| rdfs:comment | - The Fidelitas Lex (loosely translated from High Gothic as "The Law of Faith") was a Gloriana-class Battleship constructed from a Standard Template Construct (STC) pattern recovered during the progress of the Great Crusade. A Gloriana Battleship was the size of a densely compacted city, and accordingly populated not only by officers and expert crew, but by a serf-caste numbering in the tens of thousands of souls. This vessel was gifted to Lorgar, along with command of the XVIIth 'Imperial Heralds' Legion following the Primarch's reunification with his gene-sire, the Emperor, after he was discovered on the world of Colchis. Lorgar and his people embraced the ruler of the Imperium as their prophesied messiah and God-Emperor. When the Emperor finally met his long lost son face-to-face, as Lorg
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| abstract | - The Fidelitas Lex (loosely translated from High Gothic as "The Law of Faith") was a Gloriana-class Battleship constructed from a Standard Template Construct (STC) pattern recovered during the progress of the Great Crusade. A Gloriana Battleship was the size of a densely compacted city, and accordingly populated not only by officers and expert crew, but by a serf-caste numbering in the tens of thousands of souls. This vessel was gifted to Lorgar, along with command of the XVIIth 'Imperial Heralds' Legion following the Primarch's reunification with his gene-sire, the Emperor, after he was discovered on the world of Colchis. Lorgar and his people embraced the ruler of the Imperium as their prophesied 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. Lorgar gratefully took up the Emperor's purpose, but he renamed the XVIIth Legion the Word Bearers to express 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. Taking the reigns of command of his new flagship, the Fidelitas Lex, Lorgar and his newly-dubbed Word Bearers Legion joined the Emperor on his 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. Lorgar was an unusual Primarch because he was less martial in nature than his brothers, and possessed an abiding faith that religion represented the pinnacle of human expression and a deeply-held belief that the Emperor of Mankind was actually a divine being made manifest in the mortal realm. As a result, Lorgar was determined to spread his own faith in the Emperor to every world that his Legion encountered in the course of the Great Crusade, a policy that would be in direct contradiction to the principles of the Imperial Truth. During the early years of the Great Crusade, the Word Bearers came across the world of Forty-Seven Ten, also known as Khur, which they proceeded to bring into Imperial Compliance 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. Six decades after being brought into Compliance, the XIIIth Legion, the Ultramarines, would utterly destroy Monarchia on the order of the Emperor as an example to both 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. Four weeks after the Word Bearers fleet sailed from the ruin of Khur, they translated in-system, prowling around the newly discovered world of Forty-Seven Sixteen with the predatory promise of ancient seaborne raiders. This would be the sixteenth world ready to be brought to compliance by the 47th Expeditionary Fleet. The grey warships remained in orbit for eight hours, engines dead, doing nothing at all. Following his Legion's castigation by the Emperor, the Primarch remained locked within his personal shrine-chamber in self-exile for a full Terran month. He finally emerged at the ninth hour, cheers echoing throughout every Word Bearers vessel in the fleet. Lorgar addressed his sons - the past was to be put behind them, they would only now look forward, towards a brighter future. The Emperor wished the XVIIth Legion to conquer with greater alacrity. If a world could not be brought into compliance with haste, then it must be purged to its core. Lorgar ordered his Legion to kill every man, woman and child on the newly discovered heretic world. Their only crime - their 'blasphemous' worship of the False Emperor. The Fidelitas Lex and every capital vessel within the fleet, proceeded with a twelve-hour long orbital bombardment of the doomed planet. This was followed by a planetary assault by the entirety of the Word Bearers Legion, which proceeded to slaughter the entire population. The Word Bearers successfully wiped out the entire population in only a day. Augury estimates placed the number as almost two hundred million souls sacrificed that day. Following their inevitable victory, the Primarch spoke to his sons about undertaking a sacred Pilgrimage, to seek a place where gods and mortals met. The true gods of old Colchis. The Word Bearers would undertake such a pilgrimage to commune with the gods.
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