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How do!

So here’s a question. And it’s in the title.

Thunder Warriors. We know some stuff about them, such as man for man being stronger and potentially tougher than Marines. But being from a less refined science, or perhaps by entirely deliberate design, had short “natural” lifespans.

We know they were a means to an end, and seemingly by no means unique to The Emperor’s reunification forces. We also know they were all but wiped out.

But…what happened to the underlying technology? Is it said to have been destroyed, or simply filed and forgotten as the more flexible Astartes came to be?

Plus, into the modern era, it seems like House Goliath are either a close approximation of convergent tech, or an outright iteration. Depending on how you interpret the background, and knowing Van Saar and their STC played a role, they could be based on the very same tech.

If it does exist? Is there mileage in taking the vast numbers of Imperial Guard and upgrading at least some proportion into more disposable super-soldiers. Not all of them of course. But surely having such a resource would be valuable, a reserve shock troop force akin to Astartes, but not as stupendously background-rare? Because it’s explicit one became a Thunder Warrior in adulthood, not adolescence.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But…what happened to the underlying technology? Is it said to have been destroyed, or simply filed and forgotten as the more flexible Astartes came to be?

I don't think there's a canon answer, but I imagine the tech was filed and forgotten. In theory, it would have been considered important, top-secret stuff that would have been carefully guarded. Later, it would probably have been seen as wasteful or heretical to burn the Emperor's own research notes. So I imagine it's filed away next door to the astartes project notes/equipment.

Plus, into the modern era, it seems like House Goliath are either a close approximation of convergent tech, or an outright iteration. Depending on how you interpret the background, and knowing Van Saar and their STC played a role, they could be based on the very same tech.

I don't think we can confirm whether they're the same tech, but it's canon that gene and chem enhancements are both pretty widespread (if not necessarily "common"). Lots of novels feature some mook who's there to look intimidating and then get bodied by the (usually marine) protagonist, and there's often a line to the effect of, "I wonder if that guy is gene-hanced." Plus you've got the "totally not astartes" female transhumans in the Harrowmaster novel, which shows that making a big, chonky super soldier is a pretty achievable goal. Plus assassins, crusaders, and probably of plenty of other examples of S4 humans I'm overlooking. (Not sure if crusaders are still S/T 4, but I'm pretty sure they were at one point.)

If it does exist? Is there mileage in taking the vast numbers of Imperial Guard and upgrading at least some proportion into more disposable super-soldiers. Not all of them of course. But surely having such a resource would be valuable, a reserve shock troop force akin to Astartes, but not as stupendously background-rare? Because it’s explicit one became a Thunder Warrior in adulthood, not adolescence.

My headcanon justification for why they don't seem to do this is that:
A.) There's probably a pretty high mortality rate among potential candidates.
B.) The tech involved is probably still expensive to use/maintain even if you do get permission to look at the blueprints.

So instead of a ton of copy+paste guardsmen who use extremely standardized equipment, you'd get a few very expensive squads of superhumans who are as expensive to equip as something like sisters or astartes. And where a marine is potentially an investment that will keep functioning for centuries, a more short-lived thunder warrior will expire in roughly one human lifetime. (Which admittedly could also be centuries if rejuve treatments are used, I guess.)

So I guess putting it another way, imagine if you had a force similar to the sororitas, and then you slashed their numbers for an extra point of Strength and Toughness. I think it's entirely plausible that someone has done it within the setting, but the expense and politics involved can reasonably keep it from being a widespread thing.Especially when there are other, less politically-charged ways to gene/chem-hance your dudes.

I also imagine that the thunder warriors were fairly unstable both physically and mentally. Who knows what corrupting influence they might fall to in the vast darkness of the void. It may be difficult keeping them under control once spread out across the galaxy. A hoard may go missing and return as khornate berserkers in the future.

That depends how they’re deployed.

If you know you’re heading into a deadly warzone, or have a Forlorn Hope strategy? You couldn’t really hope for much more than Loyal Turbo Nutters You Know Are Disposable.

For instance, if attacking a Tau colony or Sept World, setting loose a few hundred such Turbo Nutters would make sense. As would launching them at enemy ships in boarding actions, where they’re simply not expected or required to survive, as it’s the damage they can wreak that really matters.

Send in a second wave of actually sane specialists if needed for more precision strikes whilst the Thunder Warriors are busy creating an unholy mess of a distraction and soaking up damage.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!But…what happened to the underlying technology? Is it said to have been destroyed, or simply filed and forgotten as the more flexible Astartes came to be?

I'm fairly sure they were created from the same Super Science Moon Lady Juice (sorry, the actual name eludes me) as the Primarches and the Space Marines. And then the Super Science Moon Lady destroyed it I think, the exact story yet again eludes me again.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!But…what happened to the underlying technology? Is it said to have been destroyed, or simply filed and forgotten as the more flexible Astartes came to be?

I'm fairly sure they were created from the same Super Science Moon Lady Juice (sorry, the actual name eludes me) as the Primarches and the Space Marines. And then the Super Science Moon Lady destroyed it I think, the exact story yet again eludes me again.

Selenar Gene Witches - Super Science Moon Lady is not much worse

Not destroyed - some of the Moonladies wanted to throw in with Horus, and give him the Big Thingy o' Primarch Samples, but some Raven Guard dude hid it for 10k years, which later allowed Cawl to do his Primaris with the recovered stuff. I'm not quoting the actual names, because they're related to an extremely dumb plot contrivance that is also physically-hurtful pseudolatin

Also also: in another story, on of the last Thunderdudes found out that their problems can be fixed easily by implanting Progenoids, so there's your plothook if you ever want mercenary bands of Thunderdudes going around either slaying Astartes or cooperating with #BadGuy for Progenoid payment.

The Thunder Warriors (and Astartes) were created prior to the Pacification of Luna.
The technologies and science of the Selenar allowed the Emperor to take the Legions from small-scale forces used to supplement the mortal armies of the Imperium, to the forefront of His Great Crusade.
The Sangprimus Portum also wasn't hidden for 10k years, it was hidden until the Siege of Terra ended and Guilliman initiated the Primaris Project at which point it was given to Cawl. It's an annoying plot device yes but at least get the facts right.

As for the Thunder Warriors specifically, they weren't needed so the process for creating them will have been lost to time or specifically destroyed by the Emperor to prevent challenges to His rule.

Tsagualsa wrote:
Also also: in another story, on of the last Thunderdudes found out that their problems can be fixed easily by implanting Progenoids, so there's your plothook if you ever want mercenary bands of Thunderdudes going around either slaying Astartes or cooperating with #BadGuy for Progenoid payment.

Now you're talkin'

What’s the difference between thunder warriors and the heavier Skitarii types? Seems like another bit of convergent development, alongside big ass combat servitors and Ogrynn.

Is there any credence to the idea that The Emperor wanted them gone, and the Custodes made them gone. The Emperor and The Custodes at the time really didn't make major mistakes on the level of "Letting the technology of the greatest weapon in the universe escape their halls". TWs tech was at the time, one of the Emperor's greatest creations, next to the Custodians or the Primarchs, his greatest creations. The tech was likely tossed in the perverbail recycle bin and deleted.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Is there any credence to the idea that The Emperor wanted them gone, and the Custodes made them gone. The Emperor and The Custodes at the time really didn't make major mistakes on the level of "Letting the technology of the greatest weapon in the universe escape their halls". TWs tech was at the time, one of the Emperor's greatest creations, next to the Custodians or the Primarchs, his greatest creations. The tech was likely tossed in the perverbail recycle bin and deleted.

They said universe?

I like how Majorkill put it: Thunder warriors were superior to marines in some ways- but they were normal humans who had been "Overclocked"- yes, they were big, strong, fast, etc- but they started as techno-barbarians and had to be put down. Which is all part of the lore, since Horus was paranoid Emps would do the same to the Legions once the great crusade was done.
They were a stop- gap measure at best. What I would like to know is that the Emperor was around since.. forever, so why did he never step in and say to Mars Priesthood: "Look, stop chanting over that console, it's Science- sit down and let me give you a lesson of Physics/ Chemistry/ Genetics/ (and so on) Also- your Machine God is a shard of a C'tan- quit it!"

The Emperor couldn't do anything about the Mechanicum because he was largely trapped on Terra for most of the Age of Strife.
By the time the Mechanicum had taken over Mars, it would be too late to do anything about their religion so instead the Emperor used his powers to assume the role of the avatar of the Omnissiah. The Mechanicum's religion suited the Emperor's needs so he used it against them to gain their trust.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Is there any credence to the idea that The Emperor wanted them gone, and the Custodes made them gone. The Emperor and The Custodes at the time really didn't make major mistakes on the level of "Letting the technology of the greatest weapon in the universe escape their halls". TWs tech was at the time, one of the Emperor's greatest creations, next to the Custodians or the Primarchs, his greatest creations. The tech was likely tossed in the perverbail recycle bin and deleted.

Yes. They were just tools for end. Even marines were just tools to be discarded once their job was done. Emperor was making Imperium for humans. Not super humans.

Marines nuking each other out was part of Emperor's plan from the get-go.

 Gert wrote:
The Emperor couldn't do anything about the Mechanicum because he was largely trapped on Terra for most of the Age of Strife.
By the time the Mechanicum had taken over Mars, it would be too late to do anything about their religion so instead the Emperor used his powers to assume the role of the avatar of the Omnissiah. The Mechanicum's religion suited the Emperor's needs so he used it against them to gain their trust.

Also, one of the 'objective' truths of the setting (as close as it gets) is that leaving 'god-shaped holes' around is just a very very bad idea, because capital-C Chaos is gonna creep right into them and ruin your day. That's much of the point of the 'Imperial Truth' and its eventual failure: you can't really have no religion in 40k, either you have one or a religion picks you, whether you like it or not, because it's a fundamental fact of the universe, that's also sentient and out to get you, specifically.

This is kind of a tangent, but do we know when/why the Emperor decided to start trying to stamp out religion? If getting rid of religion was always one of his goals, you'd think he'd have had more luck doing so before humanity took to the stars. Or is it implied that all human religion in the setting popped up after humanity left Terra?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
This is kind of a tangent, but do we know when/why the Emperor decided to start trying to stamp out religion? If getting rid of religion was always one of his goals, you'd think he'd have had more luck doing so before humanity took to the stars. Or is it implied that all human religion in the setting popped up after humanity left Terra?

We know from a couple of references that at least some pre-Imperial religions survived in some form. In the short story 'The Last Church' the Emperor visits what is heavily implied to be a christian church, or at least a descendant from it, during the Unification Wars. Oll Persson, the Perpetual, is of the 'Catheric' faith, which is implied to be a descendant of Catholicism (or Catharism, if you want to go down theory rabbitholes). There's also a reference to 'priest gangs of ancient religions' existing on Terra's orbital plates in some heresy book, but the citation eludes me, and has done so for a long time.

That being said, old-time religions survive, at least as weak remnants, at least to the Unification wars, and from 'The Last Church' we learn that the Emperor started eradicating religions concurrently with his conquest of Terra.

Thunder Warriors were sort of prototypes for the Astartes, so I imagine they actually had some overlap in their modifications. At least the basic ones.

They probably had the Black Carapace, Ossmodula, and a bunch of similar versions of various astartes organs.

So in a sense the blueprints for Thunder Warriors just kept getting modified till they become the Astartes blueprints.

The Black Carapace was an Astartes only thing. The armour worn by the Thunder Warriors and even some early Astartes was similar to the types worn by Inquisitors or Sororitas.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
This is kind of a tangent, but do we know when/why the Emperor decided to start trying to stamp out religion? If getting rid of religion was always one of his goals, you'd think he'd have had more luck doing so before humanity took to the stars. Or is it implied that all human religion in the setting popped up after humanity left Terra?

The Emperor believed that Chaos would continue to thrive if religion and superstition were allowed to continue. To him, the only way to defeat Chaos was to cut off their supply of worship by creating a logical, atheistic society, then using the webway to travel around the galaxy instead of relying on the Warp. Basically, he thought stamping out religion would starve Chaos of their fuel and lead to the end of the Chaos Gods. Big E being Big E, he seems to have forgotten to factor in human nature to this plan. It's not even clear if this would work anyway, since the Chaos Gods feed off emotion and removing religion and superstition doesn't remove emotions, desires, ambition, greed etc.

Of the surviving Thunderdudes did any survive to current?

Arik Taranis survived into M.31 by using traitor marine geneseed- It was sorta the Bladerunner story where he knew he was going to die but wanted to prolong his life anyways.
The Blackshield Endryd Haar "The Warhound" was thought to be a Thunder warrior who successfully was indoctrinated into a Marine, b/c Malcador remembered he fought in the Unification wars. This'd also explain why he didn't get the butcher's nails, unlike the rest of the War Hounds/ World Eaters- his physiology as a half Thunder Warrior/ Marine wouldn't allow it. (Hell, Primarch DNA didn't like the nails!)

As for Thunder warrior armor- It SUCKED compared to space marine armor, though it's considered Mk I Power armor. For one, there was no power cabling in the legs... so, the Thunder warriors had to hoof it by themselves. It also had many overlapping layers that banged against itself, giving it and the Warriors it's name. And lastly, it had NO life support in it, so was not meant for space battles. Once again, even though it's considered power armor Mk I, I think it was a stop-gap until the Emperor conferred with Mars and made/found something more viable.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
Arik Taranis survived into M.31 by using traitor marine geneseed- It was sorta the Bladerunner story where he knew he was going to die but wanted to prolong his life anyways.
The Blackshield Endryd Haar "The Warhound" was thought to be a Thunder warrior who successfully was indoctrinated into a Marine, b/c Malcador remembered he fought in the Unification wars. This'd also explain why he didn't get the butcher's nails, unlike the rest of the War Hounds/ World Eaters- his physiology as a half Thunder Warrior/ Marine wouldn't allow it. (Hell, Primarch DNA didn't like the nails!)
.

except we know some of the marine legions fought in the final conflicts of the reunification war.

Could the Thunder Warriors reproduce?

Adeptekon wrote:Of the surviving Thunderdudes did any survive to current?

Unknown, though it is implied that Fabius Bile at least has samples. It's also not really known if they're even mortal by ageing once they fixed their degeneration issues.

Adeptekon wrote:Could the Thunder Warriors reproduce?

No. That was one rule the Emperor always stuck to: independent reproduction of super-humans is a big no-no, as he saw the danger of them usurpating baseline humanity at the top of the foodchain, where they belonged in his opinion. His plan was always to use super-humans to genocide everything in the galaxy that could pose a threat, and then get rid of them to allow baseline humanity to evolve in peace to their next stage of development, possibly using the human webway to starve Chaos to death as well. Thus, super-humans under his reign were always created by surgery and manipulation, never by sexual or other reproduction that he could not control. He also took great efforts to remove a lot of Dark Age manipulations already present in humanity, to go back to baseline. That included summarily genociding survivors the Crusade encountered that were too far gone to reintegrate them into 'pure' human genetics.

Shurley thunder warriors are the inferior product.

Who ever can make thunder warriors would probably just put the resources into making or mainting Custodies, space Marines or more imperial guard.

Shurley somebody could invent new thunder warriors. With how big the galaxy is somebody shurley has tried or done so. I know some nice four armed scientists who can help you develop some nice strong fighters. Although it might not have the emperor's blessing.

To be fair, I think it would make for an interesting one-off story set in Imperium Nihilus. With resources stretched thin and new forces harder to come by, I could see a desperate Mechanicus faction plying the secrets of the legendary Thunder Warriors and creating armies to push back the darkness.

 Gert wrote:
To be fair, I think it would make for an interesting one-off story set in Imperium Nihilus. With resources stretched thin and new forces harder to come by, I could see a desperate Mechanicus faction plying the secrets of the legendary Thunder Warriors and creating armies to push back the darkness.

This is music to my ears.

I hope the last heresy-era Thunder Warriors get their final sendoff by spanking Fulgrim & the Emperor's Children that were going after the civilians. It would be a nice closing of the narrative parentheses for them: while the Legions degenerated and got lost in their own devices, the Thunder Warriors remained true to their purpose of Unity even after the people they were fighting for betrayed them. And while the Heresy is incomprehensibly horrible on a spiritual level for the Marines, for the Thunder Warriors it's just what they were used to: for those who slew the worst Warlords and Genetic Horrors that Dark Age Terra had to offer, even a Demonic Serpent Primarch is just another gassed-up science project to crush, even if it kills them.

Wasn't there an insinuation that the Custodes have all the records, weapons, and artifacts of that age inside the palace?