The Divine Rite: A Warhammer 40,000 Fanfiction

Part 1

Latigia IV, that was what the offworlders called my home planet, and we accepted the name. How could we have done otherwise?

What it was called before isn’t recorded. The Latigian people had only oral traditions before being visited by what we called The Amorok, which I now know to be a regular Imperial Mission vessel. They carried the Imperial Creed with them, the lie that their own god had once fervently renounced, and it seeped into the minds of my people the moment the Ecclesiarchy set foot on whatever world Latigia IV once was.

It changed us. I hadn’t been alive then, it was generations before I was born, but the records are thorough. Written record was one of the many lessons we Latigians learned from the Amoroks, the Imperials. They left us to our tribal existence, but taught us the Gothic language of the Imperium, and ensured the more ‘reliable’ method of written history was taken up across the world. Other than that they took changed very little, took almost nothing.

Only our faith.

In its place they gave us their own. I never learned what the old beliefs of Latigia involved. I don’t know if anyone remembers. What I do know is that ultimately, I am grateful. Whatever falsehoods they stripped away, replacing it with imaginings of their own, they kept Latigia from the Truth just as effectively as the belief in a False Emperor. These lies, as all lies eventually are, were recognized as deception in time, and so ultimately drove Latigia to the one, universal truth.

And that is Chaos.

If it wasn’t the whispering of Tzeentch that led those missionaries to us, perhaps it was simple luck. If it wasn’t the subtle caress of Slaanesh that turned them from fully colonizing Latigia IV, perhaps it was mere fortune. What I can say for certain is that it was the fury of Khorne that freed us, brought us the welcome of Nurgle.

And that I believe in neither luck, nor mere fortune.

So I will tell you my tale, in the ancient oral tradition of my people. And though it might be recorded by some of those present, and distributed in writing, I will only ever speak these words aloud. Not because the spoken word contains more power than those written, but to prove the foolish Imperials wrong. That which is written is not always true. That which is written is not always right. Writing is as easily twisted as any word given life by lips and tongue. I speak because I do not pretend that these words should be believed as fact, and I do not claim superiority or surety of purpose based only on my method of communication.

My words, my story will be dwelled on by many as a matter of faith, and whether or not you believe them will not be determined by their mode of conveyance, but by their contents.

As all words should be.