LEGION XVII WORD BEARERS
Traitor Legion
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.
Primarch Lorgar Aurelian
Faith is the soul of any army; be it vested in primitive religion or enlightened truth. It makes even the least soldier mighty, the craven is remade worthy and through its balm any hardship may be endured. Faith ennobles all of the worlds the soldier undertakes be they so base or vile, and imports to them the golden spark of transcendent purpose.
— Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Word Bearers
Lorgar, also once called Lorgar Aurelian and the Urizen (Colchisian for "wisest of the wise") before the Horus Heresy, is a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided and the former Primarch of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion.
Always determined to uplift humanity through a deep belief in the divine, once the Emperor of Mankind rejected his attempts at worship, Lorgar discovered new gods more worthy of his devotion, the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, during his infamous Pilgrimage. He was the first Primarch of the Space Marine Legions to fall to the corruption of Chaos before the Horus Heresy and it was he who ordered the corruption of the Warmaster Horus. He and his large Traitor Legion of Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines can today be found on the Daemon World of Sicarus within the Eye of Terror.
The Legion
Warcry
The Word Bearers march into battle chanting passages from the Book of Lorgar over and over.
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 his homeworld 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 Astartes 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. At present, 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.