Imperial Truth - Horus Heresy: During the dark days of the Horus Heresy the power of the Warp reached ascendance, the ruinous entities within drawn closer to the narrow divide between the Empyrean and realspace than had been experienced at any time since the Age of Strife.Knowledge of the existence and madness of that which lay beyond the veil reached its height among the worlds of the Imperium. Whether through first-hand experience, reliable eyewitness accounts, dark rumour or the frantic babbled hearsay carried by uncounted refugees in flight, the citizens of the Imperium at a stroke learned that the Daemons which they had so long denied were in fact real.With this realisation, panic and dread spread to become a galactic hysteria. The threat of the approach of the forces of the Warmaster Horus only fanned the flames of agitation; on many worlds the fever pitch of terror ground to a halt any hope of resistance as the Traitor Legions arrived, the gatekeepers of these worlds paralysed with terror or already fleeing.The Warmaster understood the power of fear and used it widely as part of his strategy of conquest. Sending his emissaries ahead of his fleets, Horus spread word of the Emperor's "Great Lie" and threatened to unleash the arcane powers he now commanded to cow populations into submission.Worlds lost to the Warmaster were said to have become "dark." This sentiment was both figurative and literal. These worlds would immediately cease all trade and communication with their neighbours, their spaceports would be blockaded and their astropathic choirs silenced. The flood of refugees escaping the onrush of the Warmaster's armies would dry up, with only a rare few voidships allowed to escape, carrying fear as a weapon to break other worlds.Among the refugees were the Warmaster's agents, insinuating themselves into positions to destabilise neighbouring star systems. To many observers, it appeared as if the darkness of space drew close to these lost worlds; isolated they would regress to a state pre-dating Imperial enlightenment. Fortress Worlds of the Imperium slipped into darkness and simply disappeared, never to be seen again.Many worlds were stripped barren by the Warmaster's engineers of war, their people and resources pressed into service in the Warmaster's fleets and armies. Industrial and Forge Worlds were captured and their denizens enslaved to continue production in actions known as "Dark Compliances." Other worlds found less useful or more resistant were scoured of life by dread atomic fire or the Life-eater virus. Still others were sacrificed wholesale to maintain the power of the Ruinstorm, the great Warp storm created by the Traitors to divide the galaxy and prevent the Loyalist Space Marine Legions from reinforcing Terra. Such a sacrifice was perhaps the worst fate of all for those worlds conquered by Horus.As worlds cascaded into darkness, conditions became ideal for all of the evils of space to emerge. Freighters full of refugees would carry within them a melting pot of worshippers of ancient religions, and for surely the first time, many different such cults would mix, each carrying a piece of a larger and more complex black ritual.The sequence of worlds becoming dark would lead to tidal waves of fearful emotions carried by billions of people, which would in turn be reflected in the psychically reactive dimension of the Warp, leading to indiscriminate, large-scale Daemonic incursions on dozens of worlds. Rebels and cultists across the galaxy threw off the pretence of Imperial Compliance to challenge their Imperial planetary governors, and such distractions to loyal defenders only paved Horus' advance.Other forces took advantage of the Imperium's weakness. The Unspeakable King would re-emerge, as would the psychopathy of Du'Maash. Xenos threats banished to the fringes of the galaxy would rear their heads to eke out a corner of the Imperium as their own, and those within cordons of quarantine would look to their skies to see the battleships of their Imperial gaolers no longer hanging above them.In many instances, the fearful tales of the Daemon abroad within the Imperium ravaging loyal systems may even have been misattributed to the influx of rampaging xenos breeds taking advantage of the Imperium's tumult, but given the paucity of surviving records, it is impossible to say what fates befell such worlds.Many questioned at this time if more could have been done to stem the rising panic. The Legiones Astartes, the symbol of Imperial strength and unity, were sundered after the bitter blows at Isstvan III and Isstvan V, Calth, Signus Prime and many more. The Shattered Legions' forces scattered across the vastness of the galaxy waged their guerrilla campaigns to harry the onrush of the Traitors' darkness, but could do little to significantly slow it.The vast martial might of the Imperial Army was split in twain by the rebellion, responding to a million cries for aid or consuming itself with in-fighting. Planetary garrison forces could scarcely keep up with the deluge of refugees and quickly became wary of their neighbours, mistrust winning over compassion thanks to the artifices of the Warmaster.With Imperial defenders in disarray, voices were raised to ask questions of the whereabouts of the Emperor and His agents of illumination, those most trusted and most required to keep the darkness at bay in the Imperium's time of need.The Emperor had returned to His seat on Terra after the Triumph of Ullanor, trusting to His chosen son, Horus, to complete the Great Crusade, while unbeknownst to His Imperium He was embroiled in His Imperial Webway Project. It may have appeared to the masses that, throughout the years of the Horus Heresy, He was either unaware or uncaring of the plight of the trillions of souls looking to Him for deliverance, and with the weight of that perception came despair.The truth though is far more frightening, as the secrets being unlocked in the Imperial Dungeons beneath the Imperial Palace were of the utmost importance, holding the full attention of the indomitable mind of the Master of Mankind, allowing Him no respite in which He could turn His gaze to the stars. With Him, His Custodians retreated to Terra, playing little significant part in the wars of the Horus Heresy, instead seeing to the safety of the Emperor and enacting His secret will during the War Within the Webway.So too did the Imperial Fists Legion and their primarch Rogal Dorn return to Terra, tasked with the fortification of the Throneworld. Beyond the light of Sol, the Imperial Fists were instrumental in the defence of the heartlands of the Imperium within the Segmentum Solar, here at least they monitored the flow of rumour and brought reassurance to isolated planetary governors that they were not forgotten.These efforts were often undermined in the early stages of what would become known as the Solar War, a campaign of calculated misdirection and manipulation whose objective was to weaken the seat of power of Terra prior to the Warmaster's arrival.The Forge Worlds of the ancient Mechanicum, ever jealous of their domains, became isolationist and reclusive, beyond the reach of Mars and Terra both. The fate of the fanatical Malagra Order which served as the internal doctrinal police of the Machine Cult is tied to the birth of the Dark Mechanicum, and as with many masters of the Forge Worlds, they had little interest in the plight of the wider Imperium, being as they were otherwise occupied with the division of the Mechanicum and the secession of Mars from the Imperium.Of the Chartist Captains and Rogue Traders in the galaxy, they made themselves known in many small ways, arriving unheralded to aid the Imperium or, in their disbelief and shock, let loose their anger at the very idea of civil war; punishing both the Emperor's and Warmaster's forces in equal measure. Such was observed when the Golden Fleet appeared to burn the skies above Tallarn, and when the Admiralty of Joss crippled the moon of Drussen IV.Multiple Rogue Traders are thought also to have contributed on both sides to the Sea of Fire, the devastating void warfare engagement across the Beta-Garmon region fought during the Battle of Beta-Garmon. On the whole, their forces were too far from the core worlds in need of their aid, too scattered to make any concerted impact on the wider war and too few to turn the tide.As to the Order Elucidatum, the secret police of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, Horus knew of their presence within the Great Crusade. Being a skilled general, he had observed early on certain regiments of the Imperial Army peeling off from their ordered advances to pursue hitherto unknown objectives and had traced these back to the offices of the Sigillite. When Horus came after the Isstvan III Atrocity to purge his voidships of Iterators, Remembrancers and Imperial bureaucrats he did not underestimate the Elucidators, tasking his Equerry Maloghurst with their extermination.Outside of the Traitors' fleets, the Elucidators found their work outstripping them as the birth of the Ruinstorm gave rise to innumerable new targets, far beyond the ability of their order to cope with alone, particularly when those among the Imperial Army whom they had come to rely on were entrenched in warfare on multiple fronts.The individual Elucidators became fragmented as the Heresy proceeded, their fates unknown and unsought after. From the text concerning the Alpha Legion's actions during the Heresy known as the Unbalanced Scales, we can deduce that perhaps dozens of Elucidators spread throughout the expeditionary fleets were in fact covert double agents of the Alpha Legion and, at the onset of the Horus Heresy, these were recalled to other, unknowable posts.In 012.M31, the Order Elucidatum was formally dissolved by the Sigillite without fanfare, and records pointing towards its existence expunged. Those few Tallymen who survived to return to their master on Terra were not lauded as either heroes or villains but quietly inducted into different secretive Imperial agencies, for Malcador was still in need of proven men and women with their particular skills.