They ask me how the Imperium began. It did not begin with a prayer, nor with a proclamation. It began with a culling.
Terra Under the Warlords of Old Night
After the dreary, lightless centuries of Old Night, Terra was a carcass being eaten by a hundred mouths. Warlords and archpriestesses, magician-kings and clan chiefs fought over the harrowed territory of a broken world — techno-barbarian dynasts, gene-septs, despots and pan-continental tyrants beyond counting. I have read the ledgers. There were hundreds of them, and every one believed the cradle of mankind was his by right.
Then He set His hand upon the world, and the Wars of Unification began.
The Thunder Warriors — the First Super-Soldiers
He did not fight the warlords with mortal soldiers. He raised the Thunder Warriors — genetically enhanced giants, crude things by the measure of what came after, but the first of the proto-Astartes — and they crushed resistance wherever they faced it. I watched their banners come over the ridge of a burning hive and I tell you truly: nothing of Old Earth could stand against them.
The Price of Unity
The smartest of the tyrants read the wind, offered terms, and were embraced. The rest were quelled or crushed. And even when Unity was declared — declared, mark you, at the moment no power on Terra could hope to vanquish the Imperial machine — the holdouts lingered for decades yet, conniving their way around treaties and rapprochements, dreaming their small dreams of independence. Unity was not an event. It was a labour, and it was paid for in blood.
As for the Thunder Warriors — He knew they could never follow Him to the stars. They were passing tools; blades that grow blunt and are cast aside. A new army would be needed for the Great Crusade to come, an army as superior to the Thunder Warriors as the Thunder Warriors were to mortal men.
You know that army. The galaxy knows it still.
Thus ended the Age of Strife on Terra, and thus began everything else. Remember, when they tell you the Imperium was founded on hope: I was there. It was founded on Unity — and Unity was a war.
Questions from the Archive
What were the Unification Wars?
The Unification Wars were the campaigns in which the Emperor conquered and united Terra at the end of the Age of Strife, crushing the techno-barbarian warlords who had carved up mankind’s homeworld between them.
Who were the Thunder Warriors?
The Thunder Warriors were genetically enhanced super-soldiers created by the Emperor for the Unification Wars — the crude forerunners of the Space Marines — and they crushed all resistance on Terra wherever they faced it.
What happened to the Thunder Warriors after Unity?
They never joined the Great Crusade. The Emperor knew they were passing tools — blades that would grow blunt and be cast aside — and a new, superior army took their place among the stars: the Space Marine Legions.