The Thunder Warriors

Thunder Warrior Captain

 

Thunder Warriors were the soldiers that marched with the Emperor to conquer Terra in the Wars of Unification. The engineering that the Emperor used to create the Thunder Warriors was not as efficient as what he would use later to create the Space Marines, nor was the technology as advanced or the geneticists as entirely willing.  These proto-Astartes were organized in twenty regiments of no more than a few hundred warriors, each named by the Emperor himself.

Thunder Warrior Standard Bearer

 

Thunder Warriors were large, easily the size of a Space Marine, and in some cases even larger. Even the few that survived the end of the Unification Wars were more than a match for an Astartes in single combat. They were made highly resistant to psychic attack, perhaps because of the sorcery they would regularly face during the Age of Strife. They had tremendous upper body strength that, when coupled with their early model of power armor, made them virtually unbeatable in close combat.

 

Thunder Warrior

 

Imperial history records that the Thunder Warriors had all died by the end of the Unification Wars and the Legiones Astartes were created to replace them.  The truth of the matter was far different, for the Thunder Warriors' fate was bound up in the terrible price that the Emperor proved willing to pay to secure a better future for mankind.  During the last battle of the Unification Wars, known as the Battle of Mount Ararat, the Thunder Warriors were slain to a man.  They were not slain by the enemies of the Emperor, but by the Emperors own servants on his orders.  The Thunder Warriors had been betrayed by their own creator, a terrible secret skillfully concealed from the people of the Imperium for more than 10,000 years.

 

Thunder Warrior Iconography

 

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Thunder_Warriors

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Thunder_warriors#.Ug13yKbn_vU