The First Heretic Quotes

“Everything is darkest," Xaphen mused, "before the dawn."

"That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realize it's a lie.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe.

God was real, and he hated us.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Xaphen swore an oath never to fail his primarch.

Argal Tal did not. He spoke in a voice soft enough to break hearts, "We are heretics, father.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“I have crusaded across his empire for over a century, raising icons and faiths in his image – and only now he objects? After a hundred years, only now am I told that all I’ve done is wrong?”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“And as man turned from the light of day, all that was left to him was the endless night. Without contrast, he threw open his arms, and darkness took hold.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Is that not blasphemy? Defying the will of the Covenant?’

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘It was a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming boredom.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“We called them false angels. You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe. God was real, and he hated us.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Everything is darkest,’ Xaphen mused, ‘before the dawn.’ ‘That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realise it’s a lie.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“You can hear Vanic dying. You hear him scream, but not for long.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“La diferencia que existe entre los dioses y los demonios depende sobre todo del lado en que uno se encuentre en ese momento.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Khaane, Tezen, Slanat and Narag”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“The Imperium is right, and that makes it mighty”, so say our iterators, so the Word is written, and so shall it be. We succeed where every other human culture has failed. We rise where alien breeds fall. We defeat every solar empire or lonely world that refuses benevolent unity. What more evidence is needed that we, and we alone, walk the right path?”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Is that so wrong?’ he asked his closest advisors. ‘Is it so wrong of me to walk the ways of a visionary, a seeker, rather than a simple soldier? What is it within my father that renders him so thirsty for blood? Why is destruction the answer to every question he is asked?’ Kor Phaeron clutched Lorgar’s shoulder tighter. ‘Because, my son, he is gravely flawed. He is an imperfect god.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“The young man with the golden skin drops to one knee, silver tears sparkling on his flawless features like droplets of sacred oil. ‘I knew you’d come,’ he weeps the words. ‘I knew you’d come.’ The God in Gold offers his armoured hand to the kneeling young man. ‘I am the Emperor,’ he smiles, benevolence incarnate, glory radiating from him in a palpable aura that hurts the eyes of every onlooker. Thousands of people line the streets. Hundreds of priests, clad in the dove-grey of the Covenant’s ecclesiarchs, kneel with Lorgar before the coming of the God-Emperor. ‘I know who you are,’ the golden primarch says through his dignified tears. ‘I have dreamed of you for years, foreseeing this moment. Father, Emperor, my lord... We are the Covenant of Colchis, and we have won this world through your worship, for the glory of your name.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“Lorgar wore nothing but a loincloth of coarse weave, leaving his immense but androgynously slender torso bare.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic