| abstract | - The Word Bearers, also known as the Armored Fist of Gonk, was a paramilitary organization led by the insane Sith Mega-Super-Overlord Darth Chaotic. That relatively small army served one goal: total eradication of the Plunk heresy from the known galaxy. It had plenty of successes and dozens of planets destroyed on its account.
- The Word Bearers are one of the nine First Founding Space Marine Legions that betrayed the Emperor of Mankind during the Horus Heresy. They became Chaos Space Marines, their allegiance pledged to their Daemon Primarch Lorgar and to Chaos Undivided. The Word Bearers were also the first Space Marine Legion to be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos many Terran decades before their counterparts turned to the Dark Gods. Through their actions they corrupted the Warmaster Horus and brought on the terrible galactic civil war of the Horus Heresy in all its savagery. Today they bend all their considerable efforts towards the overthrow of the "Corpse Emperor" in the Long War and spreading the "truth" of Chaos to all Mankind. In the years before the return of Lorgar and the discovery of Colchis by the expanding fleets of the Imperium in 857.M30, the XVIIth Legion was known amongst the vast hosts of the Great Crusade by designations other than the "Word Bearers". The Emperor named them the Imperial Heralds at their inception, an elegant title that spoke of the grand purpose for which they had been created, whilst their fellow warriors named them the "Iconoclasts," a more brutal appellation coined in appreciation of the zeal with which they cast down the idolatrous temples and cultic strongholds of Old Night. After the Legion was reunited with its lost Primarch, he renamed the XVIIth Legion the Word Bearers, which was in line with his belief that the Emperor of Mankind was the divine saviour of humanity. The Word Bearers' greatest foes amongst the servants of the Emperor are the Ultramarines and their Successor Chapters, who the Word Bearers have hated and seen as rivals since the time of the Great Crusade. The Word Bearers are the scions of the Primarch Lorgar, the Dark Apostle of Chaos and first of the Primarchs to be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. The Word Bearers sought a being worthy of their veneration, but when the Emperor denounced such practises during the Great Crusade, they turned to the Warp and the Powers of Chaos within. Lorgar grew to maturity upon the planet Colchis, a Feudal World under the sway of a single, all-powerful religious caste known as the Covenant. The priests of this primitive faith preached that one day, a supreme being would come to lead them into a new age. Lorgar was raised within the Covenant's greatest temple, learning all its secret rites and texts and compiling a vast body of his own wisdom that came to be known as "the Word." When the Emperor finally came to Colchis, the Primarch saw in the Master of Humanity the being spoken of in the ancient Colchisian prophecy. Taking his place in the Great Crusade, Lorgar led his Legion across the stars, fuelled by a fiery religious zeal. Wherever the Legion encountered the idols of any god that might rival the Emperor in the devotion of the people, they cast them down and ground them to dust, and in their place erected towering monuments to the glory of the Emperor, forcing the conquered to kneel before them and offer up praises to the new God of Mankind. Yet, such sentiment ran contrary to the Imperial Truth, as the Emperor denounced the worship of gods and daemons alike. For the Emperor Himself to be held as a god was anathema to all that the Imperium stood for, and the Master of Mankind chided Lorgar and his kin for their idolatry. Stunned, the Primarch withdrew for a time, and some have proposed that what followed was the roots of all of the woe that would subsequently befell the Imperium. Exactly what happened can never be known, but it appears that Lorgar underwent first a spiritual crisis, and then an awakening. The Emperor, who the Primarch had counted a god, had denounced his own divinity, denying the tenets of the faith in which Lorgar had been raised. Confronted by the possibility that the Word was false, Lorgar may have sought other meanings within it, and other beings that might serve in the place of the god he had believed in. In the Ruinous Powers, Lorgar found such beings, and the truth was revealed to him. The Emperor had been truthful when He had stated that He was no god, but Lorgar saw that the Master of Mankind had told the very worst of lies when He claimed that no such beings existed. The opposite was true, Lorgar discovered, the Warp filled with beings whose power was incalculably greater. Such eternal truths as only a Primarch could bear were revealed to Lorgar, including, some say, the awful reality of the Fall of the Eldar. Thus were sown the seeds of the Heresy, and Lorgar determined that in order to avoid the fate that the weakling Eldar had brought upon themselves at the moment of the creation of the Eye of Terror and the birth of Slaanesh, Humanity must embrace Chaos in all its glory. Only then, Lorgar knew, would Humanity ascend to the pinnacle of existence in a universe reshaped in the boundless image of the Warp. Possessed of this new knowledge, Lorgar returned to the Great Crusade. Where previously the Word Bearers had been criticised for their slow progress, enforced by their drive to cast down primitive idols and replace them with those of the Emperor, now their rate of conquest was prodigious. How many cultures brought into Imperial Compliance in this closing phase of the Great Crusade were in fact turned to the worship of Chaos may never be known, nor the extent to which the pernicious influence of Lorgar's Word was responsible for the corruption of the other Traitor Legions. Whatever the truth, the Word Bearers stood by the Warmaster Horus' side when he renounced his loyalty to the Emperor, and they fought at the very forefront of many of the battles of the Horus Heresy. When battle was truly joined, it was towards the Ultramarines Legion that the Word Bearers turned the greatest extent of their ire. Jealous of the favour they believed the Emperor to have unjustly shown Roboute Guilliman's Legion, the Word Bearers set in motion plans laid down years before. At Calth, a world in the Ultramarines' domain of Ultramar, the full fury of the Word Bearers was unleashed, and it was only after much death and destruction that the Legion was repulsed. Though it can never be conclusively proven, it appears that Lorgar's intentions in committing so completely to attacking the Ultramarines was not entirely based on jealousy. In so doing, the Word Bearers tied up the single biggest Legion at a time when it was most needed. When the Warmaster's armies closed upon Terra, the Ultramarines were thousands of light years away and unable to intervene until events were all but decided. In the aftermath of the Warmaster's defeat, the Word Bearers retreated to the Eye of Terror, where Lorgar was eventually granted apotheosis and ascension to daemonhood. A large portion of the Legion took refuge from the vengeful Imperium within the Maelstrom, another region of Warp/realspace interface where only those beyond the pale of Humanity dare tread. From these two fastnesses, the Word Bearers plot the corruption of the entire Imperium. The Legion does not venerate any single Chaos God, but instead draws strength from multiple sources, enacting vile pacts and inviting possession by any power they feel will serve the Word. The Legion remains to this day a relatively coherent grouping, structured after the fashion of a vast, hierarchical religion. Alone of all of the Traitor Legions, the Word Bearers field Chaplains, called Dark Apostles, though these Arch-heretics preach not the glory of the Emperor but of the Ruinous Powers. One of the greatest perils the Word Bearers present to the Imperium is the taint they so actively seek to spread. While most other Traitor Legions fight for their own ends or simply to spill blood, the Word Bearers continue the crusade their Primarch began in the aftermath of the Emperor's censure so long ago. They cultivate heresy wherever they travel, subverting the Imperial Creed and utilising Chaos Cultists as cannon fodder and congregation, often at the same time. Worse still, wherever the Word Bearers tread they order the construction of vast edifces and fanes dedicated to the glory of Chaos, often enslaving their defeated enemies and forcing them to bow down in worship to new, damned gods. By such blasphemies, entire planetary populations are lost to Mankind, in body as well as spirit.
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