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|Pre-Heresy Banner=WBSymbolPreHeresy.jpg
|Specialty=[[Daemonancy]], [[Dark Apostle]]s, Combined arms & garrisoning (Pre-Heresy){{Fn|52}}
|Battle Cry=An appropriate passage from their sacred texts and dolorous dolourous roars.{{Fn|1}}
|Warbands=
*[[The Blessed]]{{Fn|38}}
The '''Word Bearers''', originally known as the '''Imperial Heralds''' and the '''Iconoclasts''', is the '''XVII Legion''' of the original twenty [[Space Marine Legion]]s. They were the first of the nine Legions which betrayed the [[Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]], becoming the first known [[Chaos Space Marine]]s, pledging their allegiance to their [[Primarch]] [[Lorgar]] and to [[Chaos Undivided]].{{Fn|1}}
Known for their extreme religious fervor fervour even before their conversion to [[Chaos]], the Word Bearers are some of the most fanatical Chaos Marines, notable for using [[Dark Apostle]]s, a corrupted version of Space Marine [[Chaplain]]s, to inspire their Marines and their [[cultist]] allies in battle.{{Fn|1}}
==History==
[[Image:WBSymbolPreHeresy.jpg|thumb|right|180px|Pre-Heresy Word Bearers symbol]]
===Unification Wars===
The [[Primarch]] of the Word Bearers, [[Lorgar]], vanished from Terra while still an infant, just like all of the other along with his fellow Primarchs. The earliest days accounts say the '''XVIIth Legion''' stand stood apart from their brother [[Legiones Astartes]] in duty and outlook. They fought with utter devotion and a fanatical zeal. Their original recruits were drawn from the sons of defeated enemies, raised to know the crimes of their fathers and the price of the [[Emperor]]'s forgiveness. Thus while the other Legions went to war with righteousness, the XVIIth fought with the cold fury that only the condemned and redeemed could know. While other Legions took some time to acquire formal names, the XVIIth was named the '''Imperial Heralds''' almost immediately after their founding. This was , due to their early role to deliver , which involved delivering the Emperor's ultimatum, delivered presented by a lone herald in black armour with a skull-faced helmet and a winged mace: submission or destruction.{{Fn|18b}}
Upon defeating an enemy, the Imperial Heralds would empty their libraries and records of any contents deemed heretical or sorcerous. Condemned works, individuals, and buildings would be destroyed expunged in the name of the [[Imperial Truth]]. The Imperial Heralds repeated this process all across [[Terra]] during the [[Unification Wars]]. This gave the Imperial Heralds a rarely-spoken nickname among the greater Imperium: the '''Iconoclasts'''.{{Fn|18b}}
===The Great Crusade===
[[Image:WBPreHeresy.jpg|thumb|right|220px|Pre-Heresy Word Bearer color colour scheme]]Eventually, [[Lorgar]] was discovered on a [[Feudal World]] named [[Colchis]], which he had eventually unified in after a series of brutal religious wars in response to his visions of the Emperor's coming arrival. When the Emperor did arrive, as Lorgar had foreseen, the Primarch dropped to his knee, leading the population of his world in rejoicing and worship of the Emperor as a god. At the conclusion of these festivities, the Emperor bade Lorgar take his best warriors and induct them into his Space Marine Legion (at that time known as the Imperial Heralds) and join him on the [[Great Crusade]]. Lorgar appointed trustworthy regents to rule over Colchis and devoutly complied with his father's direction.{{Fn|1}}
Lorgar was an unusually pious Primarch. While other Legions were rapidly conquering planet after planet, the Word Bearers proceeded much more slowly, as they would build temples and shrines in veneration of the Emperor, who was also deemed the God of the [[Imperium]] by Lorgar, on each newly conquered planet. All forms of blasphemy and heresy that threatened the Emperor's realm, all manner of ancient scrolls, books, artworks and icons were burned and smashed before the advancing ranks of the Legion. In their place, vast monuments and cathedrals, all dedicated to the Emperor, were erected upon the mounds of dead of those who had resisted conversion. The greatest [[Chaplain]]s of the Legion produced enormous works on the divinity and righteousness of the Emperor, and Lorgar himself delivered countless speeches and sermons, converting millions to the Emperor with his words alone.{{Fn|1}}
One of the conflicts during the Great Crusade was the [[Corrinos Campaign]] where the Word Bearers fought with renegade [[Psykers]] that didn't want refused to join the [[Imperium]].{{Fn|18f}}
====A Legion Kneels====
Despite being pledged to the Great Crusade for around a century, the Emperor had never once rebuked Lorgar or his Legion for their zealous worship even though such doctrine clashed with the Emperor's [[Imperial Truth]]. However 43 years prior to the events of [[Isstvan V]] the Emperor brought his wrath to bear on the Word Bearers. The Emperor ordered the [[Ultramarines]] to utterly destroy the city of [[Monarchia]], a perfect city that was testament to all that Lorgar and the Word Bearers stood for, and the capital of [[Khur]]. In the ashes of the city the entire Word Bearers legion Legion gathered to be reprimanded by the Emperor, [[Roboute Guilliman]] and [[Malcador (Character)|Malcador the Sigilite]]. The Legion in its entirety was forced to kneel in the ashes of their greatest achievement and re-pledge themselves to the [[Great Crusade]] and to the Emperor.{{Fn|7a}}
In time, Lorgar came to realise that his worship of the Emperor as a god had been false. He still however maintained his view that faith was central to the human psyche and that it was still plausible that his views could be validated. His search began by investigating the [[Chaos|Old Faith]] of his homeworld, which in his certainty that the Emperor was a god he had destroyed during the [[The Brotherhood|First Purge of the Brotherhood]] prior to being discovered by the Emperor. He returned to Colchis to seek the answers he so desperately needed and sought the council of [[Magnus]] the Red, the wisest among the Primarchs.{{Fn|7c}}
====The Pilgrimage====
[[Image:WBHeresy.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Word Bearers Heresy-era Marine]]
Encouraged by [[Erebus]] and [[Kor Phaeron]], who had in truth already fallen to worship of the [[Ruinous Powers]], Lorgar came to realise that all of the belief systems which featured in countless other [[human]] cultures across the galaxy Galaxy shared a common origin and underlying message. He believed that because all the countless legends of divinity, from so many disparate cultures, all agreed on other powers than that exist beyond the veil, that the human species' most natural instinct could not be false. Thus he took [[The Pilgrimage]], a mythological journey to [[Eye of Terror|the place where gods and mortals meet]] in an attempt to discover the universal truth of the universe and enlighten humanity and his father.{{Fn|7d}}
The Word Bearers Legion rejoined the Great Crusade as a front for the Pilgrimage and scattered itself across the stars, bringing more worlds into compliance than any other Legion in the last fifty years of the Crusade. Lorgar himself joined the [[1,301st Expedition Fleet]] and eventually came to [[Cadia]] where they received validation for their theories that all of the Old Faiths across the galaxy Galaxy shared similar origins, and thus shared a universal truth. [[Ingethel]], a native of Cadia was anointed by the [[Gods of Chaos|gods]] as Lorgar's guide in revealing the Primordial Truth and undertook a ritual to do so which elevated her to the ranks of the [[daemon]]ic as Ingethel the Ascended.{{Fn|7e}}
Ingethel the Ascended led the Serrated Sun Chapter of the Word Bearers into the [[Eye of Terror|Great Eye]] where the failure of the [[Eldar|Eldar Empire]] Empire was witnessed first hand. Ingethel informed the Word Bearers that the Eldar failed and suffered [[Fall of the Eldar|the Fall]] because at the moment of their ascension they were unable to accept the [[Chaos|Primordial Truth]]. They gave birth to a [[Slaanesh|god of pleasure and promise]], yet they felt no joy. Their new god awoke to find its worshipers abandoning it out of ignorance and fear, thus was the endless storm of the [[Eye of Terror|Great Eye]] formed, an echo of the birth-cries of the Eldar's new god. The nature of the Primordial Truth was revealed to the Word Bearers in the ashes of the Eldar Empire, they learned that in order for humanity as a species to survive they must not commit the same sins the Eldar did, they must instead accept Chaos.{{Fn|7f}}
The Pilgrimage ultimately proved that the Emperor's [[Imperial Truth]] was in fact a lie and that gods truly did exist. Secretly pledging themselves to new Dark Gods, the Word Bearers hid their true allegiance for the next four decades.{{Fn|18b}} To do so, the Legion covertly [[The Brotherhood|purged]] loyalist elements in its ranks, mostly older Legionaries who remembered the days of the Imperial Heralds.{{Fn|66}} The purge was largely successful, though a few loyalist Word Bearers avoided its impact due to being on far-off missions during the late Great Crusade.{{Fn|67}}
