Event · M30

Word Bearers contact and purge of pre-Imperial Cadia

Word Bearers contact and purge of pre-Imperial Cadia, an episode of the Great Crusade in which Lorgar Aurelian, primarch of the Word Bearers Legion, arrived at the newly discovered world of Cadia while on a pilgrimage undertaken in the aftermath of the levelling of Monarchia. Urged by his trusted counsellors Kor Phaeron and Erebus toward powers that welcomed worship, and having failed to find satisfactory answers from his brother Magnus the Red, Lorgar set out across the galaxy guided by his own psychic senses, which he insisted carried the sound of a voice calling to him. That search led him to Cadia, a world lying nearer to the Eye of Terror than any other later associated with the sector’s troubled history, though at this date it was unconquered and unknown to the wider Imperium, its native population still unintegrated into Imperial rule. The Legion’s arrival brought violence to the inhabitants as the Word Bearers secured the planet during their passage. On Cadia, Lorgar encountered a being calling itself Ingethel the Ascended, who revealed to him what it termed the Primordial Truth: that humanity faced a choice between embracing the Chaos gods or suffering the slow ruin already befalling the Eldar. Visions shown to Lorgar during this encounter, among them a glimpse said to resemble the Emperor enthroned upon gold, completed his conversion. From this meeting the Word Bearers emerged devoted not to a single power but to Chaos Undivided, a conviction Lorgar carried onward as he journeyed with Ingethel further into the Eye of Terror toward later, better-documented encounters.

See where Word Bearers contact and purge of pre-Imperial Cadia occurred on the galactic map during the Horus Heresy.

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