Word Bearers - Notable Campaigns: The Word Bearers have woven a rich tapestry of disaster across the millennia. Only those truly steeped in arcane lore can discern the patterns within. No idle raids are these, but the sacrificial acts of a grand ritual designed to tear open reality and empower the Chaos Gods. Each betrayal, each act of hideous devotion, has been for the furtherance of this bitter crusade.The Fall of Orioc (Unknown Date.M30) - Orioc was a city-state of Old Earth. Buried in a hallowed-out mountain in Ancient Terra's ice-bound south, it stood throughout the darkness of Old Night, weathering the storms of strife for thousands of standard years. The people of Orioc believed they were the chosen of Ancient Terra's blighted children, and that they alone would outlast the anarchy that had broken so much else. This certainty came from their faith in protection from the spirits of death and life, an ancient pantheon of gods worshiped by the people of Orioc. During the Unification Wars, when the Emperor's eye finally turned to the mountain city, He seemed to have known that soft words and diplomatic overtures would be of little use. The XVIIth Space Marine Legion, the Imperial Heralds, came to the city and gave it a choice -- kneel and accept the Imperial Truth, or be destroyed. The Priest Kings of Orioc did not even hear the message before they gave their answer. Fire met the Imperial Heralds' transport and as it fell to the ice plains, the XVIIth Legion began their attack. Macro bombers came out of the snow-filled sky and the mountain cracked under a rain of seismic charges. On the mountain's flanks, siege tanks coughed shell after shell into fractures in the rock, breaking them wide open. Behind the wind came the grey armoured warriors advancing in a relentless drum roll of gun fire and the hiss of flame. After three solar hours of battle, the remaining populace was a huddled flock, crammed intro the central cavern. With every other tunnel and cavern district wiped clean of life, the XVIIth Legion halted, sealing the ways in and out of the central cavern. As the survivors waited in fretful silence, they wondered what fate awaited them. Their answer came in a rain of shattered stone and red fire, as the Ashen Circle descended on the last idolators like comets flung from a destroyed heaven. All burned, none were spared, and when it was done, the XVIIth Legion overloaded the geothermal power plants beneath the mountain, causing lava to fill the caverns, swallowing the stone idols, and exploding the city-state from the wounds in the mountain's flanks. So fell Orioc, and the message of its death carried across Ancient Terra and beyond: faith in false gods would bring only ruin and ashes.Compliance of 47-10 (Khur) (ca. 903.M30) - The world of Forty-Seven Ten, also known as Khur, was brought into Imperial Compliance by the Word Bearers Legion approximately a Terran century before the events of Istvaan III at the outset of the Horus Heresy. The beautiful capital city of Khur known as Monarchia, called the Perfect City by the Word Bearers, was built by the people of Khur at the direction and exhortation of the Word Bearers to demonstrate their faith and devotion to the God-Emperor.Melkeji Salvation (ca. 957.M30) - The world of Melkeji was a planet on the trailing edge of the galactic rim which had retained many of the technological marvels of Mankind's lost Golden Age of Technology. Star docks ringed its orbit and moons, and electric lights bathed its cities which rose in metal and stone from plains, mountains and blue sea shores. Winged craft skimmed its atmosphere, while genecrafts and bio-cleansing technologies allowed much of its population to live for many Terran centuries. On the surface Melkeji was a jewel of light still burning in the night, but darkness coiled at the heart of this perfect realm. A parasitic alien race held control over Melkeji. Accounts describe these creatures as clouds of shattered black crystal when glimpsed without their hosts. Unable to exist outside of a biological sentient host, these nameless creatures ruled Melkeji through a class referred to as the Ascended. Wearing the faces of human men and women, the Ascended ran their domains with a single purpose guiding their every action: the maintenance of a pool of future hosts. Such was the Melkeji world's ingrained devotion to their parasitic masters, that when the Great Crusade found them, they rose up to resist the invaders who sought to free them. Initially, the Imperium's Expeditionary Fleet encountered heavy resistance and the armada withdrew with a small number of human captives. From these captives the nature of the Melkeji's enslavement soon became clear. Knowing that they could not capture the planet, the Grand Marshal of the Expeditionary Fleet sent an Astropathic message asking for aid. When that aid came, it was more than the Grand Marshal could have dared to hope for. Lorgar himself came to Melkeji with eight full Chapters of his XVIIth Legion. Having talked to the captives in person, the Lord Aurelian is said to have given a single order: "Light the first fire." Perhaps out of fear that their human cattle might one day turn on them, the Ascended dwelt in a chain of nine orbital cities far above the planet's surface. Approaching without power, the war barge Castigator slid towards Melkeji from its system's edge. Once it was deep behind the planet's sphere of defences, it fired its payload, a Nova Shell and a cluster of Melta and plasma-tipped torpedoes timed to strike at the same moment. Revealing itself after launching its payload, the Melkeji warships turned to chase the Word Bearers vessel. Meanwhile, Lorgar's fleet met them, the void battle lasted a single hour, and at its end the Melkeji ships were scattered fragments of debris. The Word Bearers moved past the orbital cities to land their armoured cargoes of Astartes upon the planet's surface. Five thousand Word Bearers and 100,000 Imperial Army auxiliaries fell on the planet in a single drop. Even in the face of such might, the Melkeji resisted. Several million died in the first hour of engagement. Then, just as the defenders reached into their reserves of will, Lorgar attacked the remaining cities of the Ascended. Boarding companies in Astartes gunships punched through the turret fire and armour, and began to advance through the cities. Throughout the assault the Ascended called on their forces to resist, their voices reaching across the planet on signal waves. Lorgar made no move to stop the signaling voices, but his Assault Companies reached the orbital cities' plasma reactors. Then, one after another, the Ascended's voices were silenced and a chain of explosions ringed the besieged world. In a single moment the people of Melkeji knew that their masters were gone and that they were facing a power greater and more terrible than they any they could have dreamed in their wildest nightmares. Most of the Melkeji surrendered at that moment, the rest a few days later. A decade after, Melkeji was a world faithful to the God-Emperor. Half a century later, half a million of its sons and daughters would come to Ultramar in 007.M31 with the names of alien gods on their lips and aid the Word Bearers in the assault upon Calth and other worlds within the Realm of the XIIIth Legion.Razing of Monarchia (964.M30) - During the Great Crusade, the world of Forty-Seven Ten, also known as Khur, was brought into Imperial Compliance approximately a Terran century before the events of Istvaan III at the outset of the Horus Heresy (approximately 005.M30). The beautiful capital city of Khur known as Monarchia, called the Perfect City by the Word Bearers, was built by the people of Khur at the direction and exhortation of the Word bearers to demonstrate their faith and devotion to the God-Emperor. Nearly six decades after being brought into Compliance, some forty-three years before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, utterly destroyed Monarchia on the order of the Emperor as an example to both Primarch Lorgar and his Word Bearers that violations of the Imperial Truth through the encouragement of the continued error of religious faith and the spread of idolatrous doctrine would not be tolerated. This action crushed Lorgar and his Space Marines and led them to seek out new gods more worthy of their worship -- the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.Pilgrimage of Lorgar (ca. 964.M30) - The Pilgrimage of Lorgar was the spiritual quest undertaken by the Primarch Lorgar of the Word Bearers Space Marine Legion during the Great Crusade. Its object was to discover whether humanity's ancient collective beliefs in supernatural entities were true or whether his father the Emperor of Mankind's atheistic, rationalist Imperial Truth was the correct philosophy to guide Mankind's future. In the course of his Pilgrimage, Lorgar learned that the Emperor had lied and that supernatural entities, the Chaos Gods, did exist. Since they were the only deities seemingly in existence, Lorgar believed that they were worthy of humanity's worship. Lorgar would spend the next 40 standard years seeking to turn his fellow Primarchs to the service of Chaos and this Pilgrimage was ultimately responsible for setting in motion the events that brought on the cataclysmic Horus Heresy.Purge of 47-16 (ca. 964.M30) - Forty-Seven Sixteen was the first world brought into Imperial Compliance after the rebuke of the Word Bearers by the Emperor on the world of Khur. The lost human world had at first rejoiced to be reunited with their long-lost brothers from the stars. For over four thousand Terran years they had thought themselves alone in the universe until the arrival of the XVIIth Legion. They had greeted the Word Bearers' envoys with open arms, gazing upon the immense, grey-armoured Astartes warriors with awe and reverence. Upon their return to their orbiting vessels, First Captain Kor Phaeron commented that the people of Forty-Seven Sixteen were, "Irrevocably corrupt worshipers of a heathen deity." The humans of this world appeared to venerate a large profane titanic colossus known only as the "Storm Lord." Since the Emperor had rebuked their Primarch and the entirety of the XVIIth Legion for their slowness in bringing worlds into Compliance and violating the Imperial Truth, the Word Bearers could not again refuse the will of the Emperor. The XVIIth Legion did not have the time necessary to convert the population of Forty-Seven Sixteen to the Imperial Truth, and since their profane beliefs were deemed incompatible with the Imperium's order, the world of Forty-Seven Sixteen would have to be purged. Less than 24 hours later more than a 190 million people were dead – over 98% of the doomed world’s population. Only one city survived the 12 hour orbital bombardment, in which entire continents disappeared in flame. This was the seat of the planet's governance and centre of its blasphemous worship. The world's profane palace-temple was protected by a bubble of coruscating energy. Five full Word Bearers companies were deployed to the planet's surface to finish the job. Battling through the masses of artificial intelligent war machines unleashed by the desperate defenders, Captain Sor Talgron and his 34th Company spearheaded the assault and eventually forced their way inside, while taking more casualties than initially expected. Within the dome of the temple were gathered hundreds of human survivors as well as the political leaders of the people of Forty-Seven Sixteen. Sor Talgron spoke with the head priest and discovered, much to his shock, that these people worshipped the Emperor as a God, and that they wanted to join the Imperium! Sor Talgron felt guilty for the genocide that had been committed by his Legion because of this misunderstanding. Informing the Primarch of what had transpired, the First Captain Kor Phaeron and a cadre of 100 Terminators teleported to the surface, materialising inside the dome, their weapons trained on the human worshippers. Then Lorgar and First Chaplain Erebus materialised, making their presence known. The Primarch dismissed the fact that the people of this world worshiped the Emperor as a god and that they had somehow obtained a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus scribed by Lorgar himself. Lorgar informed Talgron that he had been penning a new magnus opus, something that would make everyone forget the now-obsolete Lectitio Divinatus. This was to be the profane Book of Lorgar. The people of Forty-Seven Sixteen were condemned, for ignorance was no excuse for violations of the Imperial Truth. The Primarch explained to Captain Talgron that sometimes sacrifices had to be made, and with a signal to his First Captain the survivors of Forty-Seven Sixteen were massacred in a hail of Storm Bolter rounds.Discovery of Cadia (966.M30) - During the so-called "Pilgrimage of Lorgar", the spiritual quest undertaken by the Primarch Lorgar and his XVIIth Legion to commune with the Dark Gods. The Word Bearers' pursuit of any scrap of information that could be found on the Primordial Truth or the nature of the place where Gods and mortals could mingle ultimately led the 1301st Expeditionary Fleet to the Cadia System near the largest permanent Warp Storm in the galaxy, later known to the Imperium as the Eye of Terror. The Word Bearers laid anchor over an unknown world. They later made planetfall on the newly discovered planet, which they designated as 1301-12. There, they discovered the Chaos-worshipping population. It was on Cadia that Lorgar first met Ingethal, a Daemon Prince of Chaos, who was appointed by the Ruinous Powers as a guide for Lorgar and inducted the naive Primarch into worshipping Chaos. This would lay the seeds for setting in motion the events that brought on the cataclysmic Horus Heresy nearly four decades later.Pyre of Corrinos (Unknown Date.M30) - The Corrinos Campaign is one of many that were seen at the time as shining examples of the Word Bearers' renewal after their censure at Khur. Now, with the fires of treachery still casting a lingering shadow ten thousand standard years later, this ancient victory can be read in a very different light. Corrinos was a star system of inhabited worlds that lay close to the major Warp routes linking the Sol System to the Eastern Fringe. Discovered after a previously unstable Warp route had opened, it at first seemed Corrinos might be brought into the Imperial fold without bloodshed. The light Imperial scout fleet who first made contact with the trio of worlds reported that the populations of all seemed open to reunification with Terra. Given the levels of technology and industry, they became a waypoint for greater exploitation of the eastern galactic zones, and a small force of Ultramarines was dispatched to link up with the scout fleet and bring Corrinos into the expanding Realm of Ultramar. The Ultramarines were becalmed in the Immaterium while en route to the Corrinos System, which delayed them by several solar months. When the forces of the XIIIth Legion finally reached their destination, they found its three worlds covered in the ruin of war. All that remained was a lone Imperial voidship lingering in orbit around one world. The Imperial survivors' account given to the Ultramarines, and the one that entered the War Council's archives, was that the scout fleet had been ambushed and destroyed after being lured into a false parley. The scout fleet's Astropaths had broadcast a garbled message that called for help and spoke of treachery. A Word Bearers Crusade fleet, under the command of Chapter Master Hasdrubal, had responded, racing to the system to find that the worlds of Corrinos were waiting for them. Far from open compliance, the population was riddled with the taint of renegade psykers. These witches had clouded the minds of the Imperial scout force, seeding them with lies that would draw more victims to Corrinos. It had only been chance that the Astropath's message had broken through. As soon as they were in range of the first world, the Word Bearers Crusade fleet began their bombardment, hammering the surface of the first planet from orbit with relentless fury. A mass Astartes drop had followed to clear the remaining life from the surface. With the warships above shaking the ground with fire, the Word Bearers made a last advance before withdrawing to orbit again and leaving the first planet of Corrinos in flames. It was said to have been done in less than a single transit of the world's sun, and then repeated twice more until the Corrinos System was cleansed of life. These were the facts the Imperium believed at the time, which signified nothing but the strength of a loyal Space Marine Legion. That Corrinos could have provided a key mustering ground for later Loyalist forces seeking to strike out of Ultramar towards the systems around Terra to protect the homeworld of humanity from an attacking force never occurred to anyone. Only later, after the terrible events of the Horus Heresy, does the account of the Pyre of Corrinos now taste of lies when one speaks of it.Compliance of Fortrea Quintus (Unknown Date.M30) - The world of Fortrea Quintus had been isolated from Imperial rule for several centuries, and when the leading edges of the Great Crusade reached the frontier of their star system, the planet's governing monarchy proved unwilling to submit itself to Imperial rule and had the Emperor's representatives executed. The Word Bearers were the nearest Legion to the world, though they were already heavily engaged in fighting Orks in the Chairak Nebula. Lorgar despatched 2,000 Astartes to Fortrea Quintus with orders that the planet be pacified within three months. The Word Bearers quickly established fortified positions on the planet and found the populace to be living in abject poverty, while their corrupt and ruthless rulers grew fat off their hard labours. A well-trained and disciplined army defended the planet's rulers, equipped with advanced weaponry and artificially-intelligent war machines. Under the command of Captain Jarulek, the Word Bearers steadily pushed their enemies back, their captain rousing the populace against their rulers with stirring speeches and fiery oratory. In ever-increasing numbers, the people of Fortrea Quintus joined Jarulek's march until his army numbered more than a million people. A month after the Word Bearers had landed, Captain Jarulek, together with his millions of new followers, launched his assault on the planetary ruler's last bastion, the Palace of Light. The casualties amongst the populace were horrendous,with thousands dying every minute as they charged the heavily defended walls, armoured bastions and labyrinthine trench systems of the main gates armed with little more than pistols and spears. As the carnage continued at the main palace gates, the Word Bearers attacked on another front, catching the defenders off-guard and striking for the heart of the palace. Nothing could stand before them and Jarulek himself captured the planet's ruler, throwing him to the blood-maddened survivors of the battle at the gates where he was torn to bloody shreds. Fully 90% of the people who had joined Jarulek's march died in the battle for the main gates, whilst barely a handful of Word Bearers had been killed. Following the victory, Jarulek began the Imperial indoctrination of the populace. When the Adepts of the Ministorum arrived to bring the word of the Emperor to Fortrea Quintus, they were horrified by the Word Bearers careless use of the populace, but found the people as well versed in the culture of the Imperium as any Loyal world could be. But when the Horus Heresy began, Fortrea Quintus would be revealed as a hotbed of Chaos worship secretly planted by the Word Bearers. After the end of the Heresy, the Ultramarines Legion would be forced to purge the planet of its festering Chaotic corruption by exterminating its population.Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan V (566.066.M31) - Noted as one of the most devastating defeats in the history of the Adeptus Astartes, the Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan V saw the Raven Guard and Salamanders Legions nearly annihilated as effective fighting forces and only the quick thinking and initiative of the Salamanders allowed a bare few Space Marines of these two Legions to escape that dreadful day. In response to the treachery of the Warmaster Horus and his betrayal of the Loyalist Astartes in the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Death Guard Legions at Istvaan III, the Primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion, Rogal Dorn, on the direction of the Emperor who had learned of Horus' actions from the Loyalist survivors aboard the Eisenstein, ordered 7 Loyalist Space Marine Legions to Horus' base on the world of Istvaan V to challenge the Traitors. They would attack in two waves and fall under the supreme command of the Iron Hands' Primarch Ferrus Manus. The Legions comprising the first wave were the Raven Guard, Iron Hands and Salamanders. The Legions comprising the second wave were the Alpha Legion, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, and a large contingent of Word Bearers that their Primarch Lorgar had stationed in the star system. Unknown to Dorn and Ferrus Manus, the Night Lords, Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors and Word Bearers had all turned from their service to the Emperor and secretly pledged their loyalty to Horus, and been instructed to keep their new allegiance to Chaos a secret. The Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard were deployed in the first wave of the assault on the planet. The first wave secured the drop site, known as the Urgall Depression, though at a heavy cost. Horus ordered his front line troops to fall back in a feint, tempting Ferrus Manus to overstretch his already thin lines. Against the advice of Corax and Vulkan, Manus led his Veterans against the fleeing Traitor Marines unsupported. Manus then brought his brother Fulgrim to combat. As the two Primarchs drew their weapons, the Raven Guard and Salamanders fell back to regroup and allow the second wave's Legions to advance and earn glory. However, as they returned they were mowed down by the four Traitor Legions that had landed to supposedly support them, thus revealing their new allegiance to Chaos. At the same time the apparent rout of the Sons of Horus, the World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor's Children suddenly halted and the Traitors pressed their attack. As Horus pressed the counterattack he managed to sandwich the Loyalists between the two Traitor forces, killing most of them. As the black-armoured Astartes of the Raven Guard Legion were cut down by the Traitors' sustained volley, the traitorous Primarch Lorgar ordered his Word Bearers Legion to attack the Raven Guards' unprotected flank. Corax charged into the ranks of the Traitorous Word Bearers, a blur of charcoal armour and black blades, butchering with an ease that belied his ferocity. Argel Tal, the Crimson Lord and leader of the daemon-possessed Astartes known as the Gal Vorbak, Lorgar's "Blessed Sons," leapt forward to meet their end at the hands of the enraged Primarch. Lorgar soon noticed that Corax was wading through the Gal Vorbak, ripping his daemon-possessed crimson warriors apart. Despite the protestations of both Kor Phaeron and Erebus, Lorgar disregarded their counsel and sprinted forwards across the churned earth and dead bodies of his brother's Legion to engage in a battle he had no hope of winning. The two Primarchs fought in furious combat -- Corax fighting to slay the Traitor, while Lorgar fought simply to stay alive. The Primarchs traded vicious blows, but the Raven Lord had the advantage not only of speed and finesse, but also of being a gifted warrior with decades of fighting experience. Lorgar did not, for he had always been more of a scholar than a warrior, and his lack of experience cost him dearly as Corax impaled Lorgar through his stomach and out his back. As Corax stepped closer, he raised his one functioning Lightning Claw to execute his brother, but was thwarted by the timely intervention of the Night Lords' Primarch Konrad Curze. Weakened by his battle with Lorgar, Corax took advantage when the Night Haunter was momentarily distracted and fired his flight pack, burning his fuel reserves to escape Curze’s grip, soaring skyward away from Curze’s rising laughter. Meanwhile, the Iron Hands were cut off and slaughtered to a man -- the Veteran Morlock Terminators cut down while Ferrus Manus was beheaded by Fulgrim. The Salamanders and Raven Guard could do nothing to help the Iron Hands, and were forced to make a costly break-out with precious few of their forces. Those Thunderhawk and Stormbird gunships that lifted off and escaped Istvaan V were far fewer than those that had landed. Corax was badly wounded and Vulkan's fate was unknown for some time. The remainder of the Iron Hands Legion arrived to find their Veterans and Primarch dead and the Salamanders and Raven Guard reduced to a fraction of their full strength, with both Legions nearly wiped out.Shadow Crusade (007-009.M31) - The Word Bearers and World Eaters launch Shadow Crusade and invade the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar with the aim of utterly destroying the domain of the Ultramarines and drawing Loyalist forces away from the Warmaster's advance on Terra. During the conflict, which centres around the perfidious attack of the Word Bearers at the Calth Muster, scores of worlds are ravaged and the involvement of the Ruinous Powers in aid of the Traitor cause is first widely manifest in open war, transfiguring both of the Traitor Legions involved.Purge of Nuceria (ca. 007.M31) - In the wake of the Battle of Calth, the Word Bearers Legion, led by their Primarch Lorgar, linked up with Angron and his World Eaters to launch a Shadow Crusade against the Realm of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds in an attempt to spread the massive Warp storm known as the Ruinstorm that had been conjured by the Word Bearers at Calth across the Eastern Fringe. This would split the galaxy in half and deny needed reinforcements to the Loyalists as Horus drove on Terra in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind. But Lorgar noticed that the mental stability of Angron, the Primarch of the World Eaters, was rapidly deteriorating because of the damage caused by the Butcher's Nails, the cortical implant that had been forced upon Angron by the slavemasters of his homeworld of Nuceria. With the savants of the Traitor Legions and the Dark Mechanicum unable to divine a way to either remove the implant without killing the Primarch or to prevent the escalating deterioration of Angron's mind, Lorgar suggested that the Word Bearers and the World Eaters return to Nuceria to gather knowledge about the implants and then raze the world to the ground. When Angron returned to his homeworld, he learned that in the Terran century since the Emperor had rescued him unwillingly from certain death beside the rebel band of gladiators he had led, the Nucerian slavemasters had concocted a story that he had cowardly run away from the rebels' last stand and left them to be slaughtered alone. Enraged by the lies that had been told about him over the last century, Angron ordered his Legion to kill everyone in the city of Desh'ea, the masters of which had once claimed to own him. Then they were to kill everyone on the planet. At the height of the final battle against the last city on Nuceria, Lorgar was confronted by his wrathful brother Roboute Guilliman, who had been chasing him and the XIIth Legion since the destruction of Calth. As the two Primarchs fought, Guilliman gravely wounded Lorgar and was about to deliver a killing stroke to his wretched brother. But Angron intervened, facing the Lord of Ultramar in single combat. As the two fought, Guilliman landed a glancing blow, his fist pounding across Angron's breastplate. One of the skulls of Angron's fallen kinsman that hung from the chain worn across his breastplate was partially shattered and scattered across the ground. Guilliman stepped back, his boot crushing a skull's remnants to powder. Angron saw it, and threw himself at his brother, his howl of wrath defying mortal origins, impossibly ripe in its anguish. Lorgar saw it, too. The moment Guilliman's boot broke the skull, he felt the Warp boil behind the veil. The Bearer of the Word started chanting in a language never before spoken by any living being, his words in faultless harmony with Angron's cry of torment. Lorgar enacted his dark plan to save his brother's life, summoning the Ruinstorm to the world of Nuceria, tearing the sky open and unleashing a crimson torrent, formed from the ghosts of a hundred murdered worlds, raining blood. Lorgar focused his concentration on the triumphant form of his mutilated brother, calling for the Neverborn, the entities men called daemons, to answer in kind. He locked Angron’s muscles, setting fire to the synapses in his brain. The first spasms wracked their way through Angron’s sinews, turning his blood to quicksilver, then to lava and at last to holy fire. His cries of thwarted rage were tainted by an agony beyond comprehension. His body started tearing itself apart, growing, rising. Perfecting, after a lifetime of broken torture. This was the moment of Angron's apotheosis into daemonhood. The World Eaters Librarians, those few who had never been implanted with the deadly Butcher's Nails implants which were inimicable to psykers, sensed the fey powers summoned by Lorgar from the Warp. In an attempt to halt Lorgar's dark plans, the 19 remaining Librarians harnessed their collective psychic powers to manifest a psychic entity known as the Communion, the gestalt consciousness of 19 psychic minds. In the midst of Lorgar's incantations, the Communion pulled the soul of the Primarch from his body. The two psychic entities confronted one another within the Warp, locked in a deadly contest of wills, each convinced that they were the one responsible for saving Angron. But ultimately, the Communion failed, for Lorgar was just as powerful in the Warp as he was in the material universe. After Angron's completed metamorphosis into a new Daemon Prince, the Daemon Primarch turned his attention to the Librarians. The Daemon Primarch's rage killed the remaining Libarians, each of them tasting a different doom. Angron killed the last of the Librarians, expunging his Legion of the mutant weakness that had plagued his gene-sons since his reunification with them a century earlier. The Librarius of the World Eaters, the last fragment of the War Hounds within the XIIth Legion, was no more. Lorgar had offered up the World Eaters as the Blood God's new servants. Now there would only be blood, an ocean of blood carried on a tide of eternal slaughter.Battle of Calth (007.M31) - The Battle of Calth, also referred to as the Calth Atrocity, was the name given by later Imperial scholars to the treacherous campaign conducted during the early stages of the Horus Heresy in the 31st Millennium by the traitorous XVIIth Space Marine Legion, the Word Bearers, on behalf of the Warmaster Horus against their hated rivals, the XIIIth Space Marine Legion, better known as the Ultramarines. The campaign was launched by the Word Bearers' Primarch Lorgar Aurelian with the goal of exterminating the XIIIth Space Marine Legion outright. The purpose of the Word Bearers' invasion of the Ultramarines' Realm of Ultramar in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy was to tie down the XIIIth Legion and prevent them from reinforcing their fellow Loyalists as the Traitor Legions marched relentlessly on Terra itself. The crux of the campaign came on the Agri-world of Calth in the Ultramar Sector, where the Ultamarines successfully broke the Word Bearers' surprise assault after a viciously-fought siege action, though at the cost of terrible casualties and the complete destruction of Calth's atmosphere and once-verdant biosphere. As a result of the devastation wrought by the Word Bearers during the Calth Atrocity, future generations of Calth's people were required to live deep underground in massive subterranean hive cities to escape their world's radiation-scorched, airless surface. While both the Ultramarines and their Primarch Roboute Guilliman survived the Word Bearers' assault, the campaign successfully prevented the Ultramarines from participating in the Siege of Terra as Horus had planned. During the invasion, the Word Bearers conducted a blasphemous Chaos ritual which summoned massive Warp storm disturbances known as the 'Ruinstorm,' which would isolate and trap those Loyalist forces caught within it like the Ultramarines, preventing them from coordinating their efforts and supporting one another as the Traitor Legions moved towards Terra. It would even prevent them from warning each other, for a time, of the Warmaster's betrayal and the civil war that had begun to consume the Imperium. The Ruinstorm would leave Terra alone in the void, infinitely vulnerable to the approaching shadow of Horus.Destruction of the Furious Abyss (007.M31) - Following the destruction of the Auretian Techocracy and securing of their rare STC templates, Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers secured a secret alliance with the traitorous Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal. He commissioned the Dark Mechancium to construct a trio of mighty vessels built for the service of his Legion. The Furious Abyss was the first such vessel of its kind. The Word Bearers had been secretly ordered by the rebellious Warmaster Horus to bring their unfettered wrath down upon their hated rivals, the Ultramarines Legion. The Furious Abyss was to play an instrumental role in the Battle of Calth and the Traitor Legion's destructive campaign that would see the Ultramarines capital world of Macragge destroyed. But before the mighty ship could reach its destination, the secret of its existence had been discovered. The Word Bearers' vessel was secretly infiltrated by a small ad-hoc Loyalist strike force of Space Marine Legionaries, who proceeded to sabotage the ship's plasma generatorium, which began a chain-reaction that resulted in the destruction of the massive vessel.Underworld War (007-017.M31) - Following the events of the Calth Atrocity, the Word Bearers perform one last act of spite and cause the planet's primary star to go super-nova. The surface of Calth is ravaged by the slow death of the Veridia star. The Battle for Calth between trapped forces of those Ultramarines and Word Bearers still locked in a death-struggle descends into the extensive arcologies. The Underworld War grinds on for ten years before the last of the Traitors is finally hunted down and slain.Second Battle of Paramar (008 or 011.M31) - The Word Bearers provided a large garrison force alongside the Sons of Horus and elements of the Dark Mechanicum's Traitor Titan Legions that defended the strategic world of Paramar V from a Loyalist attempt to retake the planet from Traitor forces during the Second Battle of Paramar.Defence of Nagathar (009.M31) - Severed from the main body of their Legion by the unleashing of the Ruinstorm, a strike force from the Dark Angels Legion finds shelter in the Nagathar-system which had become a safe haven for several Loyalist splinter forces, the most important being drawn from the Imperial Fists. The many Loyalist fractions banded together to defend Nagathar from a powerful incursion led the Word Bearers, which had hoped to prey on the system's millions inhabitants to fuel yet another of their sorcerous rites.Scouring of Gilden's Star (010.M31) - Scattered elements of the Blood Angels Legion fight a long and bloody campaign against Word Bearers forces near the galactic core on the borders of Imperium Secundus that culminates in the near-total destruction of both armies. During the campaign, the Blood Angels prove merciless in scouring worlds which have embraced the daemonic teaching of the "dark apostles" of the Word Bearers, putting all seven colonised worlds of Gilden's Star to the sword in one particularly notable instance.Battle of Zepath (011.M31) - Obsessed with hunting down the Night Haunter, Dark Angels Primarch Lion El'Jonson eventually is able to trace a slim lead on his former brother's whereabouts to the Zepath System, which had since fallen to the Word Beaers and World Eaters forces. Farith Redloss, the lieutenant-elect of the Ist Legion's Dreadwing was charged with leading the hunt for Konrad Curze upon the world of Zepath. The Dark Angels quickly uncovered the horrors perpetrated by the Word Bearers for their dark rituals. Eventually, the Dark Angels took part in multiple engagements against the forces of both Traitor Legions, which culminated in the capital city of Numentis. The Traitor forces were utterly annihilated by the victorious Dark Angels. The world was left in the care of its surviving population.A Return to Honour (013.M31) - Arcaes Odenathus, a Captain-praetor of the Ultramarines 10th Chapter, rallies the scattered survivors of his own brethren and those other Loyalist fighting across the Dominion of Storms in the galactic north-east and lead them to Honourum. Unexpected and unlooked for, this Loyalist assault strikes the Word Bearers garrison like a thunderbolt. Three weeks of desperate fighting ensues, and as all the Word Bearers' urgent requests for reinforcements are ignored by the Warmaster, focused now on his push toward Terra, the sons of Lorgar resort to the most heinous of tactics. Daemons, warp-tainted infiltrators and terrors of the wars of Old Night are unleashed, with both sides driven on past mortal endurance by hatred. When the last Traitor finally fell, there was nothing left of the grand cities of Honourum but blasted ruins; ruins whose very substance was so contaminated by the fell powers and terrible weapons they unleashed that they would blight Honourum longer than the memory of the wars which spawned them.Siege of Terra (014.M31) - The Word Bearers took part in the climactic battle of the Horus Heresy, the Siege of Terra. The walls of the Imperial Palace seemed to touch the very sky, so tall were they. Before the walls milled the combined forces of the Traitors, an army so vast and terrible that its like has never been seen before. Nor will its like be seen again until the end of times, and the final battle. All manner of corrupted mutants, all the Greater and Lesser Daemons of Chaos, and the Traitor Legions in their fell might surrounded this last bastion of the Loyalists on Terra. The walls of the Palace were ultimately breached by the Titans of the Death's Heads Legion. Even as the Emperor fought Horus above the ruins of Terra, fought like never before, intent on slaying as many of the Loyalists as they could, sacrificing their souls to the Ruinous Powers. In the wake of the Warmaster's defeat the Word Bearers withdrew with the other Legions after Horus' fall and fled to the sanctuary of the Eye of Terror. Here, they founded a new homeword, the Daemon World Sicaraus, where the Word Bearers raised up blasphemous monuments and cathedrals to the glory of Chaos Undivided and to continue to launch their holy war against the hated Imperium of Man over the next ten millennia.War of Statues (Unknown Date.M41) - The Iconoclastic Brotherhood invades the world of Conqueror's Due. The planet was once host to a great Imperial triumph, and is covered with statues hundreds of feet high depicting the Primarchs and the Emperor. The Word Bearers and their Chaos Cultists disfigure many of the statues and tear down many more with ropes and melta charges, toppling them even as the fires of a full-scale planetary war rage all around. The Cyclopeans, a Titan Legion from nearby Vellung, counter-invade from enormous bulk landers and take a grievous toll on the Word Bearers -- though the God-machines are toppled after the Chaos Space Marines perform a grand ritual in the name of Tzeentch that imbues the disfigured statues with a semblance of life.The Counter-Crusade (Unknown Date.M41) - During the Thorados Crusade, the Black Templars burn a white-hot scar of retribution across the rebellious Invernus Sector. The Word Bearers that instigated the insurrection mount a fleet-based crusade of their own, clashing with the Black Templars on a hundred battlefields. The war escalates massively as other Traitor Legions and Daemonhosts join the fight. By the time the two crusades grind to a halt, the once-populous Invernus Sector has been decimated, with six of its worlds consumed by radioactive flame.The Saint's Beacon (Unknown Date.M41) - The Shrine World of Nepthys Madrigal is the last bastion of resistance against the empyric incursion led by Lord Vileblight, a Greater Daemon of Nurgle. So holy is the ground and so valorous its Adepta Sororitas defenders that every outbreak of Vileblight's initial gambit, the Deathly Pox, is contained and sanctified within only solar minutes of it occurring. In frustration, the Great Unclean One calls in an old debt with the Dark Apostle Kor Daradan. Within the solar month, the Word Bearers attack Nepthys Madrigal. As mortals, they are not repelled by the banishment sigils of the world, and cross the barriers that kept the daemons out. They take the fight to the Sisters of Battle there with such vigour they force a full-scale evacuation of the populace. The conflict becomes a war of attrition in which the Chaos Space Marines prioritise casting down the temples and altars of the Imperial Creed, disrupting their anti-daemonic wards. The planet falls to a wave of contagion and the subsequent Plaguebearer assault.Invasion of Tanakreg (Unknown Date.M41) - Carrying out a dire prophecy he had received ten millennia earlier during the Horus Heresy, the Dark Apostle Jarulek led his formidable Word Bearers Host in the invasion of the Imperial world of Tanakreg. Though the planet possessed a formidable air defence network protecting it from orbital attack and a large number of local Planetary Defense Forces (PDF), numbering approximately 200,000 soldiers, they were subsequently slaughtered by the invading Word Bearers. The Word Bearers Host only suffered minimal casualties as they had seeded the planet before their invasion with a large number of Chaos Cults and then incited them to rise up against their Imperial overlords when the time for their invasion had arrived. This cancerous rot had spread into the upper echelons of the Tanakreg PDF, whose members sabotaged the world's air defence network so that the Word Bearers could launch a deep strike planetary assault. With the successful subjugation of Tanakreg, Jarulek had the remaining populace enslaved and forced them to build a massive obelisk known as a Gehemehnet. This foul structure was designed to channel Warp energy directly into a planet, effectively transforming it into a Daemon World. Jarulek used the Gehemehnet to channel enough Warp energy to shatter the crust of the planet, exposing a dormant Necron Monolith beneath its surface. Accompanied by his First Acolyte Marduk, the Dark Apostle managed to recover a powerful artefact from the Necrons' stasis tomb, but was slain by the awakened Necron Lord as Marduk made his escape.The Cursed Moons of Thranix (Unknown Date.M41) - The Word Bearers harness industrial cults to scorch titanic eight-pointed stars into the moons of Thranix. The capital world they orbit is blighted by a wave of Daemonic possession soon after.The Blood Tithe (920.M41) - T'au diplomats establish an uneasy peace upon the planet of Ur-Clemait, a world that has long been ravaged by civil war. Though most of the population seems content with the T'au's enforced ceasefire, the elders and priests of the old faith are distraught, insisting that the "blood tithe" must continue to be met. The puzzled T'au continue their assimilation, but before the Terran year is out, the Word Bearers arrive to enforce the tithe. They attack Ur-Clemait in force, chanting prayers of appeasement to the Dark Gods as they cut down human and xenos alike. The T'au Fire Caste meet the invasion head-on, and the world is plunged into an ongoing war far worse than the ritual struggles of old.Daemon Tide (Unknown Date.M42) - The Frontier World of Gruelbowl is the site of a painstakingly planned mass sacrifice to the Dark Gods -- not only of Humans, but also captured Ork Freebooterz, Aeldari Outcasts and T'au ambassadors. Despite the intervention of Craftworld Alaitoc, the Word Bearers complete their ritual. The Great Rift tears open across the space lanes around Gruelbowl, stranding it and leaving it at the mercy of the Dark Apostles who engineered its demise.The Blackstone Pylons of Irradium Alpha (Unknown Date.M42) - Sent by Abaddon the Despoiler to blast apart the null-field megaliths of what seems to be a deserted world, the Word Bearers become embroiled in a grinding land battle when a self-repairing Canoptek Scarab swarm leads a Necron assault from under the planet's surface. Only by summoning daemons of Khorne with offerings of their own blood do the Word Bearers break free of the counterattack and complete their mission.The War of False Prophets (Unknown Date.M42) - The Cult of Impurity takes root after Word Bearers are sighted on the Macharius pilgrimage route. Its members thrive in secrecy, the only outward sign of their true allegiance a blasphemous mockery of an Adeptus Astartes purity seal melted onto the flesh above their hearts. Led from afar by portents sent by the Dark Apostles, the cult spreads across the Segmentum Pacificus before uniting in a massive civil war that sees six Space Marine Chapters matched against billions of the Lost and the Damned.Exile's End - The Return of Lorgar (Unknown Date.M42) - After the Horus Heresy's earth-shattering climax at the Siege of Terra, Lorgar retreated ever further from the matters of the material realm, and went into seclusion indefinitely, cloistered in a locked sanctum on the Daemon World of Sicarius to atone for his deeds. As the 41st Millennium came to a close and the Great Rift boiled across the sky, rumours persisted that Lorgar had finally ended this self-imposed confinement, and has been seen walking the mortal realms in terrible splendour, preaching the word of Chaos at the head of a Word Bearers force of shocking strength and religious conviction.Final Dawn of Rykad (Unknown Date.M42) - In the Koronus Expanse of the Segmentum Obscurus, a heretical Chaos Cult emerged in the Rykad System, part of the sphere of influence of the Rogue Trader House vWinterscale, led by a "prophet" named Aurora who foretold of an event called the "Final Dawn." Amidst a planet-wide uprising unleashed by the cult on the system's capital world of Rykad Minoris, Aurora led an attack on the Electrodynamic Cenobium, a temple of the Adeptus Mechanicus housing an archeotech plasma reactor, which she attempted to overload. Aurora was seemingly killed by a strike team led by the Rogue Trader von Valancius dynasty's recently installed Lord Captain who had come to the world seeking aid after the loss of their flagship's Navigator to a Warp incursion. The Rogue Trader and their retinue aided the world's Winterscale defenders in crushing the rebellion; however, during a triumph thrown in the new Rogue Trader's honour, the planet's sun suddenly went dark, stolen by Drukhari warships for use in Commorragh. Seeing this as a signal, the Final Dawn cult mounted a final assault on the capital city of Rykad Minoris as the veil between realspace and the Immaterium thinned. The von Valancius Rogue Trader and their retinue fought their way to Rykad Minoris' starport, to be confronted on the landing pad by a Word Bearer Chaos Champion, who stated that it was he who had really been "Aurora" all along. After a pitched battle, the Rogue Trader slew the real "Aurora", but was forced to flee the dying star system in their flagship. The Word Bearers had succeeded in weakening Imperial influence in the region.Talledus War (Unknown Date.M42) - During the Era Indomitus, Kor Phaeron launched a massive Chaos invasion of the Talledus System that was controlled by the Ecclesiarchy in the Veritus Sub-sector of the Segmentum Solar. Though the system capital, the Cardinal World of Benediction, was the Chaos forces' primary target, all the inhabited worlds of the system faced a large-scale assault led by the Dark Cardinal. The Word Bearers, as always, sought to convert the bulk of Humanity to the service and worship of the Chaos Gods. They took great pleasure in furthering this agenda by attacking a world and system that was of such importance to the Imperial state religion that they deemed a fraud. To this end, Kor Phaeron forged an alliance between his Word Bearers and an Iron Warriors warband command by Warpsmith Etrogar and a piratical Night Lords fleet under the control of the Chaos Lord Yharas Kine. The fall of Talledus and Benediction to Chaos, and the conversion of its people to the true faith of Chaos, were deemed a potentially major milestone in the Word Bearers' plan to throw down the Corpse God of the Imperium and claim Mankind for the Dark Gods. The war proceeded on three fronts, on Benediction, on the Astra Militarum Fortress World of Ghreddask and in the void surrounding the asteroid belt called the Tears of the Emperor at the very edge of the system. On Benediction, the Word Bearers forces commanded by Kor Phaeron nearly seized control of the Grand Honorificum cathedral-city complex. The Loyalists were saved by an unusual phenomenon that was part of the Psychic Awakening when the faith of those gathered in the cathedral summoned forth from the Warp the protective spirits of the sacred Imperial dead.  This supernatural force, later remembered as the "Saints' Wall," surrounded the Grand Honorificum in a protective psychic shield and extinguished the grip on reality held by many of the Daemons making up Kor Phaeron's attacking army. This miracle allowed a demi-company of Salamanders Astartes to cut the remaining force of Chaos troops in two and establish a new defensive perimeter for the cathedral complex. On Ghreddask, the intervention of a Black Templars strike force destroyed the Soul Harvester mobile fortress-factory that had left the Imperial defenders at a loss, though the suicidal counterassault cost the life of the Astartes commander, Castellan Dramos. In the void, within the Tears of the Emperor, a piratical Night Lords fleet commanded by the battleship Nightmare of Celyx sought to draw in Imperial military and commercial shipping translating into the system from the Warp by using captured Imperial astropaths to throw off their Navigators' abilities. The Night Lords then took the spoils and reaped with great pleasure the terror of their victims. The arrival of Vanguard Marines from the White Scars' 10th Brotherhood turned the tables on the Heretic Astartes pirates. Their hit-and-run strikes soon transformed into a vicious, void-based guerilla war as each side tried to lure the other into ambushes. The White Scars succeeded in blunting the Night Lords' attacks on incoming Imperial shipping, but were unable to annihilate the Chaos raiding force entirely. Though the Imperium has so far managed to blunt the Chaos assault on the Talledus System on every front, the conflict is far from over.