Fidelitas Lex

The Fidelitas Lex was an ancient Imperial Gloriana-class Battleship that served as the flagship of Lorgar Aurelian, better known as the Urizen, the Primarch of the zealously religious Word Bearers Space Marine Legion, during the Great Crusade and the opening days of the Horus Heresy of the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. This flagship led a large flotilla of Word Bearers warships which comprised the XVII Legion's 47th Expeditionary Fleet. The Fidelitas Lex served as Lorgar's flagship throughout the Great Crusade during many notable Imperial Compliances and various other actions, including the Castigation of Khur, where the entirety of the Word Bearers Legions was chastised and humiliated by the Emperor of Mankind for their flagrant violations of the secular Imperial Truth, as well as the infamous compliance of the planet, designated Forty-Seven Sixteen. This was first world brought into Imperial Compliance after the rebuke of the Word Bearers by the Emperor. The Word Bearers proceeded to massacre the entire population for their blasphemous worship of the False Emperor. The Fidelitas Lex was also present during the many infamous actions during the Great Crusade and the opening days of the Horus Heresy, including Lorgar's journey into the Eye of Terror, known as the Pilgrimage of Lorgar, as well as the infamous action during the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V. The Fidelitas Lex finally met its end during the Shadow Crusade, a joint campaign conducted by both the Word Bearers and the World Eaters Legions, in which the flagship was destroyed during the fighting above Angron's homeworld of Nuceria by the ragtag Imperial fleet of the Ultramarines Legion, led by Primarch Roboute Guilliman.

History
The Fidelitas Lex was a Gloriana-class Battleship constructed from a Standard Template Construct (STC) pattern recovered during the progress of the Great Crusade. A Gloriana Battleship was the size of a densely compacted city, and accordingly populated not only by officers and expert crew, but by a serf-caste numbering in the tens of thousands of souls. This vessel was gifted to Lorgar, along with command of the XVII 'Imperial Heralds' Legion following the Primarch's reunification with his gene-sire, the Emperor, after he was discovered on the world of Colchis. Lorgar and his people embraced the ruler of the Imperium as their prophesied messiah and God-Emperor. When the Emperor finally met his long lost son face-to-face, as Lorgar had foreseen, the Primarch immediately dropped to one knee in obeisance, leading the population of his world in rejoicing and worshipping the Emperor as the one, true God of Mankind.

Lorgar gratefully took up the Emperor's purpose, but he renamed the XVII Legion the Word Bearers to express his deeply-held desire to spread his faith in the God-Emperor to every world in the Imperium, despite the Emperor's continuing admonishments that his Imperium was to be built on the foundation of the Imperial Truth, an atheistic, rationalist doctrine that forbade the practice of religious faith as mere superstition. Taking the reigns of command of his new flagship, the Fidelitas Lex, Lorgar and his newly-dubbed Word Bearers Legion joined the Emperor on his Great Crusade to reunify the human worlds of the galaxy under the new Imperium. Lorgar appointed trustworthy regents to rule over Colchis in his absence and devoutly complied with what he believed were his father's divine commandments.

Lorgar was an unusual Primarch because he was less martial in nature than his brothers, and possessed an abiding faith that religion represented the pinnacle of human expression and a deeply-held belief that the Emperor of Mankind was actually a divine being made manifest in the mortal realm. As a result, Lorgar was determined to spread his own faith in the Emperor to every world that his Legion encountered in the course of the Great Crusade, a policy that would be in direct contradiction to the principles of the Imperial Truth. During the early years of the Great Crusade, the Word Bearers came across the world of Forty-Seven Ten, also known as Khur, which they proceeded to bring into Imperial Compliance approximately a Terran century before the events of Istvaan III at the outset of the Horus Heresy. The beautiful capital city of Khur, known as Monarchia, called the Perfect City by the Word Bearers, was built by the people of Khur at the direction and exhortation of the Word bearers to demonstrate their faith and devotion to the God-Emperor. Six decades after being brought into Compliance, the XIII Legion, the Ultramarines, would utterly destroy Monarchia on the order of the Emperor as an example to both Lorgar and his Word Bearers that violations of the Imperial Truth through the encouragement of the continued error of religious faith and the spread of idolatrous doctrine would not be tolerated. This action crushed Lorgar and his Space Marines and led them to seek out new gods more worthy of their worship -- the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. [[Category:F]]