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First Founding

2018-01-14T22:52:50Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:30F0:79B:789C:BAA9: /* The Legions */

:''"They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear."''
:--The [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] on the creation of the Adeptus Astartes

After he conquered [[Terra]], the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] set out on a [[Great Crusade]] to re-unite the lost human colonies into a mighty [[Imperium]]. He soon realized that bog-standard humans wouldn't be enough; some situations called for a small number of devastatingly powerful warriors, a surgical strike force to smash enemy linchpins. To fill this role, he created his [[Primarchs]], and from their genes, he created the '''Legiones Astartes''', the twenty [[Space Marines|Space Marine]] Legions, in an event [[Second Founding|retroactively]] named the '''First Founding'''.

==The Legions==

{|align=center border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="text-align:center;"
|-
! Legion Number !! Primarch !! Homeworld !! Legion Name !! Allegiance
|-
! I
|[[Lion El'Jonson]] || [[Caliban]] || [[Dark Angels]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| ABSOLUTELY LOYAL, AND HAVE TOTALLY NEVER BEEN TRAITORS AT ANY POINT. PLEASE FOLLOW ME DOWN THIS ENTIRELY SAFE AND UNSUSPICIOUS DARK ALLEY SO THAT I MAY EDUCATE YOU ON THE TOTALLY CLEAN AND LOYALIST HISTORY OF THE DARK ANGELS!
|-
! II
! colspan="5" | +++Records expunged+++
|-
!III
| [[Fulgrim]] || [[Chemos]] || [[Emperor's Children]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Absolutely FABULOUS traitor
|-
! IV
| [[Perturabo]] || [[Olympia]] || [[Iron Warriors]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Super grumpy Traitor
|-
!V
| [[Jaghatai Khan]] || [[Chogoris|Chogoris/Mundus Planus]] || [[White Scars]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| Speedy, laughing Loyal
|-
!VI
|[[Leman Russ]] || [[Fenris]] || [[Space Wolves]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| ruff ruff Loyal ruff
|-
!VII
|[[Rogal Dorn]] || [[Terra]], [[Inwit]] || [[Imperial Fists]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| MEGA <s>ULTRA</s> FISTISHLY Loyal
|-
!VIII
|[[Konrad Curze]] || [[Nostramo]] || [[Night Lords]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Spooky traitor
|-
!IX
|[[Sanguinius]] || [[Baal]] || [[Blood Angels]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| Loyal and maybe DEEEEAAAAAADDDDD!!!
|-
!X
|[[Ferrus Manus]] || [[Medusa]] || [[Iron Hands]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| Loyal and VERY DEAD
|-
!XI
! colspan="5" | +++Records expunged+++
|-
!XII
|[[Angron]] || [[Nuceria]], [[Bodt]] || [[World Eaters]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!!ing Traitor
|-
!XIII
|[[Roboute Guilliman]] || [[Macragge]] || [[Ultramarines]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| SUPER DUPER Loyal
|-
!XIV
|[[Mortarion]] || [[Barbarus]] || [[Death Guard]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Icky traitor
|-
!XV
|[[Magnus the Red]] || [[Prospero]] || [[Thousand Sons]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Traitor (though they never asked for it)
|-
!XVI
|[[Horus|Horus Lupercal]] || [[Cthonia]] || [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| UBER Traitor
|-
!XVII
|[[Lorgar|Lorgar Aurelian]] || [[Colchis]] || [[Word Bearers]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| Double Traitor
|-
!XVIII
|[[Vulkan]] || [[Nocturne]] || [[Salamanders]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| Hot & Spicy Loyal
|-
!XIX
|[[Corvus Corax]] || [[Deliverance]] || [[Raven Guard]]
| style="background-color: navy;color:white;"| Sneaky Beaky Loyal
|-
!XX
|[[Alpharius]] [[Omegon]] || Unknown || |[[Alpha Legion]]
| style="background-color: maroon;color:white;"| It's complicated; even they might not know at this point, but according to the Imperium at large, Traitor.
|}

==Organization==
[[File:Space Marine Legion.jpg|400px|thumbnail|right|]]
The Legio Astartes, being far larger than current Space Marine Chapters, were organized along drastically different lines. At the head of the Legion was its [[Primarch]] Commander who oversaw the Legion's headquarters. Below this were the '''[[Space Marine Chapter|Chapters]]''' of the Legion, each of which was commanded by a [[Chapter Master|Lord Commander]]. Each [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapter]] in turn was divided into a number of '''Battalions''' led by a '''Lieutenant Commander'''. Each battalion was then further divided into '''Companies''' led by a [[Brother-Captain|Captain]]. The Company, itself divided into a number of '''Squads''', was the basic military division of the Legio Astartes. Due to the varying sizes of each Legion and the varying nature of supply and attrition, there was no fixed number of how many Chapters, Battalions, Companies, and Squads a Legion would contain. But even then, there was no fixed [[Codex Astartes|institution]] that a particular Company should be composed of certain units, with each Company specialising naturally as marines and officers became veterans of a certain form of warfare.

===Number of Legionaries===
The Legions were massive armies, and the size of each could vary tremendously. A precise number was never truly achieved and maintained. Even during the Great Crusade, some Legions were very numerous, while others were not. The numbers would always vary with new recruits and inevitable battle-losses, and also important was the availability of potential recruits and the [[Roboute Guilliman|administrative]] [[Perturabo|skills]] of the Primarch and his officers.

However the closest thing to a 'standard' legion is what the Emperor started with which was 10 chapters to a legion, 2 battalions to a chapter, five companies to a battalion and 100 marines to a company

The most numerous Legion of all was the [[Ultramarines]]. The [[Thousand Sons]] of [[Magnus]] were of a small number as many of them had developed mutations or uncontrollable levels of psychic powers. [[Fulgrim]]'s samples had been largely lost, and this left the Legion of the [[Emperor's Children]] also with a very small number. Both of these Legions would increase their numbers to acceptable standards only after their Primarchs were found.

The approximate sizes of a few of the Legions at the start of the Heresy have been given in various sources (it should be noted that originally these numbers were much smaller, a full zero knocked off until they were upped by the BL/Forgeworld writers):

*[[Dark Angels]] - 166,000 at the very least, but likely a lot more.
*[[Emperor's Children]] - 110,000
*[[Iron Warriors]] - 150,000 to 180,000 but could have been more, if not for them regularly taking horrific casualties.
*[[Space Wolves]] - 95,000 to 100,000(originally 130,000)
*[[Imperial Fists]] - 100,000
*[[Night Lords]] - Officially 90,000 to 120,000 but actually close to the larger Legions
*[[Blood Angels]] - 120,000(not official number, may be changed)
*[[Iron Hands]] - In excess of 113,000
*[[World Eaters]] - 150,000
*[[Ultramarines]] - 250,000
*[[Death Guard]] - 95,000
*[[Thousand Sons]] - 80,000 to 85,000
*[[Sons of Horus]] - 130,000 to 170,000
*[[Word Bearers]] - 140,000 to 250,000
*[[Salamanders]] - 89,000
*[[Raven Guard]] - 80,000
*[[Alpha Legion]] - 90,000 to 130,000 to 180,000 and possibly even more. No-one knows for sure.
*[[White Scars ]] - ?

These estimations are the Legions at the closing of the Great Crusade, though it would be a mistake to assume that the number was final and only went down during the Horus Heresy. Using the lowest and highest numbers this means there was 1,933,095 to 2,358,000 space marines without including the White Scars. Many of the Legions were still recruiting at an accelerated rate and the number actually went up.

It's also a mistake to assume that the Traitor Legions went turncoat en-masse, when in fact the Loyalist elements of those Legions counted for a significant portion of their strength. Approximately 100,000 loyalist Legionaries were purged at Isstvan III, practically counting for a Legion sized force to themselves. Their destruction came at a great cost to the Traitor Legions mustered there and Horus would enter the war with his strength greatly reduced. While rare, there were also a few members of loyalist Legions who sided with the traitors as well- the Dark Angels and White Scars in particular were very nearly torn apart by the resulting infighting.

===Assets===
Besides having far greater numbers of Astartes to draw on, the legions were also better equipped and had a much wider variety of arms and vehicles to choose from. Many armored vehicles that are currently Imperial Guard specific once served in the legions such as the [[Basilisk]], while other wargear like [[Volkite]] guns or [[Mastodon]]s were mothballed due to their rarity or their obsolescence for the smaller-sized chapters. Numerous tactical roles were likewise phased out, for better or worse.

'''Heresy-Era Specialties:'''
*[[Breacher Siege Squad]]
*[[Despoiler Squad]]
*[[Destroyer Squad]]
*[[Moritat]]
*[[Reconnaissance Squad]]
*[[Seeker Squad]]
*[[Sky Hunter Squad]]
*[[Tactical Support Squad]]

== Horus Heresy ==

{{Main|Horus Heresy}}

For all their power, the [[Space Marines]] and [[Primarchs]] were not perfect; ([[Alpharius|may]][[Omegon|be]]) half of them were sufficiently flawed to be tempted by (or driven to) [[Chaos]], led by Warmaster [[Horus]]. The traitors were defeated, but at a terrible cost, including the near-death of the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] and trillions of deaths.

[[Roboute Guilliman]] decided that the so-called [[Horus Heresy]] was proof that one man could not be trusted with power over one-twentieth of the Imperial Armed Forces, so he enacted several reforms to divide the Imperial Army into the Imperial Guard and Navy, and split the remaining loyalist Legions into Chapters, in accordance with his [[Codex Astartes]]. This event was later known as the [[Second Founding]].

==Legions in 40k==
Technically all of the Chaos Marines are still 'legions', at least in name. They never split into chapters so legions they technically remain. However, since they are all split up into roving warbands and there is no central control it's hard to say they really count anymore. Perhaps most importantly it's impossible to guess how many dudes there are even technically in any legions pool. When they aren't fighting the Imperium, they are fighting each other, and since none of the Black Crusades have been successful we can reasonably assume that marines aren't pouring out of the Eye of Terror in their hundreds of thousands. It's utterly impossible to guess how many dudes they got. They obviously have enough to attack the Imperium with (especially since their recruiting practices aren't as picky as their Loyalist counterparts), but probably not much more than the Loyalist Space Marines. Definitely less than they arrived at the Eye with, which was obviously rather fewer than they began the war with.

As for the Loyalists... Since the introduction of the [[Codex Astartes]], there are obviously no longer any Space Marine legions though that does not stop certain chapters from being described or implied to be at ''"Legion Strength"''. Though this is often a common [[Neckbeard]] error and sometimes even gets used in the fluff, where the term is mistakenly used to describe any significantly oversized chapter, though even then they never compare to the forces from the Great Crusade. Though some make a good attempt at it:

*[[Imperial Fists]] - As it turned out, Dorn didn't fully break up his Legion. Every Son of Dorn chapter has a secret plan dubbed "The Last Wall"- if the main Chapter were to encounter an immediate threat to Terra, it could call its successor chapters to unite them into a full Legion until the threat is dealt with; the prospect of so many chapters working in such close cooperation was something that frightened the [[High Lords of Terra]] and they did not approve. Nonetheless, this plan not only saved Terra from [[The War of The Beast|the largest Ork WAAAGH!! the Imperium has ever dealt with]], but also rescued the Imperial Fists from ''actual'' extinction in the process.
*[[Black Templars]] are obviously over-strength in multiples of 1000 and keep to the spirit of the Great Crusade unlike any other chapter. This force is made up of three primary crusade fleets of unknown size which can end up spread over up to thirty engagements, where the size of a force could be as large as [[Dawn of War|"nearly" chapter strength]] ''(but not '''over''' for obvious reasons)'' or as small as a [[Dawn of War 2|single ship and a handful of squads]], so can be averaged at around chapter strength for each primary fleet. This arrangement is meant to be fluid, and changes all the time as fleets merge and disperse. Respectable figures put their numbers between 2000-6000. The Templars are able to get away with this due to an obscure exception in the Codex allowing chapters to be over-strength during major Crusades in order to easily replace losses, and the Templars are ''always'' crusading.
*[[Space Wolves]] make no secret of the fact they ignore the Codex Astartes, but even then they are no-where near their original size. In M32 during the '''Battle of the Fang''' it is remarked that most of ''The Aett'' is actually abandoned. Furthermore, Logan Grimnar's own Great Company numbers 200 marines prior to the Sanctus Reach campaign and is the largest company on its own ''(i.e.: not including the chapter assets)''. Their current number was originally between 1200-3000, but following the Siege of Fenris it is almost certainly much smaller.
*[[Astral Claws]] were ''actually'' accused of Legion building and declared heretics even when they were not yet followers of [[Chaos]], their number at the time of the Badab War was around 3000, though they never even used that number as a single force and spread themselves throughout their '''[[Warhammer_40,000/6th_Edition_Tactics/Tyrant%27s_Legion|PDF forces]]'''
*[[Dark Angels#The Unforgiven|The Unforgiven]] are most likely one of the closest examples of a true Legion in that each of the successor chapters arrange themselves under one ''secret'' command structure (the '''Inner Circle'''). Though they each [[RAW|obey the letter, if not the spirit]] of the [[Codex Astartes]] and maintain mostly standard chapters of ten companies. The combined numbers of Dark Angel's successors would put them at around ''150,000 marines'', and this is just a rough estimate, though we don't know if all of the Dark Angel's successors actually consider themselves part of the Unforgiven. Some definitely do though. Oh yes indeed. The Inner Circle has been known to send a random successor chapter across the galaxy to do the space marine equivalent of getting them a six pack (of traitors) when the main chapter is too busy.
*[[Ultramarines]] - The 23 [[Second Founding]] chapters of the Ultramarines are all represented in the senate of [[Ultramar]] and some of them would cooperate on matters of Codex orthodoxy to ensure that there were no deviations. The [[Genesis Chapter]] in particular routinely loaned squads and officers to the Ultramarines to fill in gaps, while other successors could loan squads to the [[Ultramarines Honour Company]] and get to wear the blue uniform. Because the Ultramarines account for nearly half of the later-founded chapters in the Imperium, they would amount to around ''500,000 marines'' and nominally look to their progenitor for the source of their leadership and guidance, with instances of Marneus Calgar stepping in to settle disputes between chapters not even of his bloodline or issuing decrees against [[Minotaurs|chapters]] in matters that have nothing to do with the Ultramarines directly. With the return of [[Roboute Guilliman]] and his re-organisation of both the Codex and the region of Ultramar; even though chapters officially maintain their sovereignty apart from each other, he has formally created a cross-Chapter command structure of Tetrarchs to coordinate and protect the Five-Hundred Worlds.

All of the original legions maintain ties with with their subsequent founding chapters, though the level of formality is different from Chapter to Chapter. The Blood Angels occasionally call all their bros together and go to war, even going to far as to demand they provide the Blood Angels with new squads so that they could rebuild their weakened chapter. The Imperial Fists successors did the same thing during the war of the Beast; donning Imperial Fist colours to ensure that the Chapter would not go extinct. But even in those cases, [[Gabriel Seth]] had to remind [[Dante]] that he had no authority to actually demand troops from his successors and might get further by asking nicely. The new Imperial Fists considered changing their colours controversial and a little bit blasphemous, with the [[High Lords of Terra]] generally protesting about Space Marines working in such close cooperation at all. While musing with Aeonid Thiel, Guilliman's original dream for the Codex was not to simply split up the Legions at all, but to create a single unified Legion formed of self-sufficient chapters that would come together or break apart as necessary, irrespective of their individual bloodlines. Much of what goes on with the Ultramarines tended to done out of starry-eyed respect and deference towards them rather than grudging support, so in this case, their high level of cooperation appears to be following the spirit of Guilliman's original idea quite well. Obviously, the High Lords would prefer to think otherwise because they were scared to death of the possibility of a second Space Marine unification and uprising, even going so far as to plotting to overthrow the resurrected Lord Guilliman before he took control over the Senatorium.

==Two Unknown Legions==

In the [[Rogue Trader|First Edition]] of [[Warhammer 40,000]], the twenty First Founding Chapters were all known. It seems that [[Games Workshop]] had more love for some than others; when they made [[fluff]] revisions in the transition to Second Edition, the [[Valedictors]] and [[Rainbow Warriors]] were demoted to one of the "Later Foundings."

Nowadays, nothing concrete is known about the Legions II and XI, and likewise their [[Primarch#Two Missing Primarchs|unknown Primarchs]]. Officially, the Imperium deleted all records regarding the "Lost Legions"; the only reminder of the two legions were empty plinths in the Hegemon where statues of the Primarchs stood at the Imperial Palace. Throughout the ''[[Horus Heresy]]'' series, it is suggested that the [[Space Wolves]] destroyed them for some reason. [[The Horus Heresy: Massacre]] includes a timeline of the events at the end of the [[Great Crusade]], and in 965 and 969.M30, the Space Wolves engaged in two missions from which all data was redacted. In the book ''The First Heretic'', when a daemon takes the [[Word Bearers]] on a trip back in time to show them the creation of the Primarchs, the Word Bearers dialogue indicates that the XI Legion in particular did something bad enough for the Emperor to lead their purge himself. In the book ''Fear To Tread'', Sanguinius tells Horus that he hasn't revealed the existence of the Red Thirst to the Emperor because he fears that the Blood Angels would be purged as well, indicating that gene-seed flaws may have also been a factor. ''Deliverance Lost'' has a dialogue between taking place during Corax's first meeting with the Emperor where he asks why only sixteen of his brothers were waiting to meet him if he was the nineteenth Primarch to be found, only for the Emperor to deflect the question; consequently, we can assume that the Legions were purged sometime before Corax's discovery (and were never around for the Horus Heresy). He also forced the remaining Primarchs to swear an oath never to speak of their absent brothers, so whatever they did must have been extraordinarily bad. In ''Legion,'' a ship's captain notes that the naughtiness of the [[Alpha Legion]] isn't the first time that a Legion has "overstepped it's mark" and that the Imperial Army fleet should report the Alpha Legion "before they become too powerful," which might imply that one of the Legions got away with naughtiness for a long time and then used their entire Legion to fight the Emperor. 'Horus Heresy Book 3: Extermination also hints at the fate of the two missing Legions, first hinting that one Legion did not pass the "Alpha" intake (to take them up to Legion-Strength) when going through testing and the other saying that "the disaster of [REDACTED] had proven the folly of attempting to recruit Legiones Astartes stock from potentially tainted sources." These could be in reference to the same Legion (using tainted stock in the Alpha intake) or two separate ones, with Legion A fucking up in the Alpha intake and Legion B using tainted stock in the later Great Crusade.

Since Horus and the other traitor Primarchs managed to keep their records un-expunged during the Horus Heresy (and afterwards, since the Space Wolves clearly know who Magnus is, the Grey Knights clearly know who Mortarion is, and Horus' name seems to have [[Lulz|become a swearword]]), it can be assumed the missing Legions' naughtiness was something even worse. [[Heresy|Possibly they refused to wear pauldrons]], [[Alpha Legion|we don't know]].

Or there may simply be no missing Legions. According to a source who allegedly worked for Games Workshop for five years (seen [http://warhammer40000roguetrader.blogspot.com/2012/06/art-of-rogue-trader.html?showComment=1343572598289#c3841833106793028129 here]), Rick Priestley (who helped write the first Rogue Trader) read about the Roman notion of Damnatio Memoriae, and simply threw in the idea of two "missing" Space Marine Legions as a "nod" to Imperial Rome (specifically, the three Roman legions whose numbers ([[Word Bearers|XVII]], [[Salamanders|XVIII]] and [[Raven Guard|XIX]]) were never used after they were wiped out in the disastrous [[Wikipedia: Battle of the Teutoburg Forest| Battle of the Teutoburg Forest]]. So, nothing significant can ever be revealed about them, because they never really existed in the first place. Except they totally existed in the current canon, even if they started as a joke. Also, the real reason that they were kept around between Rogue Trader and recent revelations was so that people could make up their own pair of Primarchs for model painting and personal fanon (although this has lost its effect as doing so is synonymous with making them Mary Sues).

==See Also==
* [[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Space_Marine_Legion_List_(30k)|30k Legion Tactics]]

{{Marines-Official}}
{{Chaos-Official}}

[[Category:Space Marines]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Thunder Warriors

2018-01-14T22:46:10Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:30F0:79B:789C:BAA9: /* Armaments */

[[File:Thunder_warriors.jpg|200px|thumb|right|I'm better than any of you [[Space Marines|bitches]]...if only I could live longer. (P.S. the man in the picture is not an actual thunder warrior, he just stole the armor from a copy of one.)]]
The '''Thunder Warriors''' were the first soldiers of the man who eventually became the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]]. In many ways, they were the precursors to the [[Space Marines]].

==Origins==
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 consisting of hundreds 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 [[Power Armour#Mark I: Thunder Armour|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. But NOT more so than the Custodes. However, this said, according to the novella ''The Last Church'', a massed Thunder Warrior formation could shoot all at once, and create a noise 'like a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung into existence', and mow down four or five men at once in that opening salvo. So yeah, make of that what you will.

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 [[Primarch]]s. Some of their defects were intentional, as the harsh conditions of Terra meant that they were psychopaths that the Emperor did not want to use forever. .

===Eventual Fate===
The Thunder Warriors were not what He [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|envisioned]] as the defenders of humanity, they were blunt tools of destruction and little else, far inferior to the bespoken Custodians that accompanied them. It is very important to note that the Astartes were already in circulation before the Thunder Warriors were "retired", the [[Dark Angels|First Legion]] had already been established and Proto-Legions all the way up to the [[Salamanders|XVIIIth]] were seeing active combat. The Emperor saw no great loss in removing them for good now that they were obsolete. The Imperial records indicate that the last of the Thunder Warriors all perished at the '''Battle of Mount Ararat''', which is strongly believed to be a cover story. Though the details are scarce, the battle did actually happen and there were survivors, hinting at a possible betrayal and a cull instigated by the Custodians.

However, contrary to this popular viewpoint, the retirement of the Thunder Warriors may not have been a betrayal and perhaps something less dickish; more like putting down an old guard dog with cancer than a complete betrayal. The Thunder Warriors leader: '''Arik Taranis''' is vague on the details and admits he holds no ill will towards the Emperor for what he did. Another survivor: '''Dahren Heruk''' still considers himself loyal to the Emperor and holds to his pre-unity oaths. More interestingly, when Heruk rescues a Custodian from a group of Alpha Legion hiding on Terra, the surprised Custodian thanks him and seems prepared to leave him where he is, at least until a mortally wounded Heruk halts him to request and be granted an "honoured death" (basically a mercy kill with a blade through the heart). Like Arik and Ghota, Heruk's group of Thunder Warriors are all failing physically, filled with cancer, and required to undergo regular organ transplantation just to stay alive; and are failing mentally, wracked with hallucinations of the Unity Wars like soldiers with PTSD. It may be that the last of the Thunder Warriors went willingly to their ends at Mount Ararat at the very height of their eminence, knowing that they could go no further than that. The alternative being eventual madness and inevitable biological collapse, coupled with being rendered obsolete in the shadow of the newly rising Astartes. Heruk remembers the battle of Mount Ararat to have been glorious with little to no bitterness, and he and his companions all believe that they have simply [[Death Korps of Krieg|''lived too long'']].

[[File:Thunder Warrior Model.jpg|200px|thumb|left|If only GW bothered to re-make the model like they did with the Space Marines... It seems big E wasn't the only one who abandoned them.]]

The so-called "cull" wasn't the end of the Thunder Warriors, enough of them managed to escape and spread throughout the Imperium. During the [[Great Crusade]], there was an insurrection on the asteroid prison colony of Cerberus. Though the Thunder Warriors ''were not'' the only members of the rebellion, there were enough of them to form a group calling themselves the '''Dait'Tar'''. The Emperor did not like that and sent an army of [[World Eaters|War Hounds]] to crush the prison riot with impunity. The Astartes having gotten bored with maiming and killing prisoners not worthy of their challenge, found themselves some Thunder Warriors grouping up in a defensive position. Instead of just showering bullets on the surviving Warriors like a <s>more sensible</s> less manly Legion might have, the War Hounds rushed in and engaged them in close combat. But Thunder Warriors are basically mini-[[Primarchs]] without the immortality, and were able to claim three to four Marine kills in melee for each Warrior that went down. After five hours of carnage and RAEG of old vs. new, the [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]] forces waiting in orbit got bored and decided to join the party, but the party was already done and left nothing but Thunder Warrior corpses, lots of War Hound corpses, and lots and lots of regular prisoner corpses cut down apparently trying to escape the melee.

Others descended into the Underworld of Terra, taking roles amongst the criminal element or eking out a life as Gladiators. One group managed to steal an Astartes progenoid gland to extend their lifespans, and went into hiding, so far not to been seen again.

==Capabilities==
It is generally accepted that Thunder Warriors fall somewhere between Astartes and Custodes on the scale of who-beats-who. Though their exact capabilities are not covered in any great detail.

During the Unification Wars, every Warlord and his dog had access to some form of advanced technology, whether through cyber-augmentation, bio-alchemical processes or genetic tampering, the Thunder Warrior was supposed to superior to all of them. Claiming "unparalleled superhuman physical power, gene-programmed resistance to environment" and most notably: resistance to "psychic attack".

This last one is particularly notable, since while his Custodians and Astartes are possessed of some impressive willpower and determination, as well as a lot of hypno-indoctrinated mental safeguards, they seem to be no more or less able to resist psykers than any other human. What's more is that we can possibly narrow this down even further and credit it to the Emperor directly, rather than any form of genetic/biological upgrade. [[Fallen Angels|Merir Astelan]] and the [[Dark Angels|first 5000 Space Marines]] all had similar psychic wards build into their minds granted from the Emperor himself, manifesting as a golden aura that seems to make psychic compulsions have no affect on them, and giving telepaths headaches for trying to read them. This is probably why the later Astartes don't share this capability, as the Emperor probably didn't have the time to mind-lock every soldier under his command.

In any case, a few things are clear: while they do have additional organs (seeing as they had to harvest organs from their own dead rather than from normal humans to prolong their lives), they don't have a Black Carapace; the original Mk. 1 Thunder Armour was not designed to function with one, so Thunder Warriors wore their heavy armour like any mortal would, rather than interfacing with it like a second skin. They also don't have a Betcher's Gland; one of Dahren Heruk's companions, Vezula Vult, forgot about this when he tangled with a group of Alpha Legionnaires in the slums of Terra, getting sizzled in the face by acid because he wasn't paying attention. Thirdly, they don't have a secondary heart as seen with their tradition of "Honoured Deaths" with fellow warriors mercy killing mortally wounded comrades with a blade through the heart. Fourthly, and probably most importantly, they don't have a Progenoid Gland, which for Space Marine is the ''eau de Astartes'', making them everything that they are, managing their physiologies from day to day as well as providing the means to make more of them.

However, that the Thunder Warriors are physically superior to Astartes is not really in doubt, with each conflict in the fluff between them generally resulting in it taking several Astartes just to bring down a single Thunder Warrior, and even in these reported situations, the Thunder Warriors in question are long past their physical prime and are undoubtedly in the throes of genetic degredation, so who knows that they might have been capable of at the peak of their power. They might have been directly comparable to Custodians, who knows?

Ironically, if He had made a few more regiments, or at least kept the survivors, He may well have defeated the Machine Cult on Mars (who are behind everything and needed to die) and all the grimdark the Imperium now deals with would be at a minimum instead of up to eleven. [[Just as planned|Hindsight is twenty-twenty]].

===Armaments===
While not outright stated. It is rather easy to guess the weapons that Thunder Warriors used by examining the armories of the [[Dark_Angels#Cool_Shit|Dark Angels]], the [[Adeptus Custodes]] and even the [[Adeptus Mechanicus|Mechanicum]]. Rad/Irad Weapons were likely more common than they were in the [[First Founding|Legion Astartes]]. So it's likely they had access to [[Plasma Weapons]], Molecular Acid Boltshells, Stasis Grenades & Missiles, Phosphex Incinerators, [[Photon_Thruster_Weapon|Photon Thrusters]], [[Lastrum Bolters]], [[Adrathic Weapons]], Warp and [[Vortex weapons]]. Volkites were also most likely standard issue. Since Thunder Warriors did not have proper Powered Armor their successors. [[GrimDark|They likely had little to no protection from the deadly effects of their own weapons]].

== Arik Taranis ==

The first badass granddaddy of all Space Marines and Thunder Warriors who would make Girlyman and Dante envious for his existence. He was known to win lots and lots of battles for the Emperor, survive dozens of suicidal fights in which countless Thunder Warriors (who are stronger than space marines) would die, especially the last battle in which he barely made it to victory with his comrade. The Emperor, knowing the Thunder Warrior's limited lifespan would not serve any good for his [[Great Crusade|future conquest]], decided to abandon the Thunder Warriors by arranging an utter betrayal with Arik that would make Horus look like a saint. [[Grimdark|As a result, Arik was forced witness the killing pretty much all his surviving comrades while according to the record, it would be reported that Arik and the Thunder Warriors had been honorably slain during the last battle]]. Despite the betrayal, Arik had no sense of hatred towards the Emperor, for he knew that Thunder Warriors would only serve as an impediment to their [[Space Marines|future cousins]].

Anyway, Arik would later hide among Terra's population with his large, obvious body and become the Kingpin of Terra. He started out in the Petitioner's City of the Imperial Palace, gang raping his way up the food chain with his only remaining Thunder Warrior buddy, Ghota (who, as described in The Outcast Dead, is an overgrown, cantankerous motherfucker with eyes like the rage zombies from 28 Days Later, apparently a side effect of the Thunder Warriors' painful physical degradation) and at least thirty other survivors, until he was effectively the big cheese of gangsters. Calling himself Babu Dhakal (or at least everyone else called him that... the man was crazy, but he wasn't crazy enough to address himself in the third person), Arik expanded his control until it encompassed [[Drugs]], bitches, gambling, weapons, and even toilets--the absolute madman! He would go on to control criminals and heretics alike, causing the Adeptus Arbites to rage quit because they couldn't handle Arik's near swaglord level reputation and rampant (to the point of being fucking psycho) badassery.

Fortunes came to him when he found a secret lab buried within Terra and finding the lab is about as common as finding a buried starship on post apocalyptic era on Terra however. This, coupled with the scientific knowledge he somehow got from the Emperor, would help him to genetically modify and increase his life span (but not really enough to keep him alive -- until the Horus Heresy came around).

=== The Outcast Dead incident ===
When heresy first became a thing that happened in the Imperium, Arik managed to get a functioning Progenoid Gland from one of the outcast dead space marines (it's unclear which one, but they probably didn't mind too much--being outcast and dead and all). He was able to extract at least some of the information he needed to replicate the gland, and was then able to plant a functioning copy he had created within his own body, as well as Ghota's. Since GW never expanded their storyline, we can assume that either they have successfully outlived the Emperor and become more rapey, pillagey, and space piratey than the Dark Eldar, or that the result of all their careful work was that they up and turned into uber powerful heroes of the Imperium... we have no idea. They may have just settled down on Terra.

Considering that Arik had no problem with the Emperor disposing of the Thunder Warriors (likely viewing himself as a willing tool for the Emperor anyway), that he now has a progenoid implanted, and the physical capabilities of Thunder Warriors, it might be possible that Arik founded the [[Sons of Antaeus]] and other chapters during the cursed 21 founding. Especially if the progenoid's phsyical enhancement abilities repaired his body and if he acquired Space Marine psyho-indoctrination technology. This would readily explain everything about the Sons of Antaeus from their size, strength, and durability to their distant attitude and reluctance to communicate with other Imperial forces. Getting ships and wargear would have been easy since the High Lords likely revere the Thunder Warriors like everyone else.

=== Arik Taranis Facts ===
Despite being outdated and retired, Arik has demonstrated some epic Primarch-level shits:

*He knocked down the "Azurite Tower" during the Unification Wars, as well as earning tons of fucking countless titles.
*He survived the deadly last battle that nearly wiped out his army, meaning he gets shit done even if it almost killed him.
*His Thunder Warrior subordinate Ghota can fight 5 elite Astartes to a stalemate even killing one of them, yet Ghota bows to Arik. Let guesses hop at how OP Arik is.
*Arik decoded the gene-seed within some dirty drug lab, which something only the Emperor is capable of out of every living thing in the galaxy. He could probably be the greatest Apothecary in the Imperium, next to The Emperor and Eldar goddess [[Isha]] (and [[Fabius Bile|Apothecary Fabius]] if he hadn't turned [[heresy|bad]]).
*Atharva, one of the outcast dead and a powerful Thousand Sons psyker observed Arik and commented that he has an: "aura too bright to look upon. His presence had a gravity all it's own, demanding all attention and fear." and he "could barely stand to turn his psychic senses on him for fear of being overwhelmed.". Keep in mind only the Emperor and the Primarchs has that kind of aura, yet Arik, a Thunder Warrior has that kind of aura surrounding him.
*He is named after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taranis| Taranis], the Celtic god of... [[Just as Planned|thunder]]. So yeah, the guy is literally a god-tier (thunder) warrior.
*also while it is not confirmed this random anon could see him possibly being involved with the creation of the primaris marines which are basically are half way to being thunder warriors

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Space Marines]]

Thunder Warriors

2018-01-14T22:45:04Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:30F0:79B:789C:BAA9: /* Eventual Fate */

[[File:Thunder_warriors.jpg|200px|thumb|right|I'm better than any of you [[Space Marines|bitches]]...if only I could live longer. (P.S. the man in the picture is not an actual thunder warrior, he just stole the armor from a copy of one.)]]
The '''Thunder Warriors''' were the first soldiers of the man who eventually became the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]]. In many ways, they were the precursors to the [[Space Marines]].

==Origins==
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 consisting of hundreds 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 [[Power Armour#Mark I: Thunder Armour|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. But NOT more so than the Custodes. However, this said, according to the novella ''The Last Church'', a massed Thunder Warrior formation could shoot all at once, and create a noise 'like a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung into existence', and mow down four or five men at once in that opening salvo. So yeah, make of that what you will.

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 [[Primarch]]s. Some of their defects were intentional, as the harsh conditions of Terra meant that they were psychopaths that the Emperor did not want to use forever. .

===Eventual Fate===
The Thunder Warriors were not what He [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|envisioned]] as the defenders of humanity, they were blunt tools of destruction and little else, far inferior to the bespoken Custodians that accompanied them. It is very important to note that the Astartes were already in circulation before the Thunder Warriors were "retired", the [[Dark Angels|First Legion]] had already been established and Proto-Legions all the way up to the [[Salamanders|XVIIIth]] were seeing active combat. The Emperor saw no great loss in removing them for good now that they were obsolete. The Imperial records indicate that the last of the Thunder Warriors all perished at the '''Battle of Mount Ararat''', which is strongly believed to be a cover story. Though the details are scarce, the battle did actually happen and there were survivors, hinting at a possible betrayal and a cull instigated by the Custodians.

However, contrary to this popular viewpoint, the retirement of the Thunder Warriors may not have been a betrayal and perhaps something less dickish; more like putting down an old guard dog with cancer than a complete betrayal. The Thunder Warriors leader: '''Arik Taranis''' is vague on the details and admits he holds no ill will towards the Emperor for what he did. Another survivor: '''Dahren Heruk''' still considers himself loyal to the Emperor and holds to his pre-unity oaths. More interestingly, when Heruk rescues a Custodian from a group of Alpha Legion hiding on Terra, the surprised Custodian thanks him and seems prepared to leave him where he is, at least until a mortally wounded Heruk halts him to request and be granted an "honoured death" (basically a mercy kill with a blade through the heart). Like Arik and Ghota, Heruk's group of Thunder Warriors are all failing physically, filled with cancer, and required to undergo regular organ transplantation just to stay alive; and are failing mentally, wracked with hallucinations of the Unity Wars like soldiers with PTSD. It may be that the last of the Thunder Warriors went willingly to their ends at Mount Ararat at the very height of their eminence, knowing that they could go no further than that. The alternative being eventual madness and inevitable biological collapse, coupled with being rendered obsolete in the shadow of the newly rising Astartes. Heruk remembers the battle of Mount Ararat to have been glorious with little to no bitterness, and he and his companions all believe that they have simply [[Death Korps of Krieg|''lived too long'']].

[[File:Thunder Warrior Model.jpg|200px|thumb|left|If only GW bothered to re-make the model like they did with the Space Marines... It seems big E wasn't the only one who abandoned them.]]

The so-called "cull" wasn't the end of the Thunder Warriors, enough of them managed to escape and spread throughout the Imperium. During the [[Great Crusade]], there was an insurrection on the asteroid prison colony of Cerberus. Though the Thunder Warriors ''were not'' the only members of the rebellion, there were enough of them to form a group calling themselves the '''Dait'Tar'''. The Emperor did not like that and sent an army of [[World Eaters|War Hounds]] to crush the prison riot with impunity. The Astartes having gotten bored with maiming and killing prisoners not worthy of their challenge, found themselves some Thunder Warriors grouping up in a defensive position. Instead of just showering bullets on the surviving Warriors like a <s>more sensible</s> less manly Legion might have, the War Hounds rushed in and engaged them in close combat. But Thunder Warriors are basically mini-[[Primarchs]] without the immortality, and were able to claim three to four Marine kills in melee for each Warrior that went down. After five hours of carnage and RAEG of old vs. new, the [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]] forces waiting in orbit got bored and decided to join the party, but the party was already done and left nothing but Thunder Warrior corpses, lots of War Hound corpses, and lots and lots of regular prisoner corpses cut down apparently trying to escape the melee.

Others descended into the Underworld of Terra, taking roles amongst the criminal element or eking out a life as Gladiators. One group managed to steal an Astartes progenoid gland to extend their lifespans, and went into hiding, so far not to been seen again.

==Capabilities==
It is generally accepted that Thunder Warriors fall somewhere between Astartes and Custodes on the scale of who-beats-who. Though their exact capabilities are not covered in any great detail.

During the Unification Wars, every Warlord and his dog had access to some form of advanced technology, whether through cyber-augmentation, bio-alchemical processes or genetic tampering, the Thunder Warrior was supposed to superior to all of them. Claiming "unparalleled superhuman physical power, gene-programmed resistance to environment" and most notably: resistance to "psychic attack".

This last one is particularly notable, since while his Custodians and Astartes are possessed of some impressive willpower and determination, as well as a lot of hypno-indoctrinated mental safeguards, they seem to be no more or less able to resist psykers than any other human. What's more is that we can possibly narrow this down even further and credit it to the Emperor directly, rather than any form of genetic/biological upgrade. [[Fallen Angels|Merir Astelan]] and the [[Dark Angels|first 5000 Space Marines]] all had similar psychic wards build into their minds granted from the Emperor himself, manifesting as a golden aura that seems to make psychic compulsions have no affect on them, and giving telepaths headaches for trying to read them. This is probably why the later Astartes don't share this capability, as the Emperor probably didn't have the time to mind-lock every soldier under his command.

In any case, a few things are clear: while they do have additional organs (seeing as they had to harvest organs from their own dead rather than from normal humans to prolong their lives), they don't have a Black Carapace; the original Mk. 1 Thunder Armour was not designed to function with one, so Thunder Warriors wore their heavy armour like any mortal would, rather than interfacing with it like a second skin. They also don't have a Betcher's Gland; one of Dahren Heruk's companions, Vezula Vult, forgot about this when he tangled with a group of Alpha Legionnaires in the slums of Terra, getting sizzled in the face by acid because he wasn't paying attention. Thirdly, they don't have a secondary heart as seen with their tradition of "Honoured Deaths" with fellow warriors mercy killing mortally wounded comrades with a blade through the heart. Fourthly, and probably most importantly, they don't have a Progenoid Gland, which for Space Marine is the ''eau de Astartes'', making them everything that they are, managing their physiologies from day to day as well as providing the means to make more of them.

However, that the Thunder Warriors are physically superior to Astartes is not really in doubt, with each conflict in the fluff between them generally resulting in it taking several Astartes just to bring down a single Thunder Warrior, and even in these reported situations, the Thunder Warriors in question are long past their physical prime and are undoubtedly in the throes of genetic degredation, so who knows that they might have been capable of at the peak of their power. They might have been directly comparable to Custodians, who knows?

Ironically, if He had made a few more regiments, or at least kept the survivors, He may well have defeated the Machine Cult on Mars (who are behind everything and needed to die) and all the grimdark the Imperium now deals with would be at a minimum instead of up to eleven. [[Just as planned|Hindsight is twenty-twenty]].

===Armaments===
While not outright stated. It is rather easy to guess the weapons that Thunder Warriors used by examining the armories of the [[Dark_Angels#Cool_Shit|Dark Angels]], the [[Adeptus Custodes]] and even the [[Mechanicum]]. Rad/Irad Weapons were likely more common than they were in the [[Legion Astartes]]. So it's likely they had access to [[Plasma Weapons]], Molecular Acid Boltshells, Stasis Grenades & Missiles, Phosphex Incinerators, [[Photon_Thruster_Weapon|Photon Thrusters]], [[Lastrum Bolters]], [[Adrathic Weapons]], Warp and [[Vortex weapons]]. Volkites were also most likely standard issue. Since Thunder Warriors did not have proper Powered Armor their successors. [[GrimDark|They likely had little to no protection from the deadly effects of their own weapons]].

== Arik Taranis ==

The first badass granddaddy of all Space Marines and Thunder Warriors who would make Girlyman and Dante envious for his existence. He was known to win lots and lots of battles for the Emperor, survive dozens of suicidal fights in which countless Thunder Warriors (who are stronger than space marines) would die, especially the last battle in which he barely made it to victory with his comrade. The Emperor, knowing the Thunder Warrior's limited lifespan would not serve any good for his [[Great Crusade|future conquest]], decided to abandon the Thunder Warriors by arranging an utter betrayal with Arik that would make Horus look like a saint. [[Grimdark|As a result, Arik was forced witness the killing pretty much all his surviving comrades while according to the record, it would be reported that Arik and the Thunder Warriors had been honorably slain during the last battle]]. Despite the betrayal, Arik had no sense of hatred towards the Emperor, for he knew that Thunder Warriors would only serve as an impediment to their [[Space Marines|future cousins]].

Anyway, Arik would later hide among Terra's population with his large, obvious body and become the Kingpin of Terra. He started out in the Petitioner's City of the Imperial Palace, gang raping his way up the food chain with his only remaining Thunder Warrior buddy, Ghota (who, as described in The Outcast Dead, is an overgrown, cantankerous motherfucker with eyes like the rage zombies from 28 Days Later, apparently a side effect of the Thunder Warriors' painful physical degradation) and at least thirty other survivors, until he was effectively the big cheese of gangsters. Calling himself Babu Dhakal (or at least everyone else called him that... the man was crazy, but he wasn't crazy enough to address himself in the third person), Arik expanded his control until it encompassed [[Drugs]], bitches, gambling, weapons, and even toilets--the absolute madman! He would go on to control criminals and heretics alike, causing the Adeptus Arbites to rage quit because they couldn't handle Arik's near swaglord level reputation and rampant (to the point of being fucking psycho) badassery.

Fortunes came to him when he found a secret lab buried within Terra and finding the lab is about as common as finding a buried starship on post apocalyptic era on Terra however. This, coupled with the scientific knowledge he somehow got from the Emperor, would help him to genetically modify and increase his life span (but not really enough to keep him alive -- until the Horus Heresy came around).

=== The Outcast Dead incident ===
When heresy first became a thing that happened in the Imperium, Arik managed to get a functioning Progenoid Gland from one of the outcast dead space marines (it's unclear which one, but they probably didn't mind too much--being outcast and dead and all). He was able to extract at least some of the information he needed to replicate the gland, and was then able to plant a functioning copy he had created within his own body, as well as Ghota's. Since GW never expanded their storyline, we can assume that either they have successfully outlived the Emperor and become more rapey, pillagey, and space piratey than the Dark Eldar, or that the result of all their careful work was that they up and turned into uber powerful heroes of the Imperium... we have no idea. They may have just settled down on Terra.

Considering that Arik had no problem with the Emperor disposing of the Thunder Warriors (likely viewing himself as a willing tool for the Emperor anyway), that he now has a progenoid implanted, and the physical capabilities of Thunder Warriors, it might be possible that Arik founded the [[Sons of Antaeus]] and other chapters during the cursed 21 founding. Especially if the progenoid's phsyical enhancement abilities repaired his body and if he acquired Space Marine psyho-indoctrination technology. This would readily explain everything about the Sons of Antaeus from their size, strength, and durability to their distant attitude and reluctance to communicate with other Imperial forces. Getting ships and wargear would have been easy since the High Lords likely revere the Thunder Warriors like everyone else.

=== Arik Taranis Facts ===
Despite being outdated and retired, Arik has demonstrated some epic Primarch-level shits:

*He knocked down the "Azurite Tower" during the Unification Wars, as well as earning tons of fucking countless titles.
*He survived the deadly last battle that nearly wiped out his army, meaning he gets shit done even if it almost killed him.
*His Thunder Warrior subordinate Ghota can fight 5 elite Astartes to a stalemate even killing one of them, yet Ghota bows to Arik. Let guesses hop at how OP Arik is.
*Arik decoded the gene-seed within some dirty drug lab, which something only the Emperor is capable of out of every living thing in the galaxy. He could probably be the greatest Apothecary in the Imperium, next to The Emperor and Eldar goddess [[Isha]] (and [[Fabius Bile|Apothecary Fabius]] if he hadn't turned [[heresy|bad]]).
*Atharva, one of the outcast dead and a powerful Thousand Sons psyker observed Arik and commented that he has an: "aura too bright to look upon. His presence had a gravity all it's own, demanding all attention and fear." and he "could barely stand to turn his psychic senses on him for fear of being overwhelmed.". Keep in mind only the Emperor and the Primarchs has that kind of aura, yet Arik, a Thunder Warrior has that kind of aura surrounding him.
*He is named after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taranis| Taranis], the Celtic god of... [[Just as Planned|thunder]]. So yeah, the guy is literally a god-tier (thunder) warrior.
*also while it is not confirmed this random anon could see him possibly being involved with the creation of the primaris marines which are basically are half way to being thunder warriors

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Space Marines]]

Thunder Warriors

2018-01-14T22:43:42Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:30F0:79B:789C:BAA9: /* Eventual Fate */

[[File:Thunder_warriors.jpg|200px|thumb|right|I'm better than any of you [[Space Marines|bitches]]...if only I could live longer. (P.S. the man in the picture is not an actual thunder warrior, he just stole the armor from a copy of one.)]]
The '''Thunder Warriors''' were the first soldiers of the man who eventually became the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]]. In many ways, they were the precursors to the [[Space Marines]].

==Origins==
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 consisting of hundreds 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 [[Power Armour#Mark I: Thunder Armour|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. But NOT more so than the Custodes. However, this said, according to the novella ''The Last Church'', a massed Thunder Warrior formation could shoot all at once, and create a noise 'like a thunderstorm had suddenly sprung into existence', and mow down four or five men at once in that opening salvo. So yeah, make of that what you will.

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 [[Primarch]]s. Some of their defects were intentional, as the harsh conditions of Terra meant that they were psychopaths that the Emperor did not want to use forever. .

===Eventual Fate===
The Thunder Warriors were not what He [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|envisioned]] as the defenders of humanity, they were blunt tools of destruction and little else, far inferior to the bespoken Custodians that accompanied them. It is very important to note that the Astartes were already in circulation before the Thunder Warriors were "retired", the [[Dark Angels|First Legion]] had already been established and Proto-Legions all the way up to the [[Salamanders|XVIIIth]] were seeing active combat. The Emperor saw no great loss in removing them for good now that they were obsolete. The Imperial records indicate that the last of the Thunder Warriors all perished at the '''Battle of Mount Ararat''', which is strongly believed to be a cover story. Though the details are scarce, the battle did actually happen and there were survivors, hinting at a possible betrayal and a cull instigated by the Custodians.

However, contrary to this popular viewpoint, the retirement of the Thunder Warriors may not have been a betrayal and perhaps something less dickish; more like putting down an old guard dog with cancer than a complete betrayal. The Thunder Warriors leader: '''Arik Taranis''' is vague on the details and admits he holds no ill will towards the Emperor for what he did. Another survivor: '''Dahren Heruk''' still considers himself loyal to the Emperor and holds to his pre-unity oaths. More interestingly, when Heruk rescues a Custodian from a group of Alpha Legion hiding on Terra, the surprised Custodian thanks him and seems prepared to leave him where he is, at least until Heruk halts him to request and be granted an "honoured death" (basically a mercy kill with a blade through the heart). Like Arik and Ghota, Heruk's group of Thunder Warriors are all failing physically, filled with cancer, and required to undergo regular organ transplantation just to stay alive; and are failing mentally, wracked with hallucinations of the Unity Wars like soldiers with PTSD. It may be that the last of the Thunder Warriors went willingly to their ends at Mount Ararat at the very height of their eminence, knowing that they could go no further than that. The alternative being eventual madness and inevitable biological collapse, coupled with being rendered obsolete in the shadow of the newly rising Astartes. Heruk remembers the battle of Mount Ararat to have been glorious with little to no bitterness, and he and his companions all believe that they have simply [[Death Korps of Krieg|''lived too long'']].

[[File:Thunder Warrior Model.jpg|200px|thumb|left|If only GW bothered to re-make the model like they did with the Space Marines... It seems big E wasn't the only one who abandoned them.]]

The so-called "cull" wasn't the end of the Thunder Warriors, enough of them managed to escape and spread throughout the Imperium. During the [[Great Crusade]], there was an insurrection on the asteroid prison colony of Cerberus. Though the Thunder Warriors ''were not'' the only members of the rebellion, there were enough of them to form a group calling themselves the '''Dait'Tar'''. The Emperor did not like that and sent an army of [[World Eaters|War Hounds]] to crush the prison riot with impunity. The Astartes having gotten bored with maiming and killing prisoners not worthy of their challenge, found themselves some Thunder Warriors grouping up in a defensive position. Instead of just showering bullets on the surviving Warriors like a <s>more sensible</s> less manly Legion might have, the War Hounds rushed in and engaged them in close combat. But Thunder Warriors are basically mini-[[Primarchs]] without the immortality, and were able to claim three to four Marine kills in melee for each Warrior that went down. After five hours of carnage and RAEG of old vs. new, the [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]] forces waiting in orbit got bored and decided to join the party, but the party was already done and left nothing but Thunder Warrior corpses, lots of War Hound corpses, and lots and lots of regular prisoner corpses cut down apparently trying to escape the melee.

Others descended into the Underworld of Terra, taking roles amongst the criminal element or eking out a life as Gladiators. One group managed to steal an Astartes progenoid gland to extend their lifespans, and went into hiding, so far not to been seen again.

==Capabilities==
It is generally accepted that Thunder Warriors fall somewhere between Astartes and Custodes on the scale of who-beats-who. Though their exact capabilities are not covered in any great detail.

During the Unification Wars, every Warlord and his dog had access to some form of advanced technology, whether through cyber-augmentation, bio-alchemical processes or genetic tampering, the Thunder Warrior was supposed to superior to all of them. Claiming "unparalleled superhuman physical power, gene-programmed resistance to environment" and most notably: resistance to "psychic attack".

This last one is particularly notable, since while his Custodians and Astartes are possessed of some impressive willpower and determination, as well as a lot of hypno-indoctrinated mental safeguards, they seem to be no more or less able to resist psykers than any other human. What's more is that we can possibly narrow this down even further and credit it to the Emperor directly, rather than any form of genetic/biological upgrade. [[Fallen Angels|Merir Astelan]] and the [[Dark Angels|first 5000 Space Marines]] all had similar psychic wards build into their minds granted from the Emperor himself, manifesting as a golden aura that seems to make psychic compulsions have no affect on them, and giving telepaths headaches for trying to read them. This is probably why the later Astartes don't share this capability, as the Emperor probably didn't have the time to mind-lock every soldier under his command.

In any case, a few things are clear: while they do have additional organs (seeing as they had to harvest organs from their own dead rather than from normal humans to prolong their lives), they don't have a Black Carapace; the original Mk. 1 Thunder Armour was not designed to function with one, so Thunder Warriors wore their heavy armour like any mortal would, rather than interfacing with it like a second skin. They also don't have a Betcher's Gland; one of Dahren Heruk's companions, Vezula Vult, forgot about this when he tangled with a group of Alpha Legionnaires in the slums of Terra, getting sizzled in the face by acid because he wasn't paying attention. Thirdly, they don't have a secondary heart as seen with their tradition of "Honoured Deaths" with fellow warriors mercy killing mortally wounded comrades with a blade through the heart. Fourthly, and probably most importantly, they don't have a Progenoid Gland, which for Space Marine is the ''eau de Astartes'', making them everything that they are, managing their physiologies from day to day as well as providing the means to make more of them.

However, that the Thunder Warriors are physically superior to Astartes is not really in doubt, with each conflict in the fluff between them generally resulting in it taking several Astartes just to bring down a single Thunder Warrior, and even in these reported situations, the Thunder Warriors in question are long past their physical prime and are undoubtedly in the throes of genetic degredation, so who knows that they might have been capable of at the peak of their power. They might have been directly comparable to Custodians, who knows?

Ironically, if He had made a few more regiments, or at least kept the survivors, He may well have defeated the Machine Cult on Mars (who are behind everything and needed to die) and all the grimdark the Imperium now deals with would be at a minimum instead of up to eleven. [[Just as planned|Hindsight is twenty-twenty]].

===Armaments===
While not outright stated. It is rather easy to guess the weapons that Thunder Warriors used by examining the armories of the [[Dark_Angels#Cool_Shit|Dark Angels]], the [[Adeptus Custodes]] and even the [[Mechanicum]]. Rad/Irad Weapons were likely more common than they were in the [[Legion Astartes]]. So it's likely they had access to [[Plasma Weapons]], Molecular Acid Boltshells, Stasis Grenades & Missiles, Phosphex Incinerators, [[Photon_Thruster_Weapon|Photon Thrusters]], [[Lastrum Bolters]], [[Adrathic Weapons]], Warp and [[Vortex weapons]]. Volkites were also most likely standard issue. Since Thunder Warriors did not have proper Powered Armor their successors. [[GrimDark|They likely had little to no protection from the deadly effects of their own weapons]].

== Arik Taranis ==

The first badass granddaddy of all Space Marines and Thunder Warriors who would make Girlyman and Dante envious for his existence. He was known to win lots and lots of battles for the Emperor, survive dozens of suicidal fights in which countless Thunder Warriors (who are stronger than space marines) would die, especially the last battle in which he barely made it to victory with his comrade. The Emperor, knowing the Thunder Warrior's limited lifespan would not serve any good for his [[Great Crusade|future conquest]], decided to abandon the Thunder Warriors by arranging an utter betrayal with Arik that would make Horus look like a saint. [[Grimdark|As a result, Arik was forced witness the killing pretty much all his surviving comrades while according to the record, it would be reported that Arik and the Thunder Warriors had been honorably slain during the last battle]]. Despite the betrayal, Arik had no sense of hatred towards the Emperor, for he knew that Thunder Warriors would only serve as an impediment to their [[Space Marines|future cousins]].

Anyway, Arik would later hide among Terra's population with his large, obvious body and become the Kingpin of Terra. He started out in the Petitioner's City of the Imperial Palace, gang raping his way up the food chain with his only remaining Thunder Warrior buddy, Ghota (who, as described in The Outcast Dead, is an overgrown, cantankerous motherfucker with eyes like the rage zombies from 28 Days Later, apparently a side effect of the Thunder Warriors' painful physical degradation) and at least thirty other survivors, until he was effectively the big cheese of gangsters. Calling himself Babu Dhakal (or at least everyone else called him that... the man was crazy, but he wasn't crazy enough to address himself in the third person), Arik expanded his control until it encompassed [[Drugs]], bitches, gambling, weapons, and even toilets--the absolute madman! He would go on to control criminals and heretics alike, causing the Adeptus Arbites to rage quit because they couldn't handle Arik's near swaglord level reputation and rampant (to the point of being fucking psycho) badassery.

Fortunes came to him when he found a secret lab buried within Terra and finding the lab is about as common as finding a buried starship on post apocalyptic era on Terra however. This, coupled with the scientific knowledge he somehow got from the Emperor, would help him to genetically modify and increase his life span (but not really enough to keep him alive -- until the Horus Heresy came around).

=== The Outcast Dead incident ===
When heresy first became a thing that happened in the Imperium, Arik managed to get a functioning Progenoid Gland from one of the outcast dead space marines (it's unclear which one, but they probably didn't mind too much--being outcast and dead and all). He was able to extract at least some of the information he needed to replicate the gland, and was then able to plant a functioning copy he had created within his own body, as well as Ghota's. Since GW never expanded their storyline, we can assume that either they have successfully outlived the Emperor and become more rapey, pillagey, and space piratey than the Dark Eldar, or that the result of all their careful work was that they up and turned into uber powerful heroes of the Imperium... we have no idea. They may have just settled down on Terra.

Considering that Arik had no problem with the Emperor disposing of the Thunder Warriors (likely viewing himself as a willing tool for the Emperor anyway), that he now has a progenoid implanted, and the physical capabilities of Thunder Warriors, it might be possible that Arik founded the [[Sons of Antaeus]] and other chapters during the cursed 21 founding. Especially if the progenoid's phsyical enhancement abilities repaired his body and if he acquired Space Marine psyho-indoctrination technology. This would readily explain everything about the Sons of Antaeus from their size, strength, and durability to their distant attitude and reluctance to communicate with other Imperial forces. Getting ships and wargear would have been easy since the High Lords likely revere the Thunder Warriors like everyone else.

=== Arik Taranis Facts ===
Despite being outdated and retired, Arik has demonstrated some epic Primarch-level shits:

*He knocked down the "Azurite Tower" during the Unification Wars, as well as earning tons of fucking countless titles.
*He survived the deadly last battle that nearly wiped out his army, meaning he gets shit done even if it almost killed him.
*His Thunder Warrior subordinate Ghota can fight 5 elite Astartes to a stalemate even killing one of them, yet Ghota bows to Arik. Let guesses hop at how OP Arik is.
*Arik decoded the gene-seed within some dirty drug lab, which something only the Emperor is capable of out of every living thing in the galaxy. He could probably be the greatest Apothecary in the Imperium, next to The Emperor and Eldar goddess [[Isha]] (and [[Fabius Bile|Apothecary Fabius]] if he hadn't turned [[heresy|bad]]).
*Atharva, one of the outcast dead and a powerful Thousand Sons psyker observed Arik and commented that he has an: "aura too bright to look upon. His presence had a gravity all it's own, demanding all attention and fear." and he "could barely stand to turn his psychic senses on him for fear of being overwhelmed.". Keep in mind only the Emperor and the Primarchs has that kind of aura, yet Arik, a Thunder Warrior has that kind of aura surrounding him.
*He is named after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taranis| Taranis], the Celtic god of... [[Just as Planned|thunder]]. So yeah, the guy is literally a god-tier (thunder) warrior.
*also while it is not confirmed this random anon could see him possibly being involved with the creation of the primaris marines which are basically are half way to being thunder warriors

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Space Marines]]