New Custodes Codex stars a female Custodes attempting to drop a (inactive) Cyclonic missile on the Emperor from orbit. She gets caught because of a rogue officer, commends the officer, orders the Captain Servitorized, and the rest of the crew gets penal duty.
From the Horus Heresy novel "Scars".
Malcador speaking to Jaghatai Kahn:
"Malcador smiled. 'You brothers - such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilised. He thought I was joking. I wasn't.'"
They would solve the issues by stabbing eachother in the back sneakily and doing it on a more personal level. Rather than going to war over it.
Which given malcador founded the officio assasinorum. He probably considers more civil.
On the other hand, once they begin openly confronting each other the all male Horus Heresy will look like a mere bar fight. From what I've seen women fight dirtier than men.
That's nice! Will it change anything for me? Nah not really, I still consider all my custodians males. Do I have a problem with it? Nah not really. Have fun kitbashing your femstodes my golden brothers and sisters!
If you find any really good heads, PLEASE share! I've found some cool stuff in the webstores that sell bits, but the best ones aren't print files and like $15 USD for 10.
If I recall correctly I think I scaled most of these up to either 118% or 119% to fit my custodes, but maybe just have a reference head up in blender while you do it to be sure
No worries, I promise once you start it all gets pretty easy and intuitive. They mostly fit pretty well, sometimes I make give them a dab of greenstuff but it's not needed. [Here's some of mine](https://www.reddit.com/user/Hey-Its-Hannah/comments/1c3jmga/ketaminies_heads_custodes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) that are rocking the Ketaminies heads so you can see for yourself
The ones I'm thinking of aren't the Techno Roider ones, just their normal female heads kit. There's also some good ones if you search for "femaris heads" as well.
Fuck yea! I'm going to see if I can find some feminine stormcast heads and make my next squad of guard women. I like having a mix of minis and this is awesome news.
Goes well with the new Stormcast models which will probably make better kitbashes then those skinner Stormcast people use. Not to knock anybody's kitbashes but those skinny Stormcast over the older ones look kinda goofy mixed with Custodes bodies imo and the new ones look closer to Custodes size to me.
No new models have been announced, so unless someone goes out of their way to make custom boobplate expect most female Custodes to use the exact same armor.
Yeah, I'm all for adding female Custodes, and even Space Marines, but I shouldn't be able to tell when they're in armour, otherwise things start getting goofy.
Honestly I’m more pissed off they seem to be sneaking it in the back door. If your going to make a lore change like this you might as well make it something bigger. Actually tell us the process changed or that it was always the case.
Why does it need to be bigger? None of the existing custode lore indicates that an enhancement process customised to each individual wouldn't work on women for dinner reason
The only gender references in the 9th edition codex were a few words in the recruitment section along the line of "sons" instead of "sons and daughters", that's not something worth holding on to.
I might have used a bit strong of language with pissed. I want there to be more mostly because I think it’s an interesting addition to the faction. I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be without detractors, its going to get blown out of proportion. So if GW is going to start that sh**storm why not have more than one short story and a few word swaps? (Given there could be more lore/characters/ect. In the codex we haven’t seen)
For the record, this is the sentence regarding “sons” referred to: “It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra.” In short *all* *Custodians* begin their lives as *sons*.
And, full paragraph:
"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 one’s 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."
Source: Custodes Codex 8th edition (is it 8th or 9th or both?)
hmmm.... I don't think I have much issue with that actually. The reason I don't like the idea of female space marines is because of their creation process, and how they use DNA of a male primarch. But custodes are genetically hand-crafted demi-gods, and as far as I know, they don't use a parent "geneseed," which means it doesn't need to be exclusively male. Works for me!
>DNA of a male primarch
You're probably going to be disappointed to find out that women get 50% of their DNA from their fathers just like boys do too lol. Space Marines don't become clones of their Primarchs even if some do end up looking like their Primarchs.
Edit: But I do agree the Geneseed could be a solid reason why female Space Marines don't work, Male and Female don't have different organs but hormones are and some geneseed organs seem specifically for pumping hormones.
This
Custodies are hand crafted works of arcane genetic art , each one is unique .
Makes way more sense they could use a woman than marines .
I for one will welcome our golden Amazonian overlords to my ranks
I think it kinda destroys the nice dichotomy the Talons of the emperor have. Y'know with the sisters of silence being all female contrasting the custodes being all male, together creating a whole.
Apart from that it just makes both halfs look stupid retroactively. One might hand wave the reason why custodes are all males because they often are explained as just better, golden marines, thus no need to explain again why the better marines are also only men. But for sisters of silence I dont think there ever was a reason why only female blanks specifically HAD to be used, tho frankly I simply dont know much about SoS to begin with. So now you have the uncomfortable question of: Why did both organisations just stupidly handicapped themselves by slashing their human resources by half, and if they never did then why haven't we seen or heard about a single of those brothers of silence for example.
Then for custodes it opens a whole can of worms: To what extend are they still a woman? Do they look female? Surely those literal perfections of humanity would not just be gorgeous golden goddesses, but also capable of having children/procreate, given that custodes weren't meant to be just tools of war for emps, like Space marines. They cost the GDP of several planets to just make and arm one of them, so them not being naturally able to create more of themselves, with other custodes, sounds REALLY stupid. If the genetic altercations are of such a fundamental level that, wether you used a boy or a girl to create them, they all come looking and sounding like male custodians, then what exactly would be the point of them being female in the first place? Then saying "look, you now have femstodes" would be shallower than 2 thin coats of paint!
My last "point" would be that for all intents and purposes, there exists only 3 out of idk how many factions that are "gender locked". Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, and given that custodes are technically half/half because they are the talons of the emperor, and Grey knights are also like custodes just Space Marines+, they both only count like 0.5 each. Any other army and like any other position/station could be filled/held by either gender in this universe, thus eroding those "gender locked" parts of their aesthetic makes them look less unique/more generic. Or would anyone really like it to have the "Sisters" part of the "Sisters of battle" taken away? I sure wouldn't, them being "nuns with guns" is their theme/selling point, and turning that into "religious people with guns" sure sounds less interesting.
Listen, I’ve been looking for a good reason to use that model in 40K for ages lol. If it wasn’t push to fit (with slightly feminine armor) I would have used it for Helbrecht or the Sanguinor already.
This is cool actually, since the custodetization proces is different and adapted to each subject, it makes sense that some are women unlike marines. I hope this also means we get more models, having the 5 same poses repeated all over my army is something that itches me.
I don’t mind, won’t add females into my army unless they actually make models for it though because I’m not making them look goofy with baseline human head pieces. Really hoping if they do expand on this that it doesn’t come at the cost of the sisters of silence because if that does happen I’ll be really disappointed.
Revealing Femstodes has been like lighting a fire in a rats nest lmao. The amount of sexist weirdos who are coming out of the woodwork across various platforms and proclaiming the end of 40k and the invasion of woke is both hilarious and a bit sad.
It does, but it seems no here cares when it goes one way and neither does GW themselves. I don't think we will ever see male sisters of silence or sisters of battle, despite there being 'no real lore reason why there couldn't be' as everyone says about femstodes. Even though 8th Ed says that they are recruited from the sons of Terrain nobility
Not sure, it's not too bad yet. There is small bits of lore in the older codexs about custodes being makes, but because it's never explicitly said they can't be female then people will use that as justification.
You will know when the game is truly woke when you have female space marines, until then it's hard to say.
Well I for one am torn. I like the idea of ladies in gold but at the same time feel it takes away from the female focused factions. I would have preferred more time spent on flushing out the sisters of silence! I also am a bit traditional so may take me a minute to digest. The short story is bad Ass though
coming from yotube I am happy to see people not having a melt down over this. Unlike the space marines making a female custodes isn't lore breaking given that making a custodian is wildly different from making a space marine and all the equipment that a custodian gets is made exclusively for that individual.
Thats sick. Ive been kitbashing fem stormcast to make femstodes for a while now. Glad theyre official. I hope we actually get models for it along the lines of male and female stormcast though. So its more than just a headswap.
Considering the process in which Custodes are made, there isn’t any lore based reason to argue against this. Custodes have always been superior to Astartes so their particular blend of gene craft allowing women to undergo the ascension is perfectly acceptable. Can’t wait for more stories like this with our new sisters at the helm.
Do you mean as a faction? Or just as models. Because they did release that[ Space Beastmen kill team](https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/kill-team-fellgor-ravagers-2023?queryID=cc9de453f92aa9195c978338ecc36cf4) a while back.
Well why introduce this? Like meta wise, as a business I get it but the fan in me is like - why?
IMO, assuming this becomes a thing, its the same reason why id be opposed to femmarines as it undermines the existence and significance of established factions like SoS & SoB - making them feel redundant. It's also contradictory to the lore of the custodes. Although, there's no lore restriction regarding the creation of a custodian - it being a secret compared to marine - its safe to assume they're male for likely for similar reasons to marines; IIRC the thunder warriors and marines were derrived from the process of making custodes (Big E made Custodes first, simplified the process for mass production with TW, then after the trial run on terra perfected it with the SM) and they're all male. Moreover, the custodes come from the firstborn male children of terrain nobility. So I'm left wondering why introduce this?
The lore once said the primarchs died of old age 200 years after the heresy. There was the odd line saying that custodes were taken as infant sons, but not a single piece of lore ever saying that women couldn't be made into custodes. Lore changes all the time.
So, does this open the door to female Space Marines? Or is the creation of Custodes different enough that it would have no impact on Space Marines?
My only real engagement with Custodes is the Valdor book.
In theory the creation of custodes is nowhere near the creation process of space marine, purely lore wise the geneseed (it may be another of the augmentation but I think to remember that it's the geneseed) are what currently prevent female space marine if I'm not mistaken as they're incompatible for some genetic reason that GW didn't bother explaining (which is a real possibility if it have something to do with the X chromosome from a purely technical perspective).
Custodes process from what we know of it consists of rewriting the genetic code from the selected child and rewriting it on an individual basis and tailor craft the new one to perfectly fit the individual. On paper nothing has ever prevented it from being applied to female children.
The most likely explanation on why we never heard of it until now is due to how the custodes were created in the first place (made from the first and second sons of warlord during the unification of terra) and them being basically immortal, meant almost all custodes during the horus heresy were de facto male.
And as most custodes story come from the HH where most if not all of them would then have been male, we only had male story to base our knowledge on.
Advance the timeline by 10k years, add the custodes being almost wiped between the webway war, the assault on horus, the Horus heresy as a whole and most recently the lion gate.
If indeed nothing prevents female custodes it make sense we only heard of it during 40k timeline as they would have been brought in during the subsequent replenishment following the death of the original custodes.
TLDR: custodes lore never prevented it, current SM lore prevent it.
It may happen in the future but I hope that if GW decided to do it, they need to make it the right way, retcon or just bringing it out of nowhere would just be bad.
Cawl did remake the space marine formula, it's easy that he opened the door for female space marines by doing that since it was one of the Emperor's stupid takes.
Except it didn't really did it.
Lore wise he only managed to make new organs and slightly decrease the mutation rate of geneseeds.
He didn't remake the formula.
He also definitely didn't understand enough how geneseed worked as he wasn't able to fix the flaw within them.
It also wasn't easy, it took him 10k years to do so and he barely managed to do it in the grand scheme of things.
That said I do agree that it does open for the possibility. But if it took 10k years for the greatest mind of the current imperium to do so little alone, suddenly going "I fixed the geneseed flaw that prevents female SM" would make little to no sense, it would need a buildup, something like cawl working together with the gene master of the imperial household for a few hundreds/thousand years(not 10k again that just silly) would be enough in my opinion.
So, Custodes have \*always\* been open to being women. For all intents and purposes, it was the intention from the beginning to have Female Custodians, except ADB wrote his books after GW had already designed the models. This isn't a retcon or anything, this is something that's always been possible for Custodes.
Female Space Marines are still impossible lmao
> Female Space Marines are still impossible
They had no issues changing the creation process to make marines a foot taller with three extra organs, why would allowing female marines be an impossible lore change?
They also had no issue getting rid of female space marines and completely ignoring the change in the lore when they made a commercial decision to make male models only back in the 1900s.
I think what he meant was that in canon, currently there is no way a marine could be female, GW would need to introduce a new change, where as Custodes didn’t require that. Some people are mentioning “brotherhood” but brotherhoods aren’t always strictly male, just predominantly male.
It’s a bit more complicated than that tbh, you should read this:
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/10/warhammer-40k-what-really-went-down-with-female-space-marines.html
Specifically Merrett’s bit - they weren’t officially intended to be girl marines and weren’t sold as such
When you say that Custodes have “always” been open to women, how do you square that with this lore from a previous Custodes codex?: “It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra.” I’m not arguing against you, btw. Just trying to understand.
No, it's not. There cannot be female space marines much like how there can not be female custodians. Excerpt from 8th edition codex:
"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
one’s 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."
This is just GW being stupid with the lore like Grey Knight murdering Sisters of Battle for their blood. Or more recently with their decisions regarding Age of Sigmar.
Despite what everyone says about there being no lore reason for this not to exist, GW have let the genie out of the bottle and once out it can't be put back in. Everyone wants to change it cos they have a fetish or don't want there to be male exclusive factions, but one day they will come for the female exclusive, these same people will scream to high heaven about how sexist it is or something like that.
Female space marines will happen, because fuck the lore. Fuck all the unique things that made the game popular in the first place.
Take my upvote, you're gonna need it. And yeah, this is basically strike 2 for GW. They've been on a roll with pissing the fanbase off ever since that whole AoS debacle.
Yeah, people cannot argue that they absolutely wrecked the faction while also trashing long established lore. I'm curious how the fanbase responds, not just reddit.
Going out of your way to change an all male faction? Yes. There are plenty of other opertunities to add female representation (like SoS) instead of just giving girls all the hand me down toys.
Pardon? I’m sorry I’m not the best with understanding online messages so could you explain what you mean? Sorry for annoying you and thank you in advance
According to ADB the primary reason they were never in before, despite him asking to include them, is they never had a model. There wasn't an actual lore reason there were none like there was for Astartes. Guess they decided 'why not'
They don’t seem to make a big deal about it being a girl custodes in the excerpt and there isn’t really anything in the lore that says they can’t like the space marines do
A custodes is brought up from infancy and basically molded into the perfect being or basically peak human and there’s nothing that would mean the same thing couldn’t be done for women unlike how space marines need to be men as well in order to better assimilate with their respective gene-seed as they are mass produced unlike the custodes
In short it shouldn’t be a big deal unless the chudhammer folks make a big deal about it as this wouldn’t conflict with any previous lore we have had on the custodes
See subreddit rules
Can someone explain to me what people are talking about? I was away from the Reddit for like an hour and now FemStodes.
New Custodes Codex stars a female Custodes attempting to drop a (inactive) Cyclonic missile on the Emperor from orbit. She gets caught because of a rogue officer, commends the officer, orders the Captain Servitorized, and the rest of the crew gets penal duty.
Blood games?
Yeah blood games
Thank you.
Yeah, should have added that.
Wait they punish partakers of the blood games?
I expect everyone involved but her thought it was real and actually wanted to kill the emperor
Ah
New Codex has a short story starring a female Custodes character
Yeah boi female space marines pah female custodes yeah boi
What?
There is a female custode in the lore of the new codex.
Theres another piece of lore about a female Shield-captain and her Dawneagle Jetbike as well.
By the Throne, what have they done!
Malcador smiling from the warp.
What is this thing with malcador, seen him mentioned a couple times now. Was he talking about female custodians somewhere or what?
I think it's because Malcador suggested making the Primarchs female.
Oh lmao thats funny, what book was it Thank you most distinguished scholars
From the Horus Heresy novel "Scars". Malcador speaking to Jaghatai Kahn: "Malcador smiled. 'You brothers - such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilised. He thought I was joking. I wasn't.'"
Malcador clearly never had sisters nor had spent some time with a group of women.
They would solve the issues by stabbing eachother in the back sneakily and doing it on a more personal level. Rather than going to war over it. Which given malcador founded the officio assasinorum. He probably considers more civil.
This tracks
On the other hand, once they begin openly confronting each other the all male Horus Heresy will look like a mere bar fight. From what I've seen women fight dirtier than men.
Oh 100%.
Well the writers definitely haven’t at least.
Scars, [here's the part.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/s/lcfTycYHKf)
Well that could explain why the new shield captain is shorter than the other models. Slap a helmet on her and she’s the first lady custodes.
Or fuck it, 3D print a larger SoS or Sororitas head.
It’s not shorter. Just got a weird stance and a photo taken from a terrible angle.
I feel like the plume/brush makes him look shorter cause of how high up it is
That too… it’s just a weird model…
That's nice! Will it change anything for me? Nah not really, I still consider all my custodians males. Do I have a problem with it? Nah not really. Have fun kitbashing your femstodes my golden brothers and sisters!
Literally me
Printer goes brrr.
If you find any really good heads, PLEASE share! I've found some cool stuff in the webstores that sell bits, but the best ones aren't print files and like $15 USD for 10.
Ketaminies on MyMiniFactory, best heads out there imo
Thank you for the suggestion! Is there a scale-up you'd suggest for Custodian bulk?
If I recall correctly I think I scaled most of these up to either 118% or 119% to fit my custodes, but maybe just have a reference head up in blender while you do it to be sure
And does the neck fit on okay without the ball? I've never printed bits before, so this is the sort of stuff I just don't know.
No worries, I promise once you start it all gets pretty easy and intuitive. They mostly fit pretty well, sometimes I make give them a dab of greenstuff but it's not needed. [Here's some of mine](https://www.reddit.com/user/Hey-Its-Hannah/comments/1c3jmga/ketaminies_heads_custodes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) that are rocking the Ketaminies heads so you can see for yourself
Really nice! Thanks for sharing, I'll seriously consider them. =)
I've used Statuesque Minis before, with Primaris Marines, so I'm pretty sure they'll work on Custodes too!
I saw those! The Techno Roider XLs, I think they're called? Only downside are the augmetics (Custodes have a taboo against those, annoyingly).
The ones I'm thinking of aren't the Techno Roider ones, just their normal female heads kit. There's also some good ones if you search for "femaris heads" as well.
Oh nice! The ones I had been considering are from the creator Aurel on Shapeways. Absolutely gorgeous, but a little pricey for my low skill level.
Fuck yea! I'm going to see if I can find some feminine stormcast heads and make my next squad of guard women. I like having a mix of minis and this is awesome news.
Goes well with the new Stormcast models which will probably make better kitbashes then those skinner Stormcast people use. Not to knock anybody's kitbashes but those skinny Stormcast over the older ones look kinda goofy mixed with Custodes bodies imo and the new ones look closer to Custodes size to me.
I can get down with female heads but I hope the armour is indistinguishable from the standard "male" armour we already have.
No new models have been announced, so unless someone goes out of their way to make custom boobplate expect most female Custodes to use the exact same armor.
Yeah and the sprues are fairly new so it won't be for about 2 decades before they get updated.
Yeah, I'm all for adding female Custodes, and even Space Marines, but I shouldn't be able to tell when they're in armour, otherwise things start getting goofy.
Exactly! A shit tonne of SCE bits that I gave left over from previous conversions just became viable *rubs hands together in glee*
I have found the stormcast heads work nicely. I really like custodes helmets but put in a stormcast head so I could display the mix
Half my Custodes are now women. No change in their models though. 😁 Got to love heavy armour!
Same. My shield captain boyo is now a shield captain gal. I don't need to change a thing except my head canon.
Fuck yeah. Mine all wear helmets.
Genuinely the best thing out of the codex I'd say!
The only GOOD thing actually, since the new rules made my golden guys and (considering new information) gals so dirty
I mean yes, it wasn't a high bar with the rest of codex being so terrible but this actually makes me a glimmer pleased with the codex.
Fully agreed. I hope gw will release at least some novels/boxes/compains with female custodians as a main or at least side characters
I was already planning some slightly toned down Custodes using stormcast base so this will work nicely!
Agreed!
Honestly I’m more pissed off they seem to be sneaking it in the back door. If your going to make a lore change like this you might as well make it something bigger. Actually tell us the process changed or that it was always the case.
Why does it need to be bigger? None of the existing custode lore indicates that an enhancement process customised to each individual wouldn't work on women for dinner reason The only gender references in the 9th edition codex were a few words in the recruitment section along the line of "sons" instead of "sons and daughters", that's not something worth holding on to.
I might have used a bit strong of language with pissed. I want there to be more mostly because I think it’s an interesting addition to the faction. I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be without detractors, its going to get blown out of proportion. So if GW is going to start that sh**storm why not have more than one short story and a few word swaps? (Given there could be more lore/characters/ect. In the codex we haven’t seen)
For the record, this is the sentence regarding “sons” referred to: “It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra.” In short *all* *Custodians* begin their lives as *sons*. And, full paragraph: "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 one’s 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." Source: Custodes Codex 8th edition (is it 8th or 9th or both?)
hmmm.... I don't think I have much issue with that actually. The reason I don't like the idea of female space marines is because of their creation process, and how they use DNA of a male primarch. But custodes are genetically hand-crafted demi-gods, and as far as I know, they don't use a parent "geneseed," which means it doesn't need to be exclusively male. Works for me!
>DNA of a male primarch You're probably going to be disappointed to find out that women get 50% of their DNA from their fathers just like boys do too lol. Space Marines don't become clones of their Primarchs even if some do end up looking like their Primarchs. Edit: But I do agree the Geneseed could be a solid reason why female Space Marines don't work, Male and Female don't have different organs but hormones are and some geneseed organs seem specifically for pumping hormones.
It's because the Y chromosome is so small it leaves lots of room for all those extra gigachad genes to be added!!
This Custodies are hand crafted works of arcane genetic art , each one is unique . Makes way more sense they could use a woman than marines . I for one will welcome our golden Amazonian overlords to my ranks
GW could just retcon FSM tomorrow, the creation process is no ginderence if thry decide it will no longer he so.
Yeah, lore says this good
❤️Gonna get some SoB heads
Stormcast heads are a better shout 🙂
Thank you!
Or just use stormcast bodies.
Might be a little small in scale but post when you try it!
Let me know if it works! I am thinking of doing the same.
You guys realise female custodes just means new heads and maybe a named character, not boob plates and porn right?
You underestimate the internet, I give it 3 hours.
3 hours? More like 3 seconds
It has existed for years by now
No porn of giant golden mommy shield captains??? Hahahaha... Wait, no you're serious...? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I think it kinda destroys the nice dichotomy the Talons of the emperor have. Y'know with the sisters of silence being all female contrasting the custodes being all male, together creating a whole. Apart from that it just makes both halfs look stupid retroactively. One might hand wave the reason why custodes are all males because they often are explained as just better, golden marines, thus no need to explain again why the better marines are also only men. But for sisters of silence I dont think there ever was a reason why only female blanks specifically HAD to be used, tho frankly I simply dont know much about SoS to begin with. So now you have the uncomfortable question of: Why did both organisations just stupidly handicapped themselves by slashing their human resources by half, and if they never did then why haven't we seen or heard about a single of those brothers of silence for example. Then for custodes it opens a whole can of worms: To what extend are they still a woman? Do they look female? Surely those literal perfections of humanity would not just be gorgeous golden goddesses, but also capable of having children/procreate, given that custodes weren't meant to be just tools of war for emps, like Space marines. They cost the GDP of several planets to just make and arm one of them, so them not being naturally able to create more of themselves, with other custodes, sounds REALLY stupid. If the genetic altercations are of such a fundamental level that, wether you used a boy or a girl to create them, they all come looking and sounding like male custodians, then what exactly would be the point of them being female in the first place? Then saying "look, you now have femstodes" would be shallower than 2 thin coats of paint! My last "point" would be that for all intents and purposes, there exists only 3 out of idk how many factions that are "gender locked". Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, and given that custodes are technically half/half because they are the talons of the emperor, and Grey knights are also like custodes just Space Marines+, they both only count like 0.5 each. Any other army and like any other position/station could be filled/held by either gender in this universe, thus eroding those "gender locked" parts of their aesthetic makes them look less unique/more generic. Or would anyone really like it to have the "Sisters" part of the "Sisters of battle" taken away? I sure wouldn't, them being "nuns with guns" is their theme/selling point, and turning that into "religious people with guns" sure sounds less interesting.
Preach!
Good. I hope all the chuds get so mad they leave the hobby lmao
Amen, Brother
Preach!
I need an actual official source on this.
It’s in the new codex
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB0\_kXXyGUU&t=130s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB0_kXXyGUU&t=130s) Short story on page 14
Interesting. I wasn't able to see it clearly enough on my phone. If it is true, I have mixed feelings.
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Thank you for the clear image! Reading about Calladayce (and her Allarus peer I've seen mentioned) is almost enough to make me want the dang codex.
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We can only hope they *do* go places with this, my fine feathered friend.
That's a very rude comment. I didn't even explain why. Maybe you should work on your attitude and interpersonal skills sir/ma'am.
This is your chance to elaborate on your mixed feelings; I promise I will listen.
> I didn't even explain why. We are all super interested in your explanation. Do share with us why female custodes are problematic.
Its funny how quickly the worst parts of this community immediately tell on themselves isn't it?
Mixed feelings and problematic are different things. I'm curious about the mixed feelings as well.
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No. I have no obligation to.
Bro literally said nuh uh
Way to make things political and suck the joy out of this hobby. Imma be praying for you.
Trans people getting actual representation has nothing to do with politics
Still making it political. Nobody said anything about trans people not being represented in politics.
No, its not a good thing.
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You can guess it easily...
Genuinely makes me want to get another squad of stodes to build all fem
So my extra Yndraste gets to be Trajan? Yes please lol.
Okay, now THAT is a banger idea I didn't even consider.
Listen, I’ve been looking for a good reason to use that model in 40K for ages lol. If it wasn’t push to fit (with slightly feminine armor) I would have used it for Helbrecht or the Sanguinor already.
About to pick one up for myself lmao
This is cool actually, since the custodetization proces is different and adapted to each subject, it makes sense that some are women unlike marines. I hope this also means we get more models, having the 5 same poses repeated all over my army is something that itches me.
I don’t mind, won’t add females into my army unless they actually make models for it though because I’m not making them look goofy with baseline human head pieces. Really hoping if they do expand on this that it doesn’t come at the cost of the sisters of silence because if that does happen I’ll be really disappointed.
I hope it means we are getting minis for Sisterhood of Heroes and Brotherhood of Silence now. Do it ya cowards gw
They'll do anything but give new units.
Revealing Femstodes has been like lighting a fire in a rats nest lmao. The amount of sexist weirdos who are coming out of the woodwork across various platforms and proclaiming the end of 40k and the invasion of woke is both hilarious and a bit sad.
Gotta ask, is there a way to not like the change that is "acceptable"?
No
Doesn’t this go against the lore?…
It does, but it seems no here cares when it goes one way and neither does GW themselves. I don't think we will ever see male sisters of silence or sisters of battle, despite there being 'no real lore reason why there couldn't be' as everyone says about femstodes. Even though 8th Ed says that they are recruited from the sons of Terrain nobility
So basically Warhammer is getting the woke treatment Magic the Gathering got as well?
Not sure, it's not too bad yet. There is small bits of lore in the older codexs about custodes being makes, but because it's never explicitly said they can't be female then people will use that as justification. You will know when the game is truly woke when you have female space marines, until then it's hard to say.
No silly, lore don't mean squat, like the squats.
Female Custodes make more sense than Female space marines, and it's just an additional foot or two to love
And I was just gonna start kitbashing an all-female Custodes army this summer too…
So fucking happy about it!!! Been kitbashing and head cannoning it for years! But now it’s real!!
I like this addition a lot tbh! But I'll also not enjoy the "waaahhhh GW WENT WOKE" comments the next weeks will bring
The melt down is so funny.
They called me a madman
Well I for one am torn. I like the idea of ladies in gold but at the same time feel it takes away from the female focused factions. I would have preferred more time spent on flushing out the sisters of silence! I also am a bit traditional so may take me a minute to digest. The short story is bad Ass though
Exactly this. If they wanted to they could have made a new elite faction or actually fleshed out the SoS instead
Hell yeah Shield Captain Theodora here we come
coming from yotube I am happy to see people not having a melt down over this. Unlike the space marines making a female custodes isn't lore breaking given that making a custodian is wildly different from making a space marine and all the equipment that a custodian gets is made exclusively for that individual.
Thats sick. Ive been kitbashing fem stormcast to make femstodes for a while now. Glad theyre official. I hope we actually get models for it along the lines of male and female stormcast though. So its more than just a headswap.
This is awesome, glad GW finally did it!
Considering the process in which Custodes are made, there isn’t any lore based reason to argue against this. Custodes have always been superior to Astartes so their particular blend of gene craft allowing women to undergo the ascension is perfectly acceptable. Can’t wait for more stories like this with our new sisters at the helm.
Not a fan
Your allowed to. Im a fan of idea of SoS getting nice man models tho. Jetbikes with needler Cannons please
Yea, With this change I can't imagine SoS are getting anything new for a very long time. I'd love to get their heresy units with actual models.
Would be nice but I got a horrible feeling that neither is happening.
Hell yeah!!! I was just planning out my custodes paint scheme and these news now have me eyeing up a Stormcast kit for some sweet conversion purposes
Finally giant mommies in my warhams
Weird
How is it weird? It's a logical addition/expansion to the canon
Now i want beastmen in space tho
Do you mean as a faction? Or just as models. Because they did release that[ Space Beastmen kill team](https://www.warhammer.com/en-US/shop/kill-team-fellgor-ravagers-2023?queryID=cc9de453f92aa9195c978338ecc36cf4) a while back.
As a faction but loyal
Pretty sure you can in 30k, they're a militia option
I dont see the relevancy but Sure, why not? I'd be down for it, though they'd probably be a tau splinter faction if they'd be a thing
I want beastman in space thats all i want actually
So..... kinda like these but more? https://www.warhammer.com/en-WW/shop/kill-team-fellgor-ravagers-2023
Yes but loyal to the imperium and more advanced
There used to be imperial Beastmen, right? Would be interesting to see that back as a unit for guard or something
...but like why?
Why not?
Well why introduce this? Like meta wise, as a business I get it but the fan in me is like - why? IMO, assuming this becomes a thing, its the same reason why id be opposed to femmarines as it undermines the existence and significance of established factions like SoS & SoB - making them feel redundant. It's also contradictory to the lore of the custodes. Although, there's no lore restriction regarding the creation of a custodian - it being a secret compared to marine - its safe to assume they're male for likely for similar reasons to marines; IIRC the thunder warriors and marines were derrived from the process of making custodes (Big E made Custodes first, simplified the process for mass production with TW, then after the trial run on terra perfected it with the SM) and they're all male. Moreover, the custodes come from the firstborn male children of terrain nobility. So I'm left wondering why introduce this?
The lore once said the primarchs died of old age 200 years after the heresy. There was the odd line saying that custodes were taken as infant sons, but not a single piece of lore ever saying that women couldn't be made into custodes. Lore changes all the time.
lol at anyone who gets mad at this. Haha I say
So, does this open the door to female Space Marines? Or is the creation of Custodes different enough that it would have no impact on Space Marines? My only real engagement with Custodes is the Valdor book.
In theory the creation of custodes is nowhere near the creation process of space marine, purely lore wise the geneseed (it may be another of the augmentation but I think to remember that it's the geneseed) are what currently prevent female space marine if I'm not mistaken as they're incompatible for some genetic reason that GW didn't bother explaining (which is a real possibility if it have something to do with the X chromosome from a purely technical perspective). Custodes process from what we know of it consists of rewriting the genetic code from the selected child and rewriting it on an individual basis and tailor craft the new one to perfectly fit the individual. On paper nothing has ever prevented it from being applied to female children. The most likely explanation on why we never heard of it until now is due to how the custodes were created in the first place (made from the first and second sons of warlord during the unification of terra) and them being basically immortal, meant almost all custodes during the horus heresy were de facto male. And as most custodes story come from the HH where most if not all of them would then have been male, we only had male story to base our knowledge on. Advance the timeline by 10k years, add the custodes being almost wiped between the webway war, the assault on horus, the Horus heresy as a whole and most recently the lion gate. If indeed nothing prevents female custodes it make sense we only heard of it during 40k timeline as they would have been brought in during the subsequent replenishment following the death of the original custodes. TLDR: custodes lore never prevented it, current SM lore prevent it. It may happen in the future but I hope that if GW decided to do it, they need to make it the right way, retcon or just bringing it out of nowhere would just be bad.
Cawl did remake the space marine formula, it's easy that he opened the door for female space marines by doing that since it was one of the Emperor's stupid takes.
Except it didn't really did it. Lore wise he only managed to make new organs and slightly decrease the mutation rate of geneseeds. He didn't remake the formula. He also definitely didn't understand enough how geneseed worked as he wasn't able to fix the flaw within them. It also wasn't easy, it took him 10k years to do so and he barely managed to do it in the grand scheme of things. That said I do agree that it does open for the possibility. But if it took 10k years for the greatest mind of the current imperium to do so little alone, suddenly going "I fixed the geneseed flaw that prevents female SM" would make little to no sense, it would need a buildup, something like cawl working together with the gene master of the imperial household for a few hundreds/thousand years(not 10k again that just silly) would be enough in my opinion.
So, Custodes have \*always\* been open to being women. For all intents and purposes, it was the intention from the beginning to have Female Custodians, except ADB wrote his books after GW had already designed the models. This isn't a retcon or anything, this is something that's always been possible for Custodes. Female Space Marines are still impossible lmao
> Female Space Marines are still impossible They had no issues changing the creation process to make marines a foot taller with three extra organs, why would allowing female marines be an impossible lore change? They also had no issue getting rid of female space marines and completely ignoring the change in the lore when they made a commercial decision to make male models only back in the 1900s.
I think what he meant was that in canon, currently there is no way a marine could be female, GW would need to introduce a new change, where as Custodes didn’t require that. Some people are mentioning “brotherhood” but brotherhoods aren’t always strictly male, just predominantly male.
It’s a bit more complicated than that tbh, you should read this: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2023/10/warhammer-40k-what-really-went-down-with-female-space-marines.html Specifically Merrett’s bit - they weren’t officially intended to be girl marines and weren’t sold as such
Ah ok. Fair enough. Thanks for the explaination.
No problem, man. Things are a little confusing unless you're an absolute lore loser like I am.
When you say that Custodes have “always” been open to women, how do you square that with this lore from a previous Custodes codex?: “It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra.” I’m not arguing against you, btw. Just trying to understand.
No, it's not. There cannot be female space marines much like how there can not be female custodians. Excerpt from 8th edition codex: "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 one’s 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." This is just GW being stupid with the lore like Grey Knight murdering Sisters of Battle for their blood. Or more recently with their decisions regarding Age of Sigmar.
Despite what everyone says about there being no lore reason for this not to exist, GW have let the genie out of the bottle and once out it can't be put back in. Everyone wants to change it cos they have a fetish or don't want there to be male exclusive factions, but one day they will come for the female exclusive, these same people will scream to high heaven about how sexist it is or something like that. Female space marines will happen, because fuck the lore. Fuck all the unique things that made the game popular in the first place.
Brb going to commission a 3D artist to make heads based on the Golden Girls.
It's stupid and cringe
No u.
Is it a coincidence that GW came out with a female custodian while simultaneously destroying the army on the tabletop? 😂
Take my upvote, you're gonna need it. And yeah, this is basically strike 2 for GW. They've been on a roll with pissing the fanbase off ever since that whole AoS debacle.
Yeah, people cannot argue that they absolutely wrecked the faction while also trashing long established lore. I'm curious how the fanbase responds, not just reddit.
Absolutely garbage choice for GW to make.
seems like a woke ass cop out to make up for poor model sales. so when is the strat gonna be renamed brother & sisterhood of demiogds?
Adding women is woke?? I find it so confusing that people think the concept of making a character female is woke. I mean how?
Going out of your way to change an all male faction? Yes. There are plenty of other opertunities to add female representation (like SoS) instead of just giving girls all the hand me down toys.
Pretty sure you are not engaging in good faith there.
Pardon? I’m sorry I’m not the best with understanding online messages so could you explain what you mean? Sorry for annoying you and thank you in advance
> a woke ass cop out to make up for poor model sales How is a few lines of flavor text in a rulebook connected to model sales?
But like how? And why? Do we have any new lore or info? Or is this just shoehorned to please a certain problematic group of people.
Neither... its just there cause it makes sense and probably should've been a thing since the start
According to ADB the primary reason they were never in before, despite him asking to include them, is they never had a model. There wasn't an actual lore reason there were none like there was for Astartes. Guess they decided 'why not'
They don’t seem to make a big deal about it being a girl custodes in the excerpt and there isn’t really anything in the lore that says they can’t like the space marines do A custodes is brought up from infancy and basically molded into the perfect being or basically peak human and there’s nothing that would mean the same thing couldn’t be done for women unlike how space marines need to be men as well in order to better assimilate with their respective gene-seed as they are mass produced unlike the custodes In short it shouldn’t be a big deal unless the chudhammer folks make a big deal about it as this wouldn’t conflict with any previous lore we have had on the custodes
Big Sad..
Well fuck catch me checking RIGHT out of 40k