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| - The infant Primarch Lorgar vanished from the Emperor's gene-laboratory beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra while still an infant in his gestation capsule, along with the 19 other Primarchs, who were all transported through the Warp and scattered to random human-inhabited worlds across the galaxy. His gestation-capsule came to rest on the theocratic Feudal World of Colchis. When the infant Lorgar fell from the sky, his Legion had yet to be born on Terra, and the faith of Colchis was held in the hands of a ruling priesthood called the Covenant. Discovered by the followers of this predominant religion on Colchis, the Covenant, later known as the Old Faith or the Old Ways, was a polytheistic religion dedicated to the worship of entities that were in fact the Chaos Gods in mor
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abstract
| - The infant Primarch Lorgar vanished from the Emperor's gene-laboratory beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra while still an infant in his gestation capsule, along with the 19 other Primarchs, who were all transported through the Warp and scattered to random human-inhabited worlds across the galaxy. His gestation-capsule came to rest on the theocratic Feudal World of Colchis. When the infant Lorgar fell from the sky, his Legion had yet to be born on Terra, and the faith of Colchis was held in the hands of a ruling priesthood called the Covenant. Discovered by the followers of this predominant religion on Colchis, the Covenant, later known as the Old Faith or the Old Ways, was a polytheistic religion dedicated to the worship of entities that were in fact the Chaos Gods in more benevolent guises, and Lorgar was raised amongst this priesthood. Studying within a temple of the Covenant, Lorgar quickly became a devout preacher, his skill in oratory and the power of his charisma winning him many followers. Perhaps Lorgar's staunchest ally and friend was the High Priest of the Covenant, a cleric named Kor Phaeron. However, as Lorgar grew in standing amongst the people, the other members of the Covenant's ecclesiastical hierarchy began to grow jealous of his popularity. Lorgar's youth was plagued by visions of a mighty warrior in gleaming bronze armour coming to Colchis, a cyclopean giant in blue robes standing beside him. At one point, the visions reached such an intensity that Lorgar claimed that the prophesied return of Colchis' one, true God was soon to occur. He began to preach this news to the people of Colchis, causing disruptions to the theocratic rule of the Covenant as people converted to his dissident beliefs in the One God, creating a new faction within the Covenant who called themselves the Godsworn. Lorgar's enemies in the Covenant saw this as the opportunity they had been waiting for to remove the threat that Lorgar presented to the status quo, declaring him a heretic to the Old Ways. Those of the Covenant who came forward to arrest Lorgar were killed by his followers. The Covenant split into two factions, and a holy war of immense proportions erupted, eventually forcing the entire population of the world to choose a side. This war lasted six standard years, ending when Lorgar and his Godsworn supporters stormed the temple of the Covenant known as the Cathedral of Illumination in the heart of the City of Grey Flowers, the world's capital of Vharadesh, at which the Primarch had trained, killing the monks within and eliminating the heart of the conservative religious resistance to his ideas concerning the One God. Lorgar, now the Archpriest of the reformed Covenant, promised the masses that their new God would arrive on Colchis no more than a year after their victory and that they would know him only as "The Emperor." Kor Phaeron expressly explained to his adopted son that he remained a believer in the other gods of the Old Faith, but that he also believed that the One God was the most powerful of their number. This continued belief in the Old Ways, also maintained by many other Colchisians after the Godsworn's victory, would lay the foundation for the Word Bearers' eventual turn to Chaos. When the Emperor and the Great Crusade's Expeditionary Fleet reached Colshis less than a year after Lorgar's final victory over the Covenant, and He descended from his landing craft with Magnus the Red at His side, there could be no doubt in Lorgar's mind that he knelt before his god. Beside him a planet knelt and believed the same. Lorgar saw this preordained meeting as the confirmation of his many visions and prophecies, and so, the Primarch and his people wholeheartedly embraced the ruler of the Imperium as their promised messiah and God-Emperor. When the Emperor finally met His long lost son face-to-face, as Lorgar had foreseen, the Primarch immediately dropped to one knee in obeisance, leading the population of his world in rejoicing and worshipping the Emperor as the one, true God of Mankind. At the conclusion of these festivities, the Emperor bade Lorgar to take his best warriors and induct them into the XVII Space Marine Legion, the Imperial Heralds, who had been derived from his own genome. Lorgar gratefully took up the Emperor's purpose, expressing his deeply-held desire to spread his faith in the God-Emperor to every world in the Imperium, despite the Emperor's continuing admonishments that His Imperium was to be built on the foundation of the Imperial Truth, an atheistic, rationalist doctrine that forbade the practice of religious faith as mere superstition. Lorgar then joined his father and his Legion on the Great Crusade to reunify the human worlds of the galaxy under the new Imperium. Lorgar appointed trustworthy regents to rule over Colchis in his absence and devoutly complied with what he believed were his father's divine commandments. That the Emperor claimed He was not divine paradoxically only further strengthened Lorgar's faith in Him, as who else but a true God would claim that He was not divine? Every facet of the Covenant's belief structure was reorganised as the worship of the Emperor as the saviour of Mankind, and the people of Colchis united behind their new living god. The elaborate celebrations and displays of piety lasted for months, although it was said that the Emperor did not approve of this, wishing to rejoin the Great Crusade as soon as possible and being dismissive of organized religion in general. The Emperor had not begun the Great Crusade to reshackle humanity within the chains of superstition and ignorance but to spread the light of reason and science. At the conclusion of the celebrations, Lorgar was made commander of the XVII Space Marine Legion, which came to be known as the Word Bearers. Kor Phaeron survived the augmentation process to become an adult Space Marine and became Lorgar's chief adviser, lieutenant and the commander of the Word Bearers' elite 1st Company.
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