Warrior Lodge

A Warrior Lodge was a closed fraternity of warriors that existed outside of all other Space Marine Legion structure that were instituted at the close of the Great Crusade by the Chaos-corrupted Primarch Horus. These lodges more than likely played a key role in the division and later corruption of the Legions under Horus' command that led to the Horus Heresy.

History
Some six decades prior to the events of the Horus Heresy, the Luna Wolves, in collaboration with the XVII Legion, the Word Bearers (then known as the Imperial Heralds), had undertaken the compliance of the Feral World of Davin, codified as Sixty-Three Eight (63-8). A feral place, Davin had been controlled by a remarkable warrior caste, whose savage nobility had won the respect of the Astartes sent to pacify their warring feuds. The Davinite warriors had ruled their world through a complex structure of warrior lodges, quasi-religious societies that had venerated various local predators. By cultural osmosis, the lodge practices had been quietly absorbed by the Legions. Warriors always sought sought the brotherhood of their kind. The warrior lodges supposedly sought to promote fellowship across the hierarchies of command, irrespective of rank or position. These lodges were a kind of internal bond, a ribwork of loyalty that operated, as it were, perpendicular to the official chain of command. Imperial scholars now believe that the influence of Primarch Lorgar and his Word Bearer's played a key role in the proliferation of the lodges amongst the various Legions, spreading like a slow contagion and eventually becoming the source of the cancer that grew at the heart of the Imperium's finest warriors.

Officially, there were no warrior lodges, or any other kind of fraternities, within the Adeptus Astartes. It was common knowledge that the Emperor frowned on such institutions, claiming they were dangerously close to cults, and only a step away from the Imperial creed, the Lectitio Divinitatus, that supported the notion of the Emperor, beloved by all, as a god. The Emperor openly and publicly refuted his alleged divinity and banned religious worship in his empire, and demanded that his subjects accept the "Imperial Truth"-- that science, reason and logic alone presented the tools required to create a better human future. There were many of those amongst the Legiones Astartes (especially those of Terran origin) that were openly opposed to the practise of the lodges, for to them it felt wrong, if nothing else, in that it's practises were deliberately kept secret and thus deceitful. Wrong, in that the Emperor, disapproved of them. Many of those commanders who disapproved of such clandestine activities let it be known to those that served under their captaincy that they should have nothing to do with these lodges.

During a battle against Chaos-spawned undead on Davin's moon, whose Planetary Governor, Eugen Temba, had been corrupted by the forces of the Chaos God Nurgle, Horus was poisoned by a xenos blade dedicated to Nurgle known as a Kinebrach Anathame that had been stolen from the human civilisation of the Interex by Erebus after Horus and the Luna Wolves of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet had made a disastrous first contact with them. In the course of that battle, the potent living metal of the Chaos blade wielded by the plague-infused monstrosity left Horus with a bleeding, toxic wound in his shoulder that his Legion's Apothecaries could not heal despite all the advanced technology available to them. Seeing his chance to further the designs of Chaos, Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus next persuaded the Luna Wolves' warrior lodge to allow a group of Davinite shamans -- Chaos Cultists all -- located on the surface of Davin at the Temple of the Serpent Lodge to heal him. The Luna Wolves, besides themselves with grief and the fear that their beloved Primarch would die, agreed to the suggestion, despite its direct violation of the creeds of the Imperial Truth. It was on Davin that things began to turn, where the momentum came to a head. Horus fell and then he rose, healed by the arcane. Many within the Legion knew then, even if they dared not take the scope of it. Men took the good and open nature of their brotherhood and turned it slowly to meet their own ends. Dark shadows grew over the hearts of warriors who had once been devoted and loyal.

After the Warmaster's "miraculous" resurrection, the proliferation of these warrior lodges quickly spread amongst the other Legions, especially those that maintained close bonds with the XVI Legion. Though these warrior lodges venerated no god or occult principle, the ritual and secret elements of the warrior lodges did not fit with the ruthless rationality of the Imperial Truth. Frowned upon but tolerated, the lodges persisted and flourished. They survived in part because many saw them as relatively harmless, and in part because they promoted fellowship within and between Legions. It was a misjudgement that would have consequences that would later prove quite dire.

Warrior Lodge Organisation
From what little is known to modern Imperial scholars, behind closed doors the members of a lodge put aside the divisions of rank and honour. No rank existed between members aside from the ranks and divisions of the lodge itself. It was quite possible for a senior captain to be greeted as an equal by a man under his command. Likewise it was equally possible for a sergeant to be lodge master, one of his acolytes a company captain and a neophyte to be a senior commander. Such subversion of the order of rank and military discipline was possible because the lodges bound themselves about with ritual and secrecy. The meeting places of a lodge were secrete chambers entered by only one door. That door was guarded, and only those bearing the words and symbols of membership could pass within. Members recognised each other by the use of artefacts (such as Lodge coins), marks, gestures and codes phrases. Symbolism and ritual significance surrounded initiation into a lodge. In some lodges the prospective initiate was blindfolded, only seeing again once the ceremony was complete. In other lodges he would drink a cup of blood, a cup of water, and a cup of soured wine. Some had labyrinthine levels of rank to ascend; others confined themselves to a basic few.

For example, within the Emperor's Children Legion the Brotherhood of the Phoenix was a more exclusive warrior lodge than those within many of the other Legions. While the Emperor’s Children had fought alongside the Luna Wolves, they had formed great bonds of friendship with the warriors of Horus, and in the times between the fighting, a few loose tongues had spoken of their warrior lodge. The Luna Wolves lodge was, in theory, open to any warrior who desired to be a member, an informal place of lively debate where rank held no sway and a man could speak his mind freely without fear of reprisals. Eventually a few Astartes from the Emperor's Children were permitted to attend one such meeting, a pleasant evening of honourable camaraderie under the titular leadership of the Lodge Master Serghar Targost. Some enjoyed the meeting, despite the clandestine nature and theatrics of it, but some remained uncomfortable with the informality and mingling of the ranks. In the traditionally hierarchical core of the Emperor’s Children only warriors of rank could join their confraternity.