The Emperor should have just gathered the Thunder Warriors and had them fight the Orks. The Thunder Warriors would not have needed to do anything but fight and die gloriously. This would have been a far more fitting end to them.
Also, it would have prevented the emperor from becoming an overt traitor to his own loyal men. After the numerous things that he did, I have come to see that he had the betrayal of Horus coming as a justly deserved recompense.
This is heresy, all is disposable in the desperate pursuit of survival for mankind. Time travel has revealed Chaos ending the universe, no thunder warrior can stop it. Only the Emperor protects!
In theory a good idea. In practice a terrible idea when considering that the Thunder Warrior is far less stable mentally and physically and they lacked the more advanced purposes the Astartes do. Thunder warriors are what happens when you give a violent psychopath special forces level training, steroids, fentanyl, a huge bag of blow and have them stuck in a room for hours on end blaring death metal. Think Kruger from the movie Elysium and that’s basically a thunder warrior (with a cute and cuddly side and barely 1% of the physical traits). Do you really want to send them into space to fight the one race they’d absolutely get along with? Remember the Orks were impressed by Yarriks brutality in battle and he was just a commissar with advanced combat training. You send 1000 thunder warriors to go fight the Orks you’ll end up facing a Waaaarg fed by the brutality of Thunder Warriors energy. Remember that Orks grow based on the severity of the conflict they’re in. Fighting thunder warriors would’ve jump started their evolution into Krok levels.
@@TECH-HERESY The fallen have returned to the fold. The Lion issued the decree of forgiveness. There are no more heretics amongst our ranks. Simply Dark angels ready to serve the emperor and to hunt the beasts of the rift.
@@thatdoppioguy1825 Zabriel of the Dark Angels could be or could at least come close, he's an OG Terran born space marine who served for a century before Lion'el Johnson was even found back during the Great Crusade
I think the second option makes more sense. The Thunder Warriors were too risky a project and suited only to an era of savagery that Big E wanted to forget, the hilarious part is that for him there was no problem spreading savagery on an Interplanetary scale with new toys. The Emperor really is a great son of a beep. Great video man👍!
Yeah that's cause as far as he cares he's not spreading savagery but his glorious human empire. Remember before the heresy space marines learned sciences and arts alongside war
the end goal for great crusade was to make humanity so OP that we wont need any modfied super soldiers to win, the thunder warriors fought for themselves and the emperor
The three reasons why the Emperor had to eradicate the Thunder Warriors: 1) They were a highly flawed prototype that was rushed. They'd die of cancers, their bodies ripping themselves apart and biological degradation. 2) They didn't do well with garrison duty. 3) They were a blunt instrument meant to batter Terra into submission.
@@oldeskul Did he, or did he not order his remaining thunder warriors to be put down like rabbid dogs instead of sending his loyal warriors to fight and die on the battlefield?
@@idiom2805 He totally sent them to be put down. He might have even been directly involved in their extermination on Ararat. That drove the few surviving Thunder Warriors to hate him. If he had been forthright and honest with them, telling his Thunder Warriors that they were all degenerating and dying, and that he had no way to cure them. He could've given them the choice, to be executed right then and avoid dying in a painful way, or be put into stasis to be unleashed later against a greater threat out in the galaxy. I'm sure some would have chosen execution, some would have chosen stasis, and some would have attempted to flee, only to be hunted down later. Could you imagine how the War for Ullanor or the Horus Heresy would have gone if the Emperor had an army of Thunder Warriors to throw at the enemy? FAN FICTION WRITERS, TO YOUR KEYBOARDS!
The thunder warriors were a sort of rush job genetically speaking and by the time they were purged almost all of them had cancers of varying stages or some sort of genetic degeneration. They also didn’t exactly hate the Emperor it was more like they were disappointed that they would not be by his side for the next stage, while they were not conditioned to be loyal they were completely committed to the Emperor’s goals of unification of not just Terra and the Sol system but of humanity as a whole. Some thunder warriors, probably the last batch created, would go on to become Astartes. As for the threat of chaos corruption I think they would have been at the very least slightly more resistant to it than Astartes mostly because they were deeply committed to the Imperial Truth of their own volition and not (solely) indoctrination.
@@gigabuck9091given roughly half the space marines fell to chaos… that isn’t exactly something to discredit the thunder warriors for. If they believed they were helping the Emporer they’d do it, much like an Ogryn can be manipulated or tricked.
Honestly getting rid of them was practical. But the way the emperor just mass slaughtered them is more the issue. Just stop making more of them and slowly increase the number of campaigns they are sent on. They’ll slowly die out.
For context as to how physically strong the T. Warriors were, they're the only canonically confirmed Imperial force that PARTIALLY powered armor - the legs weren't powered by anything other than raw muscle, meaning that they were holding ALL of the weight without the aid of servos. Even the Custodians and Primarchs don't do that. Now granted, the T. Warrior armor was technically the prototype to the MK1 Astartes armor, but still. Knowing that, it's entirely likely that the Custodians would have had a difficult fight on their hands without the element of surprise and assistance from what would later become the 1st Legion of the Astartes (both in terms of being the first legion made AND by being the specific legion given to The Lion).
The Thunder Warriors were a creation meant to fight in the brutal Unification Wars and horrors of Old Night, and perhaps they were consider to be the Spear Tip of the Great Crusade for a time, but perhaps the Emperor saw something that made him disturb on the Thunder Warriors. Perhaps it was the unstable creation of the Thunder Warriors that made him realize that without the Geneseed of his Sons (who all have a warp deities for souls) couldn’t stabilize the madness and stagnation of the Thunder Warriors.
Tldr: a sad rush job to quickly conquer. They would deteriorate and go insane, so the emperor had the custodes cut them down like a prick. While then perfected the method with gene seed and primarchs in the astartes
I agree that the Thunder Warriors would be more trouble than it's worth to be deployed in the Great Crusade. The Emperor would probably have to set up special transport ships for them, transporting the Thunder Warriors in stasis until they reach the battle. However, what I don't understand is why the Emperor didn't put them in a stasis vault near the Imperial Palace or somewhere else on Terra? They could be kept in stasis up until they were needed for combat on Terra (like the siege of the Imperial Palace or the Webway). The Emperor could even have them equipped with more advanced Power Armor or even Terminator Armor (once it was developed) and the Thunder Warriors would turn alot of traitors into minced meat.
To be honest i think it was a shame too. The Thunder warriors SCREAM Grimdark way more than the astartes. Would have been far more legendary to do something like lock them under the palace on Terra, then they could have gotten a legendary moment as a final stand in the Heresy charging out one last time for the Emperor, in all their fury and rage and power, against the Forces of Chaos, burning bright one last time.
@@hoked2194 RT era SM could be described as an opressive mainly homosexual space police according to the materials from the setting but aside from that, they were just mortals.
@@Ironbattlemace In a Rouge Trader continuity (that's how a 40k prototype was called) Space marines were literally a bunch of powered armor mercenaries, space ZOMO and escorts for a transport ships that invade mining planets cut off from the imperium. And they are known for liking each other a little too much to be hetero. Even a name of dark angels fortress monastery is the name of a certain bar (a little bit like blue oyster from police academy) that was next to the the GW headquaters back than.
He didnt know exactly how many he needed for taking Terra And once taken, he didnt want people to know he used to have an army of psychotic beef cakes; he wanted to erase those hard times.
You ever seen a thunder warrior up close son…….. If you had…..and still drew breath by luck alone, you’d take great comfort in knowing they no longer lived. Some things are only capable of task. Theirs, was destruction. Ours was to build and preserve. You would do kind to remember that Initiate. -Captain Canderous Snurdicus 1st Legion, Dark Angels Death wing
@@canderoussnurd4265 a fucking dark angel saying that runs deep into how brutal these monsters were. If the emperor's exterminators says they were too brutal...yeah best they stay dead.
for the parts about the astartes I think the emperor didn't really plan the heresy, he would have never wished for this catastrophe to happen, but it is more than conceivable that he made contigency plans to ensure the failure of any form of rebellion or betrayal by them. furthermore i think he didn't really wanted to exterminate all of the astartes and the primarch, I think there was a bit of lore somewhere that the emperor secretely built 20 palaces on terra , one for each of his sons, so he could enjoy eternity within the peace of the imperium with all of them.
People forget they were an experiment that got lucky to have shined for as long as they did ,they were going crazy with time eventually would become useless/dangerous emperor honestly mercy killed them
@@Hyde-dg7ef in the eyes of the thunderwrriors the astartes would be immortal and perfect. they would soon rebel out of spite and jealousy within their failing body.
I think he would have been better served to hurl the thunderwarriors at Luna and Mars conquering Mars outright. It would have destroyed most if not all of the thunderwarriors. It would have also saved him a lot of trouble in the future, including denying his rebellious sons resources in the future. On Tara and Luna, he made the offer join or die. Where Mars is concerned, he uses trickery. That was a mistake, which came to bite him in the end.
I would really like to know how 40K would be different. If the Emperor had not slaughtered the thunder warriors. Instead had used them to conquer Luna and Mars outright. How would that have changed the heresy?
The problem with using them to take mars and luna is the sheer collateral damage. He needed those gene labs and industry intact otherwise the crusade would have been set back centuries that couldn't be spared with the rangdans, orks and a few others really on the rise. Keep in mind the crusade as a whole was very quick and a bit messy with a few close calls because the schedule was so very tight. I'm not really sure there was a better outcome for the thunder warriors than what they got. It would definitely have been better for the emperor later on to leave them to die slowly and painfully because it would remove the fear some had of being replaced, but in a way that can be seen as an even greater betrayal by the warriors themselves. He didn't foresee how the echoes of this and the last church would play out, and that seems to have been his real failure to me. Too much optimism in our positive traits and too much pessimism for our negative traits.
I think it was more of a matter of timing. Slaneesh's birth sent his plan into action before it was ready. He had already spent a while taking terra. Spending more time to take mars couldve been quite costly, and from what we could tell, he already felt rushed/out of time to get the crusade off and going. Buying mars and their loyalties was the quickest road for emps
Thunder warriors were brutal and single minded,they were what the emperor needed for the unification wars,but after tyat they would be redundant. Too single minded,too unstable and and actually dying,the Emperor needed soldiers,a weapon more controllef and easly produced,enter the astartes. Astartes are in all meaningful ways an improvement,what they lack in resilience/strenght they made up with skill and intelligence. The main reason the war hounds lost many men against thrm is that they were brawlers type of melee legion,played right into the thunder warriors advantages over astartes
They were too good at what they did. Once their usefulness was over, they became expendable. Seen as a waste of resources. Kinda reminds me of the corporate world, lol!
@@originalbastav7346it is, trust me The emperor may be cold heartless man but in reality he needed more army but better quality He knows thunder warriors were useful once for the unification wars, they were unstable warriors needed to be eradicated It was sad but at least these guys wont see horus heresy incident.
I can definately see the Emperor deciding the Thunder Warriors wouldn't work in the great crusade. I do find it odd that he'd plan for the Space Marines to also eventually be eliminated. Even once you have the Empire all setup and working well, you'd still have a use for them to defend things. Even if for some reason there were not many foes left I'm pretty sure they'd behave and be more than happy to endlessly patrol till their numbers wore down.
While he used the primarchs, the marines, and even himself as tools for mankinds survival. there are several hints that on a personal level within "the goal" he did love his sons and respect the marines. The thunder warriors were the prototype, and one seemingly put together quickly, and prototypes always have flaws. It made perfect logical sense to give the warriors a mix of culling and death in battle they would want even if it really can be seen as questionable. It makes no sense to kill off the completed model and their leaders when he knew about the necron, had hints to the nids, and the ork had yet to be utterly exterminated. To say little of wanting a bond, even on an unconcious level, with the primarchs who all had other abilities beyond war or any of the many other aliens to arise over the milena. I just don't think it was even on the cards for them to be killed off.
One thing I always never Understood about this section of 40k lore is why does the emperor seem so hesitant to use his power during this period. If Big E wanted to he could have conquered terra in a couple hours by virtue of his own psychic might. And he didn't need to do some grimdark order 66 on the thunderwarriors, he could have just shut down all their brains instantly with his mind powers, killing them humanely. But he just opted for the grimdark option of custodes cutting down their own brothers. Is there a lore reason for this?
From a purely pragmatic perspective, having the custodes and astartes do it allowed the emperor to see how space marines would fare against an enemy that is physically stronger than them, but that they outnumber. It simultaneously cleans up the loose end
What was said above but also because GW fucking sucks at writing. They choose to do "grimdark" for it's own sake rather than making it feel natural, they instead force it and it cripples their characters often and makes them unsatisfying.
@@velstadtvonausterlitz2338 Im not sure why you're rolling your eyes. I'm entitled to my own opinion and there's lots of examples of really shit Writing GW let's slip through like "Warrior Coven" which was a fuckin fever dream
40k's lore isn't known for making sense. You have marines dying by the hundreds in one moment, and then you have 5 marines conquering the eye of terror. It's incredibly inconsistent, especially during the early days and the magnificent WARD era. Every writer wrote what he wanted with no regard for continuity or lore. Also, everything was ill-defined back then. A marine could be as strong as a halo spartan, or as strong as hercules on demigod steroids.
This is essentially a take on the good old fashioned Frankenstein story: Mad scientist creates powerful being(s), said creation would prove to be too much to handle or unfit to exist, and the mad scientist would end up having to destroy it, although in this case, the Emperor actually succeeded in wiping them from existence whereas the Doctor would fail.
There is one Thunder Warrior left kept in a prison that time itself cannot pierce in a vault kept by a lord who would preserve him for all time. But here me for it has been seen in visions granted by the Emperor himself, there will come a dark day when the traitor forces will descend on Terra once more in a great battle where countless heroes will rise and fall, a battle where even those who the Imperium would call enemies would answer the call and stand beside humanity's final champions to beat back the great evil eating away at our universe, and in that battle the Despoiler most vile and most hated will fight his way past the Eternity Gate and into the Throne Room itself only to find his way blocked not by a member of the Angels of Death or the 10000, but the Last Soldier of Unification. And it will be then when the Betrayer shall face the Betrayed in a duel that will determine the fate of the galaxy.
That would be fuckin PEAK just having Tryzan the infinite scream "RANDOM BULLSHIT GO" and sending out all his toys against chaos. This is one of the parts I would kill for, that and Clone Fulgrim out there
Well they didn't kill them all...Endryd Haar was converted into a Firstborn Astartes. Presumably, other thunder warriors were converted as well (looks at Tyberos the Red Wake and heretically wonders...) but the procedure must have a high fail rate or was too cost prohibitive to enact so it was more effective to cull the Thunder Warriors.
Well the other issues were that they were degenerating and either going mentally insane and attacking anyone, allies or not, or they just died a slow death. Better to have put the horse out of their misery than prolong it. The fear that history would have repeated with the introduction of Primaris marines was quickly dismissed when the rubricon procedure was available.
I think it was just.. Mercy. The Thunder Warriors were defective. They could die any time. Explode. Go insane. And die in horrifying ways. Killing them in one last battle.. The way warriors like them would have liked to die. iNstead of dying from nothing.They died like warriors. On the battlefield. In one last grand battle against the Space Marines and Custodees. They showed how strong they were.. And just what kind of warriors they are.
The thunder warrior culling makes no sense since they could have just been used in some brutal engagement and have been disposed of that way. With the Emperor leading them personally, no risk of chaos corruption before their death. The establishment of a year 0 would be trivial through manipulation of historical records. But, if the space marine civil war was planned, then the culling of the thunder warriors was vital for one specific reason : a concrete argument as to the ( potential ) fate of space marines, in favour of the rebels. And Horus did use that argument, and it did sway a number of primarchs.
@lukeBryen2 True. Look at the depictions of them. Psychotic berserkers in armour rambling about some imperial truth while rushing headfirst into battle.
@lukeBryen2 thunderwarriors have all the emotions and wants x10 of a regular human. now imagine yourself as the primarch general of the thunderwarriors riddled with cancer, you see new astartes cancer free and can almost live an immortal life. you think to yourself "hey why would the emperor not give us the gift of immortality too? I should rebel and start a civil war!"
They were more nails like a galaxy full of them but the problem was that due to their unstable genetics only a few could be candidates to become Space Marines
plenty of nails, just got a more manageable hammer. imagine how many would have turned to chaos if they were using thunder warriors instead of space marines at that point
I'm late to this but I don't think the Chaos threat was worse with the Thunder Warriors. In Outcast Dead the Thousand Sons legionary present tries to read the mind of one of the Thunder Warriors and recoils in pain, describing the mind as something like a fortress of barbed wire (I can't recall exactly) and it hurts him to even look. That makes it sound like they were even more well protected than Astartes. Plus Arik Taranis shows a devotion to the Emperor even after the events of Mount Ararat, saying that he hopes the genetic defects in the Thunder Warriors were not deliberate, which might just mean he was especially devoted but I got the impression the thunder warriors blamed Valdor, rather than the emperor for the betrayal.
I think big E just wanted slaves not equals. He wanted his ordered followed unquestionably no thoughts of their own because idle minds breed contempt. Ironic that primarchs his 'sons' who he allowed free thought shattered not only his dream but his entire plan. In the end big E had only himself to blame for what happens because no matter how you try slaves always revolt eventually.
Possibly an unpopular opinion here, but I think big E gave the Thunder Warriors the best fate he could have. They were all going to die slow painful deaths. Deaths that no thunder warrior would want as it wouldn’t be very glorious. So instead he gave them a battle he knew they would never lose. He sucker punched them to make sure that they died feeling like they could have won if they had been fought fair. He also did his best to lose as few other units in doing so. In summary he did the best he could to give them a death they would be proud of without incurring any more costs than was needed.
Hasn't anyone considered that Games Workshop wanted to retcon the Rogue Trader moronic muscle head space marines into the noble astartes, and that the lore reflects this exactly, carried out by none other than the avatar of GW, the Emperor himself? It was an edition upgrade both in real life and in lore. Most meta meta ever.
I hate to say it, but it like what was meant to be the fate of the Astartes, is always in place. Malcador tells Horus before his fall, flatly. "The Imperium of Man is for Men, to be led by and ruled by Men, under the Emperor. It it's for you." Then Horus has a hissy fit and Malcador tells him "You prove my point." They were a means to an end.
I'm glad to have found another lore channel that does NOT have an AI generated voice. Images are fine but I'm sick of hearing David Attenborough's robot twin
Horus for all his faults, he must have leaned what it meant, the grand design. That everyone of them and their sons where to be extinguished in the end as they had no place in that era of peace.
Logistics was a much more pressing issue during the Unification Wars. If it wasn't a valid reason then, it wouldn't have been later on. There were plenty of battles he could have spent them on, like he did indiscriminately with everyone else. They were conspicuously insensitive to Chaos, witches, psykers and the Warp, maintaining their ability to function through situations that would have cause normal soldiers to become useless, as seen in Birth of the Imperium, The Outcast Dead and Dreams of Unity. They plowed through Warp users during the Unification Wars, what conditioning would have been necessary after that. And as I always have to point out when this issue arises, the Emperor could force the entire Word Bearers legion to kneel, but he had to ambush a handful of Thunder Warriors. The title of Primarch was not symbolic, it was based on merit. And again, the Imperium fields plenty of unmodified humans as well as abhumans in vastly larger numbers. Keeping people loyal is not a matter of genetics, it's a matter of leadership. Adaptability to diverse environments? Terra was virtually a death world, and this requirement didn't exist for any other forces than Astartes. The real reason could have been that they simply knew too much about Chaos after what they faced during the Unification Wars to risk the knowledge spreading.
I like how your accent makes "Thunder Warriors" sound like "Tender Warriors" to me! In my mind I keep picturing proto-Astartes with Care Bear symbols on their power armor!😂 That gives me an idea for a home-brew chapter that would make the Salamanders look downright heartless!
didn't see the video but off the top of my head, Id guess because the character of the emperor had just perfected the astartes slave soldiers and saw free willed gene warriors as a potential liability, so he came up with some half assed rationalization and murdered them all. because at the end of the day he's a complete and total monster.
Part of me has always wondered if the Emperor was simply ashamed of what he created with the Thunder Warriors and purged them to keep that secret from the rest of the galaxy. He would rather be seen as the lord of the perfect Custodes and noble Space Marines than the creator of the monstrous Thunder Warriors.
Honestly he could have just let them die out naturally . There was no reason to kill them he had already stopped making them . If they would have tried something crazy then he could righteously take them out
Dying out natural for most Thunder Warriors would have been very painful from the multiple different cancers, organ failures and genetic degeneration this was a mercy.
The Thunder Warriors rebelled and thats why he had to destroy them. We know that he originaly intended his sons, the Primarchs to lead humans into the stars. After Erda took them from him he conceived the plan to built the Astartes. With the Atartes there was no need to create new Thunder Warriors, he had a more stable fighting force. The Thunder Warriors where not happy about it and neither was Astarte, so they rebelled, each for their own reasons. Forcing the Emperor to kill them instead of letting them die off with time.
Many Thunder Warriors knew they would die, even if they survived they would have preferred to mean their end by the sword than anything else, dying in battle was the very last honor afforded to them,
The was that Horus Heresy book the had a couple of thunder warrior characters, i think one escaped, but they killed astartes pretty easy. Was cool reading that, wish they had more lore on the one that escaped
It was for the same reason Emps & Malcador had already concieved & engaged a long running plan to isolate & remove the Primarchs. It's better to remove a threat before it becomes one.
With the foresight of knowing about the Horus Heresy, if I was Big-E? I'd rather put the Thunder Warriors in some form of long-term storage/suspended animation, and deploy them on battlefields where Space Marines wouldn't be enough to deal with. The Dropsight Massacre of Istvaan V would have a different look to it if the Emperor gave the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Ravenguard some Thunder Warriors he kept on ice to throw at the Traitor Legions back then.
The Astartes would have met the same fate if the Emperor had reached his goals, a great culling has always been the prize for his best warriors. Duty only ends in death.
I think , in addition to all your excellent points, that it would have demoralized the Astartes Legions to have these brutal giants, who are superior warrior 1 on 1, amongst them.
Fun fact: The Thunder Warriors were based off of the Imperial Space Marines from rouge trader, they were recruited from the worst of the worst, turned into super soldiers to conquer all of Terra
I honestly think their killing is a symptom of lazy or at best conflicted writing. GW can't seem to decide if the Emperor is supposed to be truly benevolent deep down or if he's supposed to be fundamentally flawed and the writing seems to flip flop on it. Big E *does* have flaws, that's undeniable, he is not infallible, but this is something I don't think he'd do even if it were a mistake unless there were some fundamentally flawed part of him because there were *so many* other better options, which is why I think it's poor writing. If it were consistent and they really did want him to be flawed completely at heart then this would perhaps be a clever way to show it where his malice and 'need' for destruction through a misguided sense of 'purity' that shone through and made him make a poor decision because he basically couldn't 'help' it through hubris, it would be a clever way to hint that there were deep issues with him, but that would require his character to be written in a way that portrays this side of him being a consistent failing, whereas we see him often show genuine care and mercy especially when he is 'tested' to his deep down values, some of the time those flaws we see in him tend to be fairly surface level as though he only has them because he sort've 'forgot' to do the right thing with everything else he had going on and that underneath it all he does wish he'd done the right thing
Something tells me that the Thunder Warriors would have been a bit too much like the Orkz, a product of a far more savage time where most of them would just degrade if placed in the more different environment that would be the Imperium...
I’ve always kind of thought that it was as simple as a first impression. If you’re the leader of a planet subject to the Emperors crusade, are you more likely to turn your people over to the Ultramarines or the Thunder Warriors? I think the had to be the Big E’s calculus. Even though the thunder warriors were better to withstand Chaos, they were ultimately imperfect heralds of a new age of humanity.
And then, when the Emperor left on his crusade amongst the stars, the Lords of Terra allowed the few surviving Thunder warriors out of their hiding places, and set their best surgeons to work to diminish their flaws, clad them in bronze armour they honoured them, and allowed them to depart on a starship called Daedalos Krato. Within its hallowed confines they remain in stasis, and only one is awake at any time to act at the behest of the Lords of Terra should Old Earth need its defenders once more. The Lords gave him the Title of Moloch, the sacrifice, but the Thunder warriors call him Asterion, the Starlord, the one to realise the dream of their legions to once travel amongst the stars.
I feel like after time and more experience astartes would be better at 1v1. When they fought the thunder warriors they didn't have nearly as much battle experience as the thunder warriors.
Astartes and their primarchs, unlike Thunder Warriors, were not solely designed for combat. Like their primarchs, Astartes were also artisans, artists, and scholars. Dorn, Perturabo, Vulkan and Ferrus Manus were masters of artifice. Fulgrim was a charismatic diplomat, so was Horus. Magnus was supposed to become Astronomicon, taking his place on a complete, undamaged Golden Throne that would amplify his powers. The rest also had their intended uses, but most were corrupted and damaged by Erda's scattering. Lorgar was likely meant to sprwad Imperial Truth and educate people rather than be a religious fanatic.
Reason that the Horus Heresy happened in the first place had its genesis in this decision imo. Emperor did not need to betray the Thunder Warriors. Maybe it makes sense in a utilitarian sense, but it was one of many splinters injected into the Imperium by the Emperor. Without mercy or compassion, the Imperium became brittle, and fractured when some of the primarchs could not cope with it. Emperor got in the habit of making more and more secrets and it ended up biting him in the ass. The Emperor could have made some effort to help the Thunder Warriors, maybe put them in stasis to fix them later, or if not possible, give them one final battle somewhere else in the future. Or just pull the life support later, which functionally is the same but at least spares them the grief of betrayal.
The one reoccurring theme in the 40k setting that's drives me up the wall is the massive waste of resources based on almost nothing, oh what we have unconfirmed reports of a daemon incursion, EXTERMINATUS! I know that's key to the whole grim dark, but it reads more like wasteful stupidity. An Astarte are supposed to be basically war genius's and the God Emperor who made them all didn't foresee the giant Tyrranid hive fleets incoming. Be nice to have a few million thunder cannon fodder warriors to throw at that maybe.
I’m pretty sure the lore has mentioned that the Thunder Warriors were very unstable and suffered from things like cancer etc… Basically their bodies were failing them so their demise was inevitable anyway.
They weren’t able to take to the stars. That is the only reason, they were an incomplete creation. Meaning the very best were far superior and the very worse were far inferior. Averaging out to a better fighter but not able to live long enough or control their emotions on average.
To the emperor this massacre was just switching a tool. He laid down the hammer he used to hammer together terra and picked up the screwdriver needed to screw together the loose parts of the former human colonies. He is not an overly caring god.
It would be really cool to see a company or even platoon of thunder warriors show up from nowhere, turn to the astartes and give the gladiator salute, we who are about to die. For the emporer,, and rip into a horde of chaos to go out in a blaze of loyal glory
The Thunder Warriors gave the Emperor Terra. The Unification Wars were terrible. Its kind of intensity not seen untill Horus Lupercal actually laid siege again to the throneworld. The Thunderwarriors gave themselves body and soul so Terra could see the dream of unity achieved under the Raptoris Imperialis. These men were the ones who more then any other pulled Terra from the deep dark nightmare Old Night had left it in. Once they had achieved their objective and Terra belonged to the Emperor their succesors, the Adeptus Astartes were allready in development. The end these warriors got was undeserved. Instead of being herded together like cattle on Mount Arrarat to be slaughtered they should be told truthfuly by the Emperor that their design was imperfect. That they should be put in Stasis, resting on Terra, the planet they conquered for Him with one singular objective. If Terra ever was threatened again, by anyone they should then be unleashed. A contingency of thousands of veteran warriors who could then earn the death in defence of the Unity they fought so hard to achieve. They would have died in the Siege of Terra, guaranteeing them a place in Imperial History greater even then the Old One-Hundred of the Imperial Army. Instead they have been used as target practise by the Emperor to see if the Astartes and his Custodes were as capable as he thought them to be. They deserved better, its a theme you find in Imperial history again and again. Angron deserved better. Perturabo deserved better and many many more deserved better. But above them all, the Thunder Legions who conquered Terra, Deserved better most.
So they were executed because of their susceptibility to chaos. Thank god the primarchs and adeptus astartes are immune to chaos. Could you imagine if someone as powerful as horus or angron were corrupted.
