Clad in Mark I Thunder Power Armor, there were Twenty Legions of Thunder Warriors under the command of the Emperor and the Twenty Primarchs!
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Good day everyone, Zak here from Cape Town, South Africa with another Warhammer 40k lore post. Today, highlights that Space Marines AND their Primarchs were not the first super soldiers to work and die for the Emperor and his Imperium!
Indeed. So let's start a little before this...
Humanity had a Dark Age of Technology. Technology so powerful that humanity nearly ended themselves. After this came the Age of Strife where the world was basically dominated by Techno-barbarians. Basically think Mad Max style. There were areas of the planet that were radioactive wastelands and there was anarchy everywhere. Some warlords built Empires using their might and organisational skills to build armies.
For over 2000 years this ground on and on. Space travel was not a thing because this was around the time where there were Warp Storms in space everywhere.
Since there was no clear victor among men, this is where the Emperor struck. The Unification Wars were fought with the Emperor and his Thunder Warriors uniting Earth under one banner... His banner.
Origin:
Unlike Space Marines, Thunder Warriors were created by taking an adult male and grafting on to him the means to be a massive trans-human soldier. The process was surely painful, unstable and often these soldiers would not survive the transformation and even if they did, some of them only lives a few decades afterwards.
They wore Power Armor and carried Bolters into battle, much like Space Marines. The design and use of powered armor came from some faction of Techno-Barbarians. Twenty armies were built, each with a leader, each with missions to travel and make war.
At first there were only one or two hundred per Legion and eventually there were 10,000 per Legion for an astounding 200,000 Thunder Warriors! Armed and armoured like no other army on Earth, they quickly took over and soon enough the planet carried one banner.
Their Demise
The saddest part is that the Thunder Warriors were an imperfect tool and the Emperor knew that in order for him to maintain unity on Earth, he would need to get rid of the Thunder Warriors.
Thunder Warriors, besides sometimes just dying as their bodies rejected their augmentations, also often became insane.
The Emperor had already begun creating the Space Marines and THEIR twenty Primarchs. These new super soldiers were installed with a gene-seed into adolescents who would then grow into becoming transhuman.
Thus they would be far more stable and less likely to be corrupted. They were also indoctrinated and fortified in the mind and with this enhanced discipline, the First Legion (Later Dark Angels) and a couple hundred Adeptus Custodes (We'll deal with that later) took on the remaining Thunder Warriors and wiped them out!
Brutal!
The Thunder Warriors of 200,000 had been in a decline, with the Emperor not fortifying their numbers for a while and in the final battle, under strength they had the power to win, but not without sustaining many casualties!
And then the Space Marines were sent in to mop them up.
Aftermath
History was written that the last of the Thunder Warriors fell at the final battle of the Unification Wars and that they died heroes. Without whose sacrifice it would not have been possible to win the Unification Wars.
The history states that they all died but that the First Legion of Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes joined the battle and held the flag up and completed the Emperor's victory.
Some Thunder Warriors did survive the slaughter but hid away and changed their identities so the Imperial forces could not find them. It is accepted that they did not live long, imperfect as their psysiology was...
Who knows?...
Thank you for reading!
