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I've been deep diving and finding as much lore as I can on Thunder Warriors in preparation for a Thunder Warriors army I'm making and it's got me curious. I know many of the individuals too old to become full Astartes would undergo gene and biochemical enhancements which sounds very similar to how Thunder Warriors are described (just probably with more stability in mind). And since Thunder Warriors don't have the limitations of Gene Seed that Astartes have I can't think of a reason why there couldn't have plausibly been female Thunder Warriors? Anyone have any more lore on the idea?

Possible, yes.
Likely, no.

Who knows. All of it is technobabble nonsense so unless you have a direct quote from GW saying they did or did not exist there's no way to extrapolate from other fluff.

I don't think there's any canon source saying that there can't be. So unless you can find a source that does so, go wild.

(And if someone provides such a source, go wild anyway. It's your hobby. Do what you think is cool.)

I think it'd be cool. I'm against FSM but female Thunder Warriors might be neat.

Not trying to open a can of worms, but could female custodes be a thing? They don't use genseed, do they? The process for their creation is about as different from astartes as astartes are from thunder warriors?

When the whole point is to make a bigger/faster/stronger human, why would you start with a female body? Men are taller and have more muscle mass, so just from a practicality and usefulness standpoint, I don't see why they would have done it. When the USMC allowed women to join combat units, they had to reduce PT standards for those units several times so that women could pass the standards to actually join the units. It's done out of a sense of fairness due to social pressures, not to make the most effective fighting force humanly possible. I don't think the emperor has the same social pressures, or would even care if someone told him it was somehow sexist to make bigger/faster/stronger super soldiers only from men.

Toofast wrote:
When the whole point is to make a bigger/faster/stronger human, why would you start with a female body?

Because the whole point of power armor is that none of those things are relevant. You use women because if a woman has better combat skills she will be a better soldier. The argument against female soldiers applies far more to guardsmen than to marines.

(And because the result of marine enhancements is something that is no longer human, so there's no reason to believe that starting from a male base gives any different results than starting from a female base.)

I have neither interest in nor objections to female Thunder Warriors, Custodes or Marines...

But while we're talking Uberfrau, my dream is an Age of Apostasy historical collection with the six Founding Saints of the Adepta Sororitas- the original Daughters of the Emperor who took Vandire's head.

You'd have to have models for Vandire and Thor too, but they're boys, so they're even further off topic than the Founding Saints.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Toofast wrote:
When the whole point is to make a bigger/faster/stronger human, why would you start with a female body?

Because the whole point of power armor is that none of those things are relevant. You use women because if a woman has better combat skills she will be a better soldier. The argument against female soldiers applies far more to guardsmen than to marines.

(And because the result of marine enhancements is something that is no longer human, so there's no reason to believe that starting from a male base gives any different results than starting from a female base.)

What Owl said. When the creation process involves transforming musculature to be superhuman and then stuffing the recruit into an Iron Man suit, their pre-transformation ability to win an arm-wrestling contest probably isn't terribly relevant.

Plus, regardless of averages, there are some women who are just really big/fast/strong out there. So if you're trying to make the argument that a potential thunder warrior would need to be able to do a certain number of chinups, the selection wouldn't automatically exclude all women. (Or girls, assuming that Thunder Warriors get recruited as teens the way marines do.) And given that we're talking about magical space science, there isn't really any reason the process would exclude 50% of its potential recruitment pool other than the authors deciding to shove such a limitation in.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Not trying to open a can of worms, but could female custodes be a thing? They don't use genseed, do they? The process for their creation is about as different from astartes as astartes are from thunder warriors?

Right, but the emperor clearly wanted a gaggle of submissive male musclehunks around him at all times. I think he thought that women would have killed the vibe.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

What Owl said. When the creation process involves transforming musculature to be superhuman and then stuffing the recruit into an Iron Man suit, their pre-transformation ability to win an arm-wrestling contest probably isn't terribly relevant.

Plus, regardless of averages, there are some women who are just really big/fast/strong out there. So if you're trying to make the argument that a potential thunder warrior would need to be able to do a certain number of chinups, the selection wouldn't automatically exclude all women. (Or girls, assuming that Thunder Warriors get recruited as teens the way marines do.) And given that we're talking about magical space science, there isn't really any reason the process would exclude 50% of its potential recruitment pool other than the authors deciding to shove such a limitation in.

I seem to remember the Thunder Warrior process was something that could be performed on adult humans.

There probably was, but the alterations to their bodies would have probably made it almost indistinguishable to know who was man/woman.

I imagine it more of a "get this body to this end result".

Trouble here is we don’t know an awful lot about the Thunder Warrior and the process of turning a human into one.

However. We can look to House Goliath, which may have their genhanced origins in a similar technology.

They have three sources of new bodies. Vatborn (test tubes and rapid maturation to adult size) Natborn (babies!) and Unborn (regular humans altered, including physically adding new muscle mass).

Thunder Warriors appear closest to Unborn, as they too are definitely the result of a human conversion process. And House Goliath for one aren’t all male. They were intended to be sterile, but uhhhh, nature found a way.

So we can make limited inferences from that. If, and it’s such a big if were it a but it’d be of such proportions Sir Mix-A-Lot might say “steady on, La!”, House Goliath are indeed derived from the same base technology as Thunder Warriors? Then yes. Female Thunder Warriors are absolutely possible.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Toofast wrote:
When the whole point is to make a bigger/faster/stronger human, why would you start with a female body?

Because the whole point of power armor is that none of those things are relevant. You use women because if a woman has better combat skills she will be a better soldier. The argument against female soldiers applies far more to guardsmen than to marines.

(And because the result of marine enhancements is something that is no longer human, so there's no reason to believe that starting from a male base gives any different results than starting from a female base.)

What Owl said. When the creation process involves transforming musculature to be superhuman and then stuffing the recruit into an Iron Man suit, their pre-transformation ability to win an arm-wrestling contest probably isn't terribly relevant.

Plus, regardless of averages, there are some women who are just really big/fast/strong out there. So if you're trying to make the argument that a potential thunder warrior would need to be able to do a certain number of chinups, the selection wouldn't automatically exclude all women. (Or girls, assuming that Thunder Warriors get recruited as teens the way marines do.) And given that we're talking about magical space science, there isn't really any reason the process would exclude 50% of its potential recruitment pool other than the authors deciding to shove such a limitation in.

For Space Marines specifically, they also start very early in puberty (age 10-12) before sex differences have much effect, and the earliest implants thoroughly alter the hormones of the aspirant. The ossmodular and biscopea increase skeletal size and density and increase muscle mass respectively. They go into pre-teen boys, not adult men.

As mentioned though Thunder Warriors may be created from adult humans.

 Haighus wrote:

For Space Marines specifically, they also start very early in puberty (age 10-12) before sex differences have much effect, and the earliest implants thoroughly alter the hormones of the aspirant. The ossmodular and biscopea increase skeletal size and density and increase muscle mass respectively. They go into pre-teen boys, not adult men.

As mentioned though Thunder Warriors may be created from adult humans.

10-12 is the "ideal" starting age for implants 2-3, but it can go a bit later (with increased chance of complications). There are significant sex differences in boys and girls before puberty, as well.

Wyldhunt wrote:I don't think there's any canon source saying that there can't be. So unless you can find a source that does so, go wild.

(And if someone provides such a source, go wild anyway. It's your hobby. Do what you think is cool.)

Oh don't get me wrong I really have no intention of making any female Thunder Warriors, the whole thought came up when I was looking for 3rd party bits and found some Thunder Warrior heads that included a few females so it posed a interesting lore question

Wyldhunt wrote:Not trying to open a can of worms, but could female custodes be a thing? They don't use genseed, do they? The process for their creation is about as different from astartes as astartes are from thunder warriors?

Personally I think it's something that could be technically possible, makes me curious as to what the Custodes selection process involves

SeanDavid1991 wrote:There probably was, but the alterations to their bodies would have probably made it almost indistinguishable to know who was man/woman.

I imagine it more of a "get this body to this end result".

I think this is a good rational, depending on how premeditated the Emperors plans were for the Thunder Warriors (created them knowing he'd destroy them) it would make sense that he wouldn't deny himself the valuable resource of a good warrior based solely on their sex especially when he would be enhancing them and then discarding them all the same

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Trouble here is we don’t know an awful lot about the Thunder Warrior and the process of turning a human into one.

However. We can look to House Goliath, which may have their genhanced origins in a similar technology.

They have three sources of new bodies. Vatborn (test tubes and rapid maturation to adult size) Natborn (babies!) and Unborn (regular humans altered, including physically adding new muscle mass).

Thunder Warriors appear closest to Unborn, as they too are definitely the result of a human conversion process. And House Goliath for one aren’t all male. They were intended to be sterile, but uhhhh, nature found a way.

So we can make limited inferences from that. If, and it’s such a big if were it a but it’d be of such proportions Sir Mix-A-Lot might say “steady on, La!”, House Goliath are indeed derived from the same base technology as Thunder Warriors? Then yes. Female Thunder Warriors are absolutely possible.

This also brings up the interesting question of if Thunder Warriors are sterile, it would absolutely make sense that they are given the degradation they went through. I believe in the Valdor novel he describes part of the creation process for Thunder Warriors as including Somatic gene therapy and muscle grafting.

Sterile or not (whether that was a design feature or not)? The process involved may not have caused such a change in DNA that it could, wholly or partially, be passed on to offspring.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:

This also brings up the interesting question of if Thunder Warriors are sterile, it would absolutely make sense that they are given the degradation they went through. I believe in the Valdor novel he describes part of the creation process for Thunder Warriors as including Somatic gene therapy and muscle grafting.

"Somatic gene therapy" implies that it couldn't be passed on to the next generation, as somatic cells are those which do not become eggs and sperm.

I’m now wondering if keeping Thunder Warriors capable of baby making might’ve been an advantage.

As Hecaton said the genhancements likely wouldn’t carry over. But….if your Thunder Warriors were “the best of the best”, and relatively hale and healthy amongst the dregs of mankind living on a horrifically polluted Terra? Careful (non-familial) breeding would, at least in theory, generate a better and better crop of base materials to work with?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m now wondering if keeping Thunder Warriors capable of baby making might’ve been an advantage.

As Hecaton said the genhancements likely wouldn’t carry over. But….if your Thunder Warriors were “the best of the best”, and relatively hale and healthy amongst the dregs of mankind living on a horrifically polluted Terra? Careful (non-familial) breeding would, at least in theory, generate a better and better crop of base materials to work with?

Its mentioned in HH rulebooks that a large part of the Emperors initial gene-research and development was aimed at "stablising" the heavily mutated genes of the terran humans and returning it to its "pure" form to create something he could then work on for proper enhancements in what evolved into the Astartes project. the thunder warriors were a seperate endevour to his efforts to create "real humans"

Not trying to open a can of worms, but could female custodes be a thing? They don't use genseed, do they? The process for their creation is about as different from astartes as astartes are from thunder warriors?

so, the descriptions of the custodes enhancement process make it sound like its a MUCH more foundational change to the subject, a full on DNA level rebuild of them, as opposed to the "take a human and add extra organs" approach of the Astartes. The 8th edition codex mentions they are all boys, but its also that they are taken much younger than astartes, and Its explicitly mentioned that custodes are so physically and mentally unalike the humans they come form, its impossible for people work out who they were before, even though the applicants are all well known children of Terran nobility.

in short, canonically, no, their can't be female custodes, BUT the lore argument against it is significantly more flimsy than the space marine one, resting as it does on a single, passing comment about the gender of the applicants, as opposed to the explicit "this doesnt work on girls" statement for marines (as stupid as that may or may not be).

it could just be that since everyone who graduates form custodian training appears male, people assume they all start male, but its just as likely that custodian genetic alchemy just turns everyone into "men", given the level of modification being done.

or the Emperor has deep seated issues with females and actively rejects half of his potential recruiting pool, IDK.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
or the Emperor has deep seated issues with females and actively rejects half of his potential recruiting pool, IDK.

Well, nearly all of the organizers of the Palace Coup were female...

Hecaton wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

For Space Marines specifically, they also start very early in puberty (age 10-12) before sex differences have much effect, and the earliest implants thoroughly alter the hormones of the aspirant. The ossmodular and biscopea increase skeletal size and density and increase muscle mass respectively. They go into pre-teen boys, not adult men.

As mentioned though Thunder Warriors may be created from adult humans.

10-12 is the "ideal" starting age for implants 2-3, but it can go a bit later (with increased chance of complications). There are significant sex differences in boys and girls before puberty, as well.

Significant in the sense that there are measurable differences on average, but they are far more slight than the differences after puberty and have much greater overlap in range than later on. Marines typically do not recruit peak physical condition athletes*, but malnourished survivors from horrible places like underhives or feral worlds. The sex differences between 10 year olds in that group are going to be unimportant compared to their other attributes, and the process of implanting geneseed seems to largely override the actual potential of the person with their new Marine potential. Blood Angels are the best example- they don't seem to have suffered for choosing a sickly, irradiated population as their recruitment source. Blood Angels don't appear to be physically inferior to, say, Flesh Tearers just because they recruit on Baal and not Cretacia.

GW made a choice (twice) with Marine lore and we are stuck with that, but that doesn't mean their lore justification is great. Honestly, it would work better if the justification is simply that the Emperor is a gakhole (as we already know he is).


*Except the Ultramarines.


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But we don't know nearly enough about how Thunder Warriors are created. They could benefit much more from a stronger initial stock as they are apparently created from adults.


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xerxeskingofking wrote:

Not trying to open a can of worms, but could female custodes be a thing? They don't use genseed, do they? The process for their creation is about as different from astartes as astartes are from thunder warriors?

so, the descriptions of the custodes enhancement process make it sound like its a MUCH more foundational change to the subject, a full on DNA level rebuild of them, as opposed to the "take a human and add extra organs" approach of the Astartes. The 8th edition codex mentions they are all boys, but its also that they are taken much younger than astartes, and Its explicitly mentioned that custodes are so physically and mentally unalike the humans they come form, its impossible for people work out who they were before, even though the applicants are all well known children of Terran nobility.

in short, canonically, no, their can't be female custodes, BUT the lore argument against it is significantly more flimsy than the space marine one, resting as it does on a single, passing comment about the gender of the applicants, as opposed to the explicit "this doesnt work on girls" statement for marines (as stupid as that may or may not be).

it could just be that since everyone who graduates form custodian training appears male, people assume they all start male, but its just as likely that custodian genetic alchemy just turns everyone into "men", given the level of modification being done.

or the Emperor has deep seated issues with females and actively rejects half of his potential recruiting pool, IDK.

It is also possible, if they are rewritten at a DNA level, that they are neither male nor female after the process and have an artificial sex of... custodes I suppose. That doesn't comment on the original sex of the stock, but it is interesting to consider that the Emperor may tamper with the sex chromosomes too.

The description on gender later could be, as you say, an assumption.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
so there's no reason to believe that starting from a male base gives any different results than starting from a female base.)

Except for the fact that larger humans turn into larger space marines. Turning someone into a space marine doesn't automatically make them 8ft tall, it just adds a certain amount to their height. That's why all SM aren't identical sizes. Men are bigger, faster and stronger than women. If you want the biggest, fastest, strongest super soldier possible, you're going to start with 6ft+ athletic males.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:


Plus, regardless of averages, there are some women who are just really big/fast/strong out there.

Those big/fast/strong women are still very weak compared to the average man. The US Army had to heavily reduce the PT standards once they started giving the same test to men and women. 84% of women were failing compared to less than 30% of men. The USMC had to lower PT standards for combat units multiple times because no woman in the entire USMC could pass the old test that was given only to men.

Toofast wrote:
Except for the fact that larger humans turn into larger space marines. Turning someone into a space marine doesn't automatically make them 8ft tall, it just adds a certain amount to their height. That's why all SM aren't identical sizes. Men are bigger, faster and stronger than women. If you want the biggest, fastest, strongest super soldier possible, you're going to start with 6ft+ athletic males.

Except you don't, as space marine transition starts before you are either a man, or 6ft tall.

In fact, if you want tall space marines you would actually want to use girls as they typically start puberty sooner, which means they will on average be taller when you start their transition to space marine.

Hormones dictate how puberty goes, and hormones can be controlled using medical science. The only "advantage" that men have is producing more "masculine" hormones naturally during puberty. Which is negligible as space marines are being juiced to the gills on so much alien steroids that the natural baseline is basically meaningless.

Yeah, Ultramarines might be using top-of-the-class athletes from the academies, but most Marine chapters recruit from horrible places that will not be good for optimising growth. Marine trials are often as much about survival skills, luck, and determination as they are about physical ability.

I doubt the irradiated children from Baal are 6ft athletes, or the underhive scum from Necromunda, or the technobarbarians of Medusa.

Indeed. Space Marines are never described as super-human, but post human.

The organs involved? Produce hormones. Lots and lots and lots of hormones. So whatever your body would end up like if you remained merely human quickly becomes irrelevant. Bone growth, bone density, muscle mass. All far, far more than a standard human.

This suggests it’s not merely “women are on average less likely to be buff” behind no-female Astartes. Rather being derived, as were the Primarchs themselves, from the Emperor’s own genome and biology, it was simply easier to key it all to males.

As I always like to remind people? We’ve no idea what The Emperor’s true end game was with the Primarch project. All we know is 20 were created before being scattered and the information involved in their creation was sabotaged. The resulting Firstborn Astartes were a salvage job based on what was still held.

This means it’s entirely possible the first 20 were a limited batch to test the outcome at that stage. See if the mix was about right. Had they not been abducted, perhaps The Emperor might’ve done away with them as imperfect and gone with a new iteration. Certainly we know he had zero compunction about ditching his own creations entirely when it suited him.

Given how dramatic the conversion process is? Why would you ever, entirely voluntarily, limit your pool of potential recruits to around 50% of the available population?

As such, any claim there was never some sort of plan to genhance female recruits into Astartes is a spectacular failure to read the implications of the background.

Those big/fast/strong women are still very weak compared to the average man.

Humans have one of the lowest sexual dimorphism rates in primates. If Emps wanted to get the best results he should have made gorilla marines instead.

If you want the biggest, fastest, strongest super soldier possible, you're going to start with 6ft+ athletic males.

I guess almost no one in the Imperium wants the best super soldiers, I recall Blood Angels famously start with radiation-riddled people of Baal. On a technical level, the first implants need to be added between 10 and 12 years and you get a full marine at around 16 years, so before the end of natural puberty anyway.

Angronsrosycheeks wrote:
If Emps wanted to get the best results he should have made gorilla marines instead.

That's a Thunder Warrior.

 Haighus wrote:

Significant in the sense that there are measurable differences on average, but they are far more slight than the differences after puberty and have much greater overlap in range than later on. Marines typically do not recruit peak physical condition athletes*, but malnourished survivors from horrible places like underhives or feral worlds. The sex differences between 10 year olds in that group are going to be unimportant compared to their other attributes, and the process of implanting geneseed seems to largely override the actual potential of the person with their new Marine potential. Blood Angels are the best example- they don't seem to have suffered for choosing a sickly, irradiated population as their recruitment source. Blood Angels don't appear to be physically inferior to, say, Flesh Tearers just because they recruit on Baal and not Cretacia.

Won't speak to underhives, but feral worlders are likely hunter-gatherers and thus the ones who survive are likely not actually malnourished; hunter-gatherers have high mortality rates but are taller than agricultural humans and every member of their society has a physique we would consider "athletic" today. As far as the Blood Angels go, it specifically *helps* them for their aspirants' genetics to be a bit... screwy. The Corpse Eaters were known to have problems when they weren't recruited from divergent stock.

 Haighus wrote:

GW made a choice (twice) with Marine lore and we are stuck with that, but that doesn't mean their lore justification is great. Honestly, it would work better if the justification is simply that the Emperor is a gakhole (as we already know he is).

I think you're misinterpreting things.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Toofast wrote:
When the whole point is to make a bigger/faster/stronger human, why would you start with a female body?

And given that we're talking about magical space science, there isn't really any reason the process would exclude 50% of its potential recruitment pool other than the authors deciding to shove such a limitation in.

No doubt theres probably a few females out there if equally trained and equipped, could beat up a dude, but you dont double your research costs, for probably a less than, being generous, than a 1% of 2% return. When your testing and recruitment already has very low rates of success.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Because the whole point of power armor is that none of those things are relevant.

Power armour, isnt just a whoever you put in it, it works the same. It amplifies their strength. Its more of a, if you can only lift a wheel barrow, you can now lift 2. But if you can drag a car, you might be able to drag a bus kinda thing. They still work just as hard inside the shell.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

And because the result of marine enhancements is something that is no longer human, so there's no reason to believe that starting from a male base gives any different results than starting from a female base.)

Just spit balling. Maybe Emps tried. Apart from ease of use with males, The Ossmodula, could give females a pregnant type body., Haemastamen might have problems every month. Progenoids disposes of material every month, not store it. Most enhancements seem to work in combination with the base. Enhances male aggression, bulk.
Could the emp have figured out the problems, probably. But then you go back to point 1. Cost and time.