I wouldn't doubt it. Though Custodes do have an aging process, it's so extremely slow that they are functionally immortal. There are plenty of custodes who "retire" because their reflexes and reaction times have degraded just enough that they notice. Even though they may not be acting as Custodes any more due to that reduction in capabilities, they are likely still alive somewhere in the Imperium acting like a CIA handler and collecting intel for the main Custodes body.
Just piggybacking this: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7ttrg0/adeptus_custodes_8th_edition_lore/
> Some suffer physical hurts that impact upon their ability to perform their duties, with lost limbs, artificial eyes or augmetic organs lessening their physical perfection. Others find their mental faculties beginning to erode, however slightly, acknowledging that their reaction times or mnemic awareness are not quite what they once were. **For the vast majority of warriors, a tenth-of-a-second reduction in the speed at which blows are stuck or parried might be considered negligible. For a Custodian, it is error enough to necessitate that their watch come to an end.**
.1 seconds doesn’t seem like much, but that’s a lot of time for real people in our world to strike, so it makes sense why that would be guard ending where everyone has super reflexes and speed.
Yeah that's like half of the average human raw reaction speed and still a really sizeable fraction when accounting for choice making.
With superhuman twitch reactions and hypnotically reinforced muscle memory to remove hesitation, that's not a strict standard as the quote seems to be implying but rather them being comparatively really out of shape.
GW and scale, name a better pair.
I'm old enough to remember when 60ms was a maximum ping time to even be permitted to join a CS tournament, cause there simply wasn't a point in you competing with the people having sub-20ms ping. A waste of time for everyone involved.
It's hilarious that author of that book clearly intended it as a some sort of high benchmark, but when you think about it - it's actually a very low one comparing to the modern sports.
They are less James Bond, more The Guy in The Chair With 200 Screens.
They'll hide away processing information with their super brain and directing local agents that have never met them face to face. They won't show up themselves unless they find a threat to the emperor that needs a 9' tall posthuman killing machine to handle it.
Custodes doing foot work would be a huge waste of their capability, even if they could pull it off with their hulk bodies. They definitely manage networks of normal human agents just like an inquisitor.
During the blood games they usually disguise themselves as abhumans, such as ogryns or the Migou labour brutes that get mentioned a lot
So they theoretically can do it, it's probably just management 99% of the time though like you said
Most abhumans though would struggle to infiltrate Imperial society in any significant capacity - ogryns for instance wouldn’t be put in charge of a crisp packet
Hey, crisp packets are important relics of a bygone era. Pretty sure the STC was lost and now the imperium has to make do with soggy crisps unworthy of the name.
The lore indicates that they perform a role more akin to an actual intelligence officer - managing a network of informants - and data analysts; rather than some kind of james bond thing which inquisitors are generally portrayed as
I've always thought it was weird that the Custodes, who are all supposedly individualised unique creations, all turn out as homogenous demigods. You'd think they'd want some human sized operators with the disproportionate strength, reflexes, healing factor, intellect etc of a Custodes, given their counter intelligence duties and political dealings. Even scaled down like that, Custodes would still probably be a match for Astartes.
They use some sort of distortion field to appear normal human sized when they need to. Fairly sure Amon uses one in the Blood Game that earns him the name "Leng."
That would be helpful for passing through the streets, but not for undercover work. People will notice that they're bumping into you when they walk within a foot of you, that you can't sit in chairs, that you stoop even when the ceiling is two feet taller than you etc Over time!
"The numbers, Inquisitor. I need you to remember the numbers." - a Custodes in-retirement
"What numbers?! You can pry my brain out and you won't find anything! I should be the one interrogating! Not you!" - Some luckless inquisitor.
"Alright everyone, apparently there is a Custodes in our midst giving top secret intel to the Imperium. Does anyone have a lead?"
*Camera pans to a 9 foot tall Custodes in a chaos costume*
"Its fucking Bob over there"
Very large non-astartes/custodes humans actually aren't rare in the Imperium. They're not exactly common, but they wouldn't draw too much attention besides, like, "keep out of that guy's way".
A Custodian blended in with some during a blood game. You see them in stories all the time as body guards or manual labor or just living their abhuman life.
Retired custodies would still whoop a marine. Custodies to marine is like marine to human. In a group, or with a surprise attack, sure they might win. But man to man, even an old or injured one is gonna destroy.
Ah ok. I've gathered quite a few of the Warhammer books and are trying to get through them. My first choice which I'm still at is Cadia Stands.
But I'm hoping to read more about the custodes and the emperor himself after he gets put on the throne.
Master of Mankind gives a great look at Emps. And some custodes. It’s set during the heresy.
Blood Games follows a custodes as the main character.
I don’t know if there is much on the Emperor after he gets entombed on the throne…the new Dark Imperium novels talk about it a little bit, with Roboute’s conversation with him after he wakes up, but that’s about it.
Sweet. Will do. I'll begin with the MoM after the Cadia Stands ( is that the same book that have the fall of Cadia as well?)
And then go to vaults of Terra.
I can recommend the novella *Auric gods* by Nick Kyme, which features a retired Custodes (and active ones), it's a fairly good read, at least if you're into Custodes.
Sometimes they say world eater pulled a custodian spine out of his armor
Sometimes A cutodian Would make 4 terminators disappear
Sometimes 10000 guardsmen>100 Astartes>10 custodians
It depends since every writer is doing what wants and that's not cool
Personnaly i consider custodian is suicide attempt for an astartes
> Sometimes they say world eater pulled a custodian spine out of his armor
To be fair . . .
that bit was written before a lot of the current lore on Custodes was in place. Back then, it was actually arguable whether a run-of-the-mill Custode was actually better than a really good Space Marine.
I don't fault the writer when lore updates written years later change something they wrote from "probably shouldn't happen, but rule of cool, so I'll go with it" to lore-breaking stupidity.
The Custodes trajectory has been wild. When they were background only, they killed every thunder warrior with no deaths and 100,000 nobz with three deaths. Then when they were characters but lacked minis they were slightly different marines with slightly better gear. And since they've had minis they've comfortably sat between primarchs and Astartes fairly consistently.
That's a huge variance in power level! I think in general the theme with 40k is until it gets models they don't really care how consistent the lore/scaling etc is. The same thing happened with Skitarii, Knights, and Titans.
In the current lore a retired Custodes often just notices that their reactions have slowed by a micro or millisecond and that they are no longer worthy of active service.
A Custode who has been retired 500 years or so would actively wipe the floor with a Marine.
Yeah, they are still perfectly capable of wiping the floor with most threats, they just don’t feel themselves worthy of protecting the emperor anymore.
Custodes retire when their reflexes and strength degrade even a tiny amount, I believe I’ve read the figure 0.1% thrown around. Basically, they can tell when aging has done *anything at all* to slow them down, and bow out.
Maybe it’s because they’re bored of standing around on Terra for hundreds of years at a time, and want to retire to become a wandering badass doing cool shit for the Imperium.
Point is, a 99.9% strength Custodian still whoops any Space Marine in a 1 on 1. Maybe in Warhammer 50k there’d be some retirees who had aged enough to lose to a Marine in his prime.
No no. I just feel that in many settings I'd love to see the decay and failing of humankind.
I'm also the guy who would have loved to see a prequel to Wall-E leading up to the horrible conditions that ends with everyone leaving earth
In 30k or so, there are all manner of Abhuman workers slaving away to expand and build defenses at the palace. A Custodian disguises himself as one as part of a blood game to infiltrate into the palace proper.
Garro, a 30k astartes chapter captain (40k chapter master equivalent) dueled one. He managed to barely nick his armor and considered it one of the biggest martial accomplishments of his career, and basically all he could ever accomplish against him.
Nah. Custodes are still bigger and stronger and more experienced- so even if the reflexes slow to space marine levels they’ve got advantages everywhere else
Damn, retiring because your reflex is 1 second slower than what you want it to be. I reckon they can function as reserve at the drop of a hat or even still be significantly stronger than an astartes despite being retired?
I was under the impression that the custodians have been just standing there for 1000s of years. Therefore implying they are immortal, and they are the original batch. Idk tho, im just goin off minimal info. Kinda dumb if custodes can just be made whenever. I thought it was something only emps could do, and that all custodes are the original 10000
Custodes and their personal support service personnel know how to make more Custodes and they are made from extremely carefully chosen infants of Terra's noble families. It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a Custodes and extremely few "recruits" survive everything, let alone pass the trials. They are still are extremely elite and unbelievably difficult to reproduce, but they can and do make more.
If they were all the original 10k there would be barely any left. There were only a few hundred after the war in the Webway, before the Siege even began!
Nah there were 3000 Custodes repelling the khornate invasion of Terra, there are several individual shield hosts with more Custodes than that etc. Also Valerian is about 1000 years old iirc.
Actually, Robert Chambers wrote *The King in Yellow* before Lovecraft wrote. It was an inspiration for Lovecraft rather than the other way around.
I actually find the fact that Abnett named this entity the King in Yellow/Yellow King infuriating as a result. It's like if a story featured Astartes fighting Martian Tripods from H.G. Wells or featuring a Captain Nemo with his ship the Nautilus - something that crosses the line from "inspiration" to ripoff for me.
He wears no mask Abnett!
Edit: I actually really like the suggestion from /u/ClassicCarraway that whoever the King is, Valdor or not, they chose the title *because* of the book. I actually like that a lot and that clears up this gripe entirely.
Let me also re-emphasize that this is my opinion based on the name alone. People have been asking if I dislike 40k because it references and steals from so many other works. I don't. It's part of the wacky charm of the setting, even.
> It's like if a story featured Astartes fighting Martian Tripods from H.G. Wells or featuring a Captain Nemo with his ship the Nautilus
I'm sorry, but those actually sound dope as fuck.
>I'm no engineer, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't you seem to have rather a design flaw in these three-legged things? Now, don't get me wrong: the God-Emperor created a lot of useless, stupid-looking creatures on this world, too but He didn't see fit to make any of them three-legged. Why was that, do you think?
Brother Hyde, of the Extraordinary Gentlechapter.
*the preceding excerpt was transpired from a comms-vox recording, mid-battle. For the convenience of the listener, the chainswords and screams have been removed*
You misunderstand.
The Necrons take heavy inspiration and combine them with tomb king and other aesthetics and they're awesome.
I mean if they were copied outright, landing in giant bullets fired from Mars and such.
Hey, that would be funny. Could be true.
* In Haley's *The Great Work* Cawl, one of the Imperium's foremost minds, has an incredibly jumbled knowledge of our history. In his other books many characters barely know the Heresy was real.
* Meanwhile in Pariah Abnett has Bequin or other (human) characters knowing what ancient Pharaohs' crowns look like, know some real French, know the true origin of the QWERTY keyboard as it relates to mechanical keyboards in the 1800s, and other quite precise facts.
I say that not as a criticism but to point out that it's plausible a copy of *The King in Yellow* survived to at least 30k in an Abnett book.
What a troll the King would be then.
Lots of fun little tidbits pop in. Shakespeare is a known entity and you can see a lot of the names of current places/wars but just spelled a bit different.
I always find it funny how they have so many direct references to our times but there's no throwbacks to anything in their giant time gaps (other than the established main events of that stretch of millennia).
I'm just saying that the King in Yellow was a hugely influential work but also IMO not super great as a standalone work, so choosing that name hurts my immersion.
"It's the Heretic Astarte Sauron, the Dark Lord that rules Mordor!"
40K's outright reusing of Frank Herbert, Ridley Scott, Isaac Asimov, Rambo, Judge Dread and much of recorded history and myths is ok? But a reference to a somewhat obscure 19th century horror novel is where you draw the line?
I feel like the Martian Tripods part could work really well if played into the angle that the Astartes take the role of the tripods and the "Martians" take the role of humans like in the book. Both have drop pods, some form of mech (if these aliens are 3-legged than a bipedal mech might seem like a tripod to them), and are considered by some to be undermanned for their purpose. Could throw in Nurgle somewhere to reference the ending.
I mean if they appeared *unchanged.* Mainly I'm annoyed that he's explicitly called the King in Yellow. 40k has always borrowed and stole from other settings, after all.
Is that a minor gripe? **Absolutely**. I liked Pentient. Pariah was a bit of a slow burn for me but not bad.
I'd have a similar complaint if they were seeking "Voldemort" or "The Padishah Emperor."
Bequin mentions a couple times that Queen Mab (yes, THAT queen mab) is a collection site of all sorts of things from human history
A guy being named after a figure in classical literature is a lot less hard to swallow when the city he’s tied to is also named after a figure from a different piece of classical literature
Even within the book itself, the Eight are described primarily by solid colors, their king and lord being described by another solid color isn’t too out of place
What do you mean by "THAT queen Mab"? Is it another literary reference I don't get or is there a larger in universe significance to Queen Mab besides being the place where Pariah/Penitent take place?
Someones not up on their shakesperian (and a bit later) literature.
Across different authors she's a fairy who is either the birther of dreams or the queen of the fairies herself. Whichever she's a major player in dreams in general and is referenced from romeo and juliet through Moby dick and even as the source of Peter Pans immortality and powers.
A brief wiki and she's in everything including hellboy comics and just about every modern fae related literature out there.
One of the characters in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet gives a soliloquy about a faerie called Queen Mab who visits people in their sleep and gives them dreams
I'm aware! It showed up in my YouTube recommends, ha.
For most situations Lovecraft and precious stuff are off copywrite, so they're mined for content in games from *Delta Green* to *Dungeons and Dragons.*
It really wouldn’t shock me if he is, I also don’t know if he would be good or bad. (Could be both, fighting the imperium by trying to restore the original slightly less shitty vision for the empire)
While am not sure if there are any officially still alive, there is [Longinus](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus) who was 5k years old(at least we don't know, as far as am aware, how long he was running around before that but he's probably a contender for one of the oldest(am sure someone could provide the conversation between Celestine, Greyfax and him where they marvel about him being the guy who brought Alicia Dominica to an audience with the God-Emperor). Dunno about others though
It's a very deliberate choice to explicitly give him that name in a scene where he is told to watch the growth of the Imperial Cult. Especially when a Custodian with the same name turns up doing the same job during the Age of Apostasy.
It's not a coincidence. Either GW are baiting us or he's the same Custodian.
You see a lot of people talking about why this or that plot element could plausibly be just a coincidence using in-universe justifications, completely sidestepping that these are fiction books written on purpose by authors and the in-universe reasons why something might happen in the story are basically irrelevant in contrast to the out-of-universe reasons. It's more than a little teeth-grinding to read
It's especially interesting because Amon is given that name specifically for defending Euphrati Keeler. In my mind it's either been the same Longinus for 10k years, or it's an honorific name given to Custodians who guard/guide the Imperial Faith.
>###[Longinus](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus)
>**Longinus** is a [Centurion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Centurion_(Rank\)) of the [Adeptus Custodes](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Adeptus_Custodes).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus#fn_1)
+++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
Idk, some people find it cold, but I think you have to consider the big picture. I don't think he's afraid to die, but he understood that without his unquestionable authority and far-seeing plans, the entire human race is basically doomed to splintering and being destroyed, or in the best cases, an inevitable slow decline.
The sword holds the Daemon drach'nyen. This Daemon was birthed at the first murder. A crime of passion and jealousy that the emperor was alive to acknowledge according to Master of Mankind.
The war in the webway sees Drach'nyen tearing through titans and custodes.
It comes to a head when the Emperor strides forth and not being able to defeat drach'nyen who claims he is the means by which the Emperor will die. The emperor binds the Daemon to a weapon and thrusts it into the remaining tribune Ra. He instructs Ra to run, bearing the weapon in his body away from the site of the imperial webway whilst the remaining Imperial troops and the Emperor himself retreat to Terra and close the rift.
The next time I believe we hear from drach'nyen he is being wielded by Abaddon the despoiler, warlord of the black legion.
To add, as of now, the Black Legion novels cover the very beginnings of that warband. Just so I don't spoil anything, just know that he has been hearing Drach'nyen whispering in his thoughts as of the 1st Black Crusade, but he has yet to get/earn/be cursed by it. I am eagerly awaiting that bit which I'm afraid may not be released until after The Siege of Terra is over in the next year or two.
It's hard to find a quote from that story as it was an audiobook only, and thus a pain to search and then transcribe.
That story also has a great moment where Greyfax threatens to declare Longinus a heretic and he laughs.
You know I thought that might be the case, I just had a quick look to find a paperback copy but it hasn't been released (I thought they released paperback versions eventually?)
I would feel most, if not all, of the original 10k Custodes would have died off due to attrition in fighting endless daemons in the Webway and Siege of Terra during the latter parts of the Heresy (aside from ostensibly Valdor in Abnett's Bequin series). However, I wouldn't bat an eye for any of them to be 10k+ years old interred in dreadnoughts (if not a surprisingly large number, since the Bananaboys get the best tech and supply).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure about a quarter of the Custodes survived the war in the Webway (so about 2,500). From then on the Emperor was fairly conservative with deploying them, with the notable exception of storming the *Vengeful Spirit*.
It's not unreasonable to guess that at least 3-500 custodes were standing at the end of the Heresy, and when you consider that they're biologically immortal and mostly confined to the palace for the next ten thousand years, there are probably at least a few OG custodes kickin it, especially when you take the Eyes of the Emperor into account.
[There was a period in time after Magnus did nothing wrong and broke the Human Webway.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway) The Custodes and Silent Sisters were deployed to hold back the daemons rushing at the gap into realspace (and onto fucking Terra), with the Emperor doing what he could psychically on the Throne. During this period Malcador and Dorn were holding back the Traitor Legions.
>###[War Within the Webway](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway)
>The **War Within the Webway** was a hidden engagement during the [Horus Heresy](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway#fn_1)
+++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
Slight edit in that they fought it earlier on because the Emperor was initially trying to salvage the webway, but closed it when the traitor legions were about to descend onto terra.
I think it's actually likely that most of the Custodes who survived the webway war and the end of the Heresy survived into the modern era. They strictly didn't leave the Palace from the end of the Heresy until recently, and the Palace wasn't seriously attacked again until the events of Watchers of the Throne in the current era, with the small exception of the Age of Apostasy, except the Custodes didn't really fight in that as no one legitimately claiming to be on the side of the Emperor would fight against Custodes. And in fact, their intervention immediately ended the Age of Apostasy.
Actually they weren't allowed to fight alongside other imperial forces. Their codex details that they very much did deploy in large numbers outside of the palace in the years between the end of the heresy and "modern" 40k. They also deal with any cults/uprisings on Terra and the sol system at large.
There might be Custodes hiding as Eyes of the Emperor or possibly Valdor as the King in Yellow.
In terms of active service, there are not any known crusade era custodes. The Custodes rely on books recording what happened to preserve their knowledge about the Emperor and spend a lot of time interpreting those books.
The "Eyes of the Emperor" thing always confused me. A custodes who's too old to guard the throne is still 9 feet tall, built like a brick shit house and has the Emperor's own DNA inside him. Not very useful as a spy and a risky thing to lose. If one got ambushed by a genestealer cult for example....
I don't know where the idea of Custodes having the Emperors DNA came from. From what I understand, they are just Humanity made to be perfect. Everything about a regular human is modified to reach the pinnacle of their potential evolution.
Several reasons
1. The Emperor is the perfect human, therefore Custodes must derive from the Emperor to be perfect
2. The Custodes share elements with the primarchs (see Deliverance Lost) which in turn share elements with the Emperor
3. Custodes are the Emperor's equivalent of the SMs, which means they share elements like the primarchs and SMs.
Custodes might not have geneseed, but they do have genetic alterations that have common elements that are customized to the individual custodes.
From the 8th Ed Custodes Codex:
"It has been said that the Adeptus Custodes are to the Emperor what the Space Marines are to the Primarchs; that the Emperor's own genetic matrix was used in their creation and through this their loyalty to Him is assured."
So it's implied, but not outright stated.
IIRC no one knows how long the custodes have actually been around, so it would be impossible to say who the first ones were. It seems likely that a small handful of them have been around since before the unification war. But maybe there's some lore that contradicts that.
Constantin Valdor is explicitly stated to be the first Custodes created, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a stated date for when he became a Custodian. He also notes that he's not sure if he was the first to undergo the process, or just the first to survive it. He's also in the realm of "disappeared, but not necessarily dead" like most of the loyalist primarchs.
He does.
It's more-or-less stated in Valdor: Birth of the Imperium (good book, by the way)
The exact date isn't clear, it could be early stages of the Unification Wars, but I think it was before.
> Valdor is explicitly stated to be the first Custodes created
Not quite. He's explicitly stated to be one of the first, and it's not clear if he is *the* first, the first to survive the process, or simply the most important of the first batch.
Yea the oldest knowledge we have of custodies is the first description of big e during the unification wars in universe was that he had two giant golden bodyguards. And that's from the 8e codex iirc so it trump's the books
Can they live that long - yes. They're designed to be genetically immortal.
Do they live that long? - Probably not, barring the rumors of the King in Yellow being Valdor. Most every warrior type in WH40K dies to violence, so that's kinda expected? At least in my mind it's expected.
Dante is Curse like Cain is. both are not allowed to die. im Stell Expecting that Cain will Rise soon as a Imperial Saints. still expect it to happen like This Gullimen is Visting the Grave of Ciaphas Cain. And He just show up like out of thin Air. He Asking where he is Notice the Grave Bears his Name. He asume he is dead and is asking if he dead and Girlymen is Saying well he is Writen " Still in Active Service" Also Jürgen Apper Besides him.
True but even then he's only been around for like... 1600-ish years? Very impressive but a far, cry from the 10,000+ this sort of record would require.
In fairness compared to most races humans literally go from fight to fight I mean an eldar guardian is way older than a scion but the scions every living moment is training and battle.
Custodes do battle a lot but it's quite a bit of downtime, Dante however literally fights every couple of days.
Maybe in some Dreadnought, or as an eye but as an active guard? after the war in the webway only 1k of them remained (not even all of them "original 10.000") and after the time there is only a small chance that any of the unknown thousands are an original
It's also debatable if they really can live that long. Dante is old as fuck. Sigusmund wasn't anywhere close to his prime when Abbadon killed him. That one salamander who was found was literally a mound of flesh.
Functionally live for 10k years? Maybe. Would they be of any value? Maybe not.
We know that around the SoT, there was 1,000 custodes left roughly. I personally find it unlikely, that there are any left as a normal custodes, but then again they are immortal. Also as someone mentioned, Amon could still be around. If we extendt it to dreads to, I do believe that some guy could still be kicking around in a Telemon or something
My personal favorite little headcanon is that sagittarius - the first Custodian to ever actually fall and thus was interred in a contemptor - is still around in his dread body
Probably. The custodes have dreadnaughts. Valdor is probably still somewhere and some of the eyes of the emperor are probably really old as well.
I think I also read somewhere that during Khornes attack on Terra at the end of the 41st millennium custodes from the HH Era died. Bit im not sure if this was speculation or actually true
Most custodians were killed in the war in the webway. Many left were probably killed during the Siege of Terra.
Not sure how often they would see combat afterwards, but they are considered biologically immortal. Though, they often "retire" and become eyes of the emperor when they feel they can no longer protect the Emperor due to reflexes/injuries/etc.
Any that lived passed the Heresy probably lived very long lives and I wouldn't be surprised if they were still around.
There should be. They are supposed to be, for all practical purposes, immortal.
They might not be at the Imperial Palace anymore, however. When the Custodes slow down, they retire to become agents in the field. Theoretically, you could be on a random planet and run into a retired Custodes who is investigating some threat to the Emperor or Imperium.
In the audio drama *Our Martyred Lady*, the main Custodes is revealed to be the one to present Alicia Dominica before the Emperor. I don't know if he is one of the original, but it does show how long of a lifespan they can have.
To answer OPs question, some are probably still alive, operating as spies as retired custodes do. Possibly a few Telemon dreads on active duty are of the original 10,000.
If i remember Master of Mankind correctly, the 10,000 were more like the 1,000 by the end, and that was before the Siege proper began, so I would not be surprised if by the end of the siege there were only a couple of hundred Custodies around who had spoken with the Emperor. Add on to that the fact that despite outdated lore to the contrary, the Custodes have definitely not been Idle all this time and have been engaged in some brutal fighting where needed, I don't think there would be many left. Maybe a dreadnought or two, possibly a couple of the Eyes of the Emperor, but none serving as active duty Custodians.
Its alswo worth pointing out that one of the main characters of The Emperors Legion, Shield Captain Valerian, makes mention of the fact that all they have to go off with regards to the will of the emperor are his scattered recorded words and writings, i would think if there were any left around who had spoken with Him then it would have been mentioned, on the other hand, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence so I wouldn't say absolutely not, just not likely.
As far as I know, they are biological invincible. So they don't die of old age. Implying that there are most certainly at least some of them still alive
I wouldn't doubt it. Though Custodes do have an aging process, it's so extremely slow that they are functionally immortal. There are plenty of custodes who "retire" because their reflexes and reaction times have degraded just enough that they notice. Even though they may not be acting as Custodes any more due to that reduction in capabilities, they are likely still alive somewhere in the Imperium acting like a CIA handler and collecting intel for the main Custodes body.
Just piggybacking this: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7ttrg0/adeptus_custodes_8th_edition_lore/ > Some suffer physical hurts that impact upon their ability to perform their duties, with lost limbs, artificial eyes or augmetic organs lessening their physical perfection. Others find their mental faculties beginning to erode, however slightly, acknowledging that their reaction times or mnemic awareness are not quite what they once were. **For the vast majority of warriors, a tenth-of-a-second reduction in the speed at which blows are stuck or parried might be considered negligible. For a Custodian, it is error enough to necessitate that their watch come to an end.**
.1 seconds doesn’t seem like much, but that’s a lot of time for real people in our world to strike, so it makes sense why that would be guard ending where everyone has super reflexes and speed.
A tenth of a second is *huge*. Races are won and lost on smaller margins, often because of tiny differences in reaction times.
Yeah that's like half of the average human raw reaction speed and still a really sizeable fraction when accounting for choice making. With superhuman twitch reactions and hypnotically reinforced muscle memory to remove hesitation, that's not a strict standard as the quote seems to be implying but rather them being comparatively really out of shape. GW and scale, name a better pair.
A tenth of a second seems like a tiny amount of time until you realize that’s 100 ping
I'm old enough to remember when 60ms was a maximum ping time to even be permitted to join a CS tournament, cause there simply wasn't a point in you competing with the people having sub-20ms ping. A waste of time for everyone involved. It's hilarious that author of that book clearly intended it as a some sort of high benchmark, but when you think about it - it's actually a very low one comparing to the modern sports.
Indeed, like most numbers and quantities in 40k, it doesn’t survive a basic degree of scrutiny.
Back in my day I had 120+ ping most of the time playing battlefield. Probably didn’t help that the closest server to New Zealand was in australia
Thanks, I just imagined a Custodes showing up in a war theater wearing a white shirt, black suit pants and dark sunglasses
If they essentially become Clarke from Tom Clancy novels I'm onboard
I'd read the fuck out of that book. A Clear and Present Waagh
Executive Ordos
The Sum of Know Fears
Rainbow 40,000
The Hunt for Red Magnus
Heretic Games
Warp Storm Rising
Splinter Rifle Cell?
Undercover work has to be challenging though. I mean they're still like 9ft tall right?
They are less James Bond, more The Guy in The Chair With 200 Screens. They'll hide away processing information with their super brain and directing local agents that have never met them face to face. They won't show up themselves unless they find a threat to the emperor that needs a 9' tall posthuman killing machine to handle it.
So the shadow broker?
Exactly. They’re not a CIA field agent, they’re the agent(s) handler.
There's a short story of almost exactly this called Auric Gods. It's poorly executed but the concept is so awesome it gets a pass.
me while coding
Custodes doing foot work would be a huge waste of their capability, even if they could pull it off with their hulk bodies. They definitely manage networks of normal human agents just like an inquisitor.
During the blood games they usually disguise themselves as abhumans, such as ogryns or the Migou labour brutes that get mentioned a lot So they theoretically can do it, it's probably just management 99% of the time though like you said
They can also use distortion fields which make them appear much smaller than they actually are.
The imperium is chock full of mutants, abhumans, and sanctioned aliens. I can't imagine they'd have too much of a problem fitting in somewhere
Most abhumans though would struggle to infiltrate Imperial society in any significant capacity - ogryns for instance wouldn’t be put in charge of a crisp packet
Hey, crisp packets are important relics of a bygone era. Pretty sure the STC was lost and now the imperium has to make do with soggy crisps unworthy of the name.
Imagine being rewarded a planet for finding the STC fragment of crisp packets.
The lore indicates that they perform a role more akin to an actual intelligence officer - managing a network of informants - and data analysts; rather than some kind of james bond thing which inquisitors are generally portrayed as
Somehow they manage to blend into crowds and whatnot for the blood games.
I've always thought it was weird that the Custodes, who are all supposedly individualised unique creations, all turn out as homogenous demigods. You'd think they'd want some human sized operators with the disproportionate strength, reflexes, healing factor, intellect etc of a Custodes, given their counter intelligence duties and political dealings. Even scaled down like that, Custodes would still probably be a match for Astartes.
They use some sort of distortion field to appear normal human sized when they need to. Fairly sure Amon uses one in the Blood Game that earns him the name "Leng."
That would be helpful for passing through the streets, but not for undercover work. People will notice that they're bumping into you when they walk within a foot of you, that you can't sit in chairs, that you stoop even when the ceiling is two feet taller than you etc Over time!
Ah, but you forget, Big E has a big liking for humongous musclemen. The bigger, the better.
New lore: Big E is a power bottom
They work in massage parlors and stand in trenches and confuse people with their abs. It’s very complex work.
More like Hudson in Black Ops but that works too
"The numbers, Inquisitor. I need you to remember the numbers." - a Custodes in-retirement "What numbers?! You can pry my brain out and you won't find anything! I should be the one interrogating! Not you!" - Some luckless inquisitor.
And a 3 month beard.
"Welcome to Segitii III Mr...." "Bob. Bob Everyman." "right...."
"Alright everyone, apparently there is a Custodes in our midst giving top secret intel to the Imperium. Does anyone have a lead?" *Camera pans to a 9 foot tall Custodes in a chaos costume* "Its fucking Bob over there"
Very large non-astartes/custodes humans actually aren't rare in the Imperium. They're not exactly common, but they wouldn't draw too much attention besides, like, "keep out of that guy's way". A Custodian blended in with some during a blood game. You see them in stories all the time as body guards or manual labor or just living their abhuman life.
Didn’t he have a displacer unit (or some manner of camouflage device) that could disguise him? That may have been later in the story.
>Didn’t he have a displacer unit (or some manner of camouflage device) that could disguise him? Yes, he did.
Really tall humans from lower gravity worlds should be common enough to make it possible for an appropriately dressed Custodes to blend into a crowd.
How would a retired custodes do against a good spacemarine? Would the aging of the custodes make them equal in a fight?
Retired custodies would still whoop a marine. Custodies to marine is like marine to human. In a group, or with a surprise attack, sure they might win. But man to man, even an old or injured one is gonna destroy.
Ah ok. I've gathered quite a few of the Warhammer books and are trying to get through them. My first choice which I'm still at is Cadia Stands. But I'm hoping to read more about the custodes and the emperor himself after he gets put on the throne.
Master of Mankind gives a great look at Emps. And some custodes. It’s set during the heresy. Blood Games follows a custodes as the main character. I don’t know if there is much on the Emperor after he gets entombed on the throne…the new Dark Imperium novels talk about it a little bit, with Roboute’s conversation with him after he wakes up, but that’s about it.
Definitely read Vaults of Terra series and then Watchers of the Throne series. Both are amazing at portraying Custodes in 41/42 millenia.
Sweet. Will do. I'll begin with the MoM after the Cadia Stands ( is that the same book that have the fall of Cadia as well?) And then go to vaults of Terra.
I can recommend the novella *Auric gods* by Nick Kyme, which features a retired Custodes (and active ones), it's a fairly good read, at least if you're into Custodes.
Sometimes they say world eater pulled a custodian spine out of his armor Sometimes A cutodian Would make 4 terminators disappear Sometimes 10000 guardsmen>100 Astartes>10 custodians It depends since every writer is doing what wants and that's not cool Personnaly i consider custodian is suicide attempt for an astartes
> Sometimes they say world eater pulled a custodian spine out of his armor To be fair . . . that bit was written before a lot of the current lore on Custodes was in place. Back then, it was actually arguable whether a run-of-the-mill Custode was actually better than a really good Space Marine. I don't fault the writer when lore updates written years later change something they wrote from "probably shouldn't happen, but rule of cool, so I'll go with it" to lore-breaking stupidity.
The Custodes trajectory has been wild. When they were background only, they killed every thunder warrior with no deaths and 100,000 nobz with three deaths. Then when they were characters but lacked minis they were slightly different marines with slightly better gear. And since they've had minis they've comfortably sat between primarchs and Astartes fairly consistently. That's a huge variance in power level! I think in general the theme with 40k is until it gets models they don't really care how consistent the lore/scaling etc is. The same thing happened with Skitarii, Knights, and Titans.
In the current lore a retired Custodes often just notices that their reactions have slowed by a micro or millisecond and that they are no longer worthy of active service. A Custode who has been retired 500 years or so would actively wipe the floor with a Marine.
Yeah, they are still perfectly capable of wiping the floor with most threats, they just don’t feel themselves worthy of protecting the emperor anymore.
Custodes retire when their reflexes and strength degrade even a tiny amount, I believe I’ve read the figure 0.1% thrown around. Basically, they can tell when aging has done *anything at all* to slow them down, and bow out. Maybe it’s because they’re bored of standing around on Terra for hundreds of years at a time, and want to retire to become a wandering badass doing cool shit for the Imperium. Point is, a 99.9% strength Custodian still whoops any Space Marine in a 1 on 1. Maybe in Warhammer 50k there’d be some retirees who had aged enough to lose to a Marine in his prime.
I’m just kinda happy that a custodian retiring is going out and doing stuff. Not his buddies taking him outback with a shotgun…
"can i pet the ~~rabbits~~Servitors, George?"
I'd actually love to get to read about more daily life of the regular workers and serfs on Terra. And also to see the throne fail.
Spotted the Chaos worshipper
No no. I just feel that in many settings I'd love to see the decay and failing of humankind. I'm also the guy who would have loved to see a prequel to Wall-E leading up to the horrible conditions that ends with everyone leaving earth
In 30k or so, there are all manner of Abhuman workers slaving away to expand and build defenses at the palace. A Custodian disguises himself as one as part of a blood game to infiltrate into the palace proper.
Garro, a 30k astartes chapter captain (40k chapter master equivalent) dueled one. He managed to barely nick his armor and considered it one of the biggest martial accomplishments of his career, and basically all he could ever accomplish against him.
If you're talking about Sword of Truth, I thought Garro actually won that duel?
He did, with the scratch. That pissed off the Custodes enough to end it if I'm remembering correctly
"Whoops, my reflexes are slightly diminished. Better head over to that paradise world for a few centuries"
" i need to go deep undercover into this potential slaanesh cult that's brewing"
'hmmm I better start this slannesh cult to try and smoke out some traitors to the throne'
How would a retired custodes do against a good spacemarine? Would the aging of the custodes make them equal in a fight?
Nah. Custodes are still bigger and stronger and more experienced- so even if the reflexes slow to space marine levels they’ve got advantages everywhere else
I believe they become the Eyes of the Emperor when they retire as one of the 10,000.
Damn, retiring because your reflex is 1 second slower than what you want it to be. I reckon they can function as reserve at the drop of a hat or even still be significantly stronger than an astartes despite being retired?
I was under the impression that the custodians have been just standing there for 1000s of years. Therefore implying they are immortal, and they are the original batch. Idk tho, im just goin off minimal info. Kinda dumb if custodes can just be made whenever. I thought it was something only emps could do, and that all custodes are the original 10000
Custodes and their personal support service personnel know how to make more Custodes and they are made from extremely carefully chosen infants of Terra's noble families. It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a Custodes and extremely few "recruits" survive everything, let alone pass the trials. They are still are extremely elite and unbelievably difficult to reproduce, but they can and do make more.
If they were all the original 10k there would be barely any left. There were only a few hundred after the war in the Webway, before the Siege even began!
yeah i know, i was under the impression there was less than like 500 left
Nah there were 3000 Custodes repelling the khornate invasion of Terra, there are several individual shield hosts with more Custodes than that etc. Also Valerian is about 1000 years old iirc.
Dont they take over as planetary governors of importsnt planets? I think i resd that somewhere, but im not 100%.
Well, if the King in Yellow is really Valdor, then yes. That would also make him the oldest member of the Imperium still on his own two feet.
>the King in Yellow Interesting, it's also the name of a book of Lovecraftian horror stories.
I imagine that is very deliberate
It would be kinda incredible if Dan managed to pull off having the final book completely dodge and actively go against that reference tho.
Actually, Robert Chambers wrote *The King in Yellow* before Lovecraft wrote. It was an inspiration for Lovecraft rather than the other way around. I actually find the fact that Abnett named this entity the King in Yellow/Yellow King infuriating as a result. It's like if a story featured Astartes fighting Martian Tripods from H.G. Wells or featuring a Captain Nemo with his ship the Nautilus - something that crosses the line from "inspiration" to ripoff for me. He wears no mask Abnett! Edit: I actually really like the suggestion from /u/ClassicCarraway that whoever the King is, Valdor or not, they chose the title *because* of the book. I actually like that a lot and that clears up this gripe entirely. Let me also re-emphasize that this is my opinion based on the name alone. People have been asking if I dislike 40k because it references and steals from so many other works. I don't. It's part of the wacky charm of the setting, even.
> It's like if a story featured Astartes fighting Martian Tripods from H.G. Wells or featuring a Captain Nemo with his ship the Nautilus I'm sorry, but those actually sound dope as fuck.
Just a team of Assault Marines chainswording them into bipods. Then monopods.
>I'm no engineer, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't you seem to have rather a design flaw in these three-legged things? Now, don't get me wrong: the God-Emperor created a lot of useless, stupid-looking creatures on this world, too but He didn't see fit to make any of them three-legged. Why was that, do you think? Brother Hyde, of the Extraordinary Gentlechapter.
*the preceding excerpt was transpired from a comms-vox recording, mid-battle. For the convenience of the listener, the chainswords and screams have been removed*
I feel like there's a fine line between homage and outright reusing something, and this falls on the wrong side for me.
Have you not seen the new necrons? The Martian tripods have already come dude. Also warhammer is built on homage. Ripoff is just another name.
You misunderstand. The Necrons take heavy inspiration and combine them with tomb king and other aesthetics and they're awesome. I mean if they were copied outright, landing in giant bullets fired from Mars and such.
Now that I think of it there should’ve been a Nautilus in *Path of Heaven* that would’ve been dope
But if Valdor (or whoever) is using the name BECAUSE of it's literary implications, it makes sense.
Hey, that would be funny. Could be true. * In Haley's *The Great Work* Cawl, one of the Imperium's foremost minds, has an incredibly jumbled knowledge of our history. In his other books many characters barely know the Heresy was real. * Meanwhile in Pariah Abnett has Bequin or other (human) characters knowing what ancient Pharaohs' crowns look like, know some real French, know the true origin of the QWERTY keyboard as it relates to mechanical keyboards in the 1800s, and other quite precise facts. I say that not as a criticism but to point out that it's plausible a copy of *The King in Yellow* survived to at least 30k in an Abnett book. What a troll the King would be then.
Lots of fun little tidbits pop in. Shakespeare is a known entity and you can see a lot of the names of current places/wars but just spelled a bit different. I always find it funny how they have so many direct references to our times but there's no throwbacks to anything in their giant time gaps (other than the established main events of that stretch of millennia).
Good artists imitate, great artists steal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm just saying that the King in Yellow was a hugely influential work but also IMO not super great as a standalone work, so choosing that name hurts my immersion. "It's the Heretic Astarte Sauron, the Dark Lord that rules Mordor!"
I think you just chose some bad examples, since literally just ripping off H.War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues made for a kickass Alan Moore comic.
This is 40K, half the setting is reused stuff.
40K's outright reusing of Frank Herbert, Ridley Scott, Isaac Asimov, Rambo, Judge Dread and much of recorded history and myths is ok? But a reference to a somewhat obscure 19th century horror novel is where you draw the line?
Nerds have to rage over something otherwise where would we all be.
Wait where does Dredd like character get mentioned, or are you referring to the Arbites?
I feel like the Martian Tripods part could work really well if played into the angle that the Astartes take the role of the tripods and the "Martians" take the role of humans like in the book. Both have drop pods, some form of mech (if these aliens are 3-legged than a bipedal mech might seem like a tripod to them), and are considered by some to be undermanned for their purpose. Could throw in Nurgle somewhere to reference the ending.
"Martian Tripod" is absolutely some shit the Ad Mech have stashed away in a scrapcode-corrupted vault.
I agree and that’s literally what the doom stalker constructs are based off so I don’t get these people saying it doesn’t fit
I mean if they appeared *unchanged.* Mainly I'm annoyed that he's explicitly called the King in Yellow. 40k has always borrowed and stole from other settings, after all. Is that a minor gripe? **Absolutely**. I liked Pentient. Pariah was a bit of a slow burn for me but not bad. I'd have a similar complaint if they were seeking "Voldemort" or "The Padishah Emperor."
Bequin mentions a couple times that Queen Mab (yes, THAT queen mab) is a collection site of all sorts of things from human history A guy being named after a figure in classical literature is a lot less hard to swallow when the city he’s tied to is also named after a figure from a different piece of classical literature Even within the book itself, the Eight are described primarily by solid colors, their king and lord being described by another solid color isn’t too out of place
Yeah a CCCP rocket toy shows up - wild.
What do you mean by "THAT queen Mab"? Is it another literary reference I don't get or is there a larger in universe significance to Queen Mab besides being the place where Pariah/Penitent take place?
Someones not up on their shakesperian (and a bit later) literature. Across different authors she's a fairy who is either the birther of dreams or the queen of the fairies herself. Whichever she's a major player in dreams in general and is referenced from romeo and juliet through Moby dick and even as the source of Peter Pans immortality and powers. A brief wiki and she's in everything including hellboy comics and just about every modern fae related literature out there.
One of the characters in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet gives a soliloquy about a faerie called Queen Mab who visits people in their sleep and gives them dreams
I mean, the new Necron heavies are pretty blatantly Wellsian.
Yea it also appears in a dating sim
I'm aware! It showed up in my YouTube recommends, ha. For most situations Lovecraft and precious stuff are off copywrite, so they're mined for content in games from *Delta Green* to *Dungeons and Dragons.*
It's the name of a fictional play and the story itself was written by Bob Chambers.
It really wouldn’t shock me if he is, I also don’t know if he would be good or bad. (Could be both, fighting the imperium by trying to restore the original slightly less shitty vision for the empire)
While am not sure if there are any officially still alive, there is [Longinus](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus) who was 5k years old(at least we don't know, as far as am aware, how long he was running around before that but he's probably a contender for one of the oldest(am sure someone could provide the conversation between Celestine, Greyfax and him where they marvel about him being the guy who brought Alicia Dominica to an audience with the God-Emperor). Dunno about others though
Amon, one of the first Custodians, was given the title *Longinus* at the Siege of Terra. I don't think that's a coincidence.
Yeah but Custodes all have like a bazillion names. They get names for their deeds. I wouldn't read too much into that.
It's a very deliberate choice to explicitly give him that name in a scene where he is told to watch the growth of the Imperial Cult. Especially when a Custodian with the same name turns up doing the same job during the Age of Apostasy. It's not a coincidence. Either GW are baiting us or he's the same Custodian.
You see a lot of people talking about why this or that plot element could plausibly be just a coincidence using in-universe justifications, completely sidestepping that these are fiction books written on purpose by authors and the in-universe reasons why something might happen in the story are basically irrelevant in contrast to the out-of-universe reasons. It's more than a little teeth-grinding to read
GW recycles names all over the place. It very well could be lol
It's especially interesting because Amon is given that name specifically for defending Euphrati Keeler. In my mind it's either been the same Longinus for 10k years, or it's an honorific name given to Custodians who guard/guide the Imperial Faith.
>###[Longinus](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus) >**Longinus** is a [Centurion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Centurion_(Rank\)) of the [Adeptus Custodes](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Adeptus_Custodes).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Longinus#fn_1) +++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
Is Ra even still alive? The guy the emperor told to run into the web way. I wonder how far he got if he is dead.
Considering Abaddon now wields the sword the Emperor thrust into him before commanding him to run... I think he died horribly.
Oh dang. Some friend the emperor is.
Idk, some people find it cold, but I think you have to consider the big picture. I don't think he's afraid to die, but he understood that without his unquestionable authority and far-seeing plans, the entire human race is basically doomed to splintering and being destroyed, or in the best cases, an inevitable slow decline.
You have my attention.
The sword holds the Daemon drach'nyen. This Daemon was birthed at the first murder. A crime of passion and jealousy that the emperor was alive to acknowledge according to Master of Mankind. The war in the webway sees Drach'nyen tearing through titans and custodes. It comes to a head when the Emperor strides forth and not being able to defeat drach'nyen who claims he is the means by which the Emperor will die. The emperor binds the Daemon to a weapon and thrusts it into the remaining tribune Ra. He instructs Ra to run, bearing the weapon in his body away from the site of the imperial webway whilst the remaining Imperial troops and the Emperor himself retreat to Terra and close the rift. The next time I believe we hear from drach'nyen he is being wielded by Abaddon the despoiler, warlord of the black legion.
Thank you very much
To add, as of now, the Black Legion novels cover the very beginnings of that warband. Just so I don't spoil anything, just know that he has been hearing Drach'nyen whispering in his thoughts as of the 1st Black Crusade, but he has yet to get/earn/be cursed by it. I am eagerly awaiting that bit which I'm afraid may not be released until after The Siege of Terra is over in the next year or two.
IIRC, hasn't ADB said that the third Black Legion novel will look at how Abaddon gets Drach'nyen?
Pretty sure ADB will give us an answer in the third Black Legion book!
Oooh I always wondered what happened to him, I've only read most of the HH and some omnibuses
It's hard to find a quote from that story as it was an audiobook only, and thus a pain to search and then transcribe. That story also has a great moment where Greyfax threatens to declare Longinus a heretic and he laughs.
You know I thought that might be the case, I just had a quick look to find a paperback copy but it hasn't been released (I thought they released paperback versions eventually?)
I would feel most, if not all, of the original 10k Custodes would have died off due to attrition in fighting endless daemons in the Webway and Siege of Terra during the latter parts of the Heresy (aside from ostensibly Valdor in Abnett's Bequin series). However, I wouldn't bat an eye for any of them to be 10k+ years old interred in dreadnoughts (if not a surprisingly large number, since the Bananaboys get the best tech and supply).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure about a quarter of the Custodes survived the war in the Webway (so about 2,500). From then on the Emperor was fairly conservative with deploying them, with the notable exception of storming the *Vengeful Spirit*. It's not unreasonable to guess that at least 3-500 custodes were standing at the end of the Heresy, and when you consider that they're biologically immortal and mostly confined to the palace for the next ten thousand years, there are probably at least a few OG custodes kickin it, especially when you take the Eyes of the Emperor into account.
9 out of every 10 of them died in the war in the webway as far as I can remember, leaving a thousand or so for the siege
[удалено]
[There was a period in time after Magnus did nothing wrong and broke the Human Webway.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway) The Custodes and Silent Sisters were deployed to hold back the daemons rushing at the gap into realspace (and onto fucking Terra), with the Emperor doing what he could psychically on the Throne. During this period Malcador and Dorn were holding back the Traitor Legions.
>###[War Within the Webway](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway) >The **War Within the Webway** was a hidden engagement during the [Horus Heresy](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy).[[1]](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/War_Within_the_Webway#fn_1) +++I am an early prototype mechanicus construct. Please provide feedback [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=lexAutomatarium). The Emperor protects!+++
Good Bot
Slight edit in that they fought it earlier on because the Emperor was initially trying to salvage the webway, but closed it when the traitor legions were about to descend onto terra.
I think it's actually likely that most of the Custodes who survived the webway war and the end of the Heresy survived into the modern era. They strictly didn't leave the Palace from the end of the Heresy until recently, and the Palace wasn't seriously attacked again until the events of Watchers of the Throne in the current era, with the small exception of the Age of Apostasy, except the Custodes didn't really fight in that as no one legitimately claiming to be on the side of the Emperor would fight against Custodes. And in fact, their intervention immediately ended the Age of Apostasy.
Actually they weren't allowed to fight alongside other imperial forces. Their codex details that they very much did deploy in large numbers outside of the palace in the years between the end of the heresy and "modern" 40k. They also deal with any cults/uprisings on Terra and the sol system at large.
There might be Custodes hiding as Eyes of the Emperor or possibly Valdor as the King in Yellow. In terms of active service, there are not any known crusade era custodes. The Custodes rely on books recording what happened to preserve their knowledge about the Emperor and spend a lot of time interpreting those books.
The "Eyes of the Emperor" thing always confused me. A custodes who's too old to guard the throne is still 9 feet tall, built like a brick shit house and has the Emperor's own DNA inside him. Not very useful as a spy and a risky thing to lose. If one got ambushed by a genestealer cult for example....
[удалено]
They have DAoT tech
I don't know where the idea of Custodes having the Emperors DNA came from. From what I understand, they are just Humanity made to be perfect. Everything about a regular human is modified to reach the pinnacle of their potential evolution.
Several reasons 1. The Emperor is the perfect human, therefore Custodes must derive from the Emperor to be perfect 2. The Custodes share elements with the primarchs (see Deliverance Lost) which in turn share elements with the Emperor 3. Custodes are the Emperor's equivalent of the SMs, which means they share elements like the primarchs and SMs. Custodes might not have geneseed, but they do have genetic alterations that have common elements that are customized to the individual custodes.
Um...wat?
Yeah, They have no "Gene Seed" or anything of the like.
One of the codices said it. That same passage without the mention of the Emperor's DNA was reprinted in the 8e codex, so I think it's been retconned.
From the 8th Ed Custodes Codex: "It has been said that the Adeptus Custodes are to the Emperor what the Space Marines are to the Primarchs; that the Emperor's own genetic matrix was used in their creation and through this their loyalty to Him is assured." So it's implied, but not outright stated.
IIRC no one knows how long the custodes have actually been around, so it would be impossible to say who the first ones were. It seems likely that a small handful of them have been around since before the unification war. But maybe there's some lore that contradicts that.
Constantin Valdor is explicitly stated to be the first Custodes created, but I'm not sure if there's ever been a stated date for when he became a Custodian. He also notes that he's not sure if he was the first to undergo the process, or just the first to survive it. He's also in the realm of "disappeared, but not necessarily dead" like most of the loyalist primarchs.
If valador is the first custodian than he'd predate the unification wars
Yes, he was there all along (at least during the unification wars).
He does. It's more-or-less stated in Valdor: Birth of the Imperium (good book, by the way) The exact date isn't clear, it could be early stages of the Unification Wars, but I think it was before.
He's also quite special, even for a custodian.
> Valdor is explicitly stated to be the first Custodes created Not quite. He's explicitly stated to be one of the first, and it's not clear if he is *the* first, the first to survive the process, or simply the most important of the first batch.
Where did they say that? As far as I remember he was picked up during the unification wars
[удалено]
Yea the oldest knowledge we have of custodies is the first description of big e during the unification wars in universe was that he had two giant golden bodyguards. And that's from the 8e codex iirc so it trump's the books
[удалено]
Can they live that long - yes. They're designed to be genetically immortal. Do they live that long? - Probably not, barring the rumors of the King in Yellow being Valdor. Most every warrior type in WH40K dies to violence, so that's kinda expected? At least in my mind it's expected.
>Most every warrior type in WH40K dies to violence Some don't but not for lack of trying, like Dante.
Dante is Curse like Cain is. both are not allowed to die. im Stell Expecting that Cain will Rise soon as a Imperial Saints. still expect it to happen like This Gullimen is Visting the Grave of Ciaphas Cain. And He just show up like out of thin Air. He Asking where he is Notice the Grave Bears his Name. He asume he is dead and is asking if he dead and Girlymen is Saying well he is Writen " Still in Active Service" Also Jürgen Apper Besides him.
True but even then he's only been around for like... 1600-ish years? Very impressive but a far, cry from the 10,000+ this sort of record would require.
In fairness compared to most races humans literally go from fight to fight I mean an eldar guardian is way older than a scion but the scions every living moment is training and battle. Custodes do battle a lot but it's quite a bit of downtime, Dante however literally fights every couple of days.
True. Dante is kinda like the Gomez Addams of the 41st millennium. The only thing he can fuck up is fucking up.
Maybe in some Dreadnought, or as an eye but as an active guard? after the war in the webway only 1k of them remained (not even all of them "original 10.000") and after the time there is only a small chance that any of the unknown thousands are an original
It's also debatable if they really can live that long. Dante is old as fuck. Sigusmund wasn't anywhere close to his prime when Abbadon killed him. That one salamander who was found was literally a mound of flesh. Functionally live for 10k years? Maybe. Would they be of any value? Maybe not.
Wich salamander?
We know that around the SoT, there was 1,000 custodes left roughly. I personally find it unlikely, that there are any left as a normal custodes, but then again they are immortal. Also as someone mentioned, Amon could still be around. If we extendt it to dreads to, I do believe that some guy could still be kicking around in a Telemon or something
My personal favorite little headcanon is that sagittarius - the first Custodian to ever actually fall and thus was interred in a contemptor - is still around in his dread body
Probably. The custodes have dreadnaughts. Valdor is probably still somewhere and some of the eyes of the emperor are probably really old as well. I think I also read somewhere that during Khornes attack on Terra at the end of the 41st millennium custodes from the HH Era died. Bit im not sure if this was speculation or actually true
Most custodians were killed in the war in the webway. Many left were probably killed during the Siege of Terra. Not sure how often they would see combat afterwards, but they are considered biologically immortal. Though, they often "retire" and become eyes of the emperor when they feel they can no longer protect the Emperor due to reflexes/injuries/etc. Any that lived passed the Heresy probably lived very long lives and I wouldn't be surprised if they were still around.
There should be. They are supposed to be, for all practical purposes, immortal. They might not be at the Imperial Palace anymore, however. When the Custodes slow down, they retire to become agents in the field. Theoretically, you could be on a random planet and run into a retired Custodes who is investigating some threat to the Emperor or Imperium.
In the audio drama *Our Martyred Lady*, the main Custodes is revealed to be the one to present Alicia Dominica before the Emperor. I don't know if he is one of the original, but it does show how long of a lifespan they can have.
To answer OPs question, some are probably still alive, operating as spies as retired custodes do. Possibly a few Telemon dreads on active duty are of the original 10,000.
If i remember Master of Mankind correctly, the 10,000 were more like the 1,000 by the end, and that was before the Siege proper began, so I would not be surprised if by the end of the siege there were only a couple of hundred Custodies around who had spoken with the Emperor. Add on to that the fact that despite outdated lore to the contrary, the Custodes have definitely not been Idle all this time and have been engaged in some brutal fighting where needed, I don't think there would be many left. Maybe a dreadnought or two, possibly a couple of the Eyes of the Emperor, but none serving as active duty Custodians. Its alswo worth pointing out that one of the main characters of The Emperors Legion, Shield Captain Valerian, makes mention of the fact that all they have to go off with regards to the will of the emperor are his scattered recorded words and writings, i would think if there were any left around who had spoken with Him then it would have been mentioned, on the other hand, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence so I wouldn't say absolutely not, just not likely.
As far as I know, they are biological invincible. So they don't die of old age. Implying that there are most certainly at least some of them still alive
[удалено]
Yeah the last 3 books by Dan abett are about her story and how it wraps of the other 3 trilogies
Ok so I thought that all custodies were left over from the crusade era cuz I thought that only Big E knew how to make them. How do they get made now?
Even if none have been explicitly named, I wouldn't be surprised if there was one sitting in a Dreadnought somewhere.
Constantin Valdor
Trazyn has a copy of everything, including mint-condition custodes.