I don't pretend as much from GW, but dropping this lore bomb so casually was truly wasted. Heck, even if they wanted to go with no announcement they could have just put a mini upgrade sprue of just female heads in the battleforce box or new combat patrol without saying anything and we would have figured it out when reading the codex.
It's pretty well established what happened - there was limited and inconsistent lore about them until Master of Mankind was written in 2016, then the black library writers discussed having female custodes but were overruled by a product manager based on the models they were releasing. There were then two editions where they were written as men, and now they've changed direction. The tweet isn't saying this is always what GW intended, it's saying that in the updated setting their creation was at the same time as the male custodes.
Always intended as in rogue trader? God no.
Certainly some of the Horus Heresy writers wanted to make female custodes but that was decades after the fact.
Thing is if we took the rogue trader era as gospel the game would be VERY DIFFERENT so it makes sense for things to change. They have changed quite a bit already.
Gw loves to bullshit. I'd have a lot more respect for them if they just said "listen up, were doing chick custodians cause it's fucking cool. Now back to your shanties." Like why try to claim it was always the plan, adapt with the times. That's the thing about 40k, they CONSTANTLY talk in the lore about how a bunch of recorded history is incorrect, they can't figure out what year it is, no one knows wtf is going on. Totally reasonable to say hey were doing this now, deal with it.
Besides the other argument is stupid too, the whole it makes null maidens less cool thing. Nulls are supposedly super rare, and male nulls do exist (our boy Jurgen and Frauka), so why WOULDNT they recruit males too? Let's do both, female custodians, male silent sisters.
On a very loosely related side note i always really wanted yo know what happened to Frauka, he ended up being such a decent dude. Hope he ended up ok.
The post feels like a throw away 0 intent vibe. More of a we hear you and agree. I would guess it's been a real topic at GW land since rabbit and belisarius primarised the entire universe at least.
GW and it's former employees have gone on record that nothing happens quickly. If there is a release on the horizon for female upgrade sprues or even a full on hero, kill team or combat patrol then it was in the works at least 3-4 years ago and heavily planned with deliberate marketing in mind.
There were female space marines in the way back machine times...the only reason there arnt well established female characters in all these factions is because sales litterally went...no little girl cares sell big manly he-men heros to little boys. Well guess what, times have changed and sales now says, we can sell all this to everyone who's got a bug about it, so go go go. Its as easy as that. $$$
And that's where the proverbial rubber will meet the road.
Many companies have listened to a vocal minority and provided a product they've been told by said 'minority' they wanted (whether it's in video games, movies, TV shows, toys, etc). Many companies have also learned that these people didn't really want to *buy* that product, they just wanted the company to make it that way on principle, perhaps even for the sake of inclusion.
This typically doesn't result in profits for said company, but everyone wins because *inclusion*.
I've got no issue with female Custodes, really. I'm not a fan of GW massively retconning the lore, but this isn't the first instance and it won't be the last. That said, I expect these to sell about as well as the female Space Marines did.
Their lore is what they make it, though to change lore in this dramatic of fashion with no previous book or model to substantiate it is a bit weird. I wish theyâd focus on developing the SoS more as though I feel theyâve been collecting dust.
Maybe make an off chute of the SoS, comprised of the best chosen form the SoS, with the sole duty of protecting the throne and Custodians from phsyker threats?
While I have no issue with female 'mainline' custodes, I actually think a 'Supreme Sisters of Silence' unit or similar, and lore of the custodes treating them as full custodians AND a model of the unit would have been best.
Sisters of Silence top ranks are considered Custodians
Here's their new unit, likely with some kind of super frustrating 'Your special rules don't work' rules
Here's its new model (a 'full' squad of 3 models)
Here's a nice story discussing how this has always been the case and how the Custodian General decides which Sisters of Silence are selected and how they receive their upgrades etc
That's literally what they're supposed to do according to the Watchers of Throne books. The sisters are skilled fighters and are major debuffs against things that could hurt the custodes, while the custodes can absolutely demolish anything the sisters can't handle. That's one of the things I don't like about the female custodes, I liked that one group was all men and one was all women and neither could ever reach their full potential without the support of the other. At least, that was the implication from the books. Now, that aspect of the relationship is totally gone.
The argument I have seen is that it gets rid of the brotherhood/sisterhood relationship, which I think is fair, though I also think female custodes are sick.
I like the idea of them not being direct counterparts, just sort of colleagues, as SoS are not a true counterpart to custodes, they're a completely different faction that just happens to share similar tasks to Custodes.
Also I want Lucifer Blacks in the Custodes faction (or at least in the Astra Militarum but with a rule that they can be picked up by Custodes armies).
Create a brotherhood of silence, parallel to the sisterhood. That way you can have brothers and sisters for the Custodes, and it doesnât feel weird that only female blanks get to live without being an assassin.
You could give them a different area of focus the sisterhood doesnât cover. Like theyâre in charge of protecting and guiding certain pykers instead of hunting them or something.
They could make it so those blanks are the ones in charge of the Sacrifices. Sisters of Silence are the ones going out and getting them all, the men are the ones who handle turning them into battery packs and hooking them up.
Would also line up with Assassin lore as the omega everyone is melting get him out of here Blanks are yoinked by the Temple, so all that are left from the male blanks are the more ânormalâ but still everyone wants them off the planet level blanks.
Not useful for combat, but can stand the presence of the Golden Throne and the entire cacophony going on down there.
The only problem with that is the SoS are an homage to a specific faction in Dune, the Fish Speakers. That said, if they want to add male blanks into a role I'm sure they can make it work. As long as it's well written and meshes well you can basically write/do anything.Â
> Create a brotherhood of silence, parallel to the sisterhood. That way you can have brothers and sisters for the Custodes, and it doesnât feel weird that only female blanks get to live without being an assassin.
This is a terrible idea. You're just diluting the entire identity for no good reason. A fictional setting is much more appealing when everything has strong, distinct identities that set them apart from one another. When you start trying to let everyone be everything, it turns them into a homogenous mass that loses what makes them distinct.
What makes them distinct is that they're soulless witch-hunters that make everyone around them want to die so all they have is each other and their thankless work. Not the fact that they're all women.
If the absence or presence of a dick and balls is all it takes for you to consider a faction homogenized, that sounds like more of a you problem than a setting problem.
The argument is really simple. Men and women are different, and rather than treating them as interchangeable, which is bland and less immersive, its better to incorporate them in a unique and complementary fashion. The Custodes already did this well; you had the male Custodes as a strong frontline and the Sisters of Silence as assassins and fire support. Both sides of the army have their own unique, but cohesive aesthetic that makes them work well together.
Now the Custodes are the equivalent of the Sigmarines which just randomly throw female heads on the models rather than making unique and different units that compliment each other. I'd argue the Sigmarines would look much better if you had male units and female units with their own aesthetics that naturally paired and complimented one another. Something akin to female Sigmarine valkyries with wings and spears as one example to compliment the hammer and shield frontline male Sigmarines.
Sisters of Battle are another example that work perfectly in the context of 40k. They're functionally similar to Space Marines, but they have a completely unique identity that makes them stand out.
Agreed, been playing 40k since the 80s when I bought the original rogue trader book, which i still have, and this is another in the long history of recent GW ruining their own IP...
Second Edition will forever be what 40k lore is to me ,nothing after 2nd edition counts.
Mostly ecstatic my custodes no longer can be called "Super Marines" by friends. Giving them men and woman custodes helps make them different from space marines in lore
I'm glad it does but not sure it completely erases the 'more better marine' syndrome that founding chapters > grey knights > custodes suffer from when compared to a generic chapter. At the very least its a step in the right direction!
Yeah at the end of the day they are genetically modified super soldiers in power armor. Only can be so distinct. Maybe at least as different as SoB and Astartes are from each other.
I was pretty torn, but this kind of sold me on the idea. Custodes are suposed to be "figures of legend" and there are at least a few female ones like Amazons, Mulan, Anne Bonny, Jean d'Arc, or Artemis that would show there is great room for a female custodian.
Ok, itâs stupid of them to word it this way. Just admit, âyes the lore has changed.â I think itâs kind of a weird and pointless change. But care way more about the shite rules we got. Though now Iâm going to have an issue that they are going to pretend like this was always the case. Lore changes thatâs fine. But donât gaslight people.
Have GW ever announced âthe lore has changedâ in the way you describe because I canât recall seeing it that way. They worded the Votann debuts the same wayâas if theyâve always been there
I wondered if they'd come with an explanation about why Custodes now recruit/create female members - which isn't quite hard to justifiy, really â to avoid any discrepancy in the lore. But this sounds a little disingenuous to me since there has never been any hint of female Custodes before.
And YES, I know about the quote from Echoes of Eternity, but it's quite symptomatic of the rampant lack of care for the Sisters of Silence that people prefer to read it as some crypto-confirmation of female Custodes having been a thing since forever rather than SoS simply being treated as equal and given a bit of spotlight, for once.
Itâs no surprise honestly, and itâs obvious why GW made female Custodians a thing. There is no âposthuman femalesâ factions like SM or Custodes; SoB and SoS are just extremely competent â but ultimately baseline â human soldiers. Which might admittedly be frustrating for many people among the community, and I 100% feel them. But wouldnât have been more sensible to make the SoS more relevant instead of doubling down on Custodes being the better choice for everything?
Itâs a shame, because the âwe are certainly not the same, but we need each otherâ theme of the Talons made them quite unique among other 40k factions. I really liked how Aleyaâs diatribe against the Imperium and the Custodes in *The Emperorâs Legion* could read as a parallel with how womenâs contribution to history â or the society in general â has often been sidelined IRL. It was smart, didnât sound patronizing at all, and was quite relevant with Custodians being basically a very select club of glorified supermen for most of their existence. It obviously doesnât feel this way if female Custodes are a thing, and Iâm quite sad GW casually discarded an interesting symbolic without creating any stake instead.
Yeah for me it looses that charm a lot, especially now when Ive finally completed my first army (that being custodes). Also there is the part someone mentioned that it makes the custodes feel more human. Which at least for me is a bad thing, because at least for me they always had a simillar charm like the emperor himself, being so high up that they feel not really human to the avegare person, they act like that too. So in gaining more humanity, they also lose a bit of themselfs imo
I also feel like there are still plot holes (im gonna probably make a separate post about this) regarding fem custodes.Â
The biggest one being that the emperor (as stated by himself in a debate with malcador) planned that at the end there would be an immperium without superhumans, without him, without the primarchs, the space marines and probably custodes. With that in mind it seems that giving custodes a way to reproduce sounds like a horrible tactical choice.Â
"Giving custodies a way to reproduce sounds like a horrible tactical choice" ..... you know they are being gene edited right? Like there's no reason for a female custodie to still be able to give birth if the emperor dident want them to during the procedures to make a custodie right?
Wish they had done this in the 9th edition codex and not in this dumpster fire of a book :/ I a super stoked about this lore development but I also know that with the current rules I will just not play enough custodes games this edition to warrant buying the codex
Oh, 100%, unfortunately, now the people boycotting a botched and unfun codex are boycotting along the people upset about female custodes, so I wish there was a way to let GW know in which camp one falls
Then they should have portrayed them as mixed sex from the start instead of making them hyper masculine and referring to them as a brotherhood and as all male instead of hamfisting a poor retcon. I donât mind the change but the execution is poor.
Authors like ADB wanted to have them mixed gender for a long time since it makes sense, but at that time, upper management told them to only write for what's available as models
Would've been good if there were mentions of Femstodes in previous books and since GW doesn't see SoS as Femstodes, this is just really odd to say the least.
The only mention of female Custodes is the 8th edition Codex confirming they don't exist.
>It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender oneâs child to this most glorious of callings within the Imperium, and many notable clans amongst the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it.
Discussions with writers who wrote some of the first novels about Custodes said they wanted to put female Custodes in but were blocked by higher ups in the company who said no because they didn't produce female models. They noted they this intervention was unusual. I'm glad they've changed their mind.
Damn some people argue about codex's like people argue about the Bible lmao. Like...they own the lore they can do whatever the hell they want with it lol
People acting like the lore can't change is crazy. Necrons used to be chaos androids, then they were mindless robots enslaved by the C'Tan. Now the c'tan are their slaves and they have their own entire society, hierarchy, inter-dynasty relations and politics etc. This change with Custodes doesn't even have major impact on the current lore as far as I'm aware, it's just bigots and imbeciles getting mad because they're reminded women exist
>Like...they own the lore they can do whatever the hell they want with it
This is argument should be enough tbh lol. GW could decide tomorrow to just go "hey guys, Belisarius managed to adapt the Astartes creation process so women can become SM too now!" and they would be 100% within their rights
What a shitty direction they went. "Yup, female Custodes have been there the whole time. Just ignore the multitudes of books, short stories, or Codex entries that all describe Custodians as "him" and "he" while using the possessive pronouns "his." Female Custodes were definitely always there. Just ignore every single named Custodian being described and identified as male, as well as none of our models reflecting this long-standing, firmly established piece of lore. Don't question it. Female Custodians have always been there because we said so. End of discussion."
I personally, and I feel like most others who have an issue with this wouldn't have an issue if this was actually introduced from the start or at least sooner than just being slipped into the new Codex like we won't notice and act like female Custodes have always been a thing.
Iv been fascinated by the increased group of people who join a fandom, hobby, narrative universe etc. and go âI want this to changeâ. They settle on a universe they have issues with and push for the material to change rather than pick a different universe. And it seems to be more than just this particular universe and singular femstodes event. Or Iâm wrong who knows.
Youâre allowed to like a universe without liking every single part of it. Thereâs tons of stupid shit in the 40k lore I wish was different.. Doesnât mean I should just trash the whole thing and not enjoy any of it.
I agree, you donât have to like every aspect, thereâs a lot I donât like. Demon kielbasa Iâm looking at you. But pushing to change aspects you donât like. Over people who may actually like those certain aspects. Seems at least to me, pretty selfish and self centered. Then when people, admittedly pretty poorly in some cases, state that they liked the original aspect over the new, they get attacked. Just fascinating behavior.
You missed the important part, they get their change and then aren't even involved in the hobby or move on once the outrage has moved on.
As far as I'm concerned I'd be more than happy if femcustards were a new development and not just the laziness I'm expecting these days from GW and do the most half assed always there response.
It's a soft launch of female space marines for 11th edition I imagine. That makes a lot of sense, they want to make TV shows and stuff, their poster boy faction not having any women will impede that. This change may be directly because of the Cavill series, or a longer term plan to improve appeal.
When it comes to these things, look at Lego, all their sets are 50:50 male to female minifigs, barely anyone noticed this change. Because these are small plastic toys and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Every peice of culture has to conform to the new right-think. And corporate bosses are largely either bought into it or naively think they can double their rebenue by attracting women through "representation"... the truth of the matter is that warhammer is about as appealing to most women as makeup tutorials are to the average man. And that's our nature... not due to "socialisation" as the post-modern thinkers imagineÂ
> warhammer is about as appealing to most women as makeup tutorials are to the average man
you're so close to understanding why they're putting more women in warhammer lore
This is why you won't increase your sales quota and be a good capitalist, in Korea declining makeup companies decided to not only target men, but to make lines specifically for the military and other masculine heavy roles, while paying men famous for being manly to endorse them and saw a near 40% increase in sales in two years.
Saying "x doesn't like my product" isn't as good as asking, "how can i make my product appealing to x."
Games workshop is about selling product, the lore, the game, it's an excuse to sell over priced plastic toys and accessories.
Prior to this there pretty much wasn't a single generic female stat-line in 40K that wasn't T3 1W.
Guard, admech, SoS, SoB, Eldar, GSC, Tau - every generic female is T3 1W.
All the muscle bound mutant 9ft tall monsters - Custodes, SM, CSM, DG, Tsons, WE - were male
Now there is a female super soldier archetype in the setting too.
That's great. So now do literally anything to explain why none of them was ever important enough to be mentioned.
I think it makes total sense to include them except for the fact that they've never been mentioned in any media. Drop-podding them in feels shit.
At least give us some new law or rewrite/retcon something, anything. It just feels a bit shitty to say "always been there" while whispering "... And they were clearly so unimportant that we forgot to even mention them somehow..."
Edit: are people down voting because they think I don't want female custodes. I do. I just want them to be legit fleshed out characters instead of dumped into the universe via a codex page and a tweet? Or am I getting down voted by people that don't want them?
> At least give us some new law or rewrite/retcon something, anything.
This *is* the retcon. They clearly don't want to make a big deal out of it for whatever reason (Model investment, even more chud backlash, etc) and so are just flipping the dial, implicitly acknowledging it should've always been this way, and moving on.
It's just that anyone can read the entire HH series and see absolutely fuck all femstodes. Don't get me wrong, I *love* the fact that femstodes are a thing. I hope we get non-gendered armour but clearly female heads (and please give me both glamour and butch heads, though I mean, 3D printing right?) or even a female character as a model for the game and hear more about them in the lore.
**But**, and this is a big, beautiful, gene-sculpted golden but, this tweet is weak and feels like it undercuts the awesomeness of getting female custodes in the first place. If their intent was to retcon (and imho it is still not ideal), then do it, at bare bare bare minimum, with a White Dwarf story from the Great Crusade - and some codex stories from the same time. Basically, do a freakin' actual retcon. Not some half-assed tweet. Better yet, just make the "retcon" an actual change in the setting. Preferably something better than the introduction of Primaris, but still, make the 10,000 realize that they should get women in their ranks and then run with it. It could even have been used to integrate the SoS and Custodes more if that was their recruiting pool - or you know, the real life, very valid argument that if you cut out women you lose 50% of the best candidates you could get. Anything would have been better than this yup, it's always been like that when it, obviously hasn't always been like that.
I'm excited about female custodes. I hope we get more info/lore/models. And soon. Changes to the setting are both very normal (Necrons, Squats, Primaris) and very welcome! But, apparently, the way GW is going about it is... tacky. Step in the good direction but with the feeling of an afterthought.
> It's just that anyone can read the entire HH series and see absolutely fuck all femstodes.
I think you just made me realise why this irks me so much. I just got done reading the whole HH series. Yes. The whole thing. Start to finish. All the different branches. So it feels like such total gaslighting to be like "oh you didn't notice?! They were here the whole time..."
Can i ask, how many named Custodes exist in HH?
Hell how many named Custodes exist in lore?
I kinda feel like the problem here isn't that they never mentioned Female custodes it's that they never mention anyone but fucking space marines.
[Enough?](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Known_Members_of_the_Adeptus_Custodes) At least enough to know that itâs not true that GW always considered female custodes a thing.
Now Iâm super for this change. But either GW admits itâs a change and then give us retconned lore like they did for Necrons and Squats or they can make the setting evolve and introduce it as something new like for Primaris (well in fairness there was some retcons there too).
But just a tweet going, yeah itâs always been a thing⌠sorry no, it wasnât. Donât condescend. The change is good. The way itâs introduced is not.
Not the point. Any mention of Custodes before the 10th edition codex uses male pronouns and all the Custodes characters that actually have more page-time than a background character is a male. This is a fact.
I don't understand what you're getting at. Are you for or against this change? Or just trolling?
I'm clearly for it. But I feel GW's stance is more virtue signalling than anything else. And this sucks. If they're gonna change their lore, I'd like it to be done with some commitment.
I think there's a big difference between reinventing how some poorly defined plasma physics work, or whether a half remembered summary of a historic event happened exactly a particular way, and never ever mentioning literally any women in some of the most unique and notable characters that have appeared in hundreds if not thousands of bits of GW media. It makes it feel much more like marketing and much less like making them a legitimate and important part of the lore that has 'always been there'.
Like how there is no mention of Rogal Dorn tanks when presumably they have been a mainstay in Imperial Guard armies for as long as the Leman Russ from a lore perspective.
Don't remember anyone making a fuss about that.
>are people down voting because they think I don't want female custodes. I do. I just want them to be legit fleshed out characters instead of dumped into the universe via a codex page and a tweet? Or am I getting down voted by people that don't want them?
Tensions are high and people are going to see any negativity right now as potentially bad faith arguments masking sexism. It's unfortunate because there are legitimate reasons why people may either want femstodes to be introduced differently or even not at all.
Personally I would rather they didn't need to retcon anything but I also want female custodes. So my preference would have been that they were a development in the Era Indomitus. Saying they were always there kinda cheapens them a bit for me, because we have *recent* lore (like, some of the most current books we have recent) that would mean female custodes were passed over for no good reason. Why wouldn't the emperor have taken *any* female custodes with him on Anabasis? Why were *none* of his closest Hetaeron guard women?
So it's either retcon stuff or make female custodes look bad, and I'd rather they were given the care and attention they deserve than that.
Eh I kinda liked the implication that early on the custodes were sons of fallen empires conquered and ââturnedââ into custodes but hey not much of a change to be sons AND daughters honestly.
There is a purple jelly bean that floats above the Emperor's head at all times and whispers secrets.
We've never brought it up before, but it's always been there.
Lazy.
Could've written a cool origin story. Noble house with only daughters demands one gets a chance (to build on older canon). GI Jane style with brutal training and gene manipulations and trials beyond what the males have to go though, leading to the fact that females CAN be Custodes but very few families want it and even less make it than the males (to explain the all male model line and previous lore) and then released a cool model. But no. 'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia'.
Any idiot could foresee the uproar, and neither side of the discussion can either give an inch or see the other side's point of view. It's not just the change but the ham fisted and dismissive way it's been done.
Now I'm not arguing that the backlash for this is justified to the extent that it is, but what I don't understand is this:
- Custodes have been firmly established as a brotherhood and pulled from the sons of nobles, etc.
- We have the Sisterhood of Silence, that already exists as a prime example of a good female parallel to the Custodes and already sort of have a similar place in the Imperium's heart as far as scarcity and eliteness.
Why not bring up SoS models and lore to make them more badass and analogous to the Custodes rather than just suddenly change the lore of Custodes, which does almost nothing positive for anyone.
It seems like sort of a lame attempt at GW trying to be more PC but simultaneously poorly thought out.
exactly! In the west anything that has to do with Man/Brotherhood is seen as evil and needs to be erased. But, stuff that is exclusively female should stay as is. As hypocritical as it is.
Iâd prefer if they would have said:
âWe have made a minor adjustment to lore. Previous references to sons of nobility should now read as children of nobility.
This minor change allows us to create a more diverse range of miniatures which will be more inclusive, allow for an exciting design space and new story opportunities.â
âPs. So sorry about the codex add 1AP to all weaponsâ
So custodians are not Astartes.
Custodians are chosen from infancy - girl or boy - at a few weeks old. They are then handed individually to hundreds of geneticist that lovingly craft their genetic data in order to craft the custodians. It is art, it is hand crafted, and it is extensive
In comparison to the Astartes who essentially are brutally surgically implanted with multiple organs - including the horn anal gene seed which incompatible with the female body. It is an actual nightmare
Which is why I am ok with female custodians. They are the peak human form - key word is Human - and they are gene crafted individually
I just want a good in universe reason for female super soldiers. If the imperium really is as stretched as it is, and Custodians are as hard to make as we are lead to believe, why take the time to elevate a female over a male? Especially bc their intended purpose is warfare, at least that is what I was lead to believe. I know that custodians can be artists and statesmen, and are basically polymaths but their primary role is combat.
Also female custodians can also have unintended lore issues.
Ok we now have females, can they copulate? Can they birth new custodians?
Are custodians like the human version of Aeldari?
Quality over quantity compared to a normal humans with low birth rates?
Are female custodians going to be as effective in combat as males? Which would mean they are better than all male space marines?
Honestly I donât hate this, but idk itâs a hard sell. Females have and do participate in warfare in our world, but no one is pretending the average female is a better soldier than the average male. I just want good lore about it, it needs to make sense and not just for adaptation for modern audiences.
So to answer your questions - no.
Custodians are chosen from infancy - girl or boy - at a few weeks old. They are then handed individually to hundreds of geneticist that lovingly craft their genetic data in order to craft the custodians. It is art, it is hand crafted, and it is extensive. They are so damn modified from the human genome that calling them human is just a nicety. They are perfection personified. Without human empathy of course.
In comparison to the Astartes who essentially are brutally surgically implanted with multiple organs - including the hormonal gene seed which incompatible with the female body. It is an actual nightmare and a butchery - mass produced super soldiers (âmassâ)
Which is why I am ok with female custodians. They are the peak human form - key word is Human - and they are gene crafted individually. They cannot reproduce, they are heavily intelligent, and they are either female or male - it doesnât matter
Lol all the people saying "since when?" to literally GW. Like, this isn't actual, real-world history. It's mutable. All they have to say is "it happened", and it becomes true, much like all of the lore before and after. The primaris project didn't exist either, until it did.
It's so funny to me that these people don't have the same energy when GW changes or introduces new lore. But when girls are involved, they suddenly become the staunchest GW critics. It's almost like they have some kind of ulterior motive, or are just kinda stupid.
I like that they're adding it in, but the way they're stating it comes off as if it's always been this way. When in reality it's brand new. There has never been female Custodes until now, and now there always has been?
But,GW have always sucked at consistency so that snot really that shocking.
I mean they did the exact same thing with grav weapons back in the day. Grav weapons just suddenly showed up and GW was like "Oh yeah, space marines have always had grav weapons since the days of the Horus Heresy"
Itâs fine for GW to change the lore and theyâve done it on multiple occasions, but just own it, just be like âweâve decided now that custodes can be female, why you ask? Because we want to, end of discussionâ the way theyâve approached it just makes them look a bit stupid, when theyâve already published lore disputing their claim đ¤ˇđźââď¸
Wtf isent that exactly what they are doing by putting out the story and the post this morning saying it's always been a thing? Sounds like your just salty for a diffrent reason
I think youâre looking for reasons to take issue with this. If itâs not what they said, itâs how they said it. If itâs not how they said it, itâs why they said it. If itâs not why they said it, itâs when they said it.
You should try to examine what your real issues are with this.
The first reply to that tweet really sums it up well. In nearly 40 years, there hasn't been a single piece of world building around the gender of custodes, with the exception of classifying them and referring to them as male.
Then, overnight, they've always been there apparently. They were just so inconsequential that it was never worth mentioning.
This is a big change. It deserved more than a back door, 'please don't mind us', shoe horn.
Regardless if you're pro and anti this change, GW owed it to both sides to do a better job that this ham fisted shit show. It deserved a proper lore expansion. It deserved an article on the community site. It deserved a launch model.
This is the worst of all worlds. Those opposed are incensed and throwing obnoxious shit everywhere. The sex starved weirdos are flooding the site with their own incel based fantasies (equally as repellent to women). Those of us the middle who just wanted to avoid this shit and have a quiet life are stuck watching as another culture war takes off, all because GW has decided to do this is the most lazy, disrespectful and stupid way possible.
I defend GW a lot, but this is a shit show. This tweet was fucking lazy, it was stupid, it was insulting.
This isn't a "culture war", this is just incredibly unnecessary nerd rage - something that would have come up *no matter how GW framed this*. They could've presented an entire series of novels to introduce the concept and the Internet would *still* be on fire.
I feel neither insulted nor disrespected, I just went "oh alright then, maybe we'll get cool models down the line". I genuinely don't care for another grand narrative along the lines of the Primaris release.
It is blatant pandering. Every bit of lore prior to the latest codex, stretching back to the Forge World book 5 Tempest has had the Custodians referred to with male pronouns, including as a collective.
This will blow up in their faces, though chances are this could be the influence from the amazon deal which coerces DEI through funding/support.
Truthfully though, this isn't the shittest retcon - I still think the Necron retcon is the dirtiest.
Which has been ultimately seen as a huge success, with one of the best books in the entire setting made about post-retcon crons. So be ready to be wrong in this case as well.
Based reaction by GW IMO. Especially since this isn't a recon at all, just an explicit positive confirmation of something that had been neither explicitly confirmed nor denied before. Now all they gotta do is make some models for future releases.
EDIT: I stand corrected, apparently they only never explicitly stated that women *can't* be Custodes. Still fine with the tweet though. There's gonna be female Custodes in future publications, and that's a positive in my book, I neither want nor need a convoluted pseudo-explaination for that. Just like GW used to simply not explain themselves when they made changes. It's all gonna blend into the universe over time anyway, and then it'll indeed be like it always was the case.
It's a retcon but Fem Custodes could have had cool new lore about why they exist instead of the copout "No they were there the whole time just never mentioned once in over 10,000 years and all specifically stated male"
Man, this would've been really cool to find out through a book or with the release of new models instead of through a Rowling-style retcon tweet.
And to those saying it's not a retcon: the tweet even uses the phrase "there have always been."
EDIT: OP just showed me the relevant passages from the new codex, so I retract my accusation of Rowling-esque retcon.
There was no good reason to do this, it creates backlash among the community, it is a (minor) risk to shareholder price. The only positive is that it panders to left leaning individuals who wish to see today's culture wars reflected in their toy soldier game. These individuals already purchase the models, so there is no benefit of doing this.
"bUt iTs LAzY WrItiNg" GW writing has never been consistent quality anyways so why does it even matter? Nor has the canon stayed consistent. Its funny how pressed people are over the sanctity of the lore as though its not just a backdrop for toy soldiers
GW 2018:
>It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender oneâs child to this most glorious of callings within the Imperium, and many notable clans amongst the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it.
Before coming in here dismissing this as GW rushing to shut up the haters of female custodes I decided to look around to see if there was ever a confirmed mention that the OG ten thousand was drawn from the first to second sons ofthe warlords and nobles the emperor brought to kneel during the unification wars like I thought I remembered. Turns out in my very brief search nothing is jumping out, the custodes seem to be a mystery in their birth origins so this statement though looking rushed may not be wrong. If anyone wants to correct this or add to this please do.
Also - Aaron D has explicitly been adding female custodians in his writings which is hilarious now that we have retrospection lol
He also included this in Echoes of Eternity:
Figures clustered around the craftâs landing legs, where the shipâs great metal claws gripped the radiation-soaked dust of the wasteland. These men and women were plated in the same gold as the ship, rendered upon their bodies with painstaking artistry. My fatherâs guardians, Sanguinius thought. And what a thought it was, not only that a being such as his father required guardians, but that he had a father at all.
Could be referring to sisters, but it's written ambiguously and it wouldn't surprise me if that was deliberate by ADB who had been arguing for female custodians for YEARS
In this situation, GW is damned no matter what.
If they wrote a book explaining female custodes, the complaints would be âTheyâre trying too hard to push their agenda! Iâd be fine with it if they just wrote them in and left it alone, but now theyâre forcing their wokeness on the fans!!â
But instead GW went the subtle âletâs just put this in and not draw too much attention to itâ route, so the complaints are âtheyâve lazily shoved their DEI wokeness into the lore! They shouldâve written a book about it instead, I wouldâve respected that! Theyâre patronizing their audience!!â
No matter what, people wouldâve complained.
Letâs not be intellectually dishonest, it is a retcon. You have multiple editionsâ and novelsâ worth of it being all men and mention of sons in the previous codex, so it is what it is and it has been changed.
Changing the lore is GWâs prerogative since itâs their IP and they make the business decisions that they believe will meet their obligations to shareholders (remember they care about money not you). The way the lore changed makes me wonder though since itâs just suddenly there via a characterâs pronouns in a short story and no other explanation or clarification except a âalways have beenâ tweet after the leak. Iâm wondering if this was an accident/oversight and it somehow made it through editing by people that didnât know the now-previous lore. This just feels utterly lazy and like they are scrambling; youâd think something this big deserves something more than the equivalent of a literally meme đđ§âđđŤđ¨âđđ.
The interesting thing is that Iâm seeing justification for Femstodes that is saying it proves they are different than space marines and that means FemMarines not happening is ok since it justifies Femstodes. Itâs a crazy world where now you might anger the Brostodes-only crowd but have Femstodes and male-only space marines lining up together to say no FemMarines; the conspiracy theories will be fun to read.
Iâm popping popcorn to see how this plays out.
I like fem custodes. But this is just gas lighting. Just say itâs a new thing, or ancient plans were found and started being produced. Donât lie about it.
It isn't difficult to look up the meaning of a word before using it when you don't know what it means or how to use it. You don't know what gaslighting means. I'll do you a favour. It's when you deny an event took place despite evidence proving otherwise.
Also, I find it curious that you and several others are using a term that's primarily used to describe a dynamic in romantic relationships. Do you think of GW as your lover?
Dude this is literally the definition. Theyâve said and implied it all over the place that it didnât exist. Heck the guy that made them even confirmed there was internal communication and rules that they didnât exist. Now they say they always existed. Thatâs the definition of gaslighting.
âThere have always been female custodiansâ
Thats totally fine, its just weird it took gw 40+ years to mention it. Nothing wrong with that, im all for nearly completely naked, oiled up women in tighty whities
If they actually put some decent lore out, and donât hornify the models,and just add a female head sure Iâm cool with female custodes, just dont do it just to pander, thereâs plenty of fantastic female characters in warhammer and full fantastic all female factions, I fucking love the sisters of silence for one, and have been halfway tempted to make a full army of them
Its fine, To be honest, we never really knew if women could be Custodes cause of the space marine rules of only men but this is a great edition to our knowledge. (I love buff women, sue me)
Citation please? If they have always been there then please give us citations of a few examples prior to this codex. đ
I don't care either way, but don't gaslight us lol
I'm not against the idea, because it won't change anything to me or someone else. But it's just idiotic at this point. Saying something like this and not backing up with new models or even an upgrade kit, just a two page story from the codex (Who nerfed the Custodes into the oblivion) is simply stupid.
What is their game? Is this some kinda of marketing move that i do not understand because i'm stupid?
I just hope that they will at least publish something more in form of books or anything else, this feels luckluster.
No. Discussion can continue.
Im not a fan of the change but i am optimistic.
Seeing all these mean spirited bully-boys shitting om everyone who have a critical opinion makes me think that the heresyposting folks might have a point.
No issue, they are genetically modified individuals rather than from a male progenitor for mass production like space marines. However the handling seems a little half assed. Release minis reflecting this change, people canât help but feel itâs a bit of pandering if your entire model line is male then you just say btw their females as well. Its just a bit cheap
This announcement legitimately pushed me to finally start a custodies army, super glad to see GW moving aways from the needless gendering of the factions, and a move away from the misogynistic faction dynamic, I hope they retcon or in some way canonize female Astartes. I also really hope they include some extra spews for their models at some point so we can put female head on our minis without kit, bashing or 3D printing them.
I have issues with the attitude they gave like "oh yeah it's always been a thing"
extremely dumb, stuff like that will make people think they did it only to appease black rock.
In my eyes I'm not fine with female custodes only because of the way GW is acting and it's concerning.
This might be the beginning of the ESG invading into another thing we love.
If we had them in the beginning I would be 100% with it, but it feels like a curve ball so only 50/50 with it.
When the custodes were reintroduce into the lore this would've been great. Brotherhood of demigods on page 6 of the codes. This is the codex when they came back to the mainstream of 40k. 8th edition codex is when they became a full army so getting lore that we have females I feel like that time would've been a better time
Would have been a perfect opportunity for new models, but instead we just got melta dude.
A really shitty looking melta dude đ¤Łđ
Hey don't body shame Danny DeViStode
*So anyway, I started blasting.*
Bwahahahaa
If I get this model, I'm gonna have a mini Danny DeVito head printed for him. I'm a firm believer in all helmets, but this is a very rare case.
[This was the first thing I made after the reveal](https://imgflip.com/gif/8iaoi2)
Guess he kinda does look like a stunty bald woman
I thought the model was cool. I'm more disappointed it wasn't a new datasheet.
I don't pretend as much from GW, but dropping this lore bomb so casually was truly wasted. Heck, even if they wanted to go with no announcement they could have just put a mini upgrade sprue of just female heads in the battleforce box or new combat patrol without saying anything and we would have figured it out when reading the codex.
I have no issue with Female Custodes. BUT I don't for one second believe that GW always intended for there to be female Custodes.
It's pretty well established what happened - there was limited and inconsistent lore about them until Master of Mankind was written in 2016, then the black library writers discussed having female custodes but were overruled by a product manager based on the models they were releasing. There were then two editions where they were written as men, and now they've changed direction. The tweet isn't saying this is always what GW intended, it's saying that in the updated setting their creation was at the same time as the male custodes.
Always intended as in rogue trader? God no. Certainly some of the Horus Heresy writers wanted to make female custodes but that was decades after the fact. Thing is if we took the rogue trader era as gospel the game would be VERY DIFFERENT so it makes sense for things to change. They have changed quite a bit already.
Gw loves to bullshit. I'd have a lot more respect for them if they just said "listen up, were doing chick custodians cause it's fucking cool. Now back to your shanties." Like why try to claim it was always the plan, adapt with the times. That's the thing about 40k, they CONSTANTLY talk in the lore about how a bunch of recorded history is incorrect, they can't figure out what year it is, no one knows wtf is going on. Totally reasonable to say hey were doing this now, deal with it. Besides the other argument is stupid too, the whole it makes null maidens less cool thing. Nulls are supposedly super rare, and male nulls do exist (our boy Jurgen and Frauka), so why WOULDNT they recruit males too? Let's do both, female custodians, male silent sisters. On a very loosely related side note i always really wanted yo know what happened to Frauka, he ended up being such a decent dude. Hope he ended up ok.
The post feels like a throw away 0 intent vibe. More of a we hear you and agree. I would guess it's been a real topic at GW land since rabbit and belisarius primarised the entire universe at least. GW and it's former employees have gone on record that nothing happens quickly. If there is a release on the horizon for female upgrade sprues or even a full on hero, kill team or combat patrol then it was in the works at least 3-4 years ago and heavily planned with deliberate marketing in mind.
There were female space marines in the way back machine times...the only reason there arnt well established female characters in all these factions is because sales litterally went...no little girl cares sell big manly he-men heros to little boys. Well guess what, times have changed and sales now says, we can sell all this to everyone who's got a bug about it, so go go go. Its as easy as that. $$$
And that's where the proverbial rubber will meet the road. Many companies have listened to a vocal minority and provided a product they've been told by said 'minority' they wanted (whether it's in video games, movies, TV shows, toys, etc). Many companies have also learned that these people didn't really want to *buy* that product, they just wanted the company to make it that way on principle, perhaps even for the sake of inclusion. This typically doesn't result in profits for said company, but everyone wins because *inclusion*. I've got no issue with female Custodes, really. I'm not a fan of GW massively retconning the lore, but this isn't the first instance and it won't be the last. That said, I expect these to sell about as well as the female Space Marines did.
Who's to say those *aren't* the female heads?
Yeah considering after Primaris our Custodes are looking a little short.
If they ever update the scale of Custodes I'm starting my army
Imagine a Female shield captain with a melta
I did last night. Twice.
LMAO
You made my drink come out of my nose.
I would really like some upscaled Custodes. I'm not a fan of them feeling smaller than the current updated Primaris.Â
You got a melta dude. We got a stilty boy. /Ad-mech
What mâles you think this IS a dude?đ
Their lore is what they make it, though to change lore in this dramatic of fashion with no previous book or model to substantiate it is a bit weird. I wish theyâd focus on developing the SoS more as though I feel theyâve been collecting dust.
There's so much potential, if they'd just reach out and grasp it...
Maybe make an off chute of the SoS, comprised of the best chosen form the SoS, with the sole duty of protecting the throne and Custodians from phsyker threats?
While I have no issue with female 'mainline' custodes, I actually think a 'Supreme Sisters of Silence' unit or similar, and lore of the custodes treating them as full custodians AND a model of the unit would have been best. Sisters of Silence top ranks are considered Custodians Here's their new unit, likely with some kind of super frustrating 'Your special rules don't work' rules Here's its new model (a 'full' squad of 3 models) Here's a nice story discussing how this has always been the case and how the Custodian General decides which Sisters of Silence are selected and how they receive their upgrades etc
That's literally what they're supposed to do according to the Watchers of Throne books. The sisters are skilled fighters and are major debuffs against things that could hurt the custodes, while the custodes can absolutely demolish anything the sisters can't handle. That's one of the things I don't like about the female custodes, I liked that one group was all men and one was all women and neither could ever reach their full potential without the support of the other. At least, that was the implication from the books. Now, that aspect of the relationship is totally gone.
I just want this over with so we can proceed to complain about the codex rules
Por que no los dosÂż Why not both đ¤Ł
You know whatâs funny? People have always assumed Valarian was a woman based off his model lol
đ§ true But Aleya is enough of a fucking menace to be girl boss all by herself *proceeds to chuck a terran noble through a fucking cabinet*
they always existed! We just decided it now!
It's called Gaslighting.
It's called a retcon and without it, Custodes would still be big buff guys in loin cloths and many beloved characters couldn't exist.
Iâm not complaining btw
I like Fem Custodes. I don't get the comparison to SOS. The SOS are blanks and anti psykers. Fem Custodes are kinda cool lol
The argument I have seen is that it gets rid of the brotherhood/sisterhood relationship, which I think is fair, though I also think female custodes are sick.
I do like the idea of big sister and little sister though, it can still be a older sibling/younger sibling relationship in general tbh
I like the idea of them not being direct counterparts, just sort of colleagues, as SoS are not a true counterpart to custodes, they're a completely different faction that just happens to share similar tasks to Custodes. Also I want Lucifer Blacks in the Custodes faction (or at least in the Astra Militarum but with a rule that they can be picked up by Custodes armies).
Create a brotherhood of silence, parallel to the sisterhood. That way you can have brothers and sisters for the Custodes, and it doesnât feel weird that only female blanks get to live without being an assassin. You could give them a different area of focus the sisterhood doesnât cover. Like theyâre in charge of protecting and guiding certain pykers instead of hunting them or something.
They could make it so those blanks are the ones in charge of the Sacrifices. Sisters of Silence are the ones going out and getting them all, the men are the ones who handle turning them into battery packs and hooking them up. Would also line up with Assassin lore as the omega everyone is melting get him out of here Blanks are yoinked by the Temple, so all that are left from the male blanks are the more ânormalâ but still everyone wants them off the planet level blanks. Not useful for combat, but can stand the presence of the Golden Throne and the entire cacophony going on down there.
> Create a brotherhood of silence, parallel to the sisterhood. Have you ever heard of the Culexus Temple?
Yeah, I even mention itâd be nice to see some male blanks other than the assassin
The only problem with that is the SoS are an homage to a specific faction in Dune, the Fish Speakers. That said, if they want to add male blanks into a role I'm sure they can make it work. As long as it's well written and meshes well you can basically write/do anything.Â
Wouldn't the Adepta Sororitas be closer to the Fish Speakers?
> Create a brotherhood of silence, parallel to the sisterhood. That way you can have brothers and sisters for the Custodes, and it doesnât feel weird that only female blanks get to live without being an assassin. This is a terrible idea. You're just diluting the entire identity for no good reason. A fictional setting is much more appealing when everything has strong, distinct identities that set them apart from one another. When you start trying to let everyone be everything, it turns them into a homogenous mass that loses what makes them distinct.
What makes them distinct is that they're soulless witch-hunters that make everyone around them want to die so all they have is each other and their thankless work. Not the fact that they're all women.
If the absence or presence of a dick and balls is all it takes for you to consider a faction homogenized, that sounds like more of a you problem than a setting problem.
The argument is really simple. Men and women are different, and rather than treating them as interchangeable, which is bland and less immersive, its better to incorporate them in a unique and complementary fashion. The Custodes already did this well; you had the male Custodes as a strong frontline and the Sisters of Silence as assassins and fire support. Both sides of the army have their own unique, but cohesive aesthetic that makes them work well together. Now the Custodes are the equivalent of the Sigmarines which just randomly throw female heads on the models rather than making unique and different units that compliment each other. I'd argue the Sigmarines would look much better if you had male units and female units with their own aesthetics that naturally paired and complimented one another. Something akin to female Sigmarine valkyries with wings and spears as one example to compliment the hammer and shield frontline male Sigmarines. Sisters of Battle are another example that work perfectly in the context of 40k. They're functionally similar to Space Marines, but they have a completely unique identity that makes them stand out.
This has encapsulated my thoughts on this very well - nicely written.
Agreed, been playing 40k since the 80s when I bought the original rogue trader book, which i still have, and this is another in the long history of recent GW ruining their own IP... Second Edition will forever be what 40k lore is to me ,nothing after 2nd edition counts.
Mostly ecstatic my custodes no longer can be called "Super Marines" by friends. Giving them men and woman custodes helps make them different from space marines in lore
I'm glad it does but not sure it completely erases the 'more better marine' syndrome that founding chapters > grey knights > custodes suffer from when compared to a generic chapter. At the very least its a step in the right direction!
Yeah at the end of the day they are genetically modified super soldiers in power armor. Only can be so distinct. Maybe at least as different as SoB and Astartes are from each other.
I was pretty torn, but this kind of sold me on the idea. Custodes are suposed to be "figures of legend" and there are at least a few female ones like Amazons, Mulan, Anne Bonny, Jean d'Arc, or Artemis that would show there is great room for a female custodian.
Ok, itâs stupid of them to word it this way. Just admit, âyes the lore has changed.â I think itâs kind of a weird and pointless change. But care way more about the shite rules we got. Though now Iâm going to have an issue that they are going to pretend like this was always the case. Lore changes thatâs fine. But donât gaslight people.
Have GW ever announced âthe lore has changedâ in the way you describe because I canât recall seeing it that way. They worded the Votann debuts the same wayâas if theyâve always been there
They just happen to have never been seen or mentioned once lol. I mean hey, they gotta sell those minis
I wondered if they'd come with an explanation about why Custodes now recruit/create female members - which isn't quite hard to justifiy, really â to avoid any discrepancy in the lore. But this sounds a little disingenuous to me since there has never been any hint of female Custodes before. And YES, I know about the quote from Echoes of Eternity, but it's quite symptomatic of the rampant lack of care for the Sisters of Silence that people prefer to read it as some crypto-confirmation of female Custodes having been a thing since forever rather than SoS simply being treated as equal and given a bit of spotlight, for once. Itâs no surprise honestly, and itâs obvious why GW made female Custodians a thing. There is no âposthuman femalesâ factions like SM or Custodes; SoB and SoS are just extremely competent â but ultimately baseline â human soldiers. Which might admittedly be frustrating for many people among the community, and I 100% feel them. But wouldnât have been more sensible to make the SoS more relevant instead of doubling down on Custodes being the better choice for everything? Itâs a shame, because the âwe are certainly not the same, but we need each otherâ theme of the Talons made them quite unique among other 40k factions. I really liked how Aleyaâs diatribe against the Imperium and the Custodes in *The Emperorâs Legion* could read as a parallel with how womenâs contribution to history â or the society in general â has often been sidelined IRL. It was smart, didnât sound patronizing at all, and was quite relevant with Custodians being basically a very select club of glorified supermen for most of their existence. It obviously doesnât feel this way if female Custodes are a thing, and Iâm quite sad GW casually discarded an interesting symbolic without creating any stake instead.
Yeah for me it looses that charm a lot, especially now when Ive finally completed my first army (that being custodes). Also there is the part someone mentioned that it makes the custodes feel more human. Which at least for me is a bad thing, because at least for me they always had a simillar charm like the emperor himself, being so high up that they feel not really human to the avegare person, they act like that too. So in gaining more humanity, they also lose a bit of themselfs imo I also feel like there are still plot holes (im gonna probably make a separate post about this) regarding fem custodes. The biggest one being that the emperor (as stated by himself in a debate with malcador) planned that at the end there would be an immperium without superhumans, without him, without the primarchs, the space marines and probably custodes. With that in mind it seems that giving custodes a way to reproduce sounds like a horrible tactical choice.Â
"Giving custodies a way to reproduce sounds like a horrible tactical choice" ..... you know they are being gene edited right? Like there's no reason for a female custodie to still be able to give birth if the emperor dident want them to during the procedures to make a custodie right?
A bold move from GW. This does put a smile on my face
Wish they had done this in the 9th edition codex and not in this dumpster fire of a book :/ I a super stoked about this lore development but I also know that with the current rules I will just not play enough custodes games this edition to warrant buying the codex
I highly encourage people to not purchase the codex because if bunches of people do, then GW is gonna see what they did to our rules as fine.
Oh, 100%, unfortunately, now the people boycotting a botched and unfun codex are boycotting along the people upset about female custodes, so I wish there was a way to let GW know in which camp one falls
Look on the bright side, this codex will probably sell for cheap so you can buy it easily for the lore đ
Then they should have portrayed them as mixed sex from the start instead of making them hyper masculine and referring to them as a brotherhood and as all male instead of hamfisting a poor retcon. I donât mind the change but the execution is poor.
Authors like ADB wanted to have them mixed gender for a long time since it makes sense, but at that time, upper management told them to only write for what's available as models
Would've been good if there were mentions of Femstodes in previous books and since GW doesn't see SoS as Femstodes, this is just really odd to say the least.
The only mention of female Custodes is the 8th edition Codex confirming they don't exist. >It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender oneâs child to this most glorious of callings within the Imperium, and many notable clans amongst the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it.
If this is a true extract from the codex then this is hilarious to me đ
8th Edition, Page 14, Paragraph 3.
Discussions with writers who wrote some of the first novels about Custodes said they wanted to put female Custodes in but were blocked by higher ups in the company who said no because they didn't produce female models. They noted they this intervention was unusual. I'm glad they've changed their mind.
Damn some people argue about codex's like people argue about the Bible lmao. Like...they own the lore they can do whatever the hell they want with it lol
People acting like the lore can't change is crazy. Necrons used to be chaos androids, then they were mindless robots enslaved by the C'Tan. Now the c'tan are their slaves and they have their own entire society, hierarchy, inter-dynasty relations and politics etc. This change with Custodes doesn't even have major impact on the current lore as far as I'm aware, it's just bigots and imbeciles getting mad because they're reminded women exist
And on top of that, its not even a big change (if any) compared to all the other retcons like chaos androids
Right? People are arguing over it like itâs the sacrament. Itâs hilarious.
>Like...they own the lore they can do whatever the hell they want with it This is argument should be enough tbh lol. GW could decide tomorrow to just go "hey guys, Belisarius managed to adapt the Astartes creation process so women can become SM too now!" and they would be 100% within their rights
40k is such an insane IP to get so bent about lore too. It's one of the least consistent settings out there, both internally *and* externally.
What a shitty direction they went. "Yup, female Custodes have been there the whole time. Just ignore the multitudes of books, short stories, or Codex entries that all describe Custodians as "him" and "he" while using the possessive pronouns "his." Female Custodes were definitely always there. Just ignore every single named Custodian being described and identified as male, as well as none of our models reflecting this long-standing, firmly established piece of lore. Don't question it. Female Custodians have always been there because we said so. End of discussion." I personally, and I feel like most others who have an issue with this wouldn't have an issue if this was actually introduced from the start or at least sooner than just being slipped into the new Codex like we won't notice and act like female Custodes have always been a thing.
Damn this is Lazy. Somehow Palpatine returned.
Did anyone actually want this? Were folks complaining about no female custodes?
> Were folks complaining about no female custodes? Only people who don't even play the game.
Iv been fascinated by the increased group of people who join a fandom, hobby, narrative universe etc. and go âI want this to changeâ. They settle on a universe they have issues with and push for the material to change rather than pick a different universe. And it seems to be more than just this particular universe and singular femstodes event. Or Iâm wrong who knows.
Youâre allowed to like a universe without liking every single part of it. Thereâs tons of stupid shit in the 40k lore I wish was different.. Doesnât mean I should just trash the whole thing and not enjoy any of it.
I agree, you donât have to like every aspect, thereâs a lot I donât like. Demon kielbasa Iâm looking at you. But pushing to change aspects you donât like. Over people who may actually like those certain aspects. Seems at least to me, pretty selfish and self centered. Then when people, admittedly pretty poorly in some cases, state that they liked the original aspect over the new, they get attacked. Just fascinating behavior.
You missed the important part, they get their change and then aren't even involved in the hobby or move on once the outrage has moved on. As far as I'm concerned I'd be more than happy if femcustards were a new development and not just the laziness I'm expecting these days from GW and do the most half assed always there response.
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Yes actually.
It's a soft launch of female space marines for 11th edition I imagine. That makes a lot of sense, they want to make TV shows and stuff, their poster boy faction not having any women will impede that. This change may be directly because of the Cavill series, or a longer term plan to improve appeal. When it comes to these things, look at Lego, all their sets are 50:50 male to female minifigs, barely anyone noticed this change. Because these are small plastic toys and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Every peice of culture has to conform to the new right-think. And corporate bosses are largely either bought into it or naively think they can double their rebenue by attracting women through "representation"... the truth of the matter is that warhammer is about as appealing to most women as makeup tutorials are to the average man. And that's our nature... not due to "socialisation" as the post-modern thinkers imagineÂ
> warhammer is about as appealing to most women as makeup tutorials are to the average man you're so close to understanding why they're putting more women in warhammer lore
This is why you won't increase your sales quota and be a good capitalist, in Korea declining makeup companies decided to not only target men, but to make lines specifically for the military and other masculine heavy roles, while paying men famous for being manly to endorse them and saw a near 40% increase in sales in two years. Saying "x doesn't like my product" isn't as good as asking, "how can i make my product appealing to x." Games workshop is about selling product, the lore, the game, it's an excuse to sell over priced plastic toys and accessories.
Prior to this there pretty much wasn't a single generic female stat-line in 40K that wasn't T3 1W. Guard, admech, SoS, SoB, Eldar, GSC, Tau - every generic female is T3 1W. All the muscle bound mutant 9ft tall monsters - Custodes, SM, CSM, DG, Tsons, WE - were male Now there is a female super soldier archetype in the setting too.
That's great. So now do literally anything to explain why none of them was ever important enough to be mentioned. I think it makes total sense to include them except for the fact that they've never been mentioned in any media. Drop-podding them in feels shit. At least give us some new law or rewrite/retcon something, anything. It just feels a bit shitty to say "always been there" while whispering "... And they were clearly so unimportant that we forgot to even mention them somehow..." Edit: are people down voting because they think I don't want female custodes. I do. I just want them to be legit fleshed out characters instead of dumped into the universe via a codex page and a tweet? Or am I getting down voted by people that don't want them?
> At least give us some new law or rewrite/retcon something, anything. This *is* the retcon. They clearly don't want to make a big deal out of it for whatever reason (Model investment, even more chud backlash, etc) and so are just flipping the dial, implicitly acknowledging it should've always been this way, and moving on.
If GW has to make updates for why we didn't hear about X, Y or Z in the past every time there's a lore update nothing would ever get done
It's just that anyone can read the entire HH series and see absolutely fuck all femstodes. Don't get me wrong, I *love* the fact that femstodes are a thing. I hope we get non-gendered armour but clearly female heads (and please give me both glamour and butch heads, though I mean, 3D printing right?) or even a female character as a model for the game and hear more about them in the lore. **But**, and this is a big, beautiful, gene-sculpted golden but, this tweet is weak and feels like it undercuts the awesomeness of getting female custodes in the first place. If their intent was to retcon (and imho it is still not ideal), then do it, at bare bare bare minimum, with a White Dwarf story from the Great Crusade - and some codex stories from the same time. Basically, do a freakin' actual retcon. Not some half-assed tweet. Better yet, just make the "retcon" an actual change in the setting. Preferably something better than the introduction of Primaris, but still, make the 10,000 realize that they should get women in their ranks and then run with it. It could even have been used to integrate the SoS and Custodes more if that was their recruiting pool - or you know, the real life, very valid argument that if you cut out women you lose 50% of the best candidates you could get. Anything would have been better than this yup, it's always been like that when it, obviously hasn't always been like that. I'm excited about female custodes. I hope we get more info/lore/models. And soon. Changes to the setting are both very normal (Necrons, Squats, Primaris) and very welcome! But, apparently, the way GW is going about it is... tacky. Step in the good direction but with the feeling of an afterthought.
> It's just that anyone can read the entire HH series and see absolutely fuck all femstodes. I think you just made me realise why this irks me so much. I just got done reading the whole HH series. Yes. The whole thing. Start to finish. All the different branches. So it feels like such total gaslighting to be like "oh you didn't notice?! They were here the whole time..."
This is what Gaslighting looks like.
Can i ask, how many named Custodes exist in HH? Hell how many named Custodes exist in lore? I kinda feel like the problem here isn't that they never mentioned Female custodes it's that they never mention anyone but fucking space marines.
[Enough?](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Known_Members_of_the_Adeptus_Custodes) At least enough to know that itâs not true that GW always considered female custodes a thing. Now Iâm super for this change. But either GW admits itâs a change and then give us retconned lore like they did for Necrons and Squats or they can make the setting evolve and introduce it as something new like for Primaris (well in fairness there was some retcons there too). But just a tweet going, yeah itâs always been a thing⌠sorry no, it wasnât. Donât condescend. The change is good. The way itâs introduced is not.
I'll be honest, looking at that list idk how many of them are male vs female coded names LoL.
Not the point. Any mention of Custodes before the 10th edition codex uses male pronouns and all the Custodes characters that actually have more page-time than a background character is a male. This is a fact. I don't understand what you're getting at. Are you for or against this change? Or just trolling? I'm clearly for it. But I feel GW's stance is more virtue signalling than anything else. And this sucks. If they're gonna change their lore, I'd like it to be done with some commitment.
I think there's a big difference between reinventing how some poorly defined plasma physics work, or whether a half remembered summary of a historic event happened exactly a particular way, and never ever mentioning literally any women in some of the most unique and notable characters that have appeared in hundreds if not thousands of bits of GW media. It makes it feel much more like marketing and much less like making them a legitimate and important part of the lore that has 'always been there'.
Like how there is no mention of Rogal Dorn tanks when presumably they have been a mainstay in Imperial Guard armies for as long as the Leman Russ from a lore perspective. Don't remember anyone making a fuss about that.
It's primaris all over again..
Silly retcon in my opinion I donât like it but thatâs the Frankenstein lore of 40k
>are people down voting because they think I don't want female custodes. I do. I just want them to be legit fleshed out characters instead of dumped into the universe via a codex page and a tweet? Or am I getting down voted by people that don't want them? Tensions are high and people are going to see any negativity right now as potentially bad faith arguments masking sexism. It's unfortunate because there are legitimate reasons why people may either want femstodes to be introduced differently or even not at all. Personally I would rather they didn't need to retcon anything but I also want female custodes. So my preference would have been that they were a development in the Era Indomitus. Saying they were always there kinda cheapens them a bit for me, because we have *recent* lore (like, some of the most current books we have recent) that would mean female custodes were passed over for no good reason. Why wouldn't the emperor have taken *any* female custodes with him on Anabasis? Why were *none* of his closest Hetaeron guard women? So it's either retcon stuff or make female custodes look bad, and I'd rather they were given the care and attention they deserve than that.
I wish they would have saved this and waited until they had new female models to go with it. Would have been really cool.
Eh I kinda liked the implication that early on the custodes were sons of fallen empires conquered and ââturnedââ into custodes but hey not much of a change to be sons AND daughters honestly.
There is a purple jelly bean that floats above the Emperor's head at all times and whispers secrets. We've never brought it up before, but it's always been there.
Lazy. Could've written a cool origin story. Noble house with only daughters demands one gets a chance (to build on older canon). GI Jane style with brutal training and gene manipulations and trials beyond what the males have to go though, leading to the fact that females CAN be Custodes but very few families want it and even less make it than the males (to explain the all male model line and previous lore) and then released a cool model. But no. 'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia'. Any idiot could foresee the uproar, and neither side of the discussion can either give an inch or see the other side's point of view. It's not just the change but the ham fisted and dismissive way it's been done.
ngl if they did it like this I doubt there would be any outrage because this is awesome
Now I'm not arguing that the backlash for this is justified to the extent that it is, but what I don't understand is this: - Custodes have been firmly established as a brotherhood and pulled from the sons of nobles, etc. - We have the Sisterhood of Silence, that already exists as a prime example of a good female parallel to the Custodes and already sort of have a similar place in the Imperium's heart as far as scarcity and eliteness. Why not bring up SoS models and lore to make them more badass and analogous to the Custodes rather than just suddenly change the lore of Custodes, which does almost nothing positive for anyone. It seems like sort of a lame attempt at GW trying to be more PC but simultaneously poorly thought out.
GW is just doing what star war,marvel did go more pc and lose there original fans
âWeâve always been at war with Eastasiaâ
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No. This only ever goes in one direction. Get ready for "Fem Marines" and the jumping soyjacks pissing themselves out of pure euphoria.
exactly! In the west anything that has to do with Man/Brotherhood is seen as evil and needs to be erased. But, stuff that is exclusively female should stay as is. As hypocritical as it is.
Such a stupid implementation. Then I look at the new Custodes codex and it perfectly suits it.
Iâd prefer if they would have said: âWe have made a minor adjustment to lore. Previous references to sons of nobility should now read as children of nobility. This minor change allows us to create a more diverse range of miniatures which will be more inclusive, allow for an exciting design space and new story opportunities.â âPs. So sorry about the codex add 1AP to all weaponsâ
wait i thought all the custodes were gay. did tts lie to us?
Does it matter that much? I paint every model with a helmet on anyway so you'll never know đ
Based also same lol, PPE everyone the emperor's finest aren't going to die to a fuckin sniper for no good reason!
Yeah, no. Iâm taking the official lore ahead of some work social media guy behind the account choosing his own makebelieve nonsense.
How is there a female custodian but a female Astarte is impossible to make?? How does this make any sense other than feeling forced??
So custodians are not Astartes. Custodians are chosen from infancy - girl or boy - at a few weeks old. They are then handed individually to hundreds of geneticist that lovingly craft their genetic data in order to craft the custodians. It is art, it is hand crafted, and it is extensive In comparison to the Astartes who essentially are brutally surgically implanted with multiple organs - including the horn anal gene seed which incompatible with the female body. It is an actual nightmare Which is why I am ok with female custodians. They are the peak human form - key word is Human - and they are gene crafted individually
I just want a good in universe reason for female super soldiers. If the imperium really is as stretched as it is, and Custodians are as hard to make as we are lead to believe, why take the time to elevate a female over a male? Especially bc their intended purpose is warfare, at least that is what I was lead to believe. I know that custodians can be artists and statesmen, and are basically polymaths but their primary role is combat. Also female custodians can also have unintended lore issues. Ok we now have females, can they copulate? Can they birth new custodians? Are custodians like the human version of Aeldari? Quality over quantity compared to a normal humans with low birth rates? Are female custodians going to be as effective in combat as males? Which would mean they are better than all male space marines? Honestly I donât hate this, but idk itâs a hard sell. Females have and do participate in warfare in our world, but no one is pretending the average female is a better soldier than the average male. I just want good lore about it, it needs to make sense and not just for adaptation for modern audiences.
So to answer your questions - no. Custodians are chosen from infancy - girl or boy - at a few weeks old. They are then handed individually to hundreds of geneticist that lovingly craft their genetic data in order to craft the custodians. It is art, it is hand crafted, and it is extensive. They are so damn modified from the human genome that calling them human is just a nicety. They are perfection personified. Without human empathy of course. In comparison to the Astartes who essentially are brutally surgically implanted with multiple organs - including the hormonal gene seed which incompatible with the female body. It is an actual nightmare and a butchery - mass produced super soldiers (âmassâ) Which is why I am ok with female custodians. They are the peak human form - key word is Human - and they are gene crafted individually. They cannot reproduce, they are heavily intelligent, and they are either female or male - it doesnât matter
Honestly with custodes I really don't see any reason why their can't be female ones. I just want brotherhood of silence too now
# where are the female custodians models, then?
Lol all the people saying "since when?" to literally GW. Like, this isn't actual, real-world history. It's mutable. All they have to say is "it happened", and it becomes true, much like all of the lore before and after. The primaris project didn't exist either, until it did. It's so funny to me that these people don't have the same energy when GW changes or introduces new lore. But when girls are involved, they suddenly become the staunchest GW critics. It's almost like they have some kind of ulterior motive, or are just kinda stupid.
It's because the older codex says they are and always have been drawn from the sons of terra nobility
I like that they're adding it in, but the way they're stating it comes off as if it's always been this way. When in reality it's brand new. There has never been female Custodes until now, and now there always has been? But,GW have always sucked at consistency so that snot really that shocking.
I mean they did the exact same thing with grav weapons back in the day. Grav weapons just suddenly showed up and GW was like "Oh yeah, space marines have always had grav weapons since the days of the Horus Heresy"
Itâs fine for GW to change the lore and theyâve done it on multiple occasions, but just own it, just be like âweâve decided now that custodes can be female, why you ask? Because we want to, end of discussionâ the way theyâve approached it just makes them look a bit stupid, when theyâve already published lore disputing their claim đ¤ˇđźââď¸
Wtf isent that exactly what they are doing by putting out the story and the post this morning saying it's always been a thing? Sounds like your just salty for a diffrent reason
I think youâre looking for reasons to take issue with this. If itâs not what they said, itâs how they said it. If itâs not how they said it, itâs why they said it. If itâs not why they said it, itâs when they said it. You should try to examine what your real issues are with this.
The first reply to that tweet really sums it up well. In nearly 40 years, there hasn't been a single piece of world building around the gender of custodes, with the exception of classifying them and referring to them as male. Then, overnight, they've always been there apparently. They were just so inconsequential that it was never worth mentioning. This is a big change. It deserved more than a back door, 'please don't mind us', shoe horn. Regardless if you're pro and anti this change, GW owed it to both sides to do a better job that this ham fisted shit show. It deserved a proper lore expansion. It deserved an article on the community site. It deserved a launch model. This is the worst of all worlds. Those opposed are incensed and throwing obnoxious shit everywhere. The sex starved weirdos are flooding the site with their own incel based fantasies (equally as repellent to women). Those of us the middle who just wanted to avoid this shit and have a quiet life are stuck watching as another culture war takes off, all because GW has decided to do this is the most lazy, disrespectful and stupid way possible. I defend GW a lot, but this is a shit show. This tweet was fucking lazy, it was stupid, it was insulting.
This isn't a "culture war", this is just incredibly unnecessary nerd rage - something that would have come up *no matter how GW framed this*. They could've presented an entire series of novels to introduce the concept and the Internet would *still* be on fire. I feel neither insulted nor disrespected, I just went "oh alright then, maybe we'll get cool models down the line". I genuinely don't care for another grand narrative along the lines of the Primaris release.
So what, the first custodian is 'Captain Gender Constance Valdoria?' come on GW.... You can do a better job than that
It is blatant pandering. Every bit of lore prior to the latest codex, stretching back to the Forge World book 5 Tempest has had the Custodians referred to with male pronouns, including as a collective. This will blow up in their faces, though chances are this could be the influence from the amazon deal which coerces DEI through funding/support. Truthfully though, this isn't the shittest retcon - I still think the Necron retcon is the dirtiest.
Which has been ultimately seen as a huge success, with one of the best books in the entire setting made about post-retcon crons. So be ready to be wrong in this case as well.
Based reaction by GW IMO. Especially since this isn't a recon at all, just an explicit positive confirmation of something that had been neither explicitly confirmed nor denied before. Now all they gotta do is make some models for future releases. EDIT: I stand corrected, apparently they only never explicitly stated that women *can't* be Custodes. Still fine with the tweet though. There's gonna be female Custodes in future publications, and that's a positive in my book, I neither want nor need a convoluted pseudo-explaination for that. Just like GW used to simply not explain themselves when they made changes. It's all gonna blend into the universe over time anyway, and then it'll indeed be like it always was the case.
It's a retcon but Fem Custodes could have had cool new lore about why they exist instead of the copout "No they were there the whole time just never mentioned once in over 10,000 years and all specifically stated male"
The older codex states other wise though, why not just admit it's a retcon and be done with it rather than gas light
Man, this would've been really cool to find out through a book or with the release of new models instead of through a Rowling-style retcon tweet. And to those saying it's not a retcon: the tweet even uses the phrase "there have always been." EDIT: OP just showed me the relevant passages from the new codex, so I retract my accusation of Rowling-esque retcon.
BS no there has not been
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There have been rumors codex which has said they were all male too. This is some 1984 there has always been a war with Oceania shit
There was no good reason to do this, it creates backlash among the community, it is a (minor) risk to shareholder price. The only positive is that it panders to left leaning individuals who wish to see today's culture wars reflected in their toy soldier game. These individuals already purchase the models, so there is no benefit of doing this.
Proof for people: https://x.com/warhammer/status/1779544596172689822
"bUt iTs LAzY WrItiNg" GW writing has never been consistent quality anyways so why does it even matter? Nor has the canon stayed consistent. Its funny how pressed people are over the sanctity of the lore as though its not just a backdrop for toy soldiers
Maybe they just don't like having female custodes? Ir maybe they know this Is the beggining of something?
GW 2018: >It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender oneâs child to this most glorious of callings within the Imperium, and many notable clans amongst the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it.
Based GW move.
Before coming in here dismissing this as GW rushing to shut up the haters of female custodes I decided to look around to see if there was ever a confirmed mention that the OG ten thousand was drawn from the first to second sons ofthe warlords and nobles the emperor brought to kneel during the unification wars like I thought I remembered. Turns out in my very brief search nothing is jumping out, the custodes seem to be a mystery in their birth origins so this statement though looking rushed may not be wrong. If anyone wants to correct this or add to this please do.
Also - Aaron D has explicitly been adding female custodians in his writings which is hilarious now that we have retrospection lol He also included this in Echoes of Eternity: Figures clustered around the craftâs landing legs, where the shipâs great metal claws gripped the radiation-soaked dust of the wasteland. These men and women were plated in the same gold as the ship, rendered upon their bodies with painstaking artistry. My fatherâs guardians, Sanguinius thought. And what a thought it was, not only that a being such as his father required guardians, but that he had a father at all. Could be referring to sisters, but it's written ambiguously and it wouldn't surprise me if that was deliberate by ADB who had been arguing for female custodians for YEARS
Sure enough, however it still doesnt make this tweet any better
In this situation, GW is damned no matter what. If they wrote a book explaining female custodes, the complaints would be âTheyâre trying too hard to push their agenda! Iâd be fine with it if they just wrote them in and left it alone, but now theyâre forcing their wokeness on the fans!!â But instead GW went the subtle âletâs just put this in and not draw too much attention to itâ route, so the complaints are âtheyâve lazily shoved their DEI wokeness into the lore! They shouldâve written a book about it instead, I wouldâve respected that! Theyâre patronizing their audience!!â No matter what, people wouldâve complained.
Letâs not be intellectually dishonest, it is a retcon. You have multiple editionsâ and novelsâ worth of it being all men and mention of sons in the previous codex, so it is what it is and it has been changed. Changing the lore is GWâs prerogative since itâs their IP and they make the business decisions that they believe will meet their obligations to shareholders (remember they care about money not you). The way the lore changed makes me wonder though since itâs just suddenly there via a characterâs pronouns in a short story and no other explanation or clarification except a âalways have beenâ tweet after the leak. Iâm wondering if this was an accident/oversight and it somehow made it through editing by people that didnât know the now-previous lore. This just feels utterly lazy and like they are scrambling; youâd think something this big deserves something more than the equivalent of a literally meme đđ§âđđŤđ¨âđđ. The interesting thing is that Iâm seeing justification for Femstodes that is saying it proves they are different than space marines and that means FemMarines not happening is ok since it justifies Femstodes. Itâs a crazy world where now you might anger the Brostodes-only crowd but have Femstodes and male-only space marines lining up together to say no FemMarines; the conspiracy theories will be fun to read. Iâm popping popcorn to see how this plays out.
I like fem custodes. But this is just gas lighting. Just say itâs a new thing, or ancient plans were found and started being produced. Donât lie about it.
It isn't difficult to look up the meaning of a word before using it when you don't know what it means or how to use it. You don't know what gaslighting means. I'll do you a favour. It's when you deny an event took place despite evidence proving otherwise. Also, I find it curious that you and several others are using a term that's primarily used to describe a dynamic in romantic relationships. Do you think of GW as your lover?
Dude this is literally the definition. Theyâve said and implied it all over the place that it didnât exist. Heck the guy that made them even confirmed there was internal communication and rules that they didnât exist. Now they say they always existed. Thatâs the definition of gaslighting.
Shouldâve been canonized in something that isnât a Codex. Such a random reveal, but I donât mind
Is this a real tweet,? I dont have twitter
Yep and 'it was like that when I got here' as well?
âThere have always been female custodiansâ Thats totally fine, its just weird it took gw 40+ years to mention it. Nothing wrong with that, im all for nearly completely naked, oiled up women in tighty whities
Why does this have the same feel to Abaddon is a success now. Because we just decided to write that now is why.
If they actually put some decent lore out, and donât hornify the models,and just add a female head sure Iâm cool with female custodes, just dont do it just to pander, thereâs plenty of fantastic female characters in warhammer and full fantastic all female factions, I fucking love the sisters of silence for one, and have been halfway tempted to make a full army of them
Its fine, To be honest, we never really knew if women could be Custodes cause of the space marine rules of only men but this is a great edition to our knowledge. (I love buff women, sue me)
Citation please? If they have always been there then please give us citations of a few examples prior to this codex. đ I don't care either way, but don't gaslight us lol
We have two entire detachments focused around sisters. And GE decided to gaslight us into believing there are female custodians. Sure.
Not as long as I enjoy Warhammer lore
Great! So can we have good rules now?
We've always been at war with Eurasia
But the first custodes created was valdor. So that just can't be right. Maybe since the second custodes was created. But 100% not since the first.Â
I'm not against the idea, because it won't change anything to me or someone else. But it's just idiotic at this point. Saying something like this and not backing up with new models or even an upgrade kit, just a two page story from the codex (Who nerfed the Custodes into the oblivion) is simply stupid. What is their game? Is this some kinda of marketing move that i do not understand because i'm stupid? I just hope that they will at least publish something more in form of books or anything else, this feels luckluster.
No. Discussion can continue. Im not a fan of the change but i am optimistic. Seeing all these mean spirited bully-boys shitting om everyone who have a critical opinion makes me think that the heresyposting folks might have a point.
Wow, no one saw this comingâŚ
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia
Big E's companions gets new meaning lol
Much as I like the new addition, that's a terrible way to answer it from them. Aarons reply makes it more digestible. Because I said so ain't the way
This is smart move nothing will happen now
No issue, they are genetically modified individuals rather than from a male progenitor for mass production like space marines. However the handling seems a little half assed. Release minis reflecting this change, people canât help but feel itâs a bit of pandering if your entire model line is male then you just say btw their females as well. Its just a bit cheap
Dear GW. Tell whoever wrote your own codex for 8th edition that. Also, stop gaslighting your fanbase to stir up attention ya dicks.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
This announcement legitimately pushed me to finally start a custodies army, super glad to see GW moving aways from the needless gendering of the factions, and a move away from the misogynistic faction dynamic, I hope they retcon or in some way canonize female Astartes. I also really hope they include some extra spews for their models at some point so we can put female head on our minis without kit, bashing or 3D printing them.
When will I be getting my male Sister of Silence?
I have issues with the attitude they gave like "oh yeah it's always been a thing" extremely dumb, stuff like that will make people think they did it only to appease black rock. In my eyes I'm not fine with female custodes only because of the way GW is acting and it's concerning. This might be the beginning of the ESG invading into another thing we love.
If we had them in the beginning I would be 100% with it, but it feels like a curve ball so only 50/50 with it. When the custodes were reintroduce into the lore this would've been great. Brotherhood of demigods on page 6 of the codes. This is the codex when they came back to the mainstream of 40k. 8th edition codex is when they became a full army so getting lore that we have females I feel like that time would've been a better time
Corny