Valdor: Birth of the Imperium

[StrangerOrders]

You know, its funny when you think about the progression of events from each of the Custodes books Wraight has written...

In this book we see that from the beginning, Valdor didnt like the idea of Primarchs or Astartes.

 

We also see in this book that Custodes take their ques from him.

 

We see in Emperor's Legion, Magisterium and ADB's First Heretic and Master of Mankind that the Custodes think very little of Astartes and go out of their way to either refer to them as variously 'defective', 'prey' and 'tools'. To the point of their being frosty with the Grey Knights due to the implication that they might be closer to the Emp's will.

 

Valdor's comments to Russ and Dorn about their being delusional for being considered anything more than tools.

 

Yet, in this book, we see that the Emp always called the Primarch's his 'sons'... And Valdor knew that. The Astartes were always going to happen, and Valdor knew that.

 

Valdor has no ego... but is next extremely 'confident' in his reasoning...

 

And then in the latest book Wraight, through the Imperial Fist Captain, Aleya and Valerion himself chew out the Custodes for being self-obsessed and not giving a damn about anything but their own excellence at doing their duty (to the extant of maybe overlooking the duty itself).

 

It kind of makes you think if someone accidentally passed on a 10 millennia-long inferiority complex to his order and lacks the ability to recognize it...

 

Edit: To give credit, I saw someone say something to that end on reddit and it appealed to me enough to bring the suggestion here because it does alot to change one's PoV from the book. Especially because I at least had not really questioned Valdor's PoV at all until I read it.

Edited April 20, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[b1soul]

What really surprised me was to find out that the Astartes were intended to be permanent, and up until then I always thought that had the Great Crusade gone the way it was intended, that the marines would have been Mount Ararated, but it seems that was never the case and strangely that revelation made me really happy.

I might have missed this upon my first reading. Where was this confirmed?

[m0nolith]

What really surprised me was to find out that the Astartes were intended to be permanent, and up until then I always thought that had the Great Crusade gone the way it was intended, that the marines would have been Mount Ararated, but it seems that was never the case and strangely that revelation made me really happy.

 

I might have missed this upon my first reading. Where was this confirmed?

When Astarte is reminiscing on the differences between the TW and Legionaries. Near the end of the book.

[BrainFireBob]

Frankly, I would prefer a concentrated,

tightly plotted HH series plus a wider, sprawling later GC and HH setting.

 

EDIT: My dream would be a Unification Wars and earlier GC setting focusing more on the latter with explorations of the former: Terra, Sol, Rangda, Terran and transitional legions, early conquests and legion masters and heroes who have faded into legend by the late GC, formative years of the primarch "fraternity", their schooling, political struggles and machinations, etc.

 

Doesn't have to be a continuous narrative, just a massive sandbox in which to world build

You and me both, frater

[StrangerOrders]

Maybe its because I ironically dont enjoy bolterporn that much and am more interested in the cultures of the various factions of the Crusade (and because Marine v Marine is of limited interest to me), but I would dearly love to see more of the early Crusades.

 

I love the Black Books and the Primarchs Novels (including Valdor, after a fashion) because you see much more variety and interesting stuff.

 

And, call me crazy, but it makes the Marines more effective and 'pop' more when they are juxtaposed against very different, and even more relatable things than other marines with the occasional Imperial.

 

I dont mean that they should be villain-sticked into the ground, one of the draws of 40k for me is that darkness and desperation of the setting makes it a paradoxically good place to explore depth and ideology. I want to see how the various facets of the Crusade got their rep.

 

I love Primarch books like tPP because you get to see the lauded charisma and genius of the Primarchs and Legions used to take a world with next to no blood. I love books like HoO and MotF because you get to see in vivid detail the things that would be stalking the galaxy if the Crusade didnt destroy them. I love the ones like Corax's and Ferrus's and even Valdors to a degree because you see that many of the other 'innocent' human cultures might have been on different paths towards madness and unconscionable cruelty but they were still very much on that path.

 

And I love the Black Books for making the Galaxy feel like a vast, wonderous and horrifying place. Rather than the narratives that either 'everything was great until the big mean Imperium came' or the 'everything was awful until the glorious Imperium came', it makes the setting come across as a much vaster and nuanced place divorced from alot of other sci-fi and even fantasy settings. And I love that.

 

I want to see the Imperial Fists fight gate-builders, I want to see the Blood Angels be spit on by the Cyborg Minotaurs they try to befriend, I want to see Horus be betrayed by the human warlord he trusted. I really want to see the Thousand Sons methodically break the tragic warrior-queen and I want to see the Space Wolves sacrifice thousands of their own to prevent a cybernetic evil of terrifying nature with the exact awareness that they will never be thanked for it.

 

These are stories worth telling!

 

So more books like Valdor and the Primarch books please!

Edited April 20, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[b1soul]

A would be all for a novel series zooming in on a single Old Hundred Regiment as it leaves Terra to prosecute the Great Crusade. Each novel could focus on the Regiment's participation in a specific campaign early in the GC (the first one could even be set in the Sol system), but because the camera is zoomed-in, a lot of the broader setting could be left mysterious and open (for exploration by other authours...or no exploration).

 

This would similar to Gaunt's Ghosts meets the Great Crusade. Abnett could probably do a fine job.

[Kriegsmacht]

A novel series about the beginnings of the Great Crusades in the eyes of the Legions before they meet their Primarchs would be interesting.

[b1soul]

Forge World has already planted the seeds of so many novels. Early GC should be treated as a setting

[The_son_of_Dorn]

A book where space marines Join the Imperial guard as special operatives for me.

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][= We're getting off topic here =][=

[Tymell]

I finished this one last night...and I'm reeeeally not sure how I feel about it.

 

As usual, Wraight's prose is great. It's gripping, engaging, and the characters are a treat. Kandawire, Ushotan and Valdor himself are all enjoyable, and I like the somewhat sad side to the title character we get to see. That even if he himself doesn't feel it, everything has a price and that includes his power and loyalty. It's not overdone, I just came away with the feeling of a character who seemingly doesn't regret what he does...but also can't be sure how much of that is because he isn't capable of feeling it anymore. Similarly, I liked hints that the Emperor himself has some problems along those lines too, like in some ways he's less than human.

 

The emergence of the space marines was also a great scene.

 

That said, I did have a couple of significant problems with this:

 

Astarte's turn just didn't work for me. It felt like her arguments were supposed to hit home and be at least somewhat compelling, but they all fell flat. She bangs on about the new Astartes being destined to fail, how seeing the primarchs being taken away broke her heart, and I just feel nothing at any of it. It all felt hollow. I think it could've been compelling, but we needed a lot more time with her and her viewpoints.

 

The flow of the story, especially in the first half, was a struggle for me. Wraight is fond of withholding information, thrusting the reader right into things and letting the reader figure it out for him/herself, and most of the time I appreciate that. It can take a bit to properly get to grips with one of his stories, but it's very rewarding when you do. But here, this process goes on for about half the book: it's a long time before I really got what was going on and why characters were doing what they were doing. And I'm sure that's intentional, but for me, it made it very hard to really enjoy any of it until the second half of the book, because I had very little context for a lot of what was going on.

 

So yeah, I'm torn. I certainly don't feel like this is a bad book...but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have issues, or pretended I came out of it feeling truly satisfied.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Tymell

[godking]

I loved Valdor but i still believe that it was possible to stabilize at least some of the thunder warriors and that killing them off was a waste of resources.

 

I wonder how things would have worked out had the emperor not gone the primarch/astartes route and focused on stabilizing the thunder warriors he could and perfecting the system to create thunder warriors without the instability.

 

If Arik Taranis could do it with far less resources then the emperor could have stabilized the thunder warriors.

 

It would have taken longer and be more difficult but it would lessen the chances of treachery.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I loved Valdor but i still believe that it was possible to stabilize at least some of the thunder warriors and that killing them off was a waste of resources.

 

I wonder how things would have worked out had the emperor not gone the primarch/astartes route and focused on stabilizing the thunder warriors he could and perfecting the system to create thunder warriors without the instability.

 

If Arik Taranis could do it with far less resources then the emperor could have stabilized the thunder warriors.

 

It would have taken longer and be more difficult but it would lessen the chances of treachery.

Except you’ve got both the Emperor and Astarte, the two best geneticists in the galaxy, saying it can’t be done. That, and the book mentions that the main thing really keeping the Thunder Warriors loyal was their imminent death.

 

Plus, even if the Thunder Warrior creation could be perfected to remove instability, it doesn’t necessarily follow that existing Thunder Warriors could be saved.

[b1soul]

Stabilised Thunder Warriors are called Astartes.

 

It's just that unstable TW can't be transformed into the latter. You have to build up an Astartes from a raw recruit

[godking]

 

I loved Valdor but i still believe that it was possible to stabilize at least some of the thunder warriors and that killing them off was a waste of resources.

 

I wonder how things would have worked out had the emperor not gone the primarch/astartes route and focused on stabilizing the thunder warriors he could and perfecting the system to create thunder warriors without the instability.

 

If Arik Taranis could do it with far less resources then the emperor could have stabilized the thunder warriors.

 

It would have taken longer and be more difficult but it would lessen the chances of treachery.

Except you’ve got both the Emperor and Astarte, the two best geneticists in the galaxy, saying it can’t be done. That, and the book mentions that the main thing really keeping the Thunder Warriors loyal was their imminent death.

 

Plus, even if the Thunder Warrior creation could be perfected to remove instability, it doesn’t necessarily follow that existing Thunder Warriors could be saved.

 

Yet Arik Taranis who basically was self taught was able to stabilize himself and Gotha for as much as he could for centuries.

 

Not all Thunder warriors could be saved but some could have been saved and repurposed.

[StrangerOrders]

 

 

I loved Valdor but i still believe that it was possible to stabilize at least some of the thunder warriors and that killing them off was a waste of resources.

 

I wonder how things would have worked out had the emperor not gone the primarch/astartes route and focused on stabilizing the thunder warriors he could and perfecting the system to create thunder warriors without the instability.

 

If Arik Taranis could do it with far less resources then the emperor could have stabilized the thunder warriors.

 

It would have taken longer and be more difficult but it would lessen the chances of treachery.

Except you’ve got both the Emperor and Astarte, the two best geneticists in the galaxy, saying it can’t be done. That, and the book mentions that the main thing really keeping the Thunder Warriors loyal was their imminent death.

 

Plus, even if the Thunder Warrior creation could be perfected to remove instability, it doesn’t necessarily follow that existing Thunder Warriors could be saved.

 

Yet Arik Taranis who basically was self taught was able to stabilize himself and Gotha for as much as he could for centuries.

 

Not all Thunder warriors could be saved but some could have been saved and repurposed.

 

I mean, you are right.

 

But he also had two centuries with no other priorities. And is only trying to solve for two.

 

Valdor specifically says that there is no consistency with Thunder Warrior problems.

 

And in the same book as Arik, you have a nude World Eater punching through Aurumite and tear out a Custodian's spine and the legions still numbered 10k. So... alot of that lore can be pretty safely dismissed unless backed elsewhere.

 

Also in that book is a Samurai written by someone that does not seem to understand what a Samurai is beyond the Tom Cruise film. But thats my own personal gripe.  

 

I'd take it with a grain of salt.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Exactly. From what we're shown of the Thunder Warriors, the only thing we're certain of is that their degradation is that it's different for every individual. For all we know, Taranis could have been ok even without the work he did. Even if that wasn't the case, Plus, McNeil doesn't exactly have seemed to consult others (or facts) when writing that book...

 

The issue remains, you had a flawed product that requires lots of upkeep, and is less able to be mass-produced, but is also physically stronger, one-on-one. However, what you need isn't a decent number of super-strong guys, you need heaps and heaps of superior-to-baseline troops that won't tear themselves apart just by existing. Astartes, comparatively, are able to be mass-produced in numbers far beyond the Thunder Warriors, are far more stable, and at a trade-off of being a bit less physically strong, but who cares about that, they've got guns.

You've even said it yourself, "it would have taken longer". What the Emperor didn't have was time. He needed the galaxy conquered as quickly as possible, he didn't have the time to faff about saving a failed project when he could create something superior.

 

Everything we're shown about the Thunder Warriors is that they were a tool for a particular moment. They weren't glamorous, they weren't sophisticated, they were enhanced soldiers that the Emperor could churn out in sufficient numbers from his meager starting place in order to conquer Terra. They're human bodies taken and stuffed full of magical "be better" materials, stuffed into shoddily mass-produced arms and armour, and thrown onto the front line to die in battle before said magical "be better" materials consumes them. 

 

Stabilize the creation process? That's exactly what geneseed is. Instead of slipshod laboratories filling them full of whatever steroids and vat-grown muscles are implanted into them, the Emperor and Astarte made 19 organs that could be mass-produced to the same specifications each time, that would ensure that each implantee came out the same as the other implantees.

[Phoebus]

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s well-written, centers on compelling characters, and moves along on the strength of engaging interactions. The time period is obviously of great interest, and the insight provided — however carefully parsed out — is welcome. I think Wraight realizes there’s a fine balance to be struck with a story such as this: you want to touch on the things that made pre-Unification Terra such a dystopian place, but you don’t want to give too much away. The myth has to be maintained, after all, and unveiling it is better suited for (hopefully) a dedicated novel.

 

That said, Valdor: Birth of the Imperium feels too short, though that may be a consequence of the title promising more than the sum of the events it describes. There is so much more the eponymous character could have shared with regard to what the title implies, but his recollections stay in relatively familiar territory. If the intent was always to focus on the transition from the Thunder Warriors to the Legiones Astartes, a few more of Valdor’s recollections would have been welcome: to cover their inception, their apogee, and their inevitable decline. What Wraight does tell us is delivered quite nicely (he’s quite good at this, you know!), but little of it is new. That, however, may not come down to the author but to the mandate given to him.

I’d recommend this story to anyone, especially now that it’s out on a (relatively) reasonably-priced eBook format. I do wish, however, that stories such as this, which predate the Horus Heresy had been delayed until after the Siege of Terra was completed. They deserve their own stage and structure, and that goes double for anything that predates the launch of the Great Crusade.

 

That’s not to say Valdor is perfect.

 

My chief complaint about it is that Kandawire and Ophar base their actions on some fairly bad assumptions and false equivalences. “The Emperor may not be the savior he claims to be” is a good motivation, but the actual examples the supporting characters use undermine their position.

 

For example, there’s definitely worrying ruthlessness in the Emperor creating a military force that’s understood to be not just unstable, but inherently self-destructive, only to covertly carry out a pogrom against them when they’ve reached the end of their usefulness. That nonetheless cannot put him in “the same bracket” as the cannibalistic marauders that drove Kandawire from her home, much less the horror shows that passed themselves off as rulers. The gray area between them and the Emperor is ridiculously vast: if the Augustus and Vigo the Carpathian existed in the same time and world, people wouldn’t act like they were one and the same; they might not like or trust the former, but he’s ultimately the person who brought back law and order and clean running water, while the latter was the guy using black magic to keep Earth in a living nightmare state.

 

Likewise, the idea that Valdor would be worried about his order losing out to mentally unstable berserkers is tenuous at best. Would someone as astute as Ophar even consider that the praetorian guard of bespoke gene-sculpted bodyguards possessing unmatched physical and mental faculties might worry about being overtaken by psychotics who didn’t even know when their bodies would give out on them? Worse still is the notion that the unstoppable super-genius that created both groups, who was orchestrating projects and conquests of a scope no one had imagined in untold centuries, somehow wouldn’t have the last won which of his tools would survive or not.

Kandawire and Ophar nonetheless press on, and why? Because the culling of the Thunder Warriors had never been formally coordinated with subordinate government echelons. It’s an interesting intersection of the realism those two undoubtedly had to live by and the idealism the Emperor fostered in them — idealism that is obviously eroding by the time Valdor kicks off. At the end of the day, though, it feels like a shallow complaint: the Imperium they help govern and administer is predicated on waging unilateral wars against sovereign states. Kandawire and Ophar are certainly entitled to hope the Imperium might become something better, but what they feared it was becoming is what it was all along. The fact that they can’t (or won’t) recognize this is quite ironic.

 

Wraight thankfully has Valdor at least address those characters’ logical shortcomings in the confrontation near the end, but it would have been nice for them to have stronger motivations from the onset. In fact, Valdor’s revelation re: the wars not ending with Terra, but becoming a far greater stellar conquest would have been a more apropos concern for a High Lord concerned about her ruler abusing his power.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Phoebus

[b1soul]

Kandawire was an idealist. So while I wouldn't equate the Emperor with one of the sick, twisted horror shows stalking Terra...to her, neither meets her principles. She's the type who does let perfect (her ideal Imperium) be the enemy of good (the Emperor's Imperium).

 

I found Astarte's motivations, or lack thereof, to be less understandable.

 

As for Augustus vs. Vigo, I think it would depend on whether you're in the Romans' good books. It's like comparing Macedonians to Mongols. The Persians probably wouldn't find one to be significantly better than the other.

Edited May 4, 2020 by b1soul

[godking]

Exactly. From what we're shown of the Thunder Warriors, the only thing we're certain of is that their degradation is that it's different for every individual. For all we know, Taranis could have been ok even without the work he did. Even if that wasn't the case, Plus, McNeil doesn't exactly have seemed to consult others (or facts) when writing that book...

 

The issue remains, you had a flawed product that requires lots of upkeep, and is less able to be mass-produced, but is also physically stronger, one-on-one. However, what you need isn't a decent number of super-strong guys, you need heaps and heaps of superior-to-baseline troops that won't tear themselves apart just by existing. Astartes, comparatively, are able to be mass-produced in numbers far beyond the Thunder Warriors, are far more stable, and at a trade-off of being a bit less physically strong, but who cares about that, they've got guns.

You've even said it yourself, "it would have taken longer". What the Emperor didn't have was time. He needed the galaxy conquered as quickly as possible, he didn't have the time to faff about saving a failed project when he could create something superior.

 

Everything we're shown about the Thunder Warriors is that they were a tool for a particular moment. They weren't glamorous, they weren't sophisticated, they were enhanced soldiers that the Emperor could churn out in sufficient numbers from his meager starting place in order to conquer Terra. They're human bodies taken and stuffed full of magical "be better" materials, stuffed into shoddily mass-produced arms and armour, and thrown onto the front line to die in battle before said magical "be better" materials consumes them. 

 

Stabilize the creation process? That's exactly what geneseed is. Instead of slipshod laboratories filling them full of whatever steroids and vat-grown muscles are implanted into them, the Emperor and Astarte made 19 organs that could be mass-produced to the same specifications each time, that would ensure that each implantee came out the same as the other implantees.

Fair points

 

Personally i would not have killed off the Thunder warriors i would have discontinued the creation of new Thunder warriors.

 

The thunder warriors i did have i would send into the hardest battles within the solar system where casualties are going to be high wittling them down slowly while also concentrating on the Astartes project.

 

Once the Thunder warriors are sufficiently whittled down and only the strongest and most stable are left i would have combined them into one strike force to be used in an emergency and as a counterweight to the astartes Legions should the need arise.

 

Simply killing them  all off and trying to hide it is a waste of resources.

[Phoebus]

b1soul,

 

That Kandawire has an idealist stance isn’t up for debate. That she even would, however, is up for debate. That the product of an environment as dystopian as hers would have such a binary world-view (perfect or monstrous) is altogether dubious. To use your examples, the Persians certainly wouldn’t like either Alexander or Temujin, but either would be a breath of fresh air compared to the guy stitching people together into cybernetic monstrosities driven mad and homicidal by pain amplifiers.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Phoebus

[Phoebus]

Personally i would not have killed off the Thunder warriors i would have discontinued the creation of new Thunder warriors.

 

The thunder warriors i did have i would send into the hardest battles within the solar system where casualties are going to be high wittling them down slowly while also concentrating on the Astartes project.

 

Once the Thunder warriors are sufficiently whittled down and only the strongest and most stable are left i would have combined them into one strike force to be used in an emergency and as a counterweight to the astartes Legions should the need arise.

 

Simply killing them  all off and trying to hide it is a waste of resources.

This presumes that there was sufficient control over the state of the Thunder Warrior to carry out the control phase-out you propose. Granted, we could be seeing the sort of conflict between older and newer material that the studios advertise as a given for the setting, but Wraight is proposing that the timing of a Thunder Warrior falling apart was not a given. That is, the Emperor didn’t design the Thunder Warriors with a 10-year shelf life, at the end of which their organs would fail; the process by which they were created — a stopgap measure developed before the necessary lore and technology had been recovered — was imperfect and volatile, and resulted in products that would go indiscriminately psychotic, suffer organ failure, or succumb to uncontrollable bio-mass mutation at an unpredictable time.

 

You’re proposing that this force should nonetheless have been used until it was spent. Given what Wraight describes, it seems that by the time Mount Ararat happened maintaining the Legio Cataegis was more trouble than they were worth.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Phoebus

[BrainFireBob]

 

 

Exactly. From what we're shown of the Thunder Warriors, the only thing we're certain of is that their degradation is that it's different for every individual. For all we know, Taranis could have been ok even without the work he did. Even if that wasn't the case, Plus, McNeil doesn't exactly have seemed to consult others (or facts) when writing that book...

 

The issue remains, you had a flawed product that requires lots of upkeep, and is less able to be mass-produced, but is also physically stronger, one-on-one. However, what you need isn't a decent number of super-strong guys, you need heaps and heaps of superior-to-baseline troops that won't tear themselves apart just by existing. Astartes, comparatively, are able to be mass-produced in numbers far beyond the Thunder Warriors, are far more stable, and at a trade-off of being a bit less physically strong, but who cares about that, they've got guns.

You've even said it yourself, "it would have taken longer". What the Emperor didn't have was time. He needed the galaxy conquered as quickly as possible, he didn't have the time to faff about saving a failed project when he could create something superior.

 

Everything we're shown about the Thunder Warriors is that they were a tool for a particular moment. They weren't glamorous, they weren't sophisticated, they were enhanced soldiers that the Emperor could churn out in sufficient numbers from his meager starting place in order to conquer Terra. They're human bodies taken and stuffed full of magical "be better" materials, stuffed into shoddily mass-produced arms and armour, and thrown onto the front line to die in battle before said magical "be better" materials consumes them.

 

Stabilize the creation process? That's exactly what geneseed is. Instead of slipshod laboratories filling them full of whatever steroids and vat-grown muscles are implanted into them, the Emperor and Astarte made 19 organs that could be mass-produced to the same specifications each time, that would ensure that each implantee came out the same as the other implantees.

Fair points

 

Personally i would not have killed off the Thunder warriors i would have discontinued the creation of new Thunder warriors.

 

The thunder warriors i did have i would send into the hardest battles within the solar system where casualties are going to be high wittling them down slowly while also concentrating on the Astartes project.

 

Once the Thunder warriors are sufficiently whittled down and only the strongest and most stable are left i would have combined them into one strike force to be used in an emergency and as a counterweight to the astartes Legions should the need arise.

 

Simply killing them all off and trying to hide it is a waste of resources.

Stasis. The Emperor collects trophies and mementos, it would be in character to stasis them (unless Trazyn is an issue). I had hoped, before the cull was explicit, to see one of the Palace's last lines of "in case of Armageddon, break glass" be a few hundred Thunder Warriors being unleashed in front of the palace.

[Scribe]

The waste of resources (here and in Consequences) angle just seems so nonsensical in terms of 30K/40K.

 

They are rebuilding in this book, a mountain into a fortress. The leader of the Imperium is Immortal.

 

Resources are not a relevant constraint in the setting really.

[godking]

 

Personally i would not have killed off the Thunder warriors i would have discontinued the creation of new Thunder warriors.

 

The thunder warriors i did have i would send into the hardest battles within the solar system where casualties are going to be high wittling them down slowly while also concentrating on the Astartes project.

 

Once the Thunder warriors are sufficiently whittled down and only the strongest and most stable are left i would have combined them into one strike force to be used in an emergency and as a counterweight to the astartes Legions should the need arise.

 

Simply killing them  all off and trying to hide it is a waste of resources.

This presumes that there was sufficient control over the state of the Thunder Warrior to carry out the control phase-out you propose. Granted, we could be seeing the sort of conflict between older and newer material that the studios advertise as a given for the setting, but Wraight is proposing that the timing of a Thunder Warrior falling apart was not a given. That is, the Emperor didn’t design the Thunder Warriors with a 10-year shelf life, at the end of which their organs would fail; the process by which they were created — a stopgap measure developed before the necessary lore and technology had been recovered — was imperfect and volatile, and resulted in products that would go indiscriminately psychotic, suffer organ failure, or succumb to uncontrollable bio-mass mutation at an unpredictable time.

 

You’re proposing that this force should nonetheless have been used until it was spent. Given what Wraight describes, it seems that by the time Mount Ararat happened maintaining the Legio Cataegis was more trouble than they were worth.

 

Hence not creating new Thunder warriors.

 

You are correct in that the timing of the thunder warriors breaking down is not a given.

 

But then we also have the thousand sons before finding Magnus and the emperor allowing them on the field when they where presumably more prone to break down in mutations then the thunder warriors.

 

The thunder warriors could  become indiscriminately psychotic

 

The emperor tolerated the world eaters for close to a 100 years after they where united with angron and brain boxed into murder machines.

 

Where they really more trouble then they where worth compared to the Legio Astartes when the emperor destroyed at least two legions was close to destroying the world bearers and allowed Curze,Angron and their legions to basically run riot ?

 

I think a managable ammount of the thunder warriors could be stabilized especially with the insight gleamed from the Astartes project once "natural" attrition brought them down to managable numbers.

 

A managable loyal veteran force capable of standing up to Astartes is to valuable a resource to waste If there was a place for Angron/Curze there would a place for Ushotan/Arik Taranis  in the great crusade.

 

The Emperor was pressed for time ? He could have used what was left of the thunder warriors for the first steps of conquering the nearby planets instead of waiting until he had sufficient numbers of Astartes to begin.