Horus Heresy - Lords of the Imperium: After the decisive victory during the Ullanor Crusade, when Mankind's re-ascension to predominance in the galaxy was no longer in doubt, the Emperor bestowed upon the Primarch Horus Lupercal the title of Imperial Warmaster and ceded to him control of all the Imperium's military forces in the Emperor's stead.The other primarchs were then instructed to follow Horus and obey him and complete the Great Crusade under his direction. There was, it is said, some disquiet among the primarchs that the Emperor had decided to no longer fight alongside them, but the Emperor at the time was as adamant as He was close-mouthed as to what He would do on His return to Terra.The Emperor then departed for the homeworld of Mankind and the dungeons deep beneath His great Imperial Palace to begin His so-called "Great Work" on the creation of a Human extension into the labyrinth dimension of the Webway under a veil of secrecy previously unknown in the Imperium. He drew to Him certain advisors and agents of the Mechanicum and retired to the private vaults deep beneath his city-fortress within the Imperial Palace known as the Imperial Dungeons.Upon His return to Terra, the Emperor called to His side Malcador and the Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal of the Martian Mechanicum. He issued them with new commands. No longer were they to support the military campaigns, as these were now safely in the hands of his sons the primarchs and the newly appointed Warmaster Horus.The Emperor needed time and all of His focus to be directed at His next great project, which would tie the newborn Imperium together and unite it as no other Human polity had ever been united. To this end, the Emperor convened the first Council of Terra. Unlike the War Council, of which Horus was now the leader, the Council of Terra would attend to matters of state and the establishment and maintenance of Imperial Law across the myriad worlds of the Imperium.In particular, the Council of Terra was to administrate the establishment of the Imperial Tithe of troops and resources from all the worlds of the Imperium that were required to support the Great Crusade. In effect, to the new Council of Terra would fall the entirety of the civil government of the Imperium.Malcador, the Emperor's most trusted advisor, was named as the first lord of the Council and Regent of Terra and he would lead it in the Emperor's absence.The Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum of Mars, Kelbor-Hal, Captain-General Constantin Valdor of the Legio Custodes and the masters of the Adeptus Astronomica, the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Administratum of the Imperium were also appointed to the Council of Terra.Having established the new governing body of the Imperium to carry out the day-to-day work of ruling tens of thousands of worlds and trillions of Human beings, the Emperor took refuge in His vast laboratories and workshops beneath the Imperial Palace. He began work in earnest on His new project.While the Emperor was locked away in His subterranean factories, trouble was brewing. The formation of the Council of Terra proved to be a contentious decision with the distant primarchs, who were appalled when news of the formation of the council finally reached them on the frontiers of the Great Crusade.Some of the primarchs took great exception to being ruled by those they deemed less worthy of such an honour than themselves. The less stable primarchs felt that this was a betrayal of all they had fought and won in the Emperor's name and that their victories now counted for nothing.The primarchs, and many of their Astartes, felt that it was they who had suffered and sacrificed the most to build the Imperium and thus it was they who should have the greatest say in how it was ruled, not a council composed of effete Terran nobles and faceless bureaucrats. This was one of many growing resentments that allowed the Ruinous Powers to infect and corrupt several of the primarchs.The creation of the Council of Terra, seen in this light, lent new weight to Horus' later argument to several of his brothers that the Imperium had been betrayed by their father. He argued that the Emperor had proved more than willing to turn His back on His sons and generals and give power instead to petty mortal administrators and the sycophantic tech-adepts of Mars who lacked the primarchs' brilliance and superhuman abilities.As Horus prepared his rebellion against the Emperor, he convinced himself that petty functionaries and administrators had supplanted the primarchs and the Astartes within the Imperium they had won. Once the Imperium had been wholly geared for the war and conquest that was its life's blood since its inception, but now Horus believed that it had become burdened with parasitic exectors, scribes and scriveners who demanded to know the cost of everything.Bureaucracy was taking over -- red tape, administrators and clerks were replacing the heroes of the age. Horus argued to his more receptive brothers that unless the Imperium changed its ways and direction, its greatness as an empire would soon be a footnote in history books.Horus feared that everything he and his brother primarchs had achieved would be a distant memory of former glory, lost in the mists of time like the civilisations of ancient Terra. It was this hubris and arrogance that led to the Warmaster's inevitable fall to Chaos and the resultant civil war that would consume the entire galaxy, ushering in a new Age of Darkness that would last for millennia.Yet Horus and his more resentful brothers had completely misunderstood the Emperor's intent in creating the Council of Terra. The council was to become the body of civilian government that would administrate the myriad bureaucratic tasks needed for the survival of the newly formed Human interstellar empire.The Emperor was determined that in His Imperium power would reside with those mortal men and women who were governed by its apparatus and not with an artificial military elite composed of genetically-engineered beings who were so powerful that they already possessed only a very tenuous grip upon their own Humanity.The primarchs and their Space Marines had been created to give life to the Emperor's dream of a united Human Imperium stretching across the galaxy and to defend it from Humanity's myriad foes. They were never intended to rule it as a hereditary caste of immortal warriors imposing their whims upon those they deemed mere "mortals" by brute force. The primarchs and the Space Marines had been created to protect Mankind, not become new tyrants over it.