turn him from the path he strode, Lorgar refused to turn, going deeper and deeper into a place from where there could be no escape, save the quiet of death.

That said, Lorgar was not the perfect son he wished to be, every bit as brilliant and charismatic as the other Primarchs, he could also be moody and mercurial. bitter over his existence as a Primarch, believing himself to be a soldier bred for nothing but war. As Lorgar had always dedicated himself to exploring the true nature of the universe and building a society that would embody these universal truths, Lorgar never mastered the arts of combat and military strategy like his brothers and even looked down on acts of conquest. Because of his interest in things beyond warfare, he often found solace with his less militant brothers, such as the Imperial Sagittarius, Bartosz, whose personality and mindset most closely resembled his own.

## Colchis

Colchis was the Imperial Feudal World of the Segmentum Pacificus that was the homeworld of the Primarch Lorgar and his Word Bearers Legion of Space Marines before the Silencing. Colchis was a world governed by a theocracy called the Covenant dedicated to the worship of a polytheistic religion called the "Old Faith," which centred on the worship of the Chaos Gods before the arrival of Lorgar.

At three times the size of Terra, with a fraction of the population, it took almost five standard years to turn once around its merciless sun. And it turned with great patience; a day lasted a Terran week, a week lasted a Terran month. From orbit, its skin was a visage of unforgiving mountain ranges and auburn desert plains, veined by threading rivers. It was in dry lands like these that that humanity's ancestors -- the very first men and women on the world no longer called Earth -- rose in lands that would become known as the cradle of civilisation.

During the Silencing, the entire world rose up in defence of their liege lord, fanatical too the last drop of blood and the last screamed prayer to the god emperor and his divine angel. In the wake of the silencing however, nothing remained of the now unnamed rock, the Imperial forces present conducting the final sanction of Exterminatus on the world, ensuring no trace of the legions treachery would ever be found.

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