Lorgar - The Emperor as God: The belief that the Emperor was a god was not a new one. From the days of His first conquest, there were some among the peoples of Terra who whispered that He was not of the mortal realm. Many of His conquered enemies were amongst the first to call Him divine. Faced with His power and the destruction of everything they had known, they called Him by ancient names, that being their only way to rationalise what had happened. Some called Him an angel, others a spirit, some a demon, others placed His nature higher still. God they called Him, and spoke prayers to Him in the watches of the night and under the light of lost suns.That Lorgar believed the Emperor a god is beyond doubt, and it is likely that he held this belief before he met the object of his devotion, and maintained it even after becoming the lord of a Space Marine Legion charged with purging idolatry, religion and superstition in the name of the atheistic Imperial Truth. In those first years of the Great Crusade, Lorgar hid his true conviction, knowing of His father's disapproval of his belief, never stating it openly but also never disavowing it.In all the records of his words in that time, of which there are many, there is endless praise for the Emperor's vision and for the course He charted for Mankind, but not one word denouncing the specific belief that the Emperor was divine. The worship of idols, the practices of mystics, and the falseness of countless gods; all were condemned without measure, but on the nature of his lord and father, Lorgar remained silent.Perhaps the most manifest display of this belief was the now infamous Lectitio Divinitatus, a document written by Lorgar during the Great Crusade expressing his belief and the rational basis for this belief in the divine nature of the Emperor of Mankind. Ironically, this document created the foundation for what would later become the Imperial Cult during the Emperor's own lifetime. The new religion would eventually emerge during the 32nd Millennium on the myriad worlds of the Imperium following the Emperor's interment in the Golden Throne to become His Imperium's state church.It seems likely that Lorgar shared his belief with others, discussing and nursing their faith in the Emperor alongside his own. It might be easy given later events to say that figures such as the Legion's First Chaplain Erebus and Kor Phaeron were his chief confidants, and perhaps they were. Others though seem equally likely to have played their part. Halik-gar, High Herald of the XVII Legion and its commander before Lorgar's return, seems to have been converted by his gene-sire, and with him such devoted former Iconoclasts as Maedro Vessar, and Ustun Cho.Through these and others, Lorgar began to change his Legion's soul. Lorgar's return to the XVII Legion did not change the Legion's nature on the surface, the manner in which they waged war was the same, but, underneath the surface, the return of their gene-father changed the Imperial Heralds in far more profound ways. The old ways of devoted service were no longer enough, devotion to an ideal was not enough, victory was not enough. The reason one fought, the fire that drove one on step-by-step on the path of truth, that was everything.If victory was certain, and who could doubt it as stars and systems fell to the Emperor's Great Crusade in their hundreds, then the measure of true victory was not in death and blood, but in what a warrior carried within him. What one believed and the mark one left on Mankind were of the utmost importance. This sense of heightened fervour spread through the XVII Legion like fire, as if Lorgar's mere presence had raised his gene-sons up into a brighter light.One of the tangible changes that came with the return of Primarch Lorgar was an increase in the importance of ceremony amongst the warriors of the XVII. The black-clad and skull-helmed heralds of the old Legion were given new authority to ensure the moral strength of their brother Legionaries. These new Legion officers, called Chaplains, would be the core of the XVII Legion's strength, showing the way of truth through word and deed, not just to the conquered but those who held the sword.When a city burned or a people were put to death, the deed was done with the solemnity of a rite. The death notice of enemies were spoken in ritual phrases by a Chaplain, as he scattered the ashes of dead and defiant worlds over the bowed heads of warriors. New words and phrases began to enter the vocabulary of the XVII Legion, words which tasted of the dust and incense of Colchis: "apostle," "athame," "creed." Some even began to refer to the dangerous and deviant modes of thought from the Imperial Truth within the XVII Legion by a name which itself came from the shadows of lost religious creeds: heresy.