Imperial Truth - The Great Lie: From the seemingly endless cycle of tragedy and death Horus unleashed, it has become clear to all that at the heart of the Imperial Truth was a lie. This "Great Lie," promulgated by the Emperor who now sits eternal upon His throne, is that of a calculated and hidden ignorance within the doctrine of enlightenment.Those possessed of psychic gifts who had truly seen behind the stars knew that the Lie resided there all along, clearest in the darkness, though they feared to think of it and dared not speak of it: the Warp is alive with malignant sentience and malign intelligence, the very essence of which IS supernatural.These unquiet spirits, which reside in the Warp, sate themselves upon the souls of mortals. Those that remain must examine the consequences of the silence on this topic and the toll what some would call the "Great Lie" took upon the Imperium with the outbreak of the Horus Heresy.The first of these consequences may appear now to be the most terrible; that of Horus' rebellion itself. By turning his face from the light of his father, Horus not only brought ruin to the Imperium but also empowered the beings of the Warp to cross from their empyreal realm into realspace. It is claimed that Horus was closest to his father among the primarchs, and that the Emperor shared with him all of His accumulated wisdom.This can only be a falsehood, for Horus must have learned of the power of the immaterial from some other source -- the Emperor would otherwise surely have warned off His son from the dangers of the forces he later came to enter into a compact with.The White Scars Legion primarch, Jaghatai Khan, mused upon returning to Terra that, "It was the knowledge that the Emperor had concealed His true purpose from His favoured son that led to Horus' downfall. In Horus' mind, the suspicion took root that he may not have been his father's favourite; after all, my brother Magnus knew more of the Warp and Corax more of the darkness within Mankind. This must be what broke Horus' will."Captain Garviel Loken, a survivor of Isstvan III, is heard to have countered bitterly, "It was simply the realisation that the Emperor was not infallible, as all sons learn of their fathers, which set Horus' heart to fester."It is impossible to say now, for Horus too is dead and his ashes reveal nought.There have been other costs incurred by the Great Lie which have undermined the Emperor's dream of Imperium. Many billions of lives were lost in the purges later required to maintain it. Ancient civilisations, directly descended from Old Earth, who carried with them across the cosmos the torch of religions deemed anathema in this enlightened age were simply murdered for their beliefs.Tens of thousands of cities were burned, cultures were put to the sword and worlds were annihilated in the name of the Imperial Truth. Ignorance was promoted hand-in-hand with enlightenment across the stars. The stability and safety of ignorance was used as a tool, an opiate to the blissful masses, through which they would remain unquestioning.With ignorance and death as the tools used to promote wisdom, the Great Crusade ultimately made vulnerable the very foundations of the Imperium. When push came to shove, it made possible the later use of the ignorance of blind faith as a political weapon against Humanity itself.There is a final and more dire consequence, one which revealed itself in the due course of time. A greater war had begun with the end of the Horus Heresy, which blighted the future of Mankind. Once son had turned upon father, brother upon brother, and the Imperium's greatest defenders had been brought to their knees, Humanity could never attain the greatness of galactic dominance that the Emperor had intended for Mankind.Therein lay the problem, for in his reckless ambition, Horus mortally wounded the Imperium. The threat of the alien which the Imperium spent two Terran centuries casting from its growing borders during the Great Crusade had received a great reprieve. Moreover, the very fabric of reality had been altered and terrors previously unknown to Humanity had turned their eyes upon the domain of Mankind.The xenos and the Daemon could not allow the Imperium to recover the might of its golden age; from the Heresy forwards, they have always sought to bring Mankind low, for Humanity's weakness kept them strong. They would forever after circle the wounded Imperium looking for every crack in its defences to bring it one step closer to destruction.