Council of Terra

The Council of Terra was the ancient ruling body convened by the Emperor of Mankind that aided the Emperor in guiding the course of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium after the end of the Unification Wars. The Council of Terra was created after the dissolution of the War Council shortly before the beginning of the Horus Heresy and was a civilian body without Primarch participation that was the precursor to the Senatorum Imperialis. The disbanding of the War Council in favour of the Council of Terra was one of the grievances that led several of the Primarchs to grow disenchanted with their father the Emperor, a grievance that would be exploited by Horus and the agents of the Chaos Gods to gain their allegiance to his attempt to overthrow the Emperor's rule.

History
Following the successful conclusion of the Unification Wars the Emperor convened the War Council to manage the execution of the Great Crusade. The War Council effectively became the true ruling body of the Imperium during the early and middle years of the Great Crusade. The Emperor Himself sat at the head of the Council; at his left hand was Malcador the Sigillite, perhaps the Emperor's greatest ally during the Wars of Unity and a psyker whose powers were matched only by those of the Emperor. The rest of the Council was composed of talented administrators drawn from the great ruling aristocratic dynasties of Terra and the Segmentum Solar, and when the Emperor forged his alliance with the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars in the Treaty of Mars, the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicus also claimed his seat. The War Council was also attended by the Paternova of the Navigator Houses. As the Emperor left the homeworld of Mankind to lead the Great Crusade into the stars, he left in his stead the legendary Malcador, to act as the Regent of Terra in his stead.

As the Great Crusade progressed, the War Council grew, as an inevitably widening vortex of admirals and commanders, generals, sector governors and ministers of state were appended to its administrative apparatus. Below these luminaries were advocates and technocrats responsible for the Imperial control of far-flung administrative systems and world-regimes with chains of supply and distribution whose scale beggared belief. As the years became decades, each of the Primarchs were discovered and brought into the Imperial fold and were given a seat on the Council, as was the Chief Custodian and Captain-General of the Legio Custodes, the Emperor's bodyguard, but such men were creatures of war abd not politics, and as some of the purely human Council members died in war, or through simple old age or infirmity, they were replaced only irregularly.

After the decisive victory during the Ullanor Crusade, when Mankind's re-ascension to predominance in the galaxy was no longer in doubt, the Emperor bestowed upon the Primarch Horus Lupercal the title of Imperial Warmaster and ceded to him control of all the Imperium's military forces in the Emperor's stead. The other Primarchs were then instructed to follow Horus and obey him and to complete the Great Crusade under his direction. There was, it is said, some disquiet among the Primarchs that the Emperor had decided to no longer fight alongside them, but the Emperor was as adamant as he was close-mouthed as to what he would do on his return to Terra. The Emperor then departed for the homeworld of Mankind and the dungeons deep beneath his great Imperial Palace to begin His great work under a veil of secrecy previously unknown in the Imperium. He drew to him certain advisors and retired to the private vaults of his city-fortress.

Upon his return to Terra, the Emperor called to his side Malcador and the Fabricator-General. He issued them with new commands. No longer were they to support the military campaigns, these were now safely in the hands of his sons, the Primarchs and the newly appointed Warmaster Horus. The Emperor needed time and all of his focus on his next great project. To this end the Emperor convened the first Council of Terra. Unlike the War Council, of which Horus was now leader, the Council of Terra would attend to matters of state and the establishment and maintenance of Imperial Law across the myriad worlds of the Imperium. In particular the Council of Terra was to administrate to the Imperial Tithe. Under its auspices would fall all the civil government of the Imperium. Malcador, the Emperor's most trusted advisor, was named as First Lord of the Council and would lead it in the Emperor's absence. The Fabricator-General, Chief Custodian Constantin Vaz and the leaders of the Astropaths and administrative division of the Imperium were appointed to the Council.

Having established the new governing body of the Imperium, the Council of Terra, the Emperor took refuge in his vast laboratories and workshops beneath the Imperial Palace. He began work in earnest on his new project. While the Emperor was locked away in his subterranean factories, trouble was brewing. The formation of the Council was a contentious decision as the Primarchs were appalled at news of the formation of the Council of Terra. Some of the Primarchs took great exception to being ruled by those deemed less worthy of such honours than themselves. The less stable Primarchs felt that this was a betrayal of all of the wars they had fought and won in the Emperor's name. They felt that their victories had counted for nothing. Some of the Primarchs took great exception to being ruled by those deemed less worthy of such honours than themselves. They, and many of their Astartes, felt that it was they who had suffered and sacrificed the most to build the Imperium and thus it was they who should have the greatest say in how it was ruled, not a council composed of effete Terran nobles and faceless bureaucrats. It cannot be proven, but doubtless this turned out to be one of many growing resentments that allowed the Ruinous Powers to infect and corrupt several of the Primarchs.

For some this was exactly as Horus had prophesied. The Emperor was willing to turn his back on his generals and give power to petty administrators and a sycophantic Adept of Mars. The Warmaster himself believed that petty functionaries and administrators had supplanted him. Once everything in the Imperium was geared for war and conquest, but now they were burdened with exectors, scribes and scriveners who demand to know the cost of everything. The Imperium was changing and Horus wasn't sure he knew how to change with it. Bureaucracy and officialdom were taking over - red tape, administrators and clerks were replacing the heroes of the age and unless the Imperium learned to change their ways and their direction, their greatness as an empire would soon be a footnote in the history books. Everything the Warmaster had achieved would be a distant memory of former glory, lost in the mists of time like the civilisations of ancient Terra, remembered kindly for their noble past. It would be this hubris and arrogance that led to the Warmaster's inevitable fall to Chaos and the resultant civil war that would consume the entire galaxy, ushering a new Age of Darkness that would last for millennia.