Thunder Warriors

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The Thunder Warriors were the first soldiers of the man who eventually became the Emperor of Mankind. In many ways, they were the precursors to the Space Marines.

They were formed toward the end of the Age of Strife, when the Emperor judged that it was the right time to make his presence known. He needed some advantage over the warlords, barbarians, and other would-be world rulers, and so he created twenty regiments of genetically enhanced soldiers wearing simple powered armor. Because the Emperor's symbol at the time was a thunderbolt, and this symbol was prominently displayed on the chestplate of the armor, the armor came to be known as Thunder Armor and the warriors who wore said armor were called Thunder Warriors.

The Thunder Warriors were devastatingly effective and quickly became icons of the Emperor's armies; just the threat of the Thunder Warriors' arrival could convince a warlord to surrender, and those who refused quickly learned that the Thunder Warriors' reputation was not exaggerated. According to the fluff, they were even more physically powerful and ruthless than the Space Marines.

And yet, for all their successes, the Thunder Warriors were not perfect; because the Emperor was busy running the Unification Wars, fending off attacks from his neighboring warlords, and lacking the resources and expertise of Mars, he and the few scientists he had working for him were forced to cut corners, and so the Thunder Warriors were all unstable in one way or another. None of them could be counted on to last long, as either their minds or bodies gave out at unpredictable intervals, and there wasn't yet the technology available to give them a lifespan longer than the average human's. This was suitable for fighting the barbarian human armies of the Age of Strife, but not for the long, star-spanning campaign of the Great Crusade that the Emperor set as his next goal, so as soon as he had enough territory to set up a secure laboratory and enough scientists to man it, he set to work on the next generation of warriors: the Primarchs. Some of their defects were intentional, as the harsh conditions of Terra meant they were were psychopaths that the Emperor did not want to use forever. They were not what he envisioned as the defenders of humanity, so he saw no great loss in giving them an expiration date and quietly slaughtered the few remaining once Tera was firmly in his hands.

A couple of them managed to escape the cull and steal a Progenitor gland to extend their lifespans, and went into hiding on Terra. The questions of whether they're ever going to show up again or what exactly they were doing during the Horus Heresy are currently left up to people who care about them even less than the Emperor did. Or you can read The Outcast Dead, which won't give you any new information on what they're up to (it's their only appearance as actual characters, and it's the one in which they steal the Progenitor gland and then disappear into an ambiguous ending) but will give you a very solid look at what they're about.