Editing Thunder Warriors (section)

==Capabilities==
It is generally accepted that peak Thunder Warriors <u>probably</u> ''(the fluff is hazy on this)'' fall somewhere between Astartes and Custodes on the scale of who-beats-who. Though their exact capabilities are not covered in any great detail. As a military force, the Thunder Warriors were considered unmatched even in their time, yet were recorded as being lacking in discipline. Custodes vs Thunder Warriors has gone both ways with both being said to be unmatched even though both existed concurrently. So it may simply be that Custodes utilize teamwork and Thunder Warriors do not or who knows what. Since Custodes are made using the Emperor's own blood, they likely have more potent fuck-physics superhuman capabilities.

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 be superior to all of them. In '''HH1''' they were claimed to have ''"unprecedented superhuman physical power, gene-programmed resistance to environment"'' and most notably: resistance to "psychic attack". However, in the context of the statement the Thunder Warriors were explicitly superior to anything the Emperor's enemies could field '''against''' him rather than '''by''' him; however the '''HH7''' entry for Custodians explicitly states that they were designed to be ''"stronger, faster, more acute of sense and more resilient than even the doomed Thunder Warriors"'', pretty much putting the matter to bed. Yet in their time the Thunder Warriors existed as a legion while there were only a handful of Custodians attending the Emperor, so they easily projected a far more dangerous military threat. Even by the final '''Battle of Ararat''' there were only a few hundred Custodes, so the Thunder Warriors remained the deadlier force while the Custodians were still some barely understood figures who remained at the Emperor's side and it took the new Astartes warriors to eventually take down the Thunder Warriors.

Resistance to psychic attack 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. Additionally, while they did not seem vulnerable to mutation or mind control upon being exposed to sorcery, the Battle of Maulland Sen demonstrated that Warp energy exposure made them go berserk in a manner that would make even pre-Heresy Angron surprised in his more lucid moments. This implies the Thunder Warriors' psychic resistance was actually part of their enhancements and not from the Emperor's personal attention. And "resistance" probably translated to "murderize everything in range until you kill the psyker".

In terms of tactics and physical combat, it was noted by observers that the Astartes and Cataegis were very different in combat style and doctrine during the Palace Coup's battle between Valdor's first batch of Dark Angels initiates against the Thunder Warrior Survivors and their allies. Whereas the Thunder Warriors and their Primarch, Ushotan, were described as flamboyant; emotionally unrestricted; and individually imposing, the first Dark Angels were described as functional; mechanical in nature; and methodical. Additionally, while the book, Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, made clear that each Thunder Warrior and Ushotan were individually larger and more powerful than each Dark Angel they fought, the latter were described as almost always wounding or maiming their Cataegis opponents before they died and were replaced by reinforcements that would eventually wear their opponents down. Whereas Ushotan was described as a single berserk bear (in contrast to the Thunder Warrior Dahren Heruk's description of the Custodes as an indomitable pride of lions), the Astartes were described as a pack of instinctively coordinated wolves that gave him significantly more trouble than the power armored techno-barbarians he typically mowed down with contempt. The fact that they were on the verge of overwhelming him made Constantin challenge Ushotan himself to give the Cataegis Primarch a more fitting and honorable death.

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), there are a number of organs/abilities they do not have.
*No Black Carapace; the original [[Mark I: Thunder Armour|Mk. 1 Thunder Armour]] was never 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 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.
*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 and joked about how ''"[[Emperor|He]] gave them all the gifts. Didn't He?" ''
*They may not have a Larramans Organ ''(or equivalent)'' as each of Heruk's companions were shown bleeding out at various points rather than have it clot in moments the same way that Astartes do: Kabe, after being stabbed with a spear was shown to have a pool of blood forming beneath him and was beyond saving by the time it was accumulating in his lungs; Gairok had blood bubbling from his lips after being run through with a sword; while Vult was also shown to be slowly dying from a wet and dark wound to the gut some time after the wound had been inflicted.
*Finally, 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 and providing the means to make more of them.

These points aside, the fact 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 most of 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 superior to Custodians, who knows? The best example thus far is the duel between Primarch Ushotan and Constantin Valdor; both the highest exemplars of their respective breeds. Though Ushotan was wounded by several Astartes he slew before the duel actually started, with both combatants having started the battle at the same time and Valdor had since gone through a number of Thunder Warriors singlehandedly so it's still a fair starting point. Ushotan still had the strength to check several of Valdor's blows which Valdor had to return by piling more strength upon strength ''(even in his superior auramite armour)''. However, Ushotan was tiring from lactic acid build-up, which Valdor exploited with a perfectly timed strike. The Thunder Warrior ''may'' have been stronger, but the Custodian fought with unmatched martial perfection and could perceive the flow of the fight even while it was happening and presumably didn't apply one hundred percent strength and was able to work his way up while his foe had to go one hundred percent and stay there trying to fight exhaustion as he had no other advantage.

All things considered: a Dreadnought is deadlier than a single Space Marine, but the Imperium does not force healthy Space Marines to become dreadnoughts simply because they are deadlier. An Ogryn might be capable of tearing a Marines arm off, while an Assassin might be swift enough to punch through power armour, but they are all reserved for specific situations and purposes. The same should be said between the differences between the three different branches of superhuman: The Custodians were intended to be peers and guardians of the Emperor himself; and remain with him in whatever future he had planned for humanity. The Astartes were designed for long campaigns that stretch out over centuries, and were capable of fighting in any number of environments against strange alien foes. In a similar way that a lance is better at stabbing than a shorter but more versatile sword, the Thunder Warriors were designed to fight in '''one''' environment against '''one''' set of foes from '''one''' planet: [[Terra]]. A single campaign against some of the deadliest examples <u>humanity</u> could throw back at them, so it is no wonder they seem to do so well compared against Space Marines and Custodians, since they are more a tool/weapon designed for only one circumstance.

===Lifespans===
{{Topquote|There was never time for perfection, and so the Cataegis were always a compromise. They were the best that could have been created under such conditions, but nobody believed they were permanent.|Amar Astarte}}

As to the issue of longevity, the Custodians and Astartes don't age (well, they get the cosmetics of aging but it's only skin-deep and in a sexy DILF way instead of spots and wrinkles). The Emperor could have granted the Thunder Warriors longer lifespans, even biological immortality ''(it's actually pretty simple since aging is caused by imperfect DNA caused by cellular division; make division create perfect copies and there is no aging)'', but what would be the point of extending their lifespan if he did not intend to make any more of them since they were only required to take over one world (and maybe in a best case scenario Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and the gas giants to suicide against the biggest nasties present) anyway?

The Emperor had twenty more groups of transhumans ready to take over the <u>known galaxy</u> - the sheer number of worlds and the distances between them practically demands the creation of a military force that can stand the test of time. One could then propose that if the Thunder Warriors had longer lifespans then they could have fulfilled that role instead of the Astartes. But as mentioned above, while they might have been physically superior, they simply weren't equipped with the same augmentations that might be useful in more varied environments. Thunder Warriors were designed for a task and they performed it well, providing them with immortality to survive beyond this would have been needlessly sentimental.

It is also interesting that the issue of raising new Thunder Warrior regiments hasn't been brought up; The Thunder Warriors clearly had the medical knowledge to attempt to delay the failure of their physiologies, but either lacked the facilities or the desire to make more of themselves. Very little is known about Thunder Warrior recruitment and augmentation processes such as how long they take, what standards they must adhere to and what specialised equipment is required to create them. By contrast the Space Marines are equipped with their own means of reproduction; the Gene Seed allows them to make more of themselves from varied human sources ''(for example, the [[Blood Angels|IXth Legion]] were even able to recruit from mutated stock)'' and without direct oversight even when on campaign far from their home-worlds. Even if the Thunder Warriors were superior combatants in every conceivable way, the ability to replicate virtually unlimited "lesser" superhumans anywhere in the galaxy is an advantage too great to give up. Similar to how the genetic diversity and adaptivity of the Grey Wolf (which could still interbreed with coyotes and dogs) enabled it to supplant the larger Dire Wolf (which had a more specialized diet and a more restricted gene-pool).

===Development===
The Emperor could have simply made custom augmentations for each Regiment/Legion of Thunder Warriors to specialize them for each intended purpose and could have used the knowledge from the Mechanicum and cybernetics to correct the genetic flaws and smooth things out. Considering that this was how he ended up with twenty Astartes Legions, then why not bring both programs together and create Thunder Warriors with added organs so they could adapt to different environments, or make Astartes with greater size, strength, and resilience on a par with the warriors that preceded them? Considering his development of Primarchs, Astartes, and Custodes, he clearly had enough knowledge, and skill, and tools to do this, whether it was cost effective or not is a different matter; as Constantin Valdor once mentioned that to make an army of Custodians on a similar scale to the Thunder Warriors would have practically bankrupted Terra, and who knows if the programs were even compatible with each other? The existence of the World Eater Blackshield - Endryd Haar, the Terran Iron Hand - Autek Mor, as well as Arik Taranis’ success in splicing Astartes gene-seed into his body to stabilize his lifespan also suggests that it is possible that the Thunder Warriors could’ve been “upgraded and repurposed” as senior advisory cadres to supplement the Astartes but the rebellion and the cost to do so before Luna and Mars were subjugated was too prohibitive and moot if they had to be purged after the Palace Coup. Even then, it would’ve been imperfect in the same manner Khor Phaeron, Amon, and Luther weren’t able to truly fit into their adopted legions as augmented adult humans; particularly when Endryd Haar was still a berserker (albeit, an intelligent one, as Malcador remarked) without the Butcher’s Nails and killed any subordinates who defied his orders. On the flipside, Autek Mor was a sociopath tactician who didn’t give a damn about collateral damage to non-combatants or even his own subordinates so long as all his enemies wound up dead.

In any case: As much as people try to put the blame squarely at his feet for being lazy or short-sighted; Amar Astarte claimed that while his influence certainly sped things along, ''the Emperor'' was not the only person working on his transhuman projects. He had enormous laboratories with hundreds, if not thousands of scientists working in secrecy just to get as far as they did with the Space Marines, and had been working on the Space Marine project even '''before''' the Thunder Warriors existed; they were only ever just a stop-gap. Bearing in mind that the project was set-back and all of the laboratories were destroyed '''twice'''. First with the Scattering of the Primarchs due to the fucking moron [[Erda]] dropping the anti Chaos God defenses to protect the Primarchs (which would severely backfire), secondly when Amar Astarte herself decided that the loss of said Primarchs was going to doom the Astartes Program to the same failures as the Thunder Warriors ''- a very telling reason indeed-'' This means the Great Crusade race was essentially started early, as the Emperor was now on a timer in order to reclaim them before they were irretrievable and still needed to build the [[Astronomican]], claim [[Mars]] and get ''himself'' out into the galaxy to meet his sons. And he had to do this all before the Orks and/or the Rangdan hit critical mass and killed everything so Big E was already under massive pressure.

The fact that [[Primaris Marines]] now exist that are larger, stronger, and more resilient than basic Space Marines shows that the gap has finally been filled. They are still not the equals of Custodians on the tabletop, but we're only talking the about the level of variance within a single point. They are probably much closer to Thunder Warriors and are potentially what the Emperor always intended, if he had the time to focus on his project and continue, or at the very least just one or two steps below, Thunder Warrior level fighters with all the stability and mass production capability of Astartes.

Considering the threats to Unity and dangers of Terra at the time; From nations of psykers to Men of Iron hidden within the core of the planet, and [[Chaos]] licking their lips the whole time, let alone everything else like the [[Rangdan Xenocides|Rangda]] and [[Ork]]s hitting critical mass and bulldozing everything. It's unsurprising the Emperor moved as quickly as he did and used every tool at his disposal.

===Armaments===
Thunder Warriors seem to have been poorly armed compared to [[Custodes]] and [[Space Marines]]. While some assumed [[Volkite Weaponry|Volkite weapons]], [[Plasma]] and [[Radium_Weaponry|Rad weapons]] would have been standard issue. This was not the case. They used larger versions of [[Bolters]] and [[Auxilia Lasrifle|Lasrifles]]. Yes the standard issue weapon of the [[Solar Auxilia]]. That's like making the standard issue weapon of the [[Custodes]] [[Hotshot_Lasgun|Hotshot Lasguns]]. Some also had what looked like Power Weapons or some equivalent. No wonder their shit was pushed in by Empys bodyguards and the [[Dark Angels]]. Their weapons were utter garbage compared to the stuff the new boys got. Good thing for them [[Terminator]] armor didn't (or shouldn't) exist at this time.(disclaimer because Black Library writers tend to forget their own fluff) The battle described in Valdor: Birth of the Imperium would have wound up even more one sided in favor of the fucking new guys.

They also employed Skylance, the predecessor of [[Stormbird]]. So one can guess they had decent air support at the very least.