Editing Destroyer Squad (section)

===[[Ashen Circle]]===
A specialist division that stood alongside the [[Word Bearers]] Destroyer units. Rather than being tasked with the absolute destruction of the enemy, their duty was to obliterate their enemy's culture, knowledge, and faith, everything which would give the foe the heart to continue fighting. Interestingly, this formation predated [[Lorgar]]'s induction to the Legion, echoing from a time when the Word Bearers were originally the '''Imperial Heralds''', who would bring the truth of the [[Great Crusade]] to newly encountered human civilizations.

This meant that they would specifically seek out and burn libraries, schools, churches, and government buildings as well as targeting enemy priests, officials and standard bearers so that it would be easier to replace them with the Imperial Creed when the time came for compliance. To this end they were armed with Hand Flamers and specialist Axe-Rakes, which were designed for tearing down icons and symbols, but were also good for dragging down fleeing targets. They were also uniformly equipped with Jump Packs and combined their drop assaults and charges with bursts of flame.

In ''Lorgar: Bearer of the Word'', it's revealed that the original Ashen Circle were all hardcore Imperial loyalists who, for obvious reasons given the whole faith-obliterating thing, were extremely unhappy with the religious nature of the Word Bearers post-Lorgar. When the smackdown came at Monarchia, they were pretty pleased that the Word Bearers were going to get back on the track of obliterating faith as opposed to engaging in it, but their excitement at the turnaround didn't last long. [[Kor Phaeron]] and [[Erebus]] promised them the chance to burn a bunch of Lorgar's religious works, which caused much rejoicing among the Ashen Circle. However, joy soon turned to ashes (see what we did there?) in their mouths when the obliteration opportunity turned out to be a giant trap and they were slain to a man before they even really realized what was happening. Then Kor Phaeron and Erebus had their remains torched to hide the evidence, which is a classic bit of hamfisted irony from Black Library.