Operator Recommended Game Story · Warhammer 40,000 Part 14

Monarchia · The Long Betrayal That Began in the Ruined Sanctuary

Spoiler Notice: This covers the faith of Lorgar and the Word Bearers, the destruction of Monarchia, the secret pilgrimage and the Gal Vorbak, and the warrior lodges that spread through the Legions. Monarchia is an event that occurred earlier than the Triumph of Ullanor in the previous part. This part returns to that past to connect the parallel flows. It interprets official events in its own prose, distinguishing between the conjectures of Imperial chroniclers and confirmed events. This is not the history of Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar.

Chapter 1 · The XVII Legion Waiting in the Ashes

Ash remained where Monarchia once stood. When the Legion that considered the city its own achievement returned, the buildings and sanctuaries they boasted of were no longer standing. They could not even raise their swords to rush at a new enemy. This was because the entity that ordered the destruction was the Emperor, whom they had served as a god.

To understand this scene, one must look back at the time it took for the Legion to build it. The Word Bearers were not an army that served the Chaos Gods from the beginning. The XVII Legion, under the name Imperial Heralds, spread the Emperor's truth and took on the role of breaking the beliefs that the Empire considered superstition. While others tore down walls, they had to tear down the beliefs within those walls as well.

Their warfare was deeply intertwined with ideology and ritual. Their mission did not end with the surrender of the enemy army. Idols, sanctuaries, and objects that carried on teachings were also targets of attack. Because they were a Legion that erased previous faiths in the name of the Emperor, the change of re-establishing their own faith in the Emperor's name carried a greater contradiction.

It is necessary to remember the Legion's grey armor before meeting Lorgar. The red armor and grotesque mutations that would become familiar later were not yet the appearance of every warrior. Those returning to Monarchia now were an army that had carried out long conquests with the belief that they loved and obeyed the Emperor. The fact that their actions were violent and the fact that they did not consider themselves traitors existed together.

Chapter 2 · The Son Who Brought the Faith of Colchis to the Stars

Lorgar grew up on Colchis. As seen in Part 10, he learned the faith there, went through religious wars, and became a leader who prophesied the arrival of the Emperor. When the Emperor and Magnus arrived, it was as if the entity he had been waiting for had appeared before his eyes. He accepted following the Emperor and believing in the Emperor as a god in the same direction.

That learning did not disappear even after taking charge of the Legion. Lorgar preached his faith to his soldiers. Warriors from Colchis, woven around faith and ritual, increased, and the command of battle and spiritual authority moved the Legion together. The name Word Bearers contained the role of conveying words and faith.

They stayed on the planets after conquering them. They rebuilt ruined cities, bound the inhabitants to the new order, and created sanctuaries and monuments honoring the Emperor. Official lore books state that the worlds left behind in such a way prospered and showed strong loyalty. The Legion's victory was not just a name in a battle report, but a world where their teachings became the structure of life.

Monarchia was a symbol born of that method. In what was called the perfect city of the planet Khur, the image of the Empire that Lorgar believed in had become visible buildings and rituals. The Emperor was a ruler leading humanity to the stars and, at the same time, an entity to be worshipped. To the Legion, the two reinforced each other.

However, what the Emperor demanded publicly was different. The Imperial Truth rejected the worship of gods. What Lorgar considered true loyalty was at odds with the Emperor's orders. Just because both sides used the Emperor's name did not mean they used it with the same meaning.

Chapter 3 · The Slowest Advance of the Most Loyal Legion

The Great Crusade was not a business that waited. Expeditionary fleets headed to every corner of the galaxy, and fallen human worlds had to be incorporated into the Empire quickly. The time the Word Bearers spent staying behind after a conquest was the time it took for other Legions to reach the next planet. Their speed was too slow by the Empire's standards.

As the administrative apparatus investigated the problem, religious behavior was also revealed. The city worshipping the Emperor and the Legion's methods did not end as mere causes for a late schedule. They clashed with the very truth the Empire put forward. The act of subjugating new worlds was spreading a new form of the faith the Empire was trying to discard.

Official lore books do not explain why that problem was left alone until then with a single confirmed inner thought. They convey the massive scale of the Great Crusade, the limitations of warp travel and interstellar communication, and incomplete reports coming from here and there. When the Emperor knew all the details and what personal conversations were held remain gaps in the records.

The Legion the Emperor chose as a tool of reprimand was the Ultramarines. They also valued order and reconstruction after war, but they did not stop the advance of the Great Crusade. Because they were a comparable Legion, that choice feels sharper. Reconstruction itself was not forbidden. It was the faith and methods Lorgar had built that were rejected.

However, one cannot know everything about what symbols the Emperor held in his mind while choosing Guilliman. The Imperial chronicler of the lore books guesses at such meanings. This text also explains the differences revealed by the comparison, but does not turn the undisclosed private intentions of the Emperor into confirmed dialogue.

Chapter 4 · There Was No God Who Ordered the Destruction

The Ultramarines turned Monarchia into ruins. The cries of the inhabitants reached them, and the Word Bearers returned. It was after the center of the Empire they had believed in had erased the most beautiful evidence they had built.

There, Lorgar and the Legion knelt before the Emperor. They were reprimanded that the Emperor was not a god and that he did not allow such worship in his domain. There was no other authority for the Legion to challenge this. The entity they had established as the final answer to their faith was rejecting that faith.

This event was not a quiet meeting that conveyed the Emperor's policy. It was a way of destroying people's cities and showing the ashes to the returning Legion. The humiliation of the warriors whose faith was denied and the damage to the inhabitants who lost their city are different losses, but they are placed in the same event. If one focuses only on the tragedy of the Legion, the lives of the people they ruled are pushed into the background.

The illustration is a newly drawn scene contrasting the official Lorgar and the equipment of Guilliman at the time. It reflects the grey armor and gold decorations, Lorgar's mace, and the difference between the two Legions. It is not a painting that claims to have restored the exact building layout of Monarchia or every person at the scene. If one draws the Word Bearers of this time as a Legion already having red armor and demonic horns, the time of change disappears.

The fact that they were reprimanded does not justify the subsequent betrayal. However, to understand why that betrayal began in this Legion, one cannot skip this event. When people who tied all their achievements to a single faith had that faith rejected, a crossroads of what to discard and what to hold onto was created.

Chapter 5 · The Rejected Faith Did Not Disappear

Lorgar withdrew for a while. And when the Legion appeared actively in the Great Crusade again, they showed a different speed than before. They no longer stayed in the places they conquered for a long time in the same way. Worlds surrendered quickly, and resisting civilizations were met with fierce attacks. From the outside, it was a Legion that had accepted the Emperor's reprimand.

Inside, a different journey was continuing. Lorgar did not settle on the conclusion that there were no gods. He headed on a path to find a higher entity that would accept their worship. Kor Phaeron and Erebus were his closest advisors, and the old faith of Colchis continued into that search.

The latest official Legion introduction explains that the truth of the Chaos Gods was revealed during the pilgrimage to Cadia. A name that would later be known as a massive barrier protecting the Empire appears as a different threshold in this era. That place was placed in the flow where Lorgar and the Legion accepted the existence of the Warp as the center of their faith.

Just because the Imperial Truth denied gods did not mean that the dangerous entities of the Warp did not exist. In this worldview, Chaos is a power that does not disappear just by human declaration. The fact that those entities are real and the conclusion that obeying those entities is salvation are different. The transformation of the Word Bearers was a choice to cross between them.

Official lore books describe the Warp as a space where the powers of emotion and spirit ripple. The Empire was already using navigation and the abilities of psykers. However, there were limits to how much people understood it. What Lorgar discovered was not the warm embrace of another protector to return to, but entities trying to gain influence in the material world by using human longing and suffering.

Chapter 6 · An Army Divided Along Constellations

This faith did not move only in sermons. Within the organization of the Word Bearers, the command of soldiers and the command of faith overlapped. Chapter Masters, Captains, and Sergeants handled battle, and Chaplains defined what the warriors were fighting for. They were nominally different roles, but in the choices of actual war, they could not be separated from each other.

The authority of a high-ranking Chaplain could not be easily defied by an ordinary Captain. Even if a military order seemed rational, the authority to interpret the reason for that order could be on a different layer. Above those two authorities was Lorgar, and near him were Kor Phaeron and Erebus. It was a structure where the change in faith could descend deep into the Legion following orders.

The Chapters of this era are not the same units as the small, independent Space Marine organizations of the later Empire. The Chapters of the Word Bearers were large formations within the Legion. Names like the Serrated Sun, the Throne of Bones, the Crescent, and the Weeping Hand were connected to the constellations of the Colchis sky. The culture of their homeland crossed the universe to become a military organization on the battlefield.

Those names did not stop at beautiful decorations. Some units pushed in large-scale infantry, and some units burned cities and infrastructure. The attack methods of formations like the Broken Scythe and the Ashen Circle contained judgments not only on defeating the target but also on what to erase and what message to leave behind. Erasing the traces of other faiths was this Legion's old mission.

Now, the faith interpreting that mission was changing. The same formation, chain of command, and language of subjugation could hide new purposes. The Empire outside was seeing that the speed of advance had improved, but inside the Legion, what was called truth was already changing.

Chapter 7 · The Red Sons Returned from Pilgrimage

The story of Argel Tal shows that change in the flesh. He was a Word Bearer warrior connected to the Serrated Sun Chapter and participated in the Legion's pilgrimage toward the Eye of Terror. Official character introductions convey his change connected to a daemon.

The first Gal Vorbak were not just Space Marines who received new weapons from daemons. Warrior and daemon were combined into one entity. Outwardly, it might have looked like they had not changed, and in battle, they could reveal the appearance of monsters with armor, bone, and muscle intertwined. Within the body of the warrior the Emperor had created, another will had entered together.

They were elites distinguished by red armor. The entire Legion was not the same color and state from the beginning. Published lore books distinguish the flow where red color spreads to other warriors after the betrayal is revealed at Isstvan V. Therefore, the new painting in this part shows the reddened Argel Tal and other warriors still wearing grey armor together.

Argel Tal's wings, asymmetrical claws, and the connection between armor and flesh were contrasted with the official model. The blue armor fragments obtained from enemies later, which are included in that model, were not put into this scene. This painting expresses what the change after the pilgrimage means in the composition of the interior of a new ship, and it is not a restoration of the exact placement or transformation moment recorded in the official novel.

To Lorgar, the Gal Vorbak were entities that showed the power of the faith he had found before his eyes. To the warriors who would follow them, it could look like the promise was being proven in the flesh. However, gaining power was not the same as preserving oneself entirely. The daemon that entered one body was not simply equipment that the warrior could take off.

Argel Tal reappears later in the story connected to the Khan, the Shadow Crusade, and other battlefields of betrayal. That future is not ended all at once here. What is important here is the first change where a warrior of the most loyal Legion accepts the path of combining with another entity.

Chapter 8 · A Door Connected to the Inside of Other Legions

The Word Bearers did not stop at changing only themselves. Warrior lodges spread among other Legions. Official Legion introductions explain that those secret meetings continued to the proximity of the Warmaster. Relationships that were not visible through rank and official orders were created, and different thoughts could be planted within them.

It cannot be said that every warrior in every meeting reached the same conclusion at the same moment. What is important is that different dissatisfactions and desires became channels for accepting new teachings. For some, the promise of power reached them, and for others, resentment toward existing commanders was used. It was a different method from war where an enemy outside the Legion breaks down walls.

The Word Bearers maintained their outward loyalty for a long time. Official lore books convey the shadow of betrayal prepared for decades after Monarchia. While increasing troops, rapid conquest, and expanding influence were recorded as achievements for the Empire, a part of it was accumulating for the war that would tear the Empire apart later.

In this process, the space for warriors who did not accept the new faith until the end also narrowed. The record of warriors from old Terra being put into dangerous battles shows that the change in the Legion was not a joyful consensus of the entire interior. The fate of Grendel of the official excerpt is not clearly followed after being seriously injured. The fact that the record was cut off is not immediately changed into a confirmed scene of being murdered by a specific person.

Even that uncertainty is part of this history. Not everyone's voice remains with the same thickness. Surviving power can call its own change a new truth, but the thoughts and ends of the people who lost their place in that process remain fainter.

Chapter 9 · The Past That Was Behind the Bright Day of Ullanor

In the previous part, Horus received the authority of Warmaster from the Emperor. Monarchia in this part was an event that preceded that moment of victory where numerous Legions and expeditionary fleets looked toward a new command. The change that arose after the Emperor rejected the faith of one son was already flowing along the inside of the galaxy's armies.

That does not mean Horus already knew about all the subsequent betrayals at that time. The outward movement of power and the hidden preparations proceeded at different speeds. When one believes that everyone is accepting one massive march in the same direction, the invisible branches become a greater danger.

The malice that will lead from Monarchia to Calth also begins here. However, the battle of Calth and the massacre of Isstvan are not the present of this part yet. For secret loyalty to turn into open attack, the next choices and events are needed. This is why one must read the new contacts with officers around Horus and the wounds that will occur at Davin in order.

Monarchia was not a battle that brought down the Empire at once. It was a long beginning where one faith was rejected, another faith took its place, and that change continued into other people's armies. The ashes of the city could be scattered by the wind, but the resolutions and relationships formed on those ashes remained much longer.

Terminology and Character Guide

Imperial Heralds, Word Bearers: The old name of the XVII Legion and the name after Lorgar. The mission of erasing old faiths changes to the path of spreading Emperor worship, and then the teachings of Chaos.

Lorgar, Kor Phaeron, Erebus: The Primarch of the Legion, his foster father and advisor since the Colchis days, and the First Chaplain. Their relationship continues from the growth background in Part 10.

Monarchia, Khur: The place called the perfect city and the planet where that city was located. Do not confuse the destruction of the city with an event where the entire planet exploded.

Serrated Sun, Argel Tal, Gal Vorbak: A Chapter within the Legion with a Colchis constellation name, a warrior there, and warriors combined with daemons. Not everyone belonging to the Serrated Sun is a Gal Vorbak.

Chaplain, Warrior Lodges: The spiritual leader role within the Legion and secret meetings that spread to various Legions. It is not calling the same organization by two names.

Eye of Terror, Cadia: A region where the boundary between the massive Warp and reality is twisted, and an important world in the pilgrimage. The later Imperial fortress and the Great Rift are events far after this era.

Further Reading

Previous Part: Read the Triumph of Ullanor and the appointment of the Warmaster. This part retraced the branch of Monarchia, which is earlier than that. Lorgar's growth on Colchis and the Emperor's arrival can be read in Part 10.

Story to Follow: Relationships around the Warmaster and new contacts, the wounds of Davin and the intervention of Erebus. The aftermath of Calth, Isstvan, the Shadow Crusade, and individual characters continues in the respective war parts. I do not fill in unconfirmed novel detail scenes as if they were public facts.

The entire published table of contents and movement between previous and next parts can be used in the serialization guide below.

Official Materials and Verification Scope

Verification Date: October 8, 2026 (UTC). Written based on settings and events confirmed in the official public materials below. Public samples and setting introductions only verified the relevant public scope, and I do not indicate that I have read the entire books. The illustrations are AI reconstructions, not official images.

Pages from the Black Books — Word Bearers public extract

Pages from the Black Books — The Word Bearers

Legions of the Horus Heresy — The Word Bearers

Get to Know Argel Tal — the Word Bearer Who Really Changed on His Gap Year

We Asked Forge World How They Designed All18 Primarchs

The Horus Heresy explained — A short history of the Warmaster’s betrayal