Chapter 10: The Rise of the Imperial Truth
The conquest of Gorro was only the first step. Across the void, thousands of lost human worlds still languished in ignorance, ruled by tyrants, xenos, and machines that had long since forsaken their creators. The Imperium of Man, still in its infancy, needed to grow—needed to expand.
But conquest alone was not enough.
Faith had to take root.
The Imperial Truth, once a secular doctrine in another lifetime, was now something greater. No longer was the Emperor merely a leader, a ruler, a warlord—he was divine. Not a distant god, an abstraction lost in scripture and mysticism, but a living, breathing deity that could be seen, touched, and heard. A god who strode across battlefields, whose golden light illuminated the darkest corners of the galaxy.
And so, the Great Crusade truly began.
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Before the Imperium could stretch its hand beyond the Sol System in full force, it had to be unified. Mars had already been brought under the Emperor's rule, its Forge Worlds churning out war machines in service of the new order. The Mechanicum had been reforged in the fires of faith, their devotion now tied not to the distant and unknowable Machine God, but to the Emperor Himself.
But beyond Mars, many rogue enclaves still persisted in the Sol System. Remnants of the Old Night, city-states that had survived on Luna, on Europa, on Titan and beyond, each clinging to their own fragile independence.
That independence would end.
The Lunar Clans, the most powerful of these enclaves, were the first to be confronted. They had long since abandoned their humanity, augmenting themselves with crude cybernetics, worshiping fragmented remnants of pre-Old Night AI systems as gods. Their gene-warped leaders were desperate to maintain their isolation.
They refused surrender.
And so the Emperor led the Custodes and the Imperial Army in person, marching into the void-lit halls of Luna's deepest catacombs, where the leaders of the Clans thought themselves safe.
They were not.
The Golden Host cut through their abominations like a scythe through brittle reeds. The Emperor's own will crushed their corrupted machine-gods, banishing the false intelligences that had whispered madness into their ears for generations.
And when their last leader, a twisted cybernetic monstrosity that had once been human, fell before the Emperor's blade, Luna knelt.
One by one, the last free enclaves of Sol submitted.
The Solar System was whole once more.
And from it, the Imperial War Machine was fully unleashed.
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Even as the Imperium grew, it was inevitable that enemies would rise. The Emperor knew the horrors lurking beyond the stars—the myriad xenos races that had thrived during humanity's long darkness. Some were petty raiders, others crumbling relics of once-great civilizations, and some were true threats.
The Drakonid Hegemony was one such empire.
A vast interstellar dominion of reptilian warlords, the Drakonids had enslaved countless human colonies across the segmentum. Their empire was built upon the bones of human suffering, their ruling elite viewing mankind as nothing more than fodder for their arenas, slaves for their engines of war.
When the Emperor's fleets made first contact, the Drakonid warlords laughed.
They had seen human warlords before, petty remnants of a once-great race, grasping at faded glories. They believed the Imperium to be the same—a fleeting, fragile empire that would crumble at the first test.
They did not understand.
They did not know that they faced a god.
The war was swift, decisive, total.
From the very first engagement, the Imperium's superiority was undeniable. The Drakonids' fleets were vast, but they had never faced the Legiones Astartes. They had never fought the Custodes.
They had never felt the wrath of the Emperor Himself.
The Primarchs, eager to test their Legions in war, led the charge. Ferrus Manus and Perturabo broke the Drakonids' fortress-worlds with unmatched siegecraft. Lion El'Jonson and Leman Russ shattered their fleets in brutal, unrelenting space combat.
And when the Drakonids attempted their last stand on their homeworld, believing their final bastion unbreakable, the Emperor Himself descended upon them.
The battle was over in a single night.
The Drakonid War-King, a creature of monstrous size and strength, challenged the Emperor in single combat.
He lasted four seconds.
As his broken body was cast down before his armies, the remaining Drakonids collapsed into terror.
Their species had never known a god.
But now, they knew one intimately.
Those who refused to kneel were annihilated. Their civilization, once spanning hundreds of worlds, was wiped from the stars.
The humans they had enslaved, numbering in the billions, were freed.
And as they saw their deliverer, standing bathed in golden light, they fell to their knees in worship.
And thus, the Imperial Creed spread ever further.
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With each victory, faith in the Emperor's divinity grew. What had begun as whispered reverence among the liberated became a wildfire of belief.
Malcador the Sigillite, the Emperor's closest ally, was the first to recognize the importance of this. Though once a skeptic, he now saw the power of faith. The people of the Imperium needed more than strength, more than strategy.
They needed unity.
They needed belief.
And so, Malcador worked alongside Uriah, the Last Priest of Terra, to forge the first scriptures of the Imperial Creed. These were not mere texts—they were declarations of truth.
"The God-Emperor walks among us. He is not distant, not absent—He is here, and He leads us to salvation."
For the first time, the faith of the Imperium was codified.
And across the stars, wherever the Imperium marched, the faith followed.
It was no longer just war.
It was a holy crusade.
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As the Great Crusade expanded, the Emperor turned his gaze inward. His Primarchs, his sons, were already titans among men, unmatched in power, skill, and leadership.
But they could be more.
And so, the Emperor gathered them together upon Terra. In the heart of the Imperial Palace, before the golden throne itself, he bestowed upon them the Ascension.
Each Primarch, already the peak of transhumanity, was uplifted further. Their bodies, minds, and souls were reforged in golden fire, imbued with power beyond mortal comprehension.
No longer just generals, they became demigods in truth, their very presence an extension of the Emperor's will.
And with them, he selected his first twenty champions—mortals who would rise to Primarch-level power through his divine gift.
These were his first Apostles of the God-Emperor, the first to bear the mark of divinity outside of his Primarchs.
And as they rose from the golden flames, as they knelt before their god, the next stage of the Imperium began.
For the Galaxy would kneel.
For the Imperium would rule.
And for the God-Emperor, there would be no equal.