The screen turned ochre and parched, as though even the light had been gnawed away by the dust-choked sky.
Colchis.
Subtitles surfaced, accompanied by an ancient, low chant that crawled under the skin.
This is more than a Planet. It is an altar.
From the instant Lorgar Aurelian's life-pod tore through the Warp storm and crashed here, four ravenous eyes were fixed upon him.
The montage flashed backward, revealing the World's history before Lorgar's arrival. Not the lone depravity of an Erebus, but the very pigment of the Planet's civilization.
Vast temples rose upon mountains of bones; priests in robes sewn from human skin offered sacrifices to an ancient being called the Covenant.
Every grain of sand here is soaked in the whispers of Chaos. Every rite is, at its core, a summons to the Warp's dark gods.
The Planet's sole reason to exist was to wait for Lorgar—and then to corrupt him.
It is a cage exquisitely woven, awaiting the fledgling who yearned for divinity to walk willingly inside.
Yet the scene shifted, returning to the moment after the razing of the Perfect City.
At this point, Lorgar had not yet fallen.
Deep within the Word Bearers' flagship, the Law of Fidelity, the once-luminous, scripture-spouting Primarch lay like a shell-less mollusk, curled in the dark.
He had stripped off the golden power armor etched with sacred text, wearing only a coarse hairshirt, barefoot on the chill deck.
He was thinking.
More than mourning the collapse of his faith, he was striving—using the superhuman intellect of a gene-forged Primarch—to rebuild his worldview.
He is a philosopher; robbed of his god, he is forced to employ reason.
Lorgar snatched up a quill and scratched furiously upon vellum, only to strike the words out again in frustration.
'If the Emperor is no god…'
He muttered, voice hoarse, yet a glimmer of lucidity—light after blind fanaticism—kindled in his eyes.
'Then His might is only might. If might is not to be worshipped, mortals need no gods. Perhaps… Father was right. Perhaps the cosmos is cold, and we can rely only on ourselves.'
'If no gods are needed… then I need not be the messenger of so-called truth.'
Lorgar set the pen down and gazed at the star-blaze beyond the viewport; his breathing steadied.
He was almost there.
At this bleakest hour, the most fragile of the Primarchs was a hair's breadth from reasoning himself onto a path of true rationality.
He nearly embraced atheism and became a secular builder like Roboute Guilliman.
But fate—or the entities roaring with laughter within the Warp—would never permit so dull an ending.
The door opened.
No knock. Two shadows slid into that sanctum of thought like vultures long waiting for carrion.
It was Kor Phaeron, Lorgar's foster-father, and Erebus, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers.
'Leave,' Lorgar waved wearily, not even turning. 'I wish to be alone.'
'You seek answers, my son.'
Kor Phaeron's bark-dry visage wore a smile at once kindly and uncanny; he did not retreat.
'And we… have brought them.'
Erebus stepped forward, movements humble yet eyes glittering serpent-bright.
He set an ancient book, faintly reeking of blood, upon Lorgar's desk.
It was the old scripture of Colchis, the heretical tome Lorgar himself had ordered sealed.
'Do you remember, My Lord?' Erebus's voice was a honeyed dagger. 'Before the Emperor came, what did the people of Colchis worship?'
'Superstition,' Lorgar frowned. 'Fables of four supreme beings.'
'Fables?' Erebus echoed, activating a hololith.
Images cascaded: primitive cultures light-years apart, never in contact—
in jungle totems, desert murals, ice-altars—
the Blood Lord, Father of Decay, Prince of Pleasure, Changer of Ways.
Different names, different faces, yet the same four concepts.
'Civilizations that never met, revering identical gods.'
Kor Phaeron's voice dropped, rich with enticement. 'What does that tell you, Lorgar?'
'It tells you these gods are no fiction. They are objective truth.'
'The Emperor refused godhood because He feared—feared the real gods.'
Erebus leaned to Lorgar's ear, the Eden-serpent dripping its final venom:
'If the god of the material realm spurned and shamed you… might there, beyond matter, in the Warp, be gods who crave worship and will answer your devotion?'
'Think, My Lord. Gods exist—only we… worshipped the wrong ones.'
At that instant, every viewer before the screen held their breath.
They waited for Lorgar's rebuttal, for the Primarch whose faith had just collapsed and who was stumbling toward reason to show even a shred of independent thought befitting a demigod, to denounce these two obvious villains.
After all, the logic was full of holes. Power does not equal worship, and existence does not equal justice.
Yet what happened next filled everyone with a sense of absurd dismay.
On the screen, Lorgar froze.
The golden eyes that had been clouded by doubt and slowly clearing with reason blazed again—now with a sick, fanatic fire.
'Exactly!'
Lorgar shouted, as if he had just solved a math problem that had plagued him for years.
'Why didn't I see it? If Father refuses to be a god, then there must be other gods in the Universe!'
'As long as there's a god I can worship, I won't have to suffer!'
No struggle. No doubt. Not even a debate.
The gene-father of the Word Bearers, the Emperor's own son, accepted—without the slightest hesitation—a suggestion that could doom the galaxy, like a worker desperate for a new employer or an addict craving a fix.
The edifice of reason he had nearly completed collapsed at once beneath the weight of advice even a child could see was poison.
[And so the pilgrimage began.]
The scene shifted.
Lorgar never hesitated again.
He led his fleet to the World called Cadia. In those days Cadia was a wilderness; its natives had violet eyes and worshipped the Warp.
There Lorgar performed a nauseating rite, sacrificing innocents without a second thought to summon 'truth.'
Then, guided by the daemon Ingethel, he made a staggering decision.
He took his ship and plunged headlong into the place every sane being shunned—the Eye of Terror.
It was the wound where Slaanesh was born, the border between reality and hell.
He remained inside for a long time.
No one knows exactly what he endured, but when he emerged he was changed.
The golden Lorgar looked the same, yet his soul had rotted through.
He no longer doubted or wept.
Cold, cruel fire burned in his eyes.
He became the dark mentor at Horus's side—conspirator and zealot in one.
Marvel Universe
'That's…it?'
Tony Stark forgot the coffee in his hand, spreading his arms incredulously at the empty air.
'Wait, where's the logic? He just bought it? That was Loki—basically a walking "I'm the bad guy, I eat people" sign!'
'One minute he's crying because Daddy doesn't love him and toying with atheism, the next it's "fine, if you won't be my dad I'll go ask the murder-arsonist next door"?'
Tony felt the insult to his intelligence like a slap.
'Brainwashing. Has to be supernatural brainwashing. A demigod that smart can't be that stupid.'
'It feels wrong,' said Captain America, frowning; as a tactician it made no sense to him.
'Lorgar's turnaround was too abrupt—like someone flipped a switch in his head.'
'A moment earlier he was reflecting, searching for a rational way out.'
'The instant those two spoke, he abandoned thought. That wasn't persuasion; it was activation of a program buried long ago.'
Thor shook his head. 'Even Loki hesitated and struggled before his betrayals.'
'This Lorgar… he leapt into the fire as if he'd been born for that very jump.'
DC Universe
'Too smooth. Everything went too smoothly.'
'Erebus's rhetoric was mediocre, riddled with holes, yet Lorgar swallowed it whole. That defies reason.'
Constantine exhaled a smoke ring, gaze turning distant as though seeing the darkness behind the screen.
' mates, can't you see? That wasn't Lorgar's choice.'
John pointed at the image of the Planet Colchis.
'Look at that World. The narration said the Four Gods had their eye on him from the start. Colchis was one giant altar, a breeding ground engineered to corrupt him.'
'From the moment he landed there, his soul was likely tampered with.'
'His "brooding" after the Perfect City was only a death throe, a last flare of reason.'
'The moment those vipers spoke, the seed of Chaos hidden in his soul sprouted.'
'He thought he was deciding; in truth, the dark god pulled the strings.'
Wonder Woman Diana sighed.
'Poor creature. He believed he was seeking truth, but he merely traded one cage for a darker one. He never possessed a will of his own.'