Lorgar's landing site was less than ideal.
The people of this world had, at some point lost to history, begun worshipping the entities of the Warp.
Corruption and contamination permeated every facet of Colchis. Every person on this world was, in one sense, the most depraved of traitors — and in another, the most devoted of believers.
They waged war in the name of their gods, seeking nothing more than for those divine eyes to rest upon them for even a single moment longer — even a fragment of guidance would have been enough.
All of Colchis had sunk inescapably into the grip of theocratic horror, and the minds of those who lived there had been twisted into extraordinary shapes.
Lorgar had the misfortune of falling here. Yet despite this, he had memories worth cherishing.
Corruption and terror had not gathered around this demigod. His childhood had been well protected — because he had been taken in by two farmers.
The place where he had landed was remote, the surroundings neither beautiful nor wretched, but workable enough to cultivate food and live in self-sufficiency.
An elderly farming couple took him in.
They had no children of their own, and when they found that perfectly carved, plump, healthy, and inexplicably magnetic infant inside the landing pod, they came close to weeping with joy.
Lorgar grew quickly. Though shadow filled all of Colchis, it had somehow left this particular corner of the world untouched — a sanctuary preserved for this one Primarch.
The god-wars and theological disputes that consumed everything around them never reached this small, almost paradisiacal place.
Even now, having unified all of Colchis, Lorgar still held warm memories of that childhood home. A pity that the wars had burned it to the ground long since.
By the age of one, Lorgar had grown into something resembling an adolescent. He was enormously strong — he could cultivate dozens of acres of farmland in a single day, and cultivate them with care. He sometimes lay atop a mountain from sunrise to sunset, with the wind moving gently across his temples, rustling through golden fields, bringing the scent of flowers past his nose.
He wanted to change this place.
Colchis should not be like this. Humanity should not be like this. Their faith should not be offered to false gods — those frauds, those self-serving deceivers who started wars to serve their own appetites, should be subjected to eternal flame.
A god was not like that.
Lorgar could often see, through memory and through vision, a golden sun — warm, luminous, burning away all evil in the world, bringing humanity hope.
That was the true god.
These criminals had stolen the faithful from the true god through shameless deception. They had manipulated the minds of ordinary people and then demanded their loyalty.
Unforgivable.
Lorgar began to develop strange markings across his body — scripture, appearing on his skin beginning when he was three years old. His adoptive parents and the farming community around them did everything within their power to conceal this.
They didn't want word reaching the "holy armies" and the "bishops" — this child who had brought them hope could not fall into those hands.
This went on until Lorgar's tenth year.
That year, his adoptive parents died of old age. Lorgar's height shot up to four metres. The scripture had spread across his entire body, and concealment was no longer possible.
He began gathering the children and descendants of those farming families, and founded the Covenant of Truth — because through those hazy dreams and visions, he had perceived that what the true god actually preached was called "Truth."
Lorgar began leading the Covenant of Truth's faithful into the so-called "god-wars," proclaiming the existence of the genuine god.
Their power grew fast. On the strength of Lorgar's unreasonable personal might, the Covenant of Truth rose to prominence across Colchis, becoming the largest religious movement in the space of two years.
Lorgar served as its Pontifex, and spread the words of Truth across the whole world.
The Covenant's doctrine was direct — and stepped on nearly every established faith on Colchis.
Upon joining, each new member received a handbook.
Opening to the first page, three words were printed clearly: There are no gods.
No personalised divine being exists in the universe. No consciousness hears prayers. No hand writes fate. This is not a belief — it is an acknowledgment of established fact.
If you still require a "god" to hold your awe, then revere the light of reason, and the courage of humanity that holds firm in adversity. These are not gods — they are miracles that belong uniquely to humanity.
When any member discovers they no longer need this Covenant to maintain their clarity and goodwill, leaving is a more devout act than remaining.
If you still instinctively turn to "prayer" when facing hardship — remember this: when facing hardship, turning to any supernatural force for help is forbidden.
Sit in stillness. Write. Debate with fellow members. Do this until you find the smallest possible step that you can take through your own strength alone. There are no gods. Only you can take that step.
We preserve rituals, but all rituals are exercises in paradox.
The Burning of Doctrine: Once a year, each member burns one teaching they had previously accepted without scrutiny into the flames.
The Covenant of Silence: Initiation does not require swearing to "believe" — but rather: "I will spend my life maintaining the rational courage not to believe any unexamined thing, and the fortitude to remain myself when facing the swamps of adversity."
The Empty Seat: At every gathering, one prominent seat is left vacant — a reminder to all present that the independent thinker absent today holds equal dignity to any voice in the room.
There are no gods.
To Colchis, this was the deepest possible betrayal.
The gods watched over all — for such blasphemy to appear on Colchis was the greatest sacrilege imaginable.
Lorgar deserved to be dragged out and burned at the stake, set alight as a beacon.
But this time, Colchis was different from anything that had come before. The Covenant of Truth's growth exceeded all expectation — their reach swept across the entire world almost instantaneously.
Already the strongest religious movement on Colchis, they became absolutely devastating once they launched their campaign to clear out every false god and heretical sect. The enthusiasm with which the people of Colchis threw themselves into demolishing their own religion exceeded anything Lorgar had anticipated.
He had assumed that years of conditioning would have bound these believers too tightly in their entrenched ideas to break free.
Countless religions and sects were eradicated. The Covenant of Truth swept away every last faith on Colchis over the following five years.
Pontifex Lorgar personally executed the final heretical bishop still holding devotion to a false god. Colchis was free.
Verity was the youngest Godchild of the Covenant of Truth — sharp-minded and perceptive, with a genuinely distinctive perspective on rational thinking and technological development. Lorgar had rescued her from a heretical family during one of the campaigns against the sects, recognised something exceptional in her, took her in, and invested himself fully in her development.
Under her guidance, Colchis had been developing impressively — and excavations into the planet's underground had even unearthed some technological remnants left from the Dark Age of Technology.
This led Lorgar to personally appoint her as the next Governor of Colchis.
The Covenant of Truth had been, at once, a magnificent success and a failure. Its paradoxical doctrine was always going to make it impossible for the Covenant to sustain itself as the world developed and changed around it.
But a portion of the Covenant remained. The largest surviving community was located in Colchis's greatest city, Vharadesh.
Here stood a small open-air shrine — not particularly large. The Pontifex Lorgar was there, in prayer before the divine.
On the walls beside him burned two enormous torches.
Atop each torch, only the upper half of a skeleton burned.
One was named Kor Phaeron — once the most wicked Covenant Bishop in Colchis, who had resisted to the very last before being personally bisected at the waist by Lorgar, his body ignited in sacred flame by the highest faith and psychic power, his soul condemned to burn forever.
The other was named Erebus. This person had appeared before the Pontifex at the very moment the Covenant of Truth was completing its sweep of every religious sect on Colchis.
Verity still remembered the fanaticism that person had shown in the face of the Pontifex — not devotion to the Covenant of Truth, but to the so-called Chaos gods.
He had been a madman. Extreme, and genuinely dangerous. The shocking aura of evil and desecration emanating from him had made every member of the Covenant present recoil.
"Pontifex, abandon this so-called Covenant of Truth. A false god like this is unworthy of someone as powerful as you."
"Only Chaos is worthy of our devotion. Only the great Four Gods are worthy of our loyalty. Abandon the false god you follow, my lord — only the Four Gods of Chaos are true gods."
"The god of courage and strength."
"The god of wisdom and fate."
"The god of life and growth."
"The god of love and pleasure."
"They hunger intensely for a devotee like you, my lord. Only you are worthy of their true favour—"
Verity remembered the rest of the words he had spoken. His eyes had been full of madness and faith, carrying what appeared to be genuine reverence and sincerity toward the Pontifex.
She had instinctively sensed something wrong in that moment — but Lorgar's reaction was faster. In an instant, he had drawn the Blade of Promise from his hip and placed himself between it and her.
Verity swore that she had never encountered a force as desecrating and evil as what she felt in that moment — a power that seemed to sink into the marrow and corrode a person on a physical level.
She had only looked at it for a moment before she felt herself beginning to sink into some kind of mental fog.
"Awaken."
Lorgar's voice pulled Verity and everyone present back. His body erupted with blinding golden light, and golden flames blazed to life along the length of the Blade of Promise.
Lorgar bore down against the force that was attempting to forcibly corrupt him, and in a single stroke cut Erebus in two.
Golden fire roared across Erebus, producing a terrible scream.
Lorgar held the burning figure up without concern for the flames, watching him struggle, the evil aura radiating from him seeming almost impossible to burn away.
"What corruption has this man suffered? Or what sin has he committed? How does a person come to carry an aura this evil and this desecrating?"
Everyone was deeply puzzled. But Lorgar appeared to see something in those empty, fire-lit eye sockets — something that made him go silent for a very long time.
Verity never knew what he saw. Only that from that day forward, Lorgar personally constructed a small shrine in Vharadesh — decorated with the Covenant's teachings, with eternally burning sinners on the walls.
Through wind and rain, through storms and hail, the flame on those two sinners never diminished.
But what Verity could not understand was why her adoptive father had sentenced himself to the same kind of penitential suffering.
He was the clearest-eyed of all of them. And the most deeply bound. Verity knew — the Pontifex had always had a god in his heart. The true one.
He had always believed. He just hadn't shown it openly. Verity had always known — could any child who had spent the most time at his side fail to see what was truly in his heart?
But what Verity truly couldn't understand was that the Pontifex was doing penance.
Yes — penance. From the moment of the Erebus incident onward, as though struck by something, Lorgar had remained in that small open-air shrine, reciting scripture and praying in silence.
When Verity asked her adoptive father why, he said he had committed an unforgivable sin, and that he was now in the process of atoning.
An unforgivable sin? What sin? What could the Pontifex possibly have done?
She had asked, and Lorgar had not answered. Only fallen into silence again.
After that, Lorgar maintained this state without deviation. The only time he had appeared before others was when he named Verity as the next Governor.
"Father."
Verity finished her administrative work and came to the shrine to visit him.
He was as he always was — kneeling on the ground, reciting scripture. The eternally burning sinners on either side of the walls radiated light and heat, making Lorgar seem, in this moment, somehow more sacred.
That face — nearly identical to the Emperor's — had served Lorgar unfailingly in every war he had ever fought. Simply by standing at the centre of any crowd, people would instinctively and voluntarily follow him toward one goal after another. No ordinary mortal could resist a Primarch's presence — especially a Primarch who genuinely cared about humanity's wellbeing.
That near-blind devotion and dependency had let Lorgar conquer Colchis in a remarkably short time. It had also won him near-complete dominion over the hearts and minds of almost every person who followed him.
Verity was the one who had fallen deepest. She had never shown it. The world would never permit it — it had to remain a secret carried inside her for the rest of her life.
But she felt no shame in it. Because nobody could resist this kind of presence — not even the most rigorously rational scientist could face her father without something resembling religious fervour stirring in their chest.
She sat now in a chair in this place that almost no one else came to — a seat that had become almost exclusively hers. She liked sitting here because it was the closest she could get. She could feel the most intense version of her father's presence from this spot, and she had become deeply, helplessly drawn to it.
"You should be handling the people's administrative matters, not coming here every day to watch me recite scripture. This is not behaviour appropriate to a competent Governor."
Verity instinctively rose, a flicker of alarm crossing her face, head lowering, hands held straight at her sides.
"I finished today's work, so I wanted to come and keep you company."
"Administrative work ever finishes?"
Lorgar was still in his praying posture, back turned.
"Hmm—"
"I don't remember teaching you to lie."
"I — I—"
Verity found herself without words. She could not reveal her actual reason. Anyone else might — but not her.
"You should go back. People need you. Spending your precious time here keeping me company is nothing short of wasting your life."
"I just didn't want to think of you being alone here."
She said it, though it was still not the truth.
"This is nothing. Compared to the wrong I have committed, this is nothing at all."
Lorgar's gaze moved to the staff beside him, burning with golden flame. Within Erebus's empty eye sockets, a strange light occasionally flickered — and Lorgar found he couldn't quite bring himself to look directly into it.
He was afraid to see again the desecrating vision he had witnessed before. His body trembled slightly. He could not imagine that he had been capable of such wickedness.
He could not forgive himself. The sin he had committed outweighed these two burning sinners ten thousand times over.
"Why do you always say you have committed a wrong? You led us all to—"
But Lorgar had already risen, and had come to stand beside her.
Verity lost her words. She didn't dare look directly at him. She was afraid that if she did, she might lose control and show what she was trying to hide.
The next moment, she felt a familiar weight settle gently on the top of her head.
Lorgar's index finger rested on her brow. Verity looked up at her adoptive father's face — scripture engraved across it — and those burning gold eyes.
She looked for only an instant, then quickly lowered her gaze. Her cheeks felt warm.
"This is my journey of atonement. Not yours. You do not need to know why, and I have no intention of telling you what I experienced. This is my last fragment of stubbornness — and it is also protection for you. This is not something you should know."
"Now go. Do not come here on a whim again. A Governor's heart should be with her people — not hiding here in her father's presence instead of doing her work. Your responsibilities are heavy."
Verity almost replied. But Lorgar had already resumed his scripture-reciting posture, and she stood there for a moment, something unspoken on her lips, and finally left.
Two days later, Pontifex Lorgar quietly departed from Vharadesh and began his journey of atonement.
Before leaving, he had written a letter for Verity — words of encouragement and farewell, and a request that she have the small shrine demolished. He had occupied this place too long. It could have served a better purpose.
From that day on, farmers and ascetics across the region would occasionally glimpse a tall figure — enormous, walking with two great staffs, golden flames burning at their tips.
"Where the forge have I ended up? Is this even the Eastern Fringe?"
Perturabo, aboard his flagship the Iron Blood, looked at the completely unfamiliar surroundings and turned on Ivieria and the others with considerable irritation.
He genuinely couldn't believe he had actually trusted these Aeldari to have a meaningful understanding of the Webway.
"We should be at the Maelstrom right now. So where is this? Tell me."
What had started as an entirely routine Webway exploration — the route on the map had been marked as leading to the Maelstrom, and Perturabo had come himself precisely because he was concerned about encountering long-unmaintained sections or Chaos contamination — had gone extraordinarily sideways.
The Maelstrom had significant strategic value. It was also reasonably close to the galactic core, and bringing the Squats to heel was on Perturabo's list of objectives. All good reasons to go personally.
What he hadn't anticipated was following the route map and having it simply stop matching reality.
Ivieria, for her part, was experiencing a progressive crisis of confidence the further they went — watching the Webway's features, which resembled but didn't match the map at all, while holding a route chart that their Grand Farseer had painstakingly explored step by step, with every branch route and variation noted.
There was no reason this should have gone wrong.
And yet they had been drifting through the Webway for three full months.
Just as Perturabo was seriously considering punching a hole through the Webway wall and having the Daemon Factory seal it behind them, a bright exit point appeared not far ahead.
At this point, even if it opened into the Eye of Terror itself, he was taking it. Anything was better than not knowing what was happening outside.
What waited on the other side left him speechless.
Somehow the route that should have led to the Maelstrom had taken him through the Solar Segmentum and deposited him at the far edge of the Ultima Segmentum.
"My lord, this — this was simply a small error. I guarantee it won't happen again."
Ivieria was beginning to feel genuinely anxious. She had no desire to end up nailed to a production line after death, being five-whipped by overseers every few seconds.
Perturabo looked at her sideways. Those deep blue eyes in that already somewhat dark expression made Ivieria feel her heart stutter, her breathing momentarily disrupted.
"I hope this is the last time. You don't want to find out what it feels like to be put inside a Daemon Engine."
"Yes, my lord."
But then Perturabo appeared to sense something. His eyes snapped to a specific direction.
"Head that way."
The Iron Blood moved quickly under the logic engine's navigation, pressing forward in the direction Perturabo indicated.
"My lord, is something wrong?"
Ivieria asked, curious.
Perturabo didn't answer her. His expression was one of puzzlement — mixed with something that approached disbelief, as though he were looking at something that genuinely surprised him.
Lorgar, mid-atonement journey, suddenly stopped.
He looked up at the sky. Those golden eyes fixed on a single direction, as though something enormous and dangerous was approaching.
His psychic sight showed him a vast Daemon Factory descending toward Colchis.
It was immensely evil, and extraordinarily powerful — a thousand times more dangerous than any of the heretics who had once plagued Colchis.
Lorgar also caught, within the presence, something that felt both familiar and strange to him in a way that was difficult to describe.
Perturabo had already located his brother. But after surveying all of Colchis and learning from its people what Lorgar had done here, he found himself genuinely impressed.
Was this really the Lorgar he knew?
He gave a brief order for the others to make their way to the surface, then his figure faded from the Iron Blood and vanished.
When Lorgar saw his brother in person, he understood immediately — this man was beyond saving.
Chaos power saturated his core. The enormous Daemon Factory materialised in Lorgar's vision, and the evil and desecration in its aura sent veins of blood rushing into his eyes in an instant.
He planted the eternally burning Erebus and Kor Phaeron into the ground, drew the Blade of Promise from his hip, and his body erupted in boundless golden psychic power — roaring golden flames surging directly toward Perturabo.
"What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"
A black psychic barrier formed in front of Perturabo, holding the golden flames at bay.
"Traitor — how dare you commit such desecration, betraying the god?"
Lorgar flashed to Perturabo's side, Blade of Promise in hand — a single thrust that pierced cleanly through Perturabo's defences, aimed directly at his throat.
"What are you doing?"
Perturabo grabbed the burning Blade of Promise with one hand, feeling the searing heat against his palm, and concluded that this brother had spent so long reciting scripture that it had genuinely affected his reasoning.
"Calm down."
"I have nothing to say to you, traitor. Die."
The flames on Lorgar's body burned more intensely — but in Perturabo's assessment, even now it wasn't quite enough. Compared to the Emperor, Lorgar still had some way to go.
He stripped the Blade of Promise from Lorgar's grip, slapped him flat to the ground with one hand, and locked him down with unrelenting psychic force, preventing this clearly not-fully-thinking brother from doing something else regrettable.
"Preparing this kind of welcome for your brother at a first meeting — what exactly have I done to you? What deep grievance do we have that makes this appropriate?"
"Traitor — you deserve to sink in hell forever. I swear — I will hunt down and exterminate every last one of your kind!"
Lorgar's eyes held absolute conviction and determination. Looking at the desecrating presence emanating from this enormous figure, Lorgar's already furious inner state was on the verge of losing all reason — the flames across his body threatened to break out of Perturabo's psychic containment.
"What exactly have you seen that makes you believe I'm a traitor?"
Perturabo frowned. Lorgar's state was clearly very wrong.
"Stop performing and pretending, desecrating demon. You are not my brother."
Perturabo looked at the two staffs burning with golden flames. The skeletons mounted on them caught his eye — specifically one of them.
Within those hollow eye sockets, a faint light occasionally flickered.
He identified it immediately.
"That feathered bird — I have been far too lenient with it."
Lorgar felt the restraints on him vanish in an instant. Perturabo had disappeared.
Deep in the Crystal Labyrinth in the Warp, countless Cyclonic Torpedoes fell from the sky at high speed.
The Changeling armies of the Crystal Labyrinth scattered in every direction — the ones too slow were reduced to slurry, waiting for their eventual resurrection.
"TZEENTCH — DAMN YOU—"
The Lord of Iron's furious voice came from above, as tens of thousands of Phalanx-equivalent weapons systems unleashed world-ending fire and hammered the Crystal Labyrinth into trembling.
Just as Tzeentch inside the Labyrinth was mocking the incoming assault and preparing to meet it, a chainblade sword burning with crimson flame drove in from the centre — Skarbrand first through the gap, locking onto Kairos immediately.
An enormous club followed from another direction, shattering one corner of the Crystal Labyrinth entirely. Ku'gath and the Plague Father came behind with an endless plague army and began ravaging the Labyrinth's depths.
Khorne appeared above, a chainsaw-axe descending on Kairos from overhead. A staff materialised in the air to catch the devastating blow.
But then countless mechanical arms came from the side, assaulting from every direction simultaneously — Kairos found himself overwhelmed. Khorne condensed a great sword and brought it down from above, punching through one of Kairos's wings.
Slaanesh, who had been concealed in the darkness all along, struck from behind Kairos, piercing through his back — the spike-edged sensation nearly beginning to erode Kairos's fundamental power source.
In that moment the mechanical arms returned again, relentless and gapless. The Architect of Fate had no choice but to commit everything to pushing them back, then instantly fled with the Crystal Labyrinth — not even stopping for the Exalted Lords of Change left behind.
On the way out, a jeering, taunting cry drifted back — "All is proceeding according to plan."
With Kairos gone, Khorne turned its attention back to Perturabo and Slaanesh, and the Khornate host began charging toward the Daemon Factory and the Slaaneshi forces.
Perturabo had no interest in playing anyone's divine war games. With Tzeentch gone, he left too — no reason to stay and get surrounded.
Back on Colchis, Lorgar — who had been confused a moment before — immediately returned to an expression of fury and combat readiness.
In the Warp, the whole exchange had lasted only a moment. In the material universe, barely seconds. To Lorgar, Perturabo had simply flickered briefly out of existence and returned.
Blade of Promise raised, full golden flames rising again — Lorgar had half-planned to take this traitor out with him today and call it repayment of his sins. But Perturabo simply appeared in front of him, seized the Blade of Promise, and forced the golden psychic power back into Lorgar's body through sheer overwhelming force.
What it feels like to have fully-released psychic power forcibly recompressed into your own body: Lorgar felt as though his internal organs were about to detonate. The violent psychic feedback flushed his face scarlet in an instant.
"All right. Calm down. I'm not a traitor. What you saw will not come to pass through me. What you saw was only one possible future — it is not necessarily real. You were manipulated."
"What do you mean?"
Lorgar regarded this "traitor" with complete wariness and zero trust. If he were capable of winning the fight today, he would have added another staff to his collection by now.
"Do you know what the Warp is?"
Perturabo asked.
"Forget it — by the look of you, you don't understand it very well. Wait for the Emperor to come and explain it to you personally. However much I tell you, you probably won't believe me."
"I've already notified him. His fleet isn't very far — ten days, maybe a couple of weeks, and he'll be here. Ask him whatever you want then."
"For now — show me the Colchis you've built."
Perturabo's psychic senses moved through Colchis, taking in the people and cities below. The Covenant of Truth's doctrines, the small handbook — he examined all of it with genuine interest.
"I want to see what you've accomplished here."
He said it with authentic curiosity.
Lorgar remained entirely on guard. For this particular brother — the one who, in certain possible futures, had put a hole through humanity's homeworld — Lorgar would not under any circumstances trust him.
Even if he said it was manipulation.
Was Lorgar a fool? Was the body that was practically marinated in Chaos power a fabrication?
Grabbing the Blade of Promise bare-handed. Forcibly compressing psychic power that could rupture a star back into his body. The enormous Daemon Factory Lorgar had seen in his vision. The vast mechanical figure at its centre.
Lorgar knew that even if this brother hadn't turned traitor yet, he was likely not what anyone would call good.
Reluctantly, Lorgar led Perturabo on a walk through Colchis.
At first he didn't want to bring Perturabo into the cities proper — but Perturabo's direction was very clear, and Lorgar felt as though a single narrowing of those deep blue eyes was enough to return him to a familiar city.
The two great staffs followed behind him. The Blade of Promise remained in hand, golden flames undisguised. Perturabo paid it no attention.
This city had developed well. Technology levels and the living conditions of the people under its governance were genuinely impressive — difficult to believe this had emerged from a world that had built its identity around religion.
"How did you do this?"
Perturabo asked Lorgar.
"What?"
"This planet. How did you develop it to this point? Founded on religion — and yet now the development is rooted in technology and genuine concern for the people. And those doctrines of yours: self-contradictory, and yet you managed to build a movement of this scale."
"Good intentions aside — surely not everyone agreed with you? I checked carefully — this planet was very nearly fully infiltrated by Chaos before you arrived, and through all of that you still fought your way through, unified the world, and eliminated every Chaos devotee in such a short time."
"I have to say, you're genuinely capable, brother. If it were me — I would have simply destroyed the planet and found somewhere habitable to take a few survivors."
The mildly complimentary tone produced no relaxation in Lorgar's guard.
"I only did what needed to be done. The people who truly changed this place were the humans of Colchis themselves. I merely gave them a starting point."
"That's modest of you, brother. I don't deny that mortals have some exceptional individuals among them — but how deep the stupidity and ignorance runs in their bones is something I've also experienced firsthand."
"Especially their greed. The sort of fool who wants to control everything, enslave others, accumulate power — they come in endless supply. That Colchis was overrun by Chaos the way it was doesn't surprise me in the slightest."
"Most mortals are stupid and venal. Show them even a slight kindness and they immediately presume on it. The only effective method is constant pressure — keep them without enough breathing room to entertain thoughts of resistance, then make a public example of a select few, and they'll be more obedient than the most docile lamb in any pen."
"Do you know what I do? In my world, that's exactly how I govern them. Efficiency and output are remarkable. Looking at your Colchis, my best estimate is that a hundred more years of agricultural tool production here still wouldn't match one week's output from a single workshop in my domain."
Lorgar found this kind of thinking genuinely repellent. Precisely because ordinary people had limited understanding, it was more important to lead them toward the right path — what was the point of endlessly denigrating mortals? They were innocent.
The evil among them had been guided toward wickedness — wasn't that partly because people like them had failed to provide clear moral frameworks and genuine standards of right and wrong?
If there were stable order and a prosperous state, who would spend their days in petty calculation, one meal away from ruin?
If a person could have a safe and comfortable life, who would want to risk their neck over a piece of bread?
Lorgar had worked to change Colchis precisely to transform that kind of atmosphere — not only for the sake of the god he believed in.
"You seem unconvinced?"
Lorgar turned his head away. He didn't want to talk to this person.
"We have another brother, actually — your philosophy is quite different from his, but I think you'd be heading in the same direction. You two might have some things worth discussing when you meet."
Perturabo felt a certain perverse amusement. He was genuinely curious about what it would look like when Lorgar and Roboute Guilliman met.
"He sounds like he'd be better than you in any case."
"If you're using your own definition of 'better' — then yes, the state of the territory he governs is considerably better than mine."
"Pontifex."
Verity arrived with a fully armed escort.
Her adoptive father's return had genuinely made her happy — but seeing the enormous figure standing beside him, and the Blade of Promise still burning in his hand, she immediately felt that something was deeply wrong.
She cleared the civilian population in the immediate area, summoned her escort, and began setting up positions in the surrounding streets. Armed forces began concentrating around the city's perimeter.
This was somewhat futile, and she knew it. She had seen her adoptive father at full strength — the kind of power that unmade landscapes. And now he was standing beside this enormous stranger with a burning weapon in hand, looking almost coerced. This was not an enemy Vharadesh could deal with.
But Verity did it anyway. Even if every human on Colchis was annihilated, she would not allow the person in front of her to gain even the smallest advantage.
"Interesting. She's one of yours?"
Perturabo had sensed every one of these small preparations instantly. He simply didn't feel it was worth stopping.
Watching his adopted daughter refuse to run no matter how many pointed looks he directed at her, something briefly resigned crossed Lorgar's expression.
"Her name is Verity. Governor of Colchis — the formal and actual leader of this world."
"What is she to you?"
"I took her in during one of the campaigns."
"Remarkable ability. Your instincts are good — a talent of her administrative calibre is rare even across the Imperium, perhaps one in ten billion. She would qualify for a position in the Administratum on Terra."
"As a favour to you, I don't imagine the Regent would refuse to help Colchis cultivate a capable official."
"She isn't going anywhere. She belongs to the people of Colchis. She is my — my adopted daughter. I will not allow you to take her under any circumstances."
Perturabo looked at the mildly protective Lorgar and didn't press the point.
"Fine. Continue showing me around. Have her stand down."
"For all the wars you've fought — the military standard is surprisingly low, and the equipment is genuinely painful to look at. I'm curious how these people managed to defeat the heretics. Did you personally charge in at the front and kill everything, and they just came in afterwards to collect the benefits?"
"Or were the heretics also just — poor?"
Watching her adoptive father walk side by side with the enormous figure along the street, Verity dismissed her forces, and began quietly following behind them both.