What happened to the Thunder Warriors

[Kol Saresk]

I think the simple matter(or at least a neutral view) was that the Thunder Warriors were what he could make with what he had and used them while he can. He may not have known there was a way to save them. In fact, the cull may have been nothing more than the Emperor putting the Thunder Warriors out of their misery.

 

Ultimately I think the Emperor does have the best interest of Humanity at heart. The problem is that he is one of those "the ends justify the means" so he is willing to sacrifice anything and everyone to "save Humanity." He might even be willing to sacrifice the Primarchs. After all, there are the two missing Legions who vanished by unknown cause for unknown reason.

 

As far as Lorgar goes, even if you dropped the Faith aspect, his Legion was responsible for building up the infrastructure of every world they brought to Compliance until Monarchia. That is what they were punished for. The "faith" was simply why they stayed behind on every world, the motive. The Emperor seemed to make no move to destroy the Lectitio Divinatus, yet it was made by Lorgar as well, though before the events on Monarchia. I'll provide what the Emperor said in The First Heretic. I'll put in brackets where the breaks in the speech occur and to label the "charge", "reason" for the charge, and "motive" for what they did. It is from page 61 if anyone would like to confirm or examine for themselves.

 

"Word Bearers, hear me well. You, among all my Legions, are guilty of failure. You number more than any other, excepting the XIII. Yet your conquests are the slowest, and your victories ring hollow.[charge][break]

 

You linger on compliant worlds for years after final victory[reason], driving the populace into the worship of false faith, seeding cults of the naive and the deceived, erecting monuments to lies. All you have done in the Great Crusade is for naught. While all others succeed and bring prosperity to the Imperium, you alone have failed me.[motive][break]

 

Wage war as you were created to do. Serve the Imperium as you were born to do. Take with you the lesson learned here this day. You kneel in the ruination found at the end of a false path. Let this be your Legion's rebirth."[end]

 

Now, this part I do find interesting. The Emperor tells them to "Wage war" and "serve the Imperium" as they were born to do. Now if we listed these as "primary" and "secondary" purposes by order of appearance, it would mean that their primary purpose is to wage war. Like the Thunder Warriors before them, they were built as weapons. Unlike the Thunder Warriors, they were refined and built as scalpels and apparently have some sort of long term goal in mind.

 

Now it is entirely possible that the Emperor was just concerned about expanding his borders and securing the defenses of Humanity as fast as possible and then worrying about building up the interior or it was something like "I built you guys to be soldiers and I made the administratum to be the builders. Stop doing their jobs and trying to spread your filth."

[Kol Saresk]

 

DIdnt the Emperor build his Sons estates on Terra where they were supposed to stay after the crusades? I think its in the ravens flight when Corax goes to Terra

Deliverance Lost to be specific. Not sure of the page.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

Strangely, there were twenty rooms if I recall correctly, but I thought Magnus was destined for the Golden Throne...

[Kol Saresk]

Well Magnus was "destined" for the Golden Throne when the Golden Throne was built. It is inferred that it was always planned for the Golden Throne to exist from the moment the Primarchs were born. It is also inferred that if Magnus was put onto the Golden Throne, he would be in a state similar to the Emperor when He was put on the Throne to save His life. But what if that's not the case. What if the Primarchs were made, and then the Emperor began his research into a Human-made Webway and that culminated into the Gold Throne, which needs a very powerful psyker to be used and thus, the Primarchs' roles changed as things began to develop. Even the Emperor admits that he cannot see and know everything.

[Conn Eremon]

If they're meant to wage war and not do the administrating, why wasn't Guilliman and his sons kneeling in the dirt alongside the Bearers of the Word, instead of being shown as the example of what they could be?

[Kol Saresk]

If they're meant to wage war and not do the administrating, why wasn't Guilliman and his sons kneeling in the dirt alongside the Bearers of the Word, instead of being shown as the example of what they could be?

Because when the Ultramarines were administrating, it didn't get in the way of them making war. Their Expeditions were constantly bringing worlds to Compliance. But the Word Bearers' Expeditions would apparently halt and take years to not to just insure a smooth transfer from non-Imperial to Imperial, but to also to basically rebuild the world's infrastructure.

 

If we take what the IA articles say on the matter, for the Word Bearers it says: "The progress of the Word Bearers was slow, but complete. None escaped the crozius or the bolter. Entire worlds were scoured of the living for their refusal to submit to the will of the Emperor. When the Emperor took note of Lorgar's slow advance across the stars, he personally reproached his Primarch. He informed Lorgar that his purpose was not for faith, but for battle. The true mission of the Space Marines was to reconquer and unify the galaxy under the banner of Imperium, not to waste precious time and resources in vast displays of fealty and piety."

 

And for the Ultramarines it says: "The Primarch soon assimilated the wonders of the Imperium and readily took command of the Ultramarines Legion. As ever, his greatest talents lay in the art of war and he led the Ultramarines to victory after victory, further expanding the Emperor's realm. He liberated countless worlds from the domination of aliens and foul Chaos renegades, but where some of his brother Primarchs left a trail of death and destruction in their wake, Roboute brought peace and prosperity. Every world the Ultramarines liberated rapidly took its place amongst those loyal to the Imperium, and Guilliman's genius for planning campaigns ensured that the planet's population and industry suffered the minimum amount of collateral damage. On Macragge, the Fortress of Hera took shape, a building of such magnificent proportions that it defied the human mind with its grandeut. Upon its completion, those Ultramarines who had remained behind to oversee its construction began recruiting from Macragge and the surrounding systems."

 

I'm going to stop there as it goes on to say the Ultramarines received their first influx from Macragge and then the surrounding systems and before long, they had drawn so many recruits they became the largest Legion in existence.

 

But notice the difference between the two. The Word Bearers destroyed everything and then spent years rebuilding it. The Ultramarines on the other hand, were extremely precise(except probably where excessive force was needed), destroying only the pockets of resistance while leaving the world largely intact. But nothing is said of them rebuilding those worlds. Rather, that is something that is inferred because of Ultramar. If we went by what was said about the Fortress of Macragge, then the Ultramarines didn't perform the reconstruction, but rather left a contingent of indeterminate size to oversee the construction while the Expedition moved on. Rather different from the Word Bearers.

[Raven Angel]

FW's Betrayal gives some insight into the unification wars and the overall timeline. One thing it makes clear is that the Thunder Warriors where already being phased out in favor of Astartes before Terra was conquered.

[Kais Klip]

Because not only were the Ultramarines not the slowest (not that it mattered with the following point) but they truly had to show something for it; they established an Empire of their own that had even a chance of rivalling the Imperium before, and they achieved that establishment through war, an establishment which served humanity well, covering the Emperors mandate that Saresk put forward.

 

It's not that the Word Bearers were wasting time, its that they were wasting time doing something which the Imperial Truth explicitly forbids; I don't doubt that were 2 Legions not already gone, the thought of... Redistributing the Word Bearers might have crossed the Emperor's mind merely for the act alone.

 

An argument could be made that the comments that Saresk points out came out only because the Emperor was "tired" of denying his godhood and recognised the psychological fact of it is better to point to an alternative (ie you were made to do this, hintadyhinthintvoice: maybe you should do it instead of prostrating yourself) rather than simply command a stop to an unwanted task without a further command, yet again. Out it bluntly, instead of telling a child to stop hitting the dog for the thousandth time he told him to stop hitting the dog, go upstairs and do his homework as a child should be doing.

 

Edit: didn't see Saresk's post before replying.

[Conn Eremon]

Except that the Ultramarines could be bringing to Compliance even more worlds if they focused less on their administrations. If both left behind contingents of Marines focusing on assimilating conquered worlds then both weakened their force for the sake of conquered worlds. If the contingents weren't Marines then you would have the Army having all the credit and the practice would have become far more widespread in other fleets and Legions. But we know it was actual Ultramarines because we have it from the mouths of the Sons of Horus. Both Legions decreased their rates of conquests for the sake of already conquered worlds, no matter the fact that the Ultramarines' rate of conquest was already prodigious, they could have done more. If it was about Lorgar spending too much time and resources on worlds already conquered, the Legion that also spends time and resources on those worlds wouldn't be used as an example. It would have been the Sons of Horus, Dark Angels, Blood Angels or pretty much any other Legion not itself bordering on censureship. Space Wolves or the Imperial Fists. Not the Ultramarines.

 

If that was the true cause of Lorgar's shaming, they'd be in the exact same boat. Anything that excuses the Ultramarines from such a censorship applies no less to the Word Bearers, who were censored. Unless it's about the motive behind the Legions' actions, which brings it right back to having the spreading of faith be the root of the matter.

[Kol Saresk]

Except the Word Bearers didn't leave behind contingents. Everything I can find was "A Word Bearers found a world, the Word Bearers Expedition would bring the world to compliance, and then the entire Expedition would wait until the world was fully rebuilt and indoctrinated into the Lectitio Divinatus before moving on to the next world. The Ultramarines' war progress was fluid while the Word Bearers' was jarring and filled with stops.

 

As I showed with the quotes, the Word Bearers' motives were spoken against as well, however as I also pointed out, it is known that virtually nothing was done to stop the Lectitio Divinatus Cult or its spread by non-Word Bearers, although it was heavily discriminated against by a good majority of the Imperial population.

 

As I also said, the Ultramarines' contingents are speculation, not fact. The only thing the IA articles said was that they Ultramarines left their conquered worlds behind mostly intact and that there was a contingent of Ultramarines on Macragge who oversaw the recruitment and training of future Ultramarines. No mention of the size of this contingent was made and no mention was made if that was a standard practice. That's why I said if we went by that line as there are no guarantees about it.

 

Going directly by the IA passage with no inferring or assumption, all we see is that the Ultramarines would "liberate" a world, leave its infrastructure mostly intact and that every world the Ultramarines brought to compliance was quickly counted amongst those loyal to the Imperium."

 

That's it. Nothing is said if the Ultramarines left it solely for the Administratum to rebuild or if they left behind a contingent to oversee the Administratum's efforts. The only thing that an be inferred is that they did not rebuild the entire planet or even leave the need to do so.

[Conn Eremon]

Its not speculation, unless the Sons of Horus were wrong. They leave behind Army contingents and not Legionnaires, unlike the Ultramarines. That's not speculation, its outright stated by those Marines. Or maybe it was an internal monologue, either way the point was made. The IA might not have said anything either way, but the opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy series did and was confirmed by the Furious Abyss and Fear to Tread.

 

My point is that the remark that the issue of faith had little to nothing to do with Monarchia as much as the taking time to administer makes no sense if the Ultramarines take time to administer as well, and its not speculation that they do unless that IA is being deemed the only viable source and the HH series non-canon. Though the WB took more time and conquered less than UM, it can't be because they weren't always at war, perpetually, because neither were the UM. It had to be more about the reasons why, because that's what most differentiated the two Legions. Otherwise the Ultramarines would be brought to task for leaving Marines behind or spending time learning and developing skills unrelated to war, as the series outright states that they do. But we also know that this manner of operating is a direct cause for the UM successes. So again, couldn't have been about administrating, that they should only do war, because the UM are an example of how spending at least some time administrating improves their ability to make war.

[Emperors Immortals]

Thunder Warriors have always held my imagination, especially the question of what happened to them.

 

My assumption is that without most of the Space Marine organs and equipment, prolonged contact to polluted environments during the course of campaigning on Terra probably led to there deaths. The Great Crusade needed a force able to be used to enforce order after wards, therefore Astartes were created with the idea of being self suficient to begin with.

 

My only question then becomes "was the Emperor actually planning to get rid of the Astartes after the crusade?" because I kind of thin hed just send them on prolonged crusade beyond the imperiums borders.

[Kol Saresk]

Its not speculation, unless the Sons of Horus were wrong. They leave behind Army contingents and not Legionnaires, unlike the Ultramarines. That's not speculation, its outright stated by those Marines. Or maybe it was an internal monologue, either way the point was made. The IA might not have said anything either way, but the opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy series did and was confirmed by the Furious Abyss and Fear to Tread.

Actually it is speculation unless there is a source that says "Every Ultramarines Expedition left behind a garrison contingent in a manner similar to the Iron Warriors or left behind Imperial Army units like the Sons of Horus or spent years rebuilding a planet they left relatively intact similar to how the Word Bearers had to rebuild worlds they had completely destroyed." Speculation is nothing more than "I think they did this because they did this here but I do not have anything to confirm it." Which is exactly what I did when I said that if the Ultramarines did what they did at Macragge on every planet they conquered, then they would leave behind an indeterminate contingent while the rest of the Expedition would move on, a manner more in keeping with the Iron Warriors than the Word Bearers.

 

Again, the Word Bearers stopped entire Expeditions. The Expeditions were meant to constantly move forward. Even the Iron Warriors' Expeditions would move forwards after leaving a garrison here, and a garrison there. But the Expedition moved on.

My point is that the remark that the issue of faith had little to nothing to do with Monarchia as much as the taking time to administer makes no sense if the Ultramarines take time to administer as well, and its not speculation that they do unless that IA is being deemed the only viable source and the HH series non-canon. Though the WB took more time and conquered less than UM, it can't be because they weren't always at war, perpetually, because neither were the UM. It had to be more about the reasons why, because that's what most differentiated the two Legions. Otherwise the Ultramarines would be brought to task for leaving Marines behind or spending time learning and developing skills unrelated to war, as the series outright states that they do. But we also know that this manner of operating is a direct cause for the UM successes. So again, couldn't have been about administrating, that they should only do war, because the UM are an example of how spending at least some time administrating improves their ability to make war.

If you recall(or just reread the post), I never said that faith had little or nothing to do with it. I said:

As far as Lorgar goes, even if you dropped the Faith aspect, his Legion was responsible for building up the infrastructure of every world they brought to Compliance until Monarchia. That is what they were punished for. The "faith" was simply why they stayed behind on every world, the motive. The Emperor seemed to make no move to destroy the Lectitio Divinatus, yet it was made by Lorgar as well, though before the events on Monarchia. I'll provide what the Emperor said in The First Heretic. I'll put in brackets where the breaks in the speech occur and to label the "charge", "reason" for the charge, and "motive" for what they did. It is from page 61 if anyone would like to confirm or examine for themselves.

 

"Word Bearers, hear me well. You, among all my Legions, are guilty of failure. You number more than any other, excepting the XIII. Yet your conquests are the slowest, and your victories ring hollow.[charge][break]

 

You linger on compliant worlds for years after final victory[reason], driving the populace into the worship of false faith, seeding cults of the naive and the deceived, erecting monuments to lies. All you have done in the Great Crusade is for naught. While all others succeed and bring prosperity to the Imperium, you alone have failed me.[motive][break]

 

Wage war as you were created to do. Serve the Imperium as you were born to do. Take with you the lesson learned here this day. You kneel in the ruination found at the end of a false path. Let this be your Legion's rebirth."[end]

 

Now, this part I do find interesting. The Emperor tells them to "Wage war" and "serve the Imperium" as they were born to do. Now if we listed these as "primary" and "secondary" purposes by order of appearance, it would mean that their primary purpose is to wage war. Like the Thunder Warriors before them, they were built as weapons. Unlike the Thunder Warriors, they were refined and built as scalpels and apparently have some sort of long term goal in mind.

 

Now it is entirely possible that the Emperor was just concerned about expanding his borders and securing the defenses of Humanity as fast as possible and then worrying about building up the interior or it was something like "I built you guys to be soldiers and I made the administratum to be the builders. Stop doing their jobs and trying to spread your filth."

"Even if you drop the "faith" aspect." Not "Well faith wasn't why they were punished." Actually everything I said would go to support that their faith was exactly why they got punished because it was their faith that was causing them to stay behind on every single planet just to rebuild it. I said what they got in trouble for was rebuilding planets and why they got in trouble is because of their faith, which is exactly what you've been saying.

 

I pointed out that faith wasn't the primary reason because here you have the Lectitio Divinatus all over the entire Imperium and yet nothing is being done about it by the Emperor. The primary reason still is and was that where other Legions would either leave behind a garrison of Astartes or Imperial Army units while the rest of the Expedition moved on, the Word Bearers halted all forward momentum just to rebuild a world. The reason why they rebuilt those worlds was because of their faith and it too was hated on, just not as the primary reason as to why they had failed the Emperor. Otherwise the Emperor would have just said "You are spreading religion and named it Lectitio Divinatus. You should be ashamed of yourself."

 

EDIT:

Thunder Warriors have always held my imagination, especially the question of what happened to them.

 

My assumption is that without most of the Space Marine organs and equipment, prolonged contact to polluted environments during the course of campaigning on Terra probably led to there deaths. The Great Crusade needed a force able to be used to enforce order after wards, therefore Astartes were created with the idea of being self suficient to begin with.

 

My only question then becomes "was the Emperor actually planning to get rid of the Astartes after the crusade?" because I kind of thin hed just send them on prolonged crusade beyond the imperiums borders.

But if the Thunder Warriors had died to pollution, then shouldn't of everything else that wasn't a supersoldier? Or were you thinking that their specific augmentations simply reacted bad to the environment? I'm not trying to criticize, just understand the reasoning.

[Conn Eremon]

Well, okay, maybe I did misapprehend that post, because I took it as saying sure, faith had a part, just an unimportant one. However, I disagree still about the speculating. It's not speculating to say the Ultramarines do things when you read outsiders say they do and insiders remembering times they do. I haven't read anything saying they always do, but then I haven't read anything saying that the Word Bearers always do either and I don't believe I ever said either one does it always. Just that both do.

 

And I read the First Heretic and saw it as primarily about the faith. The Emperor spoke against Lorgar, the Legion and Lectitio Divinatis by condemning what they all represent, the continuation and spreading of religious beliefs. Its not like the Emps can speak out against the Lectitio, its a hiddwn cult whose members are unknown. But he did speak against its founder and primary spreader of its beliefs about those beliefs, in the ruins of a city predicated upon those beliefs. Granted this next part is my speculation, but to me that's the Emperor speaking against the Lectitio through its only tangible presence, the WB.

 

But I grow tired of writing somewhat long-winded posts using a smartphone's touchscreen and this debate has nothing to do with the Thunder Warriors. Feel free to message me if you want to continue this.

 

On topic, I thought one of the TW was called 'son' by the other because he was made a Thunder Warrior by that other. After the Unification War, as an extension of the experiments to save himself. In describing the two, they seemed to point out that the subordinate was similar but not quite as impressive, like a comparison of the many not-Marines like Luther and true Marines.

But then, I didn't particularly enjoy the book and skimmed through sections here and there.

[Emperors Immortals]

Yes, the TW could have survived longer then less augmented troops, and would have a higher concentration of pollutants then them. (im thinking radiation and chemical residue from weapons).

 

I think there particular augmentations had little to do with survival in a hostile environment beyond keeping them alive for the Terran campaign, which is perhaps where the deas for the Astartes particular back up organs and augmentics came from?.

 

All purly conjecture, but it explains both there shorter lives and eventual purging without the need for the Emperor to be such a ruthless bastard.

[Kol Saresk]

Fair enough Emperors Immortals.

[Vesper]

Vesper, are you still touting speculation as fact or do you have anything to back up your unequivocal statement that the TWs didn't undergo any form of mental conditioning, that the Emperor chose to give them a limited timespan and that he chose not to save them?

:)

So, the mental conditioning thingy, I think I read it somewhere, but can't remember where yet.

On the fact that the emperor did it on purpose, pure speculation (as far as I know... Maybe there are evidences on his real involvment in this that I'm unaware of). But I personaly think that it suits him pretty well.

[Kol Saresk]

Okay, so after looking through a friend's copy of Betrayal, I found this tidbit on page 85.

 

"The insurrection forces had slaughtered the ruling castes of the hollowed-out asteroid prison colony, and in the wake of the uprising the 3,000,000 or so indentured habitants of Cerberus had risen up in anarchic revolt in a state of near continuous rioting and mob violence, and initial attempts to impose order by Terran troops had been thrown back in disarray as it became apparent that among the insurrectionists was a renegade cadre of outlawed Thunder Warriors-long believed dead-calling themselves the Dait'Tar. With many of the Space Marine Legions already assigned to the first Expedition fleets and en route to the stars, the Emperor himself dispatched his War Hounds to Cerberus(and it allears the irony was not lost on him in doing so) with explicit instructions to reclaim Cerberus colony and carry the Emperor's wroth to thise that defied him.

 

At 0300 Hours Terran Sidereal time the War Hounds of the XII Legion attacked multiple access points on the asteroid's surface, and at 0808 hours a signal was received from Preator-Commander Calyb Hax of the XII Legion that Cerberus-Primary had been returned to compliance. When asked by the leader of the waiting second wave how many prisoners to expect to transfer into custody, Hax replied that he had not been ordered to take any...

 

Alves Scorn, whose command had been part of the second wave, led his regiment in the bleak task of clear-up operations in the wake of the War Hounds' assault, hunting down any survivors hiding in the warren of tunnels and passageways, of which there proved to be precious few. Afterwards he wrote of his experiences in his journals, and records more than once coming across the hulking carcass of an armoured Thunder Warrior, often with three or four of his number in Legiones Astartes dead around him-of choke points and defence posts turned into blood-soaked charnel houses-and of scores upon scores of insurgents cut down from behind while fleeing in blind panic, their weapons abandonded."

 

So the Thunder Warriors were still supposed to be dead. The most interesting bit is that they were considered "outlawed" and the way they were described as a "renegade cadre of outlawed Thunder Warriors."

 

To me, that would suggest that either all Thunder Warriors had been outlawed, or this was a splinter of a specific group of Thunder Warriors that had been outlawed.

[Aegnor]

Deliverance Lost - yeah, they have cottages within the Palace.

[mysteriousmaskedmystery]

i remember babu stating that they had been purposefully culled by the emperor, and he also claims to understand the move and not even blame the emperor for it, but he wants to live all the same.  maybe they were mentally conditioned if he was that loyal.  he seems almost like he wants to prove he was worthy of the emperor still, as if the emperor might take him back?  that's just wild speculation on my part.

 

as for the tumors and such, they were the first batch, not a perfected product, the primarchs came after the thunder warriors, then the marines from the primarchs with the stable gene-seed of their primarchs.

 

it seems like, first he took normal humans and tried to augment them, that worked the results left something yet to be desired.  then the primarchs were made from scratch, and from them came the gene-seed which would allow him to make the legions.  so maybe the astartes were just a stable, mass-produced version of the thunder warriors, while the custodes were still hand crafted, one by one, augmented humans, but without the side-effects of the thunder warriors?

 

lastly, as to the culling of the thunder warriors, it's possible that the wars of unification, which even by the time of the heresy were mythical, were even more brutal and barbaric than the wars of the crusade and the wars had taken such a toll on the minds of the thunder warriors, the emperor didn't think they would be the right force for bringing new wars into the fold.  that doesn't seem likely to me, just one idea to throw out there but the astartes were just as single minded, you either submit or you die.

 

so maybe if the if the thunder warriors were dying off anyway, they weren't really useful for much longer, so instead of creating more of them, he created the astartes, a more permanent solution, and he didn't want the thunder warriors as a threat in the future, they might have been brutal, but they weren't dumb, babu, wasn't your run of the mill warrior, but still, he's trying to get gene-seed so he can reverse engineer it and fix himself, and he seems confident he can do it with nothing but the resources he can scrape together as a slum-crime lord.  corax has trouble tinkering with it, even with the emperor's cliff-notes and schematics.  maybe the emperor was afraid of what would happen if the thunder warriors came to resent their shortened life spans, or figured out that they were about to become obsolete so he saw the only solution as cutting their throats before they turned on him?

 

again, no sources, no canon, just wild speculation, trying to piece together the little i know of them.

[Raven Angel]

Also from Betrayal page 26 and 27

 

The Creation of Space Marines

From the outset of his re-taking of Terra the Emperor  employed genetically modified warriors within his own forces and in these early enhanced troops lay the origins of what would later become the Space Marine Legions. Terra under the Old Night had seen more than its fair share of augments and 'super' soldiers created both from bio-alchemy and cyber-augmentation, and as early as the 25th Millennium the Horix Treatise mentios the use of bio-enhancments in the wars of Ancient Earth. Since that time gean-breeds, war-wights and ironsides had all carved their bloody names in history as part of the incessant conflict between the tecno-barbarian tribes and city-stats of Old Earth as war raged unabated for thousands of years. But it was the Emperor's own Thunder Warriors---named for the thunderbolt and raptor's head heraldry of their master---that were to prove superior to them all. a gestalt mix of unprecedented superhuman physical power, gene-programmed resistance to enviroment and even psychic attack, warlike spirit and the Emperor's own stratigic genius, the Thunder Regiments were an army unlike any that had come befor them, and the forces of the powerful tyants of Earth had nothing to match them. But despite their many early victories in the Unification Wars, the Thunder Warriors were far from perfect. Some were mentally unstable, other suffered catastrophic biological failure after an unpredictable span of years, their own superhuman physiques turning against them in the end. As the Remembrancer Dolvar put it: "Alas for them, the warriors of caged thunder and with whom lightning smote, they have burned the brightest in glory, but burned brief."

 

It seems obvious in retrospect that the Emperor knew early on that a more permanent and stable force of enhanced warriors was neede, so even while the Thunder Warriors waged war in their early days the Emperor gathered about him a team servants and gene-wrights, some willing and others as captives taken from his foes, and constructed new geneticslaboratoies deep in the vast dungeons of his Terran fortess. Labour here went on for decades in absolute secrecy and here was first created the Primarchs and other wonders of gene-craft known and unknown, and formost of these were the Legiones Astartes. Into their creation went all the secret history and lore of the Age of Strife, hard wisdom gained through the successes and failures of the Thunder Warriors who were their prototype and the Emperor's own inimitable genius. The first among them were hand picked men from the Emperor's personal bodyguard. These volunteers were subjected to surgical, genetic and psychological modification. With rigorous training and appropriate mental conditioning they became not only immensely strong and tough, but iron-willed and disciplined, an unstoppable force whose loyalty to the Emperor was unflinching. Quickly the process was refined and systematized, and the numbers of these new enhanced warriors, at first armed and armored as the Thunder Warriors had been, grew swiftly and they were organized into twenty distinct regiments numbering at first no more that a few hundred warriors each. Although it remained a dire secret at the time, it is now widely believed that this division was more that a merely administrative one, as each regiment contained variant 'gene-seed' encoding drawn from a different primogenitor Primarch. This often manifested its influence in subtle and unexpected ways, not least of all in influencing the psychological character of the remade and enhanced warrior. With the regiments expanding rapidly into Legions with the intake of new blood from the areas of Terra that had already joined cause with the Emperor, the new warriors quickly eclipsed and replaced the mighty but far less disciplined and unstable Thunder Warriors and victory followed victory in quick succession. as time went on the regiments became Legions as the Emperor recruited men from amongst the newly conquered tribes of Old Earth and hundreds swiftly became tens of thousands. These superhuman troops dominated the Wars of Unification, easily defeating all their Terran opponets and forcing the Tech-Priests of Mars to sue for peace. They fought with righteous zeal and it was they who first referred to their mission as a 'Crusade' and by their efforts for the first time in unrecorded millennia the Earth was united under the rule of on man.

[Ubermensch Commander]

A key thing to remember about The Outcast Dead is that our information is coming from a singular, particularly unreliable narrator. With his biology in as much disarray as it was, it is quite likey the old TW was misremembering or flat out hallucinating. Could be completely true.  We lack enough outside material to run with it.  Think "Angels of Darkness" and that business about the Lion always shadowing his own troops or the Word Bearers supposition about where all those Blue Armored gits came from.  One cancer riddled old war damaged super soldier may not have all marbles in play.  But, then again, maybe.

 

I prefer down playing the "limited shelf life" angle for the more consistently used  "phase out" background that the HH fluff utilizes for the Thunder Warriors.  They warred in the MK I armor, fought for the Big E in the early Unification wars against the "Techno-Barbarian tribes" of old Earth, and were proto-types of the later human genetic augmentation that would lead to the Legions. They were Proto-Astartes.  Examples of this methodology is utilized with Lorgar and Erebor/Kor Phaeron (One of those two little :cusses) to make super humans that CAN keep up with Astartes more or less, but are a bit different.
As the Emperor perfected the method, as well as gaining access to better staff and equipment with his expanding sphere of influence, the Thunder Warriors were simply phased out for the Space Marine Legions.  They fought and died alongside the Legions, forming an old core of vets that eventually dwindled to nothing through simple attrition.  In the same way older models of tanks and rifles are phased out of militaries for the newer and next version, or formations are removed with restructuring, so too were the Thunder Warriors.  No unnecessary "dark secret" or "planned obsolescence" just simple progression.  Which makes sense if the same/similar method is still used for exemplary individuals in the Great Crusade era.

The problem with the The Outcast Dead version of events is a simple "why?" and its inconsistencies with the other fluff. (TIme line business aside).  Perhaps later threads will shine more light on the matter.

@RAven Angel
Good find with that Betrayal quote! Here I was flipping through the Horus Heresy: Visions of War artbook to find quotes.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

@Vesper. The old boy is certainly depicted as having a ruthless, if not vicious streak and I wouldn't put it past him.

 

So the Thunder Warriors were still supposed to be dead. The most interesting bit is that they were considered "outlawed" and the way they were described as a "renegade cadre of outlawed Thunder Warriors."

To me, that would suggest that either all Thunder Warriors had been outlawed, or this was a splinter of a specific group of Thunder Warriors that had been outlawed.

I think it would require the article 'the' in front of 'outlawed' to confirm that all TWs had been outlawed, but we know how GW like to keep things vague until they are ready. Even then things can be revisited ;)

 

To me this sentence suggests they used two adjectives when only one was required, ie renegade cadre of TWs or cadre of outlawed TWs.

 

I'm sure we'll hear more given the prodigious output of BL :)

[Kol Saresk]

Well you have to remember, Betrayal is a product of Forgeworld which has on more than one occasion sought to pioneer its own way into the fluff.

 

@Raven Angel: So if I read the quote correctly, it does support the "Thunder Warriors were less refined" theory I proposed in their psychotic episodes and genetic instability(which doe to some degree support Babu's description of their physiology), although it does not say much about how they phased out from history, although since that was provided in The Outcast Dead when all the Astartes went "But you and all the other Thunder Warriors died in that one battle!" I guess we know the "official" story of what happened to the Thunder Warriors.

 

Hmm, I wonder. The Betrayal quote does support Babu's suggestion that the Emperor was always planning to phase out the Thunder Warriors, but Babu suggested it was to "create a legend" while Betrayal suggests that the Emperor wanted something better. Is it perhaps plausible that, like I theorized earlier on, that the Emperor made the Thunder Warriors because that was all he could do at the time and then used them to gather the materials necessary to create the Primarchs?

[Kais Klip]

I think that will always remain in the forefront of possibilities Kol, and I believe the reason for so many other theories frequently gaining credit from the narrative's characters is because understandibly they do not want/cannot realise the Emperor can make mistakes on such scale, no matter how grand it is(and needs prototypes). Thus they seek to come up with more outlandish explanations that while perhaps mar the Emperor's... chi/karma, his mental and physical prowess remains unquestioned, which I understand given the surrounding time of morale tribulation.