Word Bearers

Sicarus & Ghalmek — The Book of Lorgar, Gal Vorbak & Dark Council

In truth, the Word Bearers won the Horus Heresy. Originally known as the 'Imperial Heralds' (XVII Legion), who dressed in unpainted slate-grey plate and burned every temple, scroll, and religious icon on conquered worlds to enforce the Emperor's secular 'Imperial Truth', their Primarch Lorgar Aurelian could not accept a universe without gods. When the Emperor humiliated the XVII Legion in the ashes of their perfected cathedral-city, Monarchia, forcing 100,000 Space Marines to kneel in the radioactive dust before Roboute Guilliman, First Chaplain Erebus and Kor Phaeron pointed their grieving Primarch toward the 'Pilgrimage' into the Eye of Terror.

Forty-three years before Isstvan V, Lorgar sent Argel Tal and the Serrated Sun Chapter into the Eye aboard the 'Orfeo's Lament', creating the first symbiotic Possessed Space Marines ('Gal Vorbak', the Blessed Sons) while seeding 'Warrior Lodges' across every other Legion. Today, while Lorgar meditates inside the 'Templum Inficio' on Sicarus, the Legion is ruled by the 'Dark Council' of Dark Apostles, locked in an eternal power struggle between Erebus and Kor Phaeron.

Sub-Factions, Secret Orders & Classified Relics

• The Gal Vorbak & Vakrah Jal ('Chapter of the Consecrated Iron') — The original symbiotic Daemon-Marines of the Serrated Sun and Argel Tal's later Second Generation possessed.
• The Ashen Circle (30k Iconoclasts) — Jump-pack squads armed with 'axe-rakes' and 'hand-flamers' who originally burned false religions for the Emperor, and later burned libraries of science for Chaos.
• The Dark Council of Sicarus — The ruling synod of the XVII Legion, split between the 'Pure' faction of First Chaplain Erebus and the 'Brotherhood' faction of Master of the Faith Kor Phaeron.