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I am not here to bash Angron and Curze for being terrible leaders and human beings. They really suck, though. Without Chaos, these two should have been already executed.

While reading The First Heretic, I came across this.

While all others succeed and bring prosperity to the Imperium, you alone have failed me.

This is what the Emperor tells Lorgar, and I don't understand.

Worlds conquered by The Night Lords are only compliant for a while and would revolt as soon as they have the chance. This is what happens when you terrorize them into submission without creating a strong foundation for a new system. The Night Lords went from trying to conquer world while killing as few but as horrifically as possible to being a bunch of degenerate murders and rapists who commit crimes against humanity for laugh.

The World Eaters just kill everyone and destroy everything. Granted, the Space Wolves kinda did the same early in the Great Crusade, but Leman Russ keeps their wanton thirst for destruction in check. Meanwhile, Angron is unleashing pure murder on anyone he sees and usually leaves little that rebuilding would have to be done from scratch.

So, why did the Word Bearers somehow fail the Emperor while the World Eaters and Night Lords are innocent angels? The Word Bearers have good intentions, just misguided. The Night Lords are kinda like that but with far less control and a lot of unnecessary violence as the Great Crusade goes on. The World Eaters are just pure malicious and should have been culled like the Thunder Warriors as soon as the Butcher's Nails were introduced.

The world's the 8th conquered didn't rebel after they left, in fact it's the exact opposite of what happened.
Those worlds conquered by the Night Lords lived in permanent terror that the 8th would return to punish them if they transgressed, and the Emperor didn't care if people were scared just that they were loyal.
It took years for Nostramo to slide back into it's old ways and that was because there was no real Legion presence keeping up the rule of Curze. The old powers came back because nobody remembered the terror of the Night Haunter because Curze didn't want to return to his adopted homeworld due to his intense hatred for it.

Angron on the other hand was exactly the tool the Emperor needed to break the worlds too hardy for other Legions. The 12th were the brick rather than the scalpel and they performed that role very well.

Lorgar actively spread religion in the aethiest Imperium. He did the opposite of what the Emperor wanted, ergo punishment.

 Gert wrote:
The world's the 8th conquered didn't rebel after they left, in fact it's the exact opposite of what happened.
Those worlds conquered by the Night Lords lived in permanent terror that the 8th would return to punish them if they transgressed, and the Emperor didn't care if people were scared just that they were loyal.
It took years for Nostramo to slide back into it's old ways and that was because there was no real Legion presence keeping up the rule of Curze. The old powers came back because nobody remembered the terror of the Night Haunter because Curze didn't want to return to his adopted homeworld due to his intense hatred for it.

Angron on the other hand was exactly the tool the Emperor needed to break the worlds too hardy for other Legions. The 12th were the brick rather than the scalpel and they performed that role very well.

Lorgar actively spread religion in the aethiest Imperium. He did the opposite of what the Emperor wanted, ergo punishment.

The issue was why did the Emperor have to do it when he did in that way? He could have stressed it from the very beginning, instead of letting Lorgar go spread a new religion for years and only then destroy his crowning achievement.

Of course, the 40K situation shows Lorgar was right all along. Faith and worship is now what empowers the Emperor and what unites the Imperium ideologically.

Lorgar could have been one the Emperor's most loyal Primarchs if the Emperor had tolerated acting like a god for Lorgar and just told him about Chaos and how they would try to tempt him and lure him away. Lorgar would then probably have held firm to his faith and resisted the blandishments of the Chaos gods.

Because he's a brutal tyrant who was mad one of his supposed elite chosen was messing up The Big Plan.

Despite assertions to the contrary the Emperor is still human and subject to the human condition of being a prick.

He didn't care if he hurt Lorgar's feelings, Lorgar broke rule number one of the Great Crusade and the punishment was deemed necessary.
The Emperor got what he wanted out of it, a Legion that rapidly conquered swathes of worlds and exterminated hundreds of Xenos empires.
How was he supposed to know Kor Phaeron and Erebus were Chaos worshippers? He's powerful but not all knowing.

I agree with Gert. "Terrible at people management" is pretty much a core trait of the Emperor at this point.

Except Russ was doing the exact same thing: the sixth exported Fenris' indigenous religion (morkai et al) to the sixth legion holdings. But russ wasn't called on it because he's one of his father's favourites.

And he would've known about Kor Phaeron if he'd ever actually had a meaningful discussion with Lorgar. Lorgar overthrew the covenant of Colchis as much by oratory as violence and he knew the covenants theology very well.

The Emperor would have instantly recognised that Kor Phaeron was worshipping the ruinous powers if they'd actually discussed colchis prior to the war.

The Emperor wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Colchis was loyal and stable after Lorgar took over and the Emperor assumed that Lorgar would drop his religion thing once he was introduced to the Imperial Truth.

He was wrong but that's not exactly a shock.

I would argue that pissing off a bunch of guys who are openly worshipping you, and thus utterly loyal, is definitely "Looking the gift horse in the mouth"

On one hand, the Emperor had regained one of his generals who also had military expertise from a now stable world with a good sized population to recruit from, and on the other they were a bit religious, something the Iterators of the Imperium could deal with.
He needed the materials Colchis provided more than he needed to worry about the god-bothering.
That's what not looking the gift horse in the mouth means.

The humbling of Lorgar and the Legion didn't come out of nowhere. Lorgar was repeatedly told to stop practicing religion and do more conquering but he didn't.

It wasn’t just the Word Bearers being humbled and told off though.

It was anyone starting to think of The Emperor as a god.

If he’s willing to force his own son, and his son’s gathered forces to correct the error of their ways? What’s he gonna to do you?

There's no real indication Lorgar in the novels had ever been told so to his face.

Whilst the Emperor might have sent warnings or messages, there's a good chance none of them got past Kor Pheron and Erebus, who were actively trying to engineer...basically exactly the events that occurred.

So your argument is that Lorgar is a complete idiot and couldn't hear his brothers, his father, his father's officials and the entire Imperium around him saying "Dude stop building a religion, we're trying to get rid of them!".

 Gert wrote:
So your argument is that Lorgar is a complete idiot and couldn't hear his brothers, his father, his father's officials and the entire Imperium around him saying "Dude stop building a religion, we're trying to get rid of them!".

I've not read any of the books, but I get the general impression that a great deal of the Heresy can be traced back to Primarchs being total idiots.

I seem to remember that when the Emperor and Guilliman shamed/humiliated the Word Bearers the dialogue didn't seem to show that Lorgar was surprised at the Emperor's displeasure. Not in a way that would imply he was blissfully unaware the Emperor would not like being called a god. If anything, it seemed to kinda imply that he was fully aware that it was against the Emperor's stated wishes. It was more along the lines that he hoped the Emperor would change his mind if they talked in person or that he would be secretly ok with them worshipping him as a god.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Gert wrote:
So your argument is that Lorgar is a complete idiot and couldn't hear his brothers, his father, his father's officials and the entire Imperium around him saying "Dude stop building a religion, we're trying to get rid of them!".

I've not read any of the books, but I get the general impression that a great deal of the Heresy can be traced back to Primarchs being total idiots.

And the Emperor.

Its all one big soap opera now, where you end up yelling at the screen over how dumb most of them are.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I seem to remember that when the Emperor and Guilliman shamed/humiliated the Word Bearers the dialogue didn't seem to show that Lorgar was surprised at the Emperor's displeasure. Not in a way that would imply he was blissfully unaware the Emperor would not like being called a god. If anything, it seemed to kinda imply that he was fully aware that it was against the Emperor's stated wishes. It was more along the lines that he hoped the Emperor would change his mind if they talked in person or that he would be secretly ok with them worshipping him as a god.

Considering how the Emperor tolerated being worshipped as the Omnissiah by the Mechanicum, Lorgar hoping that the Emperor would also accept being worshipped as a god by the rest of the Imperium was not entirely without basis..

Exactly, the idea that Lorgar didn't know what he was doing is flat out wrong.

He also knew that going god-hunting was also a bad thing to do because Magnus "the rules don't apply to me" the Red very specifically told him not to go hunting for new gods to worship in the Warp because they were essentially predators looking for a new meal.

Lorgar isn't innocent in the slightest, he's just well written in First Heretic and Betrayer.