Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The emperor decides against creating the primarchs and space marines and instead stabilizes his thunder warriors so their bodies and minds dont deteriorate.

He forms the thunder warriors into armies roughly the same as the space marines would have been organized with each under the command of a trusted Thunder warrior commander like Arik Taranis.

With his thunder warriors and normal human armies he sets out to conquer the universe.

How do things work out ?

Do you mean just in terms of conquering the Galaxy for Humanity or the HH too?

 Ratius wrote:
Do you mean just in terms of conquering the Galaxy for Humanity or the HH too?

Mostly conquering the Galaxy for humanity.

But its also interesting how and if a heresy would occur remember that in this scenario there are no chaos tainted primarch or space marines .

If a heresy would occur it would probably spring from a chaos tainted planet subverting a part of the thunder legions/ Imperial Army.

The Horus Heresy happened due to The Emperor being enormously incompetent, arrogant, and having absolutely no understanding of even the most basic elements of human psychology or social interaction. Something would go terribly wrong, eventually.

The whole reason the Big E made the Primarchs was because he figured out he couldn't handle it all himself, and didn't trust anyone else to do the job. If he sent out normal humans and Thunder Warriors, some of them would have rebelled and become independent warlords. Some would have encountered xenos and human threats they couldn't deal with and been wiped out. The Emperor couldn't be everywhere at once, and all his big psychic projects were sapping his strength.

There are basically two possibilities:
1)The Emperor overextends himself and gets killed. This nearly happened in canon against the so called "Primork" warboss that momentarily got the upper hand on him. The Great Crusade falls apart without him.

2) The Emperor plays it safe and survives, but his crusade isn't nearly as successful due to rebellions and failed military campaigns. Even after tapping into the Webway, he has to deal with Craftworld Eldar and Commoragh. There's no big, dramatic heresy, but the galaxy is much more fragmented and the Imperium is much smaller, or at least takes much longer to build up.

The Primarchs and Space Marines gave the Imperium an edge on its opponents that it otherwise wouldn't have. The Emperor is really uber and all, but at the end of the day he's limited by being just one guy. Any force without him leading it directly, and without Space Marines and Primarchs, isn't going to fare any better than the countless other human empires that existed at the time.

Well the question is what would happening instead? The Space Marines were weapons developed to conquer everything in sight. Without them well the crusade would have been crippled and basically been a crawl from planet to planet. But regarding how the Space Marines and Primarches turned out I would have preferred this rather than letting the psychopathic Space Marines run rampant.

 fallinq wrote:
The whole reason the Big E made the Primarchs was because he figured out he couldn't handle it all himself, and didn't trust anyone else to do the job. If he sent out normal humans and Thunder Warriors, some of them would have rebelled and become independent warlords. Some would have encountered xenos and human threats they couldn't deal with and been wiped out. The Emperor couldn't be everywhere at once, and all his big psychic projects were sapping his strength.

There are basically two possibilities:
1)The Emperor overextends himself and gets killed. This nearly happened in canon against the so called "Primork" warboss that momentarily got the upper hand on him. The Great Crusade falls apart without him.

2) The Emperor plays it safe and survives, but his crusade isn't nearly as successful due to rebellions and failed military campaigns. Even after tapping into the Webway, he has to deal with Craftworld Eldar and Commoragh. There's no big, dramatic heresy, but the galaxy is much more fragmented and the Imperium is much smaller, or at least takes much longer to build up.

The Primarchs and Space Marines gave the Imperium an edge on its opponents that it otherwise wouldn't have. The Emperor is really uber and all, but at the end of the day he's limited by being just one guy. Any force without him leading it directly, and without Space Marines and Primarchs, isn't going to fare any better than the countless other human empires that existed at the time.

The only real edge the space marines had over the Thunder lwarriors was that they where designed for combat in hostile enviroments and stability of mind and body.

Arik Taranis is equal of better then most space marines of the crusade era

In this alternate scenario the empeor worked to stabilize his thunder legions.

The thunder legions could have more or less filled the place of the space marines.


You are right about the edge the primarchs bring.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Beaviz81 wrote:
Well the question is what would happening instead? The Space Marines were weapons developed to conquer everything in sight. Without them well the crusade would have been crippled and basically been a crawl from planet to planet. But regarding how the Space Marines and Primarches turned out I would have preferred this rather than letting the psychopathic Space Marines run rampant.

Thunder warriors could have taken the spot the space marines took up they where equal to space marines in almost every facet except that they where not specifically designed for battle in hostile enviroments but since they would be wearing power armour this is not that big of a factor.

godking wrote:
The only real edge the space marines had over the Thunder lwarriors was that they where designed for combat in hostile enviroments and stability of mind and body.

And that right there is a huge reason to get rid of them. The hostile combat has work arounds, but redundancy is a good thing. Power armour is not infallible. Backups are good planning.
As to 'only edge is stability of body and mind', that's huge. The BA and WE were nearly excommunicated for that (Sanguinius feared it enough to keep it hidden), and the TS were nearly removed for not being stable of body (although, mutating to warp spawn is a wee bit different).

godking wrote:
Arik Taranis is equal of better then most space marines of the crusade era.

Better, actually. The Thunder Warriors are supposedly better then marines. But above.

godking wrote:
In this alternate scenario the empeor worked to stabilize his thunder legions.

The thunder legions could have more or less filled the place of the space marines.

At this point though, you essentially have Space Marines. There are differences, true enough, but functionally, they're the same. Basically, what would have happened if the Primarchs were never recovered.

godking wrote:
You are right about the edge the primarchs bring.

Thunder warriors could have taken the spot the space marines took up they where equal to space marines in almost every facet except that they where not specifically designed for battle in hostile enviroments but since they would be wearing power armour this is not that big of a factor.

Redundancy is always good. When you're doing construction, a 2" beam works? Make it a 3". 1 foot deep holds the fence? Don't ever settle for the bare minimum, because it falls that much faster. Space marines being able to achieve battlefield function in hostile conditions is a large part of what they are, and the worth they hold. Power armour might do, but if your soldiers die that much faster, it's better to go the extra mile and give em the implants to function, even slightly, without it.

Part of it is resources. Given the unstable nature of the Thunder Warriors, you have the option of putting large amounts of time and resources that could otherwise be going towards the crusade, or put towards fixing what may not be fixable. That some of the Thunder Warriors managed it is true, but hindsight is 20/20. If the Emperor had attempted to stabilise them, and they couldn't be stabilised, he would have lost a lot more then could have potentially been gained.

Another is in the names. Warriors vs marines. Warriors are good for engagements, but soldiers are so much better. You can't guarantee warriors, but give a man a weapon and training, and you can make a soldier out of him. Also, the fact that the thunder warriors are unreliable could have been a massive issue in the crusade, and issue exacerbated by the huge time and distance scale.

Another thing is loyalty. The Thunder Warriors were grown men, raised to superhuman, and knew exactly that. Their hubris was huge. By indoctrinating them from an early age, the Emperor ensured a much firmer grasp on the Space Marines. The Thunder Warriors didn't need primates to rally behind. They would have rebelled by themselves.

And lastly, image. If you're going to act like a benevolent ruler of mankind, you need a good facade. The Thunder Warriors were responsible for terrible massacres and genocides, and with that tainting his image, the Emperor would have been sliding down the proverbial back pole in regards to his proclaimed aims.

The Thunder Warriors wouldn't have lasted that long. They had problems with meltdowns and tumors. They were not stable. They had to use Space Marine-genetics in order to survive after the Unification Wars. I think the Outcasts or something like that made that clear.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
The Thunder Warriors wouldn't have lasted that long. They had problems with meltdowns and tumors. They were not stable. They had to use Space Marine-genetics in order to survive after the Unification Wars. I think the Outcasts or something like that made that clear.

Have you read the thread? OP says if the Emperor had worked to stabilise the Thunder Warriors. I think the first post made that clear.

Its already clear in fluff they were not stable neither mentally nor physically. Why do you think Empy had to develop the Primarches and Space Marines? For fun?

Yeah, but the OP specifically said that in this scenario that instead if developing promarchs, Empy chose to fix the thunder warriors. Therefore, the tumors and meltdowns you mentioned would be invalid. Pretty much, to me this seems more like a debate over who could get more done, not if one is physically healthier than the other. I would say astartes are better, with less hubris and generally more loyal to the Emperor, Emps couldn't be everywhere at once, as mentioned previously in this thread.

Thunder warriors where brutal, savage, even stabalied they where more as wiki,s out them a sword rather than a precise scalpal.

Fine for smashing a enemy to bits, they excelled beyond a marine at that but not the same genius level strategist's and tactician's.

Firstly, we're assuming the Emperor can fix the thunder warriors. There is presumably a reason he didn't just augment a new crop of thunder warriors. Yes, there's the hostile environment issue, but there's also the issue of discipline and loyalty, not to mention their functional immortality. Equally, you could argue he should have mass-produced Custodes, but there's presumably a reason for that too - it was too expensive, even for the Terran Unity.

Secondly, even if a Thunder Warrior is the equal (physically) of a marine, he's not an equal (tactically) of a primarch. The Primarchs were awesome fighters, but their key importance was as generals and organisers.

Without the primarchs, you are in a situation where the astartes don't win a lot of the campaigns that they fight in, and you don't have the organised, loyal (to start with), and efficient worlds feeding industrial might and personnel into the Imperial Crusade Fleets without long bloody campaigns to capture them first, which may well ruin the resources you want to capture them for.

All right, Fenris is pretty useless except for providing manpower to Russ, but how about Nostromo - one of the Imperium's primary suppliers of adamantium? Or the Five Hundred Worlds?

The Thunder Warriors were so much a bad idea that the horrible idea of Primarches and Space Marines actually were a good one. If anything I think Empy should have looked for ways to mass-produce his Custodians rather than travel down the road of even augmenting the Thunder Warriors, though I agree with the poster above me that he likely tried that first.

Second the view that whilst the TWs were awesome warriors and fighters, they have none of the tactical skill, acumen, planning or refinement of the Primarchs or even SM Captains and Sergeants.

They were also not specialised, once you capture that world whos going to man it? A bunch of unruly TWs or Perturbos crew? I know who'd I choose.

I highly doubt the TWs could have subdued the Laer as Fulgrim did or fight the Void war VS the Diasporex.

The assumption seems to be that stabilized Thunder Warriors would be somehow better than Primarchs/Marines. I think it's rather doubtful.

Primarchs were intended to have a purpose beyond simple combat, presumably in order to contribute to a post-Crusade galaxy. Thunder Warriors were essentially monotasked for combat and would become a problem with no war to fight. Presumably that's why the Emperor had them liquidated.

Even assuming Thunder Warriors could be stabilized (which the survivors managed to some degree) they remained overspecialized tools and a destabilizing force in the unified Imperium the Emperor meant to create.

Being purely martial beings the chances are rather good that TWs could be corrupted, primarily by Khorne, even more easily than the. Primarchs were. My opinion only, of course.

Aaaaand... My two cents.

 Ratius wrote:
They were also not specialised, once you capture that world whos going to man it? A bunch of unruly TWs or Perturbos crew? I know who'd I choose.

Is this a rhetorical question? You know what happened to that legion I presume.

I thought a major flaw with the TW was that they were made from anyone, like criminals and other underworld scum... Point is, that's the same problem that Night Lords DEVELOPED, not an innate problem.

So if the TW were drawn from a better stock and had better training - I feel that the tactical acumen of space Marines isn't innate but trained into them but feel free to disagree - then you'd have a reliable set of troopers in addition to the presumption that the Emperor fixed the bodily flaws. And the Terran batch could just be used as World Eaters equivalents until they got themselves wiped out.

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:


Another is in the names. Warriors vs marines. Warriors are good for engagements, but soldiers are so much better. You can't guarantee warriors, but give a man a weapon and training, and you can make a soldier out of him. Also, the fact that the thunder warriors are unreliable could have been a massive issue in the crusade, and issue exacerbated by the huge time and distance scale.

Warriors excel at 1v1 combat. Soldiers are able to coordinate their actions into something greater. Conquering the galaxy requires the later. The SM, even without the primarchs shared a geneseed that brings them together and helps them work as a team.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The Horus Heresy happened due to BL authors being enormously incompetent, arrogant, and having absolutely no understanding of even the most basic elements of human psychology or social interaction. Something would go terribly wrong, eventually.

Fixed

So if the TW were drawn from a better stock and had better training - I feel that the tactical acumen of space Marines isn't innate but trained into them but feel free to disagree - then you'd have a reliable set of troopers in addition to the presumption that the Emperor fixed the bodily flaws. And the Terran batch could just be used as World Eaters equivalents until they got themselves wiped out.

Could be, but then you don't have Thunder Warriors, you have... pseudo-Space Marines or something. What makes a TW a TW is their origins, background and philosophy. If you take all of that away, then you just have another bio-enhanced fighter of some kind.... maybe not a Space Marine, but definitely not a Thunder Warrior.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The Horus Heresy happened due to BL authors being enormously incompetent, arrogant, and having absolutely no understanding of even the most basic elements of human psychology or social interaction. Something would go terribly wrong, eventually.

Fixed

godking wrote:
The emperor decides against creating the primarchs and space marines and instead stabilizes his thunder warriors so their bodies and minds dont deteriorate.

So... he makes them into Space Marines?

Is this a rhetorical question? You know what happened to that legion I presume.

Of course. However the point remains that the TW were not as well crafted for individual roles within the Crusade, garrison, siege warfare, psychological, hit and run, total war, void actions, fortifications etc etc etc.
Therefore the Crusade would not have been a success with them compared to the SMs, even taking into account the debacle of the Heresy.

The OP asked would they have been as successful. My answer remains a no.

 Farseer Anath'lan wrote:

And that right there is a huge reason to get rid of them. The hostile combat has work arounds, but redundancy is a good thing. Power armour is not infallible. Backups are good planning.
As to 'only edge is stability of body and mind', that's huge. The BA and WE were nearly excommunicated for that (Sanguinius feared it enough to keep it hidden), and the TS were nearly removed for not being stable of body (although, mutating to warp spawn is a wee bit different).

True but in this scenario the emperor has stabilized the thunder warriors so they won't go mad o deteriorate bodily i agree that the space marines ability to fight in hostile enviroments is a big edge compared to thunder warriors.

Redundancy is always good. When you're doing construction, a 2" beam works? Make it a 3". 1 foot deep holds the fence? Don't ever settle for the bare minimum, because it falls that much faster. Space marines being able to achieve battlefield function in hostile conditions is a large part of what they are, and the worth they hold. Power armour might do, but if your soldiers die that much faster, it's better to go the extra mile and give em the implants to function, even slightly, without it.

True which is why i think that without space marines /primarchs the empeor might have achieved the same thing but i would have taken longer and would have been much harder

Part of it is resources. Given the unstable nature of the Thunder Warriors, you have the option of putting large amounts of time and resources that could otherwise be going towards the crusade, or put towards fixing what may not be fixable. That some of the Thunder Warriors managed it is true, but hindsight is 20/20. If the Emperor had attempted to stabilise them, and they couldn't be stabilised, he would have lost a lot more then could have potentially been gained.

Arik Taranis was able to stabilize himself with knowledge he gained by watching the emperor at work with very few resources i have to believe that the emperor if he wanted too could have stabilized his thunder warriors

Another is in the names. Warriors vs marines. Warriors are good for engagements, but soldiers are so much better. You can't guarantee warriors, but give a man a weapon and training, and you can make a soldier out of him. Also, the fact that the thunder warriors are unreliable could have been a massive issue in the crusade, and issue exacerbated by the huge time and distance scale.

The World eaters are basically warriors and lets not forget that the thunder warriors would have decades/centuries of expereince when the crusade starts comapred to the relatively green space marines.

Another thing is loyalty. The Thunder Warriors were grown men, raised to superhuman, and knew exactly that. Their hubris was huge. By indoctrinating them from an early age, the Emperor ensured a much firmer grasp on the Space Marines. The Thunder Warriors didn't need primates to rally behind. They would have rebelled by themselves.

The only instance of rebellion i can think of is surviving thunder warriors taking over a moon and being dealt with by the warhounds legion.

Even Arik Taranis bore the emperor no real ill will and he has more reason to hate the emperor then most traitor primarchs.

Their hubris was huge but the thunder warriors at least at the start of the crusade would have been with the emperor since before the unification i dont see a scenario with half of the thunder warriors rebelling out of hubris.

I see some thunder warrior commanders maybe going rogue but not the extent of the horus heresy.

With the thunder warriors you won't have the issue of the thunder warriors being more loyal to primarchs then the emperor.

Maybe some would rebel but nothing like the horus heresy.

And lastly, image. If you're going to act like a benevolent ruler of mankind, you need a good facade. The Thunder Warriors were responsible for terrible massacres and genocides, and with that tainting his image, the Emperor would have been sliding down the proverbial back pole in regards to his proclaimed aims.

The space marines where also responsible for terrible massacres and genocides, With good propaganda and the imperial "truth" most of the massacres and genocides can be hidden from the citizens of the imperium.

I think a more interesting question would be, what would have happened if the Primarch's were made, but their legions were not. They were just designed to be inspiring generals for mankind, they lead from the front, but the front of imperial armies. Would The heresy still have happened?

I'd argue it would be more likely to happen in this scenario. The minds of men can be weak, so very open to chaos influence, and the Primarch's are not going to not have solitude, they are still beings with emotions.

Would the imperium have expanded as far as they did in the great crusade, or would they be in a better place now 10000 years in the future?

Weren't the Thunder Warriors even more strong and skilled in combat than the Space Marines?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Weren't the Thunder Warriors even more strong and skilled in combat than the Space Marines?

Yeah but they were borderline psychopathic too, I'd rather have slightly weaker but sane SMs.

The TW were great combatants but terrible soldiers.

The former win battles, the latter win wars.