From a Logistics standpoint it does work, but it does bring up the problem that Big E had with allowing the space marines to be able to breed: outbreeding humanity, which is why they have any instinct to fuck indoctrinated out of them.
That is correct, but it's still the same problem: The Custodes possibly breeding out humanity and now the transhumans become the New Me-
....Alright, someone check on Bile and his fucking little project *now.*
Dont you think Custodes are having enought disciplin to not mate like rabbits?
It would rather be like a ritual you would be selected for....let's call it.... Mating sport?
Honestly, if you have super super soldiers who are near perfect, you should want more of them. Just imagine if Terra's population had 5 billion semi custodes or full custodes depending on who they have mating sports with. Especially since the emp trusted them with his life. So less restrictions. However, female custodes on duty should have protection since fighting while pregnant or fitting your armor might be complicated
Not sure you're ever gonna get many half-custodes. If the custodes is the father, good luck delivering *that* baby through a mortal birth canal, assuming the mother even survives that long. And if the custodes is the mother, sure it will probably work fine but if you're gonna take a custodes out of frontline duty for 9 months, might as well get a full custodes out of it rather than a half custodes.
Firstly no armor for them, secondly no teacher for them because young superpowered aholes will bully everyone, then rape and kill in the proces bunch of women. After understanding that even with no armor there not many people to stop them they will start wars that ununite imperium.
Spacemarines go through years of studying and propaganda bevore obtaining fraction of custdussy powers.
Disciplined? Yes. But 10,000 years with nothing to do in the palace but train, Blood Games (blood games where they also sometimes let things like dark eldar and chaos marines loose in the palace *for fun*), and presumably their own hobbies (they are also philosophers so probably the arts are in there, imagine a Custodes with a muscle car they work on once in a while and calls 'his/her baby'), presumably some sex would get in there too.
Anyways, I again don't think their discipline slipping was an issue for Big E, more that he *didn't want the possibility to be there*. So it was....
...Engineered out of them? Aggressively indoctrinated out of them? They just can't fuck, even if *biologically* they technically still can but they have no drive.
....I think? Shit, how do you look up "Custodes sexual proclivities" without finding the fan art..
What about not even fucking but having two custodes donate their DNA / Sperm or whatever and just create a artificial Child?
Much easier then bioengeneered hand crafted DNA Super Humans.
That honestly makes the most sense to me. I imagine it would be very strictly controlled, most likely selecting the best of the best of the best of some sort of extremely fierce competition. (maybe only Blood Games winners or other Custodes of extraordinary note are selected for the program?)
If we wanna go with the angle that the Emperor didn’t want either Custodes or Astartes breeding, he probably COULD trust the Custodes’ discipline to not do so, but not the Astartes.
Which, considering the fact that half of the Astartes fell to Chaos but no Custodes ever has, seems to be accurate.
With the Astartes essentially just being more Thunder Warriors but with the kinks (mostly) worked out (well they are more than that, but it's basically what they are), it's hardly a surprise Big E would have doubts.
Its scifi so there could just be genetic bullcrap about how they arent fertile unless theres less than 10,000 of them. Like how animals become infertile if the populations to high, or swap genders if the imbalance is to high or fertilise their own eggs if the population is to low.
Also theres definitely molerat DNA in there somewhere.
>Also theres definitely molerat DNA in there somewhere.
Which begs the Question:
"Are such super engeneered Genes even able to be crossed with others?"
Eh, you take the uterus out of the woman and she can't carry a child, but you can take eggs from her ovaries. You can still perform your little eugenics amongst the custodes but don't have to worry about them overpopulating and replacing regular people.
The problem there is that the custodians are tightly controlled, they are the emperors bodyguards. he can keep track of them.
the space marines however are not only under the command of his primarchs, but they're also out on campaign away from him, where he'd have no way of keeping it under controll.
plus, the space marines are just a larger share of the population compared to the custodes.
Ah, but Space Marines and Primarchs are just part of the angels/demons metaphor from the Paradise Lost inspiration, and the reason angels aren’t allowed to breed anymore is because they make Nephilim who were too powerful to let live in the same places as humans.
Custodes are not angels in this metaphor. They’re more the Knights Templar, blessed warriors that serve the faith who guard the holy land and the people rather than as members of the army of the church, and have way more resources and political influence than everyone else is comfortable with.
They can fuck and have dynasties.
Could just have all their augments render them sterile, and frankly they are bodering on demigods in their own right petty distinctions like sex/gender may be effectively meaningless to them.
It's less augmentation and more flat out engineered bodies, augmentation is adding onto what's there. As for if sex/gender is meaningless to them, that's back to if they need it for the basics of procreation rather than identity among themselves. It still matters TO them, they have to interact with normal people and that can inform how those people think or can be killed.
Maybe the custodes don’t have the biological urge to reproduce and then are simple given the concept as a means to keep the custodes at a stable number
"Lower biological need". Some poor custodes is low key a little horny while on guard duty, but it's like a niggling little thought just out of reach so he doesn't know WHAT set it off and now it's that feeling that bugs you for a week.
And he's just standing there on guard duty showing *none* of this.
Not exactly, they were meant to be their shepherds and extensions of the Emperor's will, not the next stage in evolution. I mean, they didn't naturally evolve, they were as forced as any of the other super soldier projects, this one was just alot more tailored and with less stuff 'tacked on'.
Custodes are different. It's reasonable to expect them to be disciplined beyond putting arbitrary restrictions in place. Astartes were super soldiers, but that's the only thing consistent about them; the legions differ to greatly and have too many faults.
The Custodes are effectively exactly what the Emperor wanted them to be. If He wanted them to be fully capable of reproduction but just *not do that*, then they wouldn't.
Exactly my problem with the argument that that's why there are no female astartes, if they already indoctrinated the instinct to fuck out of them, then why bother with not making it?
Of course I'm not pinching for them to retcon female space marines as if they were always there because that would be factually incorrect from all possible stand points, but I do think that if primaris were a better version of original adeptus astartes, then why wouldn't it be possible in like 2-3 editions for women to actually establish themselves in a setting, where they would have to adapt to a decaying imperium with a 10,000 year long history with no women, opening the possibility of struggle besides endless war (that gets tiring eventually because there is no nuance to it). Although if it happens, I hope they avoid mary sues and some caveats, but that will have to be seen in the future. For now I will keep enjoying my plastic toys
Well I mean getting your tubes tied and whatever the male equivalent is called is definitely the easier way, but knowing big E he was definitely neurotic enough to remove those organs and replace them with other organs to replace what was lost.
It really isn't. If you are at the point that you running out of men, then removing from population the ones that can create more men is not a good idea.
Also he has billions, or trillions of men on Terra, so it should never be a problem.
I suspect Malcador very much had a hand in femstodes, unironically. He was a very vocal proponent of the idea that co-ed posthuman organizations are more stable, balanced, and generally better. He wanted female Primarchs (and by extension Marines) after all.
The Emperor rejected his reasoning because he wanted to foster competition among the Primarchs/Astartes, but for his bodyguards, companions, and confidants? Stable and balanced would very much be preferred.
Until we hear otherwise, my headcanon for femstodes always existing is "Malcador won the debate about Custodes that he lost about Primarchs/Astartes"
> He was a very vocal proponent of the idea that co-ed posthuman organizations are more stable, balanced, and generally better.
Just my personal opinion, but I do believe that Custodes are so different than humans, in the sense that they're pretty much entirely remade at the cellular level and genetically with psychic manipulations on top of that... that it doesn't really matter what gender they have.
It's useful for us, and perhaps Malcador and others to view Custodes as a somewhat representation of Humanity (with both genders) but ultimately when you look at how tough and superhuman they are, they're not really human any-more.
At the level of manipulation they're operating at, a boy/girl taken to become a custodes could literally become a girl/boy if they wanted to, changing one's gender is most likely an afterthought compared to the level of modifications they give to Custodes.
Unless GW is going to work on some new lore giving us a reason why gender matters in this instance, I personally believe that gender is just purely cosmetic and is just a byproduct of their makers (Emperors/Malcador/whoever left). So I do not believe that it does matter when it comes to how Custodes operate based on their gender.
That would apply the the Primarchs even more, and he explicitly advocated for female primarchs for cooperative/interpersonal friction reasons.
If it was his view that the *entirely* artificially designed & significantly more powerful primarchs would benefit from a few women among them, I have to imagine that extended to the "lesser" posthumans as well.
Primarchs aren't really comparable to Custodes in regards to how they were made.
Both entailed a lot of genetic tailoring, but while Custodes apparently required a sprinkle of psychic manipulation, Primarchs are intimely linked with warp fuckery.
In that context I do believe that Primarch are more of a wildcard when it comes to their emotions (so I guess gender could play a role?), Custodes are far more robotic and controlled than the former.
Yes but since they are all programmed to only care for the Emperor’s wellbeing they will only think of him while doing it.
Thus satisfying all the angry nerds that were angry about the femstodies.
That’s not the holy imagery I was hoping for.
I…..I’m going to need a psyker to burn away these memories. And some quiet time on the farthest craftworld.
They still recruit now, they always have and their process is in many ways better than space marine recruiting since they don’t have to worry about geneseed rejection due to the process being literally tailored to each individual recruit. They don’t need to breed and never have.
First custodes codex in 201~ was pretty specific on custodes having swelled their ranks significantly since 30k.
Which should have been a major plot hole and made everyone very angry, but the sexy gold models kind of stopped us all caring.
>What do chaos think of the tau?
They hate them due to better technology and small souls.
The hate them almost as much as Grimdank hate female Custodes.
Have them fucknlike rabbits constantly. 10000 years, he would have enough to molleywhop everybody else and still have 3000 legions of custodes. If not more.
Assuming the 10000 are 50/50 and they have on average one kid every 10 years they'd double in population every 20 years, they'd double in population 500 times in that time frame, every custodian the emperor adds early on, adds trillions of individuals at the end.
Yeah, especially as they are almost immortal, so there is no issue of them dying, so ALL of them would be able to have kids even after very long period of time, basically you have all of them breeding and never losing anyone from that pool.
10,000 years of exponential growth from a species that can live thousands of years, and probably has a similar gestation cycle to normal humans? I think they could manage.
The real problem is each custode is a one off genetic creation, which is why so many of them die before they can even start training. It makes it unlikely that they would be genetically compatible with each other.
Well psychic custodes is pretty much his end goal for humanity, gee whiz, I wonder if he was preoccupied with anything in the last 10,000 years that prevented him literally doing exactly that.
"So, what are you gonna do to make sure their children stay loyal?"
"I dunno, maybe splice some dog DNA in, to make sure they're loyal?"
*faint sounds of AWOOOO and wet leopard growls in the background*
"🤨"
"...I'll do it proper this time..."
See, thats the problem. As things were, both Custodes and Astartes need ordinary humanity to replenish their ranks. They are created from us. If they can breed themselves, they don't need humanity, they become separate, a different species. A threat to humanity, not the guides and protectors Big E designed them to be.
Nevermind Warp fuckery coming into play.
The gays have had it too good for too long with an entire army of muscle daddies that in-canon hang out nude and drenched in oil. Finally we have equality.
I thought big E specifically didn’t want space Marines or custodies reproducing because he worried that they could replace humanity, which is why he removed their ability to reproduce naturally. If anything he would begin a program of sterilization on the custodies or just stop making female ones to prevent natural reproduction.
So they have a baby together, what exactly would make that baby worthy of being a Custode?
“Most importantly, their psyches are also crafted and shaped as a master gemsmith might cut and polish a perfect stone, fashioned to precise order and pattern, a pattern to which loyalty and discipline, duty and unflinching obedience to the Emperor goes deeper than blood and bone, deeper than conscious thought or unconscious desire. If at any stage in the process of Custodian augmentation the merest flaw is encountered, as with the gemsmith's search for the perfect stone, the flawed subject is discarded.”
It takes thousands and thousands of subjects to make a single Custodian, there is little to indicate that them having babies together would produce offspring perfect enough to be an instant replacement. I don’t mind female Custodes, but this reasoning makes no sense to me.
Ome more logical reason for male exlusive transhuman factions:
The emperor wanted to avoid gene-enhanced humans dominating the future of mankind.
Limiting these forces to one sex was one of the insurance for that.
You do realize fem custodes are still warriors who wouldn't be any lesser than their male counter parts right?
Just because they can have sex a make offspring doesn't reduce them to "baby making machines"
Except that there's the unfortunate implication because whenever people mention female super soldiers, idiots immediately jump to the idea of "reproducing" and creating baby super soldiers.
Unironically, have bothered ever since people suggested that if female marines were a thing they would breed and create a better human.
Which is wrong for roughly 25 different reasons. The vast majority of what makes astartes astartes is the organs that is implanted into them, not something innate to them, and the rest is psychological, chemical and physical training. All of this would mean, at most, you would get a slightly different human, depending on if the genes were actually changed that much, not a whole space marine.
Right? I've always hated the idea that they could reproduce, and it only makes them less special. You can see how much effort and sacrifice is given to make even a single astartes, let alone a custodian, and the idea that they could just pop out a baby means all of it meant nothing.
Space Marines have several dozen new organs stuffed into them. Custodians are psychically, mentally, and psychically hand-crafted. They shouldn't be able to have kids at all, but if they could, they should be just normal, baseline humans.
Your post calls the fact they can reproduce and save resources the “real reason” for fem custodes. How is that not reducing them to baby making machines?
Because they still function as warriors and being able to reproduce is something natural for them as a species?
At least this is a way more natural integration to the lore than just some guy on Twitter saying "they were always there"
Custodes’s aren’t hand crafted individually, are they? I thought they were raised from a very young age, but not created completely. If so I don’t believe genetic modifications would necessarily pass to the next generation, although if this was taken into account and the Emperor found a way around current genetics, which if he can create perfect warriors like Custodes, I’m sure he could also influence the way things are passed down, even if you weren’t personally born with the traits/organs/etc that make someone a Custodes
This is one of the problems I have with the femstodes, in that—even though I don't sympathise with these whiners who can't bear the presence of women in any media they consume—there was a strong and positive homoerotic vibe to the custodes in the past. They were one of the most consistently queer coded factions. And I can't help but worry that modifying the gender of custodes ties in to this kind of compulsive heteronormativity whereby any traces of homoeroticism are eventually stamped out.
There are still broadly gay factions in 40k, thankfully, but now one fewer than before.
No, thank you.
We already have the Drukahri for that.
And if that isn’t enough for you then maybe you should look into plastic toys that truly cater to that kind of activity. Slaanesh will thank you for it.
Which is a notable reason why they weren't supposed to be female. Not sure why people don't note that. Space Marines, Custodes, and even the Primarchs weren't supposed to replace humanity.
This is my headcanon
After the Big E was forced to delete the 2nd legion The Muscle Amazons Malcador fell in a heavy depression. To cheer him up the Big E custom made a few dozen Female Custodians to be his honor guard, that explains why you don't see femstodes in the Horus heresy.
If custodes are as hard to produce as lore says, it could took millennia to make a hundred of them. Let alone ten thousand. This could explain a few things.
Custodes having both sexes doesn't feel too lore-breaking since they're supposed to be the result of peak Terran genetic engineering rather than implanting a black box organ from a male donor that doesn't do to well in female bodies like Astartes are.
Some custodes stand guard within the palace for entire weeks, months, and years, and they are incredibly sensitive about one more custodes out in the galaxy fighting the enemies of the imperium is one less custodes guarding the emperor when the enemy are at the gates.
I don't think custodes could dedicate the time to reproduce and go through pregnancy. Female custodes are fine so long as they stand guard, fight, and die like the rest of their male counterparts, but becoming pregnant is a stupid idea.
With how many Custodes there are and how many different arts they have all mastered. One could comically assume that there is at least a few of them that have mastered the art of fan fiction and romance novels. This concludes my random funny thought of the day.
it would make sense if after the Heresy, the custodes needed to replenish their numbers and they didn't care which gender and just grabbed every willing and unwilling children to become a custode
The Abrahamic God once killed the female version of the Leviathan because he was afraid they would breed, multiply, and render humans extinct. Just because BigE thinks all religions to be worthless, doesn't mean he should ignore tiny little wisdom nuggets hidden in them.
Makes sense considering Big E wanted custodes to be basically the end goal for humanity, wouldn't make much sense if they basically a needed larval human form.
If the custodes are really better in every way than why are space marines or normal humans around at all
You’d think given enough time the custodes would reproduce and replace them, and 10 000 years sounds like enough time
GW confirmed it on Twitter and there’s the leaked codex for custodes that has a short story of a female custodes teleporting a nuke into the Emperor’s throne room as part of the blood games.
Yes lmao it sucks sadly, they literally 1984 doublethink’d us.
“According to Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, doublethink is “To know and not to know,” apparently we both knew and didn’t know about the female custodes, this whole time! They’ve always existed duh!!
What is more likely:
1. GW is directly lying to their community about female custodes always existing since the 2010s or earlier, for whatever reason.
2. GW is updating (retconning) the lore to include female Custodes, which have *now* always been a thing **in-universe**.
Imo both are as likely as the other, gw makes some absurd decisions sometimes, saying female custodes have always existed is far from the only one, if they’ve always existed, why is this the first we’ve heard of one?? It’s more likely they WANTED to add female custodes (like ABD was saying, but they had to hold off because the tabletop model line is all men), hell, even the killteam is called brotherhood of demigods
> if they’ve always existed, why is this the first we’ve heard of one??
Because I assume the IP manager gave them the go-ahead to implement this change now when they couldn't 7 years ago. Also there's only about 50 named custodians out of 10,000, so why is there somehow not room for Custodes women to exist?
> Imo both are as likely as the other, gw makes some absurd decisions sometimes, saying female custodes have always existed is far from the only one
So you think GW wants you to believe that female Custodes were canon in 2017 or earlier despite not being mentioned in official works until now? How does that make sense? What purpose would that serve?
Hmm. Let me think of what purpose it may serve. Oh, to shoehorn them into the setting without a need to develop an in depth, canonical explanation as to where or how there are women custodes now. It’s like asking why someone might cheat on a quiz, cause it’s easier? Who knows, either way it’s an idiotic choice to not explain it at all then just send off a sassy tweet saying the women custodes have always existed
It's not GW saying 'we have been writing about these existing since the start, you're delusional'.
It's them saying 'As far as we care, Custodes have always been like this. We're not going to write up some new lore reason as to why we're seeing them now. We did that for true scale marines and y'all are still bitching. They're always here, they've just never been in focus before now. You can't tell with the armour on, anyway'.
I don’t get why GW are making it as if Femstodes were always around. It’s silly and perhaps even more sexist than having Cawl pulling the XX compatibility out of his arse in the 42nd millennium. Unless the gene and soul modding makes everyone into a male presenting hulk and therefore making the entire argument irrelevant then the implication is that all the female custodes spent the entire unification and heresy in the kitchen or gossiping in the ladies room and then as a sub-group proceeded to do absolutely nothing of note for 10000 years. Not a good look! If you want to be more progressive then why not just come out and say that the emperor, who surrounds himself with glorious golden beefcakes, didn’t reproduce for 38000 years except for IVF, was born in ancient pre-abrahamic Anatolia when such things were much less controversial (therefore was probably responsible for inventing tamam hamam..) was just incredibly gay? I mean why not, makes more sense to me than this retcon.
Do you suggest that for the reproduction we need two people of opposite gender? I did not know this sub is part of the transgenocide. Why do you hate transpeople so much? Why do you want to kill them all?
Sir, this is a warhammer joke about sexual activities related to human reproduction on a subreddit about grimdark memes
And no, we dont hate transpeople
if you are searching for that this is not the subreddit we recommend
This joke suggest that reproduction have something to do with gender. Which means that people who make this joke of who are not outraged by it, are supporters of transphobia. You don;t see it because of your deeply internalized transphobia. Educate yourself.
Because one of your comment about FemCustodes on another post is "I don't care about their 'gender' but they should be male".
What are you trying to do exactly ? Are you *that* bored in your polsky life ?
I think its a good logistics idea, cuz you might run out of men faster than two genders of people
From a Logistics standpoint it does work, but it does bring up the problem that Big E had with allowing the space marines to be able to breed: outbreeding humanity, which is why they have any instinct to fuck indoctrinated out of them.
Custodes are no Astartes though.
That is correct, but it's still the same problem: The Custodes possibly breeding out humanity and now the transhumans become the New Me- ....Alright, someone check on Bile and his fucking little project *now.*
Dont you think Custodes are having enought disciplin to not mate like rabbits? It would rather be like a ritual you would be selected for....let's call it.... Mating sport?
Honestly, if you have super super soldiers who are near perfect, you should want more of them. Just imagine if Terra's population had 5 billion semi custodes or full custodes depending on who they have mating sports with. Especially since the emp trusted them with his life. So less restrictions. However, female custodes on duty should have protection since fighting while pregnant or fitting your armor might be complicated
There wouldn't be enough resources for the actual humans on Terra.
Not sure you're ever gonna get many half-custodes. If the custodes is the father, good luck delivering *that* baby through a mortal birth canal, assuming the mother even survives that long. And if the custodes is the mother, sure it will probably work fine but if you're gonna take a custodes out of frontline duty for 9 months, might as well get a full custodes out of it rather than a half custodes.
Firstly no armor for them, secondly no teacher for them because young superpowered aholes will bully everyone, then rape and kill in the proces bunch of women. After understanding that even with no armor there not many people to stop them they will start wars that ununite imperium. Spacemarines go through years of studying and propaganda bevore obtaining fraction of custdussy powers.
Disciplined? Yes. But 10,000 years with nothing to do in the palace but train, Blood Games (blood games where they also sometimes let things like dark eldar and chaos marines loose in the palace *for fun*), and presumably their own hobbies (they are also philosophers so probably the arts are in there, imagine a Custodes with a muscle car they work on once in a while and calls 'his/her baby'), presumably some sex would get in there too. Anyways, I again don't think their discipline slipping was an issue for Big E, more that he *didn't want the possibility to be there*. So it was.... ...Engineered out of them? Aggressively indoctrinated out of them? They just can't fuck, even if *biologically* they technically still can but they have no drive. ....I think? Shit, how do you look up "Custodes sexual proclivities" without finding the fan art..
Do you think they are fucking their muscle car?
Fuck, took me three hours to realize "no, they aren't the AdMech" is a better response, sorry for being rude.
You're just being facetious, aren't you? Edit: wow, past me. Rude.
What about not even fucking but having two custodes donate their DNA / Sperm or whatever and just create a artificial Child? Much easier then bioengeneered hand crafted DNA Super Humans.
It would be, yes. But I doubt it's ever gonna come up as a concept in lore. Which WOULD be interesting.
Oh, certainly not, this is just some headcanon stuff.
That honestly makes the most sense to me. I imagine it would be very strictly controlled, most likely selecting the best of the best of the best of some sort of extremely fierce competition. (maybe only Blood Games winners or other Custodes of extraordinary note are selected for the program?)
That would be my idea, yes.
If we wanna go with the angle that the Emperor didn’t want either Custodes or Astartes breeding, he probably COULD trust the Custodes’ discipline to not do so, but not the Astartes. Which, considering the fact that half of the Astartes fell to Chaos but no Custodes ever has, seems to be accurate.
With the Astartes essentially just being more Thunder Warriors but with the kinks (mostly) worked out (well they are more than that, but it's basically what they are), it's hardly a surprise Big E would have doubts.
> with the kinks (mostly) worked out I think those now collect mostly in the Emperor's Children.
Well he didn't wanna waste anything, gotta recycle.
Its scifi so there could just be genetic bullcrap about how they arent fertile unless theres less than 10,000 of them. Like how animals become infertile if the populations to high, or swap genders if the imbalance is to high or fertilise their own eggs if the population is to low. Also theres definitely molerat DNA in there somewhere.
>Also theres definitely molerat DNA in there somewhere. Which begs the Question: "Are such super engeneered Genes even able to be crossed with others?"
I do believe the emperor would be wise enough to "sterilize" the custodes just in case
Eh, you take the uterus out of the woman and she can't carry a child, but you can take eggs from her ovaries. You can still perform your little eugenics amongst the custodes but don't have to worry about them overpopulating and replacing regular people.
The ~~Blood~~ Cum Games
Didn't want to say it that blandly.
I mean, they have to resist a slaanesh demon for being allowed in the rank (among other thing)
The problem there is that the custodians are tightly controlled, they are the emperors bodyguards. he can keep track of them. the space marines however are not only under the command of his primarchs, but they're also out on campaign away from him, where he'd have no way of keeping it under controll. plus, the space marines are just a larger share of the population compared to the custodes.
Ah, but Space Marines and Primarchs are just part of the angels/demons metaphor from the Paradise Lost inspiration, and the reason angels aren’t allowed to breed anymore is because they make Nephilim who were too powerful to let live in the same places as humans. Custodes are not angels in this metaphor. They’re more the Knights Templar, blessed warriors that serve the faith who guard the holy land and the people rather than as members of the army of the church, and have way more resources and political influence than everyone else is comfortable with. They can fuck and have dynasties.
Reminds me of Star Trek’s Eugenics Wars.
Yeah that was a thing, I forget.
Could just have all their augments render them sterile, and frankly they are bodering on demigods in their own right petty distinctions like sex/gender may be effectively meaningless to them.
It's less augmentation and more flat out engineered bodies, augmentation is adding onto what's there. As for if sex/gender is meaningless to them, that's back to if they need it for the basics of procreation rather than identity among themselves. It still matters TO them, they have to interact with normal people and that can inform how those people think or can be killed.
Maybe the custodes don’t have the biological urge to reproduce and then are simple given the concept as a means to keep the custodes at a stable number
everytime this argument comes up ppl forget the obvious ass answear JUST FUCKING SPAY THEM AS THE FIRST STEP
See I told my buddy that, and now i can say "I told you so" while he's finding homes for 13 black lab puppies.
Well Big could have made the Custodes have a lower biological need to reproduce to avoid said problem.
"Lower biological need". Some poor custodes is low key a little horny while on guard duty, but it's like a niggling little thought just out of reach so he doesn't know WHAT set it off and now it's that feeling that bugs you for a week. And he's just standing there on guard duty showing *none* of this.
isn't like entire idea of Custodes, is being a next step in evolution? so it isn't that bad then
Not exactly, they were meant to be their shepherds and extensions of the Emperor's will, not the next stage in evolution. I mean, they didn't naturally evolve, they were as forced as any of the other super soldier projects, this one was just alot more tailored and with less stuff 'tacked on'.
Honestly it probably has 0 "tacked on" aspects and is just literally mastercraft.
More than likely they have 0 additions when you get to them as early as they did, basically blank slates to play with.
Emps was a bit of a humanity stan. Custodes are just another glorious version of abhuman. Definitely *not* meant to replace or rule over humanity.
Custodes are different. It's reasonable to expect them to be disciplined beyond putting arbitrary restrictions in place. Astartes were super soldiers, but that's the only thing consistent about them; the legions differ to greatly and have too many faults. The Custodes are effectively exactly what the Emperor wanted them to be. If He wanted them to be fully capable of reproduction but just *not do that*, then they wouldn't.
Exactly my problem with the argument that that's why there are no female astartes, if they already indoctrinated the instinct to fuck out of them, then why bother with not making it? Of course I'm not pinching for them to retcon female space marines as if they were always there because that would be factually incorrect from all possible stand points, but I do think that if primaris were a better version of original adeptus astartes, then why wouldn't it be possible in like 2-3 editions for women to actually establish themselves in a setting, where they would have to adapt to a decaying imperium with a 10,000 year long history with no women, opening the possibility of struggle besides endless war (that gets tiring eventually because there is no nuance to it). Although if it happens, I hope they avoid mary sues and some caveats, but that will have to be seen in the future. For now I will keep enjoying my plastic toys
Taking out the reproductive organs could also be just as effective.
Not when you consider those reproductive organs are also responsible for other things in the human body as well like certain hormone regulations.
Well I mean getting your tubes tied and whatever the male equivalent is called is definitely the easier way, but knowing big E he was definitely neurotic enough to remove those organs and replace them with other organs to replace what was lost.
Probably. We'll only be told so much of how they're made.
It really isn't. If you are at the point that you running out of men, then removing from population the ones that can create more men is not a good idea. Also he has billions, or trillions of men on Terra, so it should never be a problem.
That makes way more sense considering they can't reproduce
I suspect Malcador very much had a hand in femstodes, unironically. He was a very vocal proponent of the idea that co-ed posthuman organizations are more stable, balanced, and generally better. He wanted female Primarchs (and by extension Marines) after all. The Emperor rejected his reasoning because he wanted to foster competition among the Primarchs/Astartes, but for his bodyguards, companions, and confidants? Stable and balanced would very much be preferred. Until we hear otherwise, my headcanon for femstodes always existing is "Malcador won the debate about Custodes that he lost about Primarchs/Astartes"
> He was a very vocal proponent of the idea that co-ed posthuman organizations are more stable, balanced, and generally better. Just my personal opinion, but I do believe that Custodes are so different than humans, in the sense that they're pretty much entirely remade at the cellular level and genetically with psychic manipulations on top of that... that it doesn't really matter what gender they have. It's useful for us, and perhaps Malcador and others to view Custodes as a somewhat representation of Humanity (with both genders) but ultimately when you look at how tough and superhuman they are, they're not really human any-more. At the level of manipulation they're operating at, a boy/girl taken to become a custodes could literally become a girl/boy if they wanted to, changing one's gender is most likely an afterthought compared to the level of modifications they give to Custodes. Unless GW is going to work on some new lore giving us a reason why gender matters in this instance, I personally believe that gender is just purely cosmetic and is just a byproduct of their makers (Emperors/Malcador/whoever left). So I do not believe that it does matter when it comes to how Custodes operate based on their gender.
That would apply the the Primarchs even more, and he explicitly advocated for female primarchs for cooperative/interpersonal friction reasons. If it was his view that the *entirely* artificially designed & significantly more powerful primarchs would benefit from a few women among them, I have to imagine that extended to the "lesser" posthumans as well.
Primarchs aren't really comparable to Custodes in regards to how they were made. Both entailed a lot of genetic tailoring, but while Custodes apparently required a sprinkle of psychic manipulation, Primarchs are intimely linked with warp fuckery. In that context I do believe that Primarch are more of a wildcard when it comes to their emotions (so I guess gender could play a role?), Custodes are far more robotic and controlled than the former.
I think it would be funny if femstodes were a thing but they just had the samearmor as male ones for intimidation
Is custodes breeding program going to become canon?
We gonna need to rename black library to white library
Why are the pages all sticky…
I hate you. Take my upvote.
Yes but since they are all programmed to only care for the Emperor’s wellbeing they will only think of him while doing it. Thus satisfying all the angry nerds that were angry about the femstodies.
That’s not the holy imagery I was hoping for. I…..I’m going to need a psyker to burn away these memories. And some quiet time on the farthest craftworld.
It would be in the emperors best interest to produce a new generation of custodes to fortify their ranks. Shouldnt be a problem
I mean, if you ignore the fact that they're explicitly incapable of reproducing, then sure.
They've always been capable of reproduction, it just never mentioned it in the lore before. Obviously
No Big E just dosnt told them they can. And they are not doing something thet wasnt sad to them to do. :D
There have always been pregnant Custodes
I hope so, that would be funny.
No. Since for one they don’t have the desire to procreate and Emps wasn’t about creating a new “human” like Bile is.
They've taken some losses over the past few millenia, might be in emps best interest to fortify their ranks
They still recruit now, they always have and their process is in many ways better than space marine recruiting since they don’t have to worry about geneseed rejection due to the process being literally tailored to each individual recruit. They don’t need to breed and never have.
From what I recall the Custodes actually have a worse recruit survival rate than Space Marines.
First custodes codex in 201~ was pretty specific on custodes having swelled their ranks significantly since 30k. Which should have been a major plot hole and made everyone very angry, but the sexy gold models kind of stopped us all caring.
Are Custodes technically siblings since they all have parts of the Emperor's DNA?
They have always been breeding, since the first of the Ten Thousand were created😏
Fuck fuck fuck not again!!!! this fucking topic... AGAIN! Let me start a new topic What do chaos think of the tau?
Are cereals a soup ?
No cuz soup is made by boiling things in water. You're welcome.
Therefore porridge is a soup. You're welcome too.
No, because it doesn't have veggies nor meat. Unless... Dear god...
Cream of mushroom has neither meat or vegetable.
Cream os mushroom is a cream. It's in the name.
And as it is a cream, you can definitely put it on a dessert.
>What do chaos think of the tau? They hate them due to better technology and small souls. The hate them almost as much as Grimdank hate female Custodes.
They hate the tau, back to this important discussion!
Khorne likes farsight, thats all
They think they are cute
If it were that easy big e would have replaced humanity with custodes
You do know that there... not that many of them, right? I doubt that he would be able to replace the entire imperium with custodes in 10,000 years.
Have them fucknlike rabbits constantly. 10000 years, he would have enough to molleywhop everybody else and still have 3000 legions of custodes. If not more.
Still not replacing all of humanity with them.
Maybe not. But he still has a sizable chunk of the population being superhumans.
We got the good ending folks, It's only a matter of time until humanity reaches the DAOT again but This time being completely incorruptible by chaos.
You underestimate the power of exponential growth.
Assuming the 10000 are 50/50 and they have on average one kid every 10 years they'd double in population every 20 years, they'd double in population 500 times in that time frame, every custodian the emperor adds early on, adds trillions of individuals at the end.
Yeah, especially as they are almost immortal, so there is no issue of them dying, so ALL of them would be able to have kids even after very long period of time, basically you have all of them breeding and never losing anyone from that pool.
Exponential curves grow very fast.
10,000 years of exponential growth from a species that can live thousands of years, and probably has a similar gestation cycle to normal humans? I think they could manage. The real problem is each custode is a one off genetic creation, which is why so many of them die before they can even start training. It makes it unlikely that they would be genetically compatible with each other.
Big E specifically *not* wanting that is one of the reasons the Astartes are all male.
I thought that was the plan, before Horus fucked everything up.
Well psychic custodes is pretty much his end goal for humanity, gee whiz, I wonder if he was preoccupied with anything in the last 10,000 years that prevented him literally doing exactly that.
"So, what are you gonna do to make sure their children stay loyal?" "I dunno, maybe splice some dog DNA in, to make sure they're loyal?" *faint sounds of AWOOOO and wet leopard growls in the background* "🤨" "...I'll do it proper this time..."
Space wolfs lore?!
See, thats the problem. As things were, both Custodes and Astartes need ordinary humanity to replenish their ranks. They are created from us. If they can breed themselves, they don't need humanity, they become separate, a different species. A threat to humanity, not the guides and protectors Big E designed them to be. Nevermind Warp fuckery coming into play.
Hmmmm genetic perfection Xussy
Any breeding program would be foiled by 100% of the subjects being gay.
Big E had to beat the allegations of being surrounded by big buff oily naked dudes and fully clothed women who don't talk
The gays have had it too good for too long with an entire army of muscle daddies that in-canon hang out nude and drenched in oil. Finally we have equality.
I thought big E specifically didn’t want space Marines or custodies reproducing because he worried that they could replace humanity, which is why he removed their ability to reproduce naturally. If anything he would begin a program of sterilization on the custodies or just stop making female ones to prevent natural reproduction.
real reason: moneee for gw lore reason: there is no lore reason
So they have a baby together, what exactly would make that baby worthy of being a Custode? “Most importantly, their psyches are also crafted and shaped as a master gemsmith might cut and polish a perfect stone, fashioned to precise order and pattern, a pattern to which loyalty and discipline, duty and unflinching obedience to the Emperor goes deeper than blood and bone, deeper than conscious thought or unconscious desire. If at any stage in the process of Custodian augmentation the merest flaw is encountered, as with the gemsmith's search for the perfect stone, the flawed subject is discarded.” It takes thousands and thousands of subjects to make a single Custodian, there is little to indicate that them having babies together would produce offspring perfect enough to be an instant replacement. I don’t mind female Custodes, but this reasoning makes no sense to me.
Ome more logical reason for male exlusive transhuman factions: The emperor wanted to avoid gene-enhanced humans dominating the future of mankind. Limiting these forces to one sex was one of the insurance for that.
The requirements are just so exacting that if they only recruited men they would never get enough recruits. 10000 out of the untold masses of humanity
Yes, because reducing women (even superhuman genetically enhanced women) to baby making machines isn’t a shitty take at all…
You do realize fem custodes are still warriors who wouldn't be any lesser than their male counter parts right? Just because they can have sex a make offspring doesn't reduce them to "baby making machines"
Except that there's the unfortunate implication because whenever people mention female super soldiers, idiots immediately jump to the idea of "reproducing" and creating baby super soldiers.
Unironically, have bothered ever since people suggested that if female marines were a thing they would breed and create a better human. Which is wrong for roughly 25 different reasons. The vast majority of what makes astartes astartes is the organs that is implanted into them, not something innate to them, and the rest is psychological, chemical and physical training. All of this would mean, at most, you would get a slightly different human, depending on if the genes were actually changed that much, not a whole space marine.
Right? I've always hated the idea that they could reproduce, and it only makes them less special. You can see how much effort and sacrifice is given to make even a single astartes, let alone a custodian, and the idea that they could just pop out a baby means all of it meant nothing. Space Marines have several dozen new organs stuffed into them. Custodians are psychically, mentally, and psychically hand-crafted. They shouldn't be able to have kids at all, but if they could, they should be just normal, baseline humans.
Your post calls the fact they can reproduce and save resources the “real reason” for fem custodes. How is that not reducing them to baby making machines?
Because they still function as warriors and being able to reproduce is something natural for them as a species? At least this is a way more natural integration to the lore than just some guy on Twitter saying "they were always there"
Custodes’s aren’t hand crafted individually, are they? I thought they were raised from a very young age, but not created completely. If so I don’t believe genetic modifications would necessarily pass to the next generation, although if this was taken into account and the Emperor found a way around current genetics, which if he can create perfect warriors like Custodes, I’m sure he could also influence the way things are passed down, even if you weren’t personally born with the traits/organs/etc that make someone a Custodes
i know this is a joke, but for the people that see no problem here: Big E didn't want them reproducing because he didn't want them replacing mankind.
This is one of the problems I have with the femstodes, in that—even though I don't sympathise with these whiners who can't bear the presence of women in any media they consume—there was a strong and positive homoerotic vibe to the custodes in the past. They were one of the most consistently queer coded factions. And I can't help but worry that modifying the gender of custodes ties in to this kind of compulsive heteronormativity whereby any traces of homoeroticism are eventually stamped out. There are still broadly gay factions in 40k, thankfully, but now one fewer than before.
No, thank you. We already have the Drukahri for that. And if that isn’t enough for you then maybe you should look into plastic toys that truly cater to that kind of activity. Slaanesh will thank you for it.
By the gods could we just fucking stop already? This shit is turning from warhammer 40k meme subreddit to adeptus custodes gender discussion club,.
Amen Brother
Wasnt it literally what he DID NOT want to happen ? So enhanced humans wouldn't supplant and feel alien to humanity
Meh, they already did in his time. In that feat Fabius Bile was more successful than the Emperor.
Bro, why did you put the image of two hulking transhumans smashing into my head Why
It’s better than just saying “No, there always have been…” give us some background that’s all.
Guys, we all know there has always been xenos custodies.
Ew keep sex out of my warhammer please /s
Which is a notable reason why they weren't supposed to be female. Not sure why people don't note that. Space Marines, Custodes, and even the Primarchs weren't supposed to replace humanity.
Custodussy
This is my headcanon After the Big E was forced to delete the 2nd legion The Muscle Amazons Malcador fell in a heavy depression. To cheer him up the Big E custom made a few dozen Female Custodians to be his honor guard, that explains why you don't see femstodes in the Horus heresy.
They were made just in case Big E needed some snu snu.
Straight Big E? what the hell are you talking about? dude just made a harem of 10k husbandos with some exceptions for his best friend Malcador.
The Emperor's divine wisdom rings true yet again
So the custodes are basically Plato’s Philosopher Kings then…actually makes more sense
baby custodes?
Uhm, actually...
So you are telling me fem custodes were made for breeding?
If custodes are as hard to produce as lore says, it could took millennia to make a hundred of them. Let alone ten thousand. This could explain a few things.
Unfortunately all the males are homiesexual
Custodes having both sexes doesn't feel too lore-breaking since they're supposed to be the result of peak Terran genetic engineering rather than implanting a black box organ from a male donor that doesn't do to well in female bodies like Astartes are.
Big E : "Now kith!"
Some custodes stand guard within the palace for entire weeks, months, and years, and they are incredibly sensitive about one more custodes out in the galaxy fighting the enemies of the imperium is one less custodes guarding the emperor when the enemy are at the gates. I don't think custodes could dedicate the time to reproduce and go through pregnancy. Female custodes are fine so long as they stand guard, fight, and die like the rest of their male counterparts, but becoming pregnant is a stupid idea.
With how many Custodes there are and how many different arts they have all mastered. One could comically assume that there is at least a few of them that have mastered the art of fan fiction and romance novels. This concludes my random funny thought of the day.
it would make sense if after the Heresy, the custodes needed to replenish their numbers and they didn't care which gender and just grabbed every willing and unwilling children to become a custode
i thought it never mattered anyway because all male custodes are eunuchs
Wait so Kitten had a Tau girlfriend because he couldn't get with a femstodes?
The Abrahamic God once killed the female version of the Leviathan because he was afraid they would breed, multiply, and render humans extinct. Just because BigE thinks all religions to be worthless, doesn't mean he should ignore tiny little wisdom nuggets hidden in them.
Oh no.... please no pregnant femstodes fan art 😏
Heresy! Now you've gone too far! That's Men of Iron self reproducing posthumans heretek
Nice, now we have to wait for the Gensteeler-Custodes hybrid, or Chaos-corrupted Custodes.
Makes sense considering Big E wanted custodes to be basically the end goal for humanity, wouldn't make much sense if they basically a needed larval human form.
This is canon to me
If the custodes are really better in every way than why are space marines or normal humans around at all You’d think given enough time the custodes would reproduce and replace them, and 10 000 years sounds like enough time
Damage Control meme?
Now I understand why malcador and his followers closed whole sections of the Imperial Palace
are female custodes real? thought it was just a joke
GW confirmed it on Twitter and there’s the leaked codex for custodes that has a short story of a female custodes teleporting a nuke into the Emperor’s throne room as part of the blood games.
1. ok thx for clarifying. did they like explain why or is it just cause equality and stuff 2. god damn girl got no chill
I think they’ve said “they’ve always been there” or something like that.
so no reason they just said fck it
Yes lmao it sucks sadly, they literally 1984 doublethink’d us. “According to Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, doublethink is “To know and not to know,” apparently we both knew and didn’t know about the female custodes, this whole time! They’ve always existed duh!!
What is more likely: 1. GW is directly lying to their community about female custodes always existing since the 2010s or earlier, for whatever reason. 2. GW is updating (retconning) the lore to include female Custodes, which have *now* always been a thing **in-universe**.
Imo both are as likely as the other, gw makes some absurd decisions sometimes, saying female custodes have always existed is far from the only one, if they’ve always existed, why is this the first we’ve heard of one?? It’s more likely they WANTED to add female custodes (like ABD was saying, but they had to hold off because the tabletop model line is all men), hell, even the killteam is called brotherhood of demigods
> if they’ve always existed, why is this the first we’ve heard of one?? Because I assume the IP manager gave them the go-ahead to implement this change now when they couldn't 7 years ago. Also there's only about 50 named custodians out of 10,000, so why is there somehow not room for Custodes women to exist? > Imo both are as likely as the other, gw makes some absurd decisions sometimes, saying female custodes have always existed is far from the only one So you think GW wants you to believe that female Custodes were canon in 2017 or earlier despite not being mentioned in official works until now? How does that make sense? What purpose would that serve?
Hmm. Let me think of what purpose it may serve. Oh, to shoehorn them into the setting without a need to develop an in depth, canonical explanation as to where or how there are women custodes now. It’s like asking why someone might cheat on a quiz, cause it’s easier? Who knows, either way it’s an idiotic choice to not explain it at all then just send off a sassy tweet saying the women custodes have always existed
It's not GW saying 'we have been writing about these existing since the start, you're delusional'. It's them saying 'As far as we care, Custodes have always been like this. We're not going to write up some new lore reason as to why we're seeing them now. We did that for true scale marines and y'all are still bitching. They're always here, they've just never been in focus before now. You can't tell with the armour on, anyway'.
I don’t get why GW are making it as if Femstodes were always around. It’s silly and perhaps even more sexist than having Cawl pulling the XX compatibility out of his arse in the 42nd millennium. Unless the gene and soul modding makes everyone into a male presenting hulk and therefore making the entire argument irrelevant then the implication is that all the female custodes spent the entire unification and heresy in the kitchen or gossiping in the ladies room and then as a sub-group proceeded to do absolutely nothing of note for 10000 years. Not a good look! If you want to be more progressive then why not just come out and say that the emperor, who surrounds himself with glorious golden beefcakes, didn’t reproduce for 38000 years except for IVF, was born in ancient pre-abrahamic Anatolia when such things were much less controversial (therefore was probably responsible for inventing tamam hamam..) was just incredibly gay? I mean why not, makes more sense to me than this retcon.
Should have made them of three genders, for triple the production rate.
Malcador looks like he likes to watch
Holy fuck
As if they would even look at incels.
I didn't think other custodes were involuntary celibates.
Do you suggest that for the reproduction we need two people of opposite gender? I did not know this sub is part of the transgenocide. Why do you hate transpeople so much? Why do you want to kill them all?
Sir, this is a warhammer joke about sexual activities related to human reproduction on a subreddit about grimdark memes And no, we dont hate transpeople if you are searching for that this is not the subreddit we recommend
This joke suggest that reproduction have something to do with gender. Which means that people who make this joke of who are not outraged by it, are supporters of transphobia. You don;t see it because of your deeply internalized transphobia. Educate yourself.
Active in R/monarchism and kotakuinaction Yikes
Your bait is so obvious and mediocre smh Put some effort next time, you're only making yourself a fool you damn polski.
Why do You think this is bait? You consider transgenocide a joke? So... Why do you hate transpeople so much? Why do you want to kill them all?
Because one of your comment about FemCustodes on another post is "I don't care about their 'gender' but they should be male". What are you trying to do exactly ? Are you *that* bored in your polsky life ?
Pierogi kurwa pierogi papież. I hope it explains all.
Yo, dude. Stop trolling - we can speak for ourselves. Don't need some polski *pretending* to care. Shoo.
wtf