Kor Phaeron held a place in the Word Bearers unlike any other officer in the Legions, for he had been Lorgar's mentor upon Colchis long before the primarch was reunited with the Emperor. An arch-priest of the old faith who had recognised the divine in the young Lorgar, he rose with him to become the Dark Cardinal and Master of the Faith, first among the Legion's captains and keeper of its spiritual soul. He was not the equal of a true Astartes in body, his gene-implantation imperfect owing to his advanced age, yet his influence dwarfed his martial prowess, for he had shaped the very mind of a primarch.
It was Kor Phaeron, alongside Erebus, who steered Lorgar toward the Primordial Truth and helped bind the whole Legion to the powers of Chaos. Ambitious, manipulative, and jealous of his primacy, he pursued his own designs as eagerly as the Legion's, and at Calth he was given command of the treacherous assault upon the Ultramarines, hungering to claim a great victory for his gods and himself. That the massacre fell short of total annihilation would gnaw at him for ages, but his hand in damning the Seventeenth was beyond dispute.