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 General Kroll wrote:
Where? Give me a quote.

"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."

8th edition codex, page 14, shadows and alchemy in the brotherhood of demigods section of the book.

Custodes were not mentioned to be all men in the original Rogue Trader, i'm not familiar if there was anything else predating 6th.

 Dysartes wrote:
You're trying to get this poster to say where in the process map we've never seen it says women can't be Custodes?

That's really not the strong gotcha card you seem to think you're playing there, you know, and demonstrates the weakness of the "this wasn't a retcon" position.

Nobody is trying to gotcha anyone.

He’s stated several times that the lore explicitly states that custodes cannot be women.

He’s wrong. There’s nowhere in the lore that does this. It gives examples of male recruitment, and male characters. Nowhere within those examples does it exclude the possibility of female recruits. Nowhere.

That doesn’t demonstrate any weakness in a reasonable position taken by some of us, that GW are not making a seismic change here.

40K lore has always been a malleable and fluid beast, it’s never been wholly consistent and for many years they’ve pushed the idea that all the myriad law changes are canon, but not all of them are true. This allows them to make all sorts of minor and major retcons and imo is a good way of allowing the universe to shift and move to whatever narrative they want to tell at any given time without them actually being hard retcons.

The introduction of female custodes is wholly consistent with their handling of the lore over the last 40 years of publications. I find it utterly pathetic that we now have this crybabying and bellyaching about this with added demands to introduce male characters to previously all female factions. I mean how insecure and weak in your own masculinity does one need to be to demand that, or to call GW hypocrites for not doing it?

I genuinely find it feeble.

A.T. wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Where? Give me a quote.

"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."

6th edition codex, page 14, shadows and alchemy in the brotherhood of demigods section of the book.

Custodes were not mentioned to be all men in the original Rogue Trader, i'm not familiar if there was anything else predating 6th.

Don't you mean 8th? IIRC Custodes were not playable in the sixth.

In any case wasn't this already changed for the 9th edition codex?

 Crimson wrote:
Don't you mean 8th? IIRC Custodes were not playable in the sixth.

Sorry, yes 8th - i'll correct that.

(I had played them back in 6th using the old 5e Siege of Terra rules - sisters of silence made from dark eldar and custodes from dark angels with high elf helms)

Random thought:

I wonder if the Sisters of silence would be cooler if they went for a more Bene Gesserite kind of direction. A cult of woman all participating in a ten millennia long attempt at esoteric eugenics. Sisters, daughters and mothers who occasionally produce members of a warrior caste. A badass warrior grandma sounds like peak 40k to me. I don't know if that's all too weird though...

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Random thought:

I wonder if the Sisters of silence would be cooler if they went for a more Bene Gesserite kind of direction. A cult of woman all participating in a ten millennia long attempt at esoteric eugenics. Sisters, daughters and mothers who occasionally produce members of a warrior caste. A badass warrior grandma sounds like peak 40k to me. I don't know if that's all too weird though...

I was under the impression that this was kinda where GW was drawing from when they designed this peculiar order of magical women.

epronovost wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Random thought:

I wonder if the Sisters of silence would be cooler if they went for a more Bene Gesserite kind of direction. A cult of woman all participating in a ten millennia long attempt at esoteric eugenics. Sisters, daughters and mothers who occasionally produce members of a warrior caste. A badass warrior grandma sounds like peak 40k to me. I don't know if that's all too weird though...

I was under the impression that this was kinda where GW was drawing from when they designed this peculiar order of magical women.

They're more like anti-magical women though!

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I wonder if the Sisters of silence would be cooler if they went for a more Bene Gesserite kind of direction. A cult of woman all participating in a ten millennia long attempt at esoteric eugenics.

Already exists - the Orders Famulous are one of the non-militant wings of the wider sisterhood.

epronovost wrote:
I was under the impression that this was kinda where GW was drawing from when they designed this peculiar order of magical women.

They originated (as did the armoured custodes) in the 2003 horus heresy trading card game, with some details later filled out in the 2004 visions of war artbook - though I don't have a copy of it to hand.

A.T. wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Where? Give me a quote.

"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."

8th edition codex, page 14, shadows and alchemy in the brotherhood of demigods section of the book.

Custodes were not mentioned to be all men in the original Rogue Trader, i'm not familiar if there was anything else predating 6th.

I've recently checked the 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition rulebooks, which have scant mentions with no gendered language at all.

A.T. wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I wonder if the Sisters of silence would be cooler if they went for a more Bene Gesserite kind of direction. A cult of woman all participating in a ten millennia long attempt at esoteric eugenics.

Already exists - the Orders Famulous are one of the non-militant wings of the wider sisterhood.

epronovost wrote:
I was under the impression that this was kinda where GW was drawing from when they designed this peculiar order of magical women.

They originated (as did the armoured custodes) in the 2003 horus heresy trading card game, with some details later filled out in the 2004 visions of war artbook - though I don't have a copy of it to hand.

The armoured Custodes definitely appeared earlier- the 3rd edition rulebook has the classic image with a couple of Custodes standing in front of a huge pyramid stretching into the distance, and that was released in 1998:

There was also a John Blanche plate of a Custodian that was featured in the 4th edition rulebook (released 2004) but I'm pretty sure is older:

 JNAProductions wrote:

robbienw wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:

robbienw wrote:

As above, show me where it explicitly states they cannot be women. The scant lore we had on them till 8th edition, and what we’ve had since, doesn’t mention women recruits, that’s not the same as excluding them altogether.

If I say that the sky is blue right now, I’m not saying it cannot be grey on another day, or black when the sun goes down. In short, evidence of one thing does not make something else impossible.

Its already been shown to you. We have the quote from RT stating they are men, the quote from 30k where the Emperor states they are men, the quote from the 8th edition codex that explicitly states their recruits are infant boys, a BL author stating he wasn't allowed to iclude a female one because they are male, an entirely male miniature line and a whole book 60+ book series that ran for 80 years that hasn't featured or mention a single one amongst a host of named male Custodians.

Its a retcon, nothing more.

You can keep stomping your foot and repeating the same thing over and over again, but you’ve spectacularly missed my point. None of what you state above explicitly states the Custodes cannot be women.

There’s nearly 60 years of Star Trek on television and film. And not once does anyone use a toilet. By your logic toilets cannot exist in the Star Trek universe.

It does explicitly state Custodes can't be women. It doesn't give you the technical reason why, but its obvious from the lore (until the retcon ofc) that they can't be.

Kirk is seen sitting on a toilet in the brig in Star Trek V. Additionally, toilets are both seen and discussed in various Trek episodes from various series over the years. Try again

"My men are ready,"-an officer telling their superior that their mixed gender forces are prepared for battle.
Does that statement state, or even imply, that the women in the officer's forces are actually all men? Or is it just an instance of English using masculine as the default?

No one would say that unless it was an all male force. If it was a mixed gender force they'd say my soldiers are ready. Or my company is ready. Or my force is ready. Or my crew are ready. Or just "we are ready".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 General Kroll wrote:

robbienw wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:

robbienw wrote:

As above, show me where it explicitly states they cannot be women. The scant lore we had on them till 8th edition, and what we’ve had since, doesn’t mention women recruits, that’s not the same as excluding them altogether.

If I say that the sky is blue right now, I’m not saying it cannot be grey on another day, or black when the sun goes down. In short, evidence of one thing does not make something else impossible.

Its already been shown to you. We have the quote from RT stating they are men, the quote from 30k where the Emperor states they are men, the quote from the 8th edition codex that explicitly states their recruits are infant boys, a BL author stating he wasn't allowed to iclude a female one because they are male, an entirely male miniature line and a whole book 60+ book series that ran for 80 years that hasn't featured or mention a single one amongst a host of named male Custodians.

Its a retcon, nothing more.

You can keep stomping your foot and repeating the same thing over and over again, but you’ve spectacularly missed my point. None of what you state above explicitly states the Custodes cannot be women.

There’s nearly 60 years of Star Trek on television and film. And not once does anyone use a toilet. By your logic toilets cannot exist in the Star Trek universe.

It does explicitly state Custodes can't be women.

Where? Give me a quote.

You've already been given several quotes. But once again you pretend they don't exist and ask the same question over and over.


[

And bear in mind-a statement saying "Custodes ARE men," is not the same as saying "Custodes MUST BE men."

It kind of is though.

robbienw wrote:
No one would say that unless it was an all male force. If it was a mixed gender force they'd say my soldiers are ready. Or my company is ready. Or my force is ready. Or my crew are ready. Or just "we are ready".

No, in those cases they would often use men as a gender neutral term.
And as star trek was mentioned if you've seen Wrath of Khan they refer to the female officer as 'mister' - which is also gender neutral in this context.

Really it's just the 6th edition 'sons' which is explicit.

A.T. wrote:

robbienw wrote:
No one would say that unless it was an all male force. If it was a mixed gender force they'd say my soldiers are ready. Or my company is ready. Or my force is ready. Or my crew are ready. Or just "we are ready".

No, in those cases they would often use men as a gender neutral term.

They really wouldn't because then they'd think the group was entirely male, and its very easy to use other terminology to indicate a mixed group.

 Haighus wrote:
There was also a John Blanche plate of a Custodian that was featured in the 4th edition rulebook (released 2004) but I'm pretty sure is older

I dug around and found a few images of Blanches' which aren't dated, but suggested to be used/unused concept sketches for the card game / artbook - that wasn't amongst them but it might have been from the same era.

One that stood out though might shed a little light on the conceptual origins GW of the sisters of silence - "proto SoB" (though obviously not from a lore perspective)

robbienw wrote:

A.T. wrote:

robbienw wrote:
No one would say that unless it was an all male force. If it was a mixed gender force they'd say my soldiers are ready. Or my company is ready. Or my force is ready. Or my crew are ready. Or just "we are ready".

No, in those cases they would often use men as a gender neutral term.

They really wouldn't because then they'd think the group was entirely male, and its very easy to use other terminology to indicate a mixed group.

Tell me, when Gandalf says that it is in men we must place our trust in the Lord of the Rings, do you assume that he means only males?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

robbienw wrote:

A.T. wrote:

robbienw wrote:
No one would say that unless it was an all male force. If it was a mixed gender force they'd say my soldiers are ready. Or my company is ready. Or my force is ready. Or my crew are ready. Or just "we are ready".

No, in those cases they would often use men as a gender neutral term.

They really wouldn't because then they'd think the group was entirely male, and its very easy to use other terminology to indicate a mixed group.

Tell me, when Gandalf says that it is in men we must place our trust in the Lord of the Rings, do you assume that he means only males?

Haha, trick question. LotR specific use of terminology isn't really relevant to this discussion. Its known Tolkien specifically avoided the use of 'humans' and 'mankind' in universe to refer to humans as a collective in LotR.

On a causal watch of the films though i'd assume he was specifically referring to males, as the human leaders, soldiers and heroes are near exclusively male.

Nice try though

The Oxford dictionary gives as one definition of the word "man" the following:

ordinary members of the armed forces as distinct from the officers.
"he had a platoon of forty men to prepare for battle"

I hope this clears things up!

robbienw wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

robbienw wrote:

Odd comment about black space marines though, i think you'll find they've been around for a long long time. What did you mean by that?

Some years ago (feels like fairly recently, but it is probably longer time than I imagine) there was a Black Library book with a prominent black Space Marine (Ultramarine IIRC) on cover, and a bunch of people had a fit about it. Quite similar than this current Custodes incident.

And perhaps you don't remember, but non-white people used to be pretty rare in GW art and miniature paintjobs. It has thankfully changed now.

Its odd the way he phrased the comment though, like he is saying its primarily been done by GW as a punishment.

Non-white people have been in GW art and studio models for a long time, its not a new thing.

Not as a punishment necessarily, but as a reaction. GW started making 40k more inclusive as a reaction to market forces and the success of ‘woke’ AOS with people who don’t buy 40k. GW is for everyone but bigots was a reaction to players showing up to tournaments dressed with Nazi symbols. Making Custodes explicitly inclusive is likely a reaction to other market forces, or perhaps to market research done in the early stages of the Amazon/40k show deal. Having the main faction with most of the flavors gender-locked is something that might come under more scrutiny when making a TV show for a more mainstream market—and if the reputation for 40k fandom gets gross enough to be an issue, I have no doubt GW would choose femmarines over fidelity to the lore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pretty sure the Police Academy movies use “men” when addressing all the cadets, including the women. It’s always been used the way the French use “ils” to refer to any group with some male presence rather than exclusively male presence.

 Crimson wrote:
The Oxford dictionary gives as one definition of the word "man" the following:

ordinary members of the armed forces as distinct from the officers.
"he had a platoon of forty men to prepare for battle"

I hope this clears things up!

Funny, you have seem to have missed the definition which states it refers to an adult human male.

This is what the oxford dictionary has to say on the usage of the word man as reference to gender:

Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now frequently understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people.

Looks like you have an outdated archaic understanding of the word, that fell out of use prior to the 20th century. Even prior to that it was understood to primarily refer to adult men.

Hope this helps

In English, the use of men is a linguistic quirk arising from man being the generic word for people in old English. Hence mankind.

Males used to be called wer.

Regardless, male pronouns definitely used to be used for mixed-gender groups as the default into the 2000's. It seems to have faded out of use in the last couple of decades.

For example, the 3rd edition rulebook of 40k uses he/him to refer to the generic player in the rules, despite several women being credited for writing the book (including at least one editor). It also uses he/him to refer to generic models in the rules, despite Eldar, for example, definitely having female combatants and Sisters of Battle being a full army in the same rulebook.

This continued in the 4th edition rulebook (although use use of they/them for models becomes more common, he/him still features).

Using male pronouns as the default was common until quite recently.

That said, I think the 8th edition quote stating sons is pretty unambiguous, I'm not arguing that Custodes haven't been retconned.

robbienw wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
The Oxford dictionary gives as one definition of the word "man" the following:

ordinary members of the armed forces as distinct from the officers.
"he had a platoon of forty men to prepare for battle"

I hope this clears things up!

Funny, you have seem to have missed the definition which states it refers to an adult human male.

This is what the oxford dictionary has to say on the usage of the word man as reference to gender:

Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now frequently understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people.

Looks like you have an outdated archaic understanding of the word, that fell out of use prior to the 20th century. Even prior to that it was understood to primarily refer to adult men.

Hope this helps

No, because it depends on the context. The reference to military units is current as it is listed. Furthermore, 40K uses a lot of archaic language intentionally. And of course, the RT text we we were discussing was written in the 80's. Due these undeniable facts, one cannot conclusively infer from the source text that the group is exclusively male.

 Crimson wrote:

robbienw wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
The Oxford dictionary gives as one definition of the word "man" the following:

ordinary members of the armed forces as distinct from the officers.
"he had a platoon of forty men to prepare for battle"

I hope this clears things up!

Funny, you have seem to have missed the definition which states it refers to an adult human male.

This is what the oxford dictionary has to say on the usage of the word man as reference to gender:

Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now frequently understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people.

Looks like you have an outdated archaic understanding of the word, that fell out of use prior to the 20th century. Even prior to that it was understood to primarily refer to adult men.

Hope this helps

No, because it depends on the context. The reference to military units is current as it is listed. Furthermore, 40K uses a lot of archaic language intentionally. And of course, the RT text we we were discussing was written in the 80's. Due these undeniable facts, one cannot conclusively infer from the source text that the group is exclusively male.

Context

The context is obvious and agrees with my position, the Custodes were portrayed as all males at the time as we can see from art and the RT model. The terminology of men = men and women was as archaic in the 80's as it is now. Its outdated. Most military units were all male in the 1987 anyway, but no one would have referred to a mixed unit as 'men' in 1987 and no one would do it now. If they had intended to portray the Custodes as mixed then, they would have just said 'These Custodians', or 'These men and women' as previously stated.

Regardless, the 8th edition codex and other supporting evidence are definitive anyway.

Its a retcon, nothing more.

robbienw wrote:
If they had intended to portray the Custodes as mixed then, they would have just said 'These Custodians', or 'These men and women' as previously stated.

'These select warriors' - rogue trader page 139.

Ok, I think I'm done with the semantics. If people do not acknowledge the dictionary, it is no use.

There is one actually definite statement of Custodes gender, that's from 8th edition codex, and it was already changed in the 9th. The retcon is similar than to what happened to Imperial Knights, which passed without much notice.

Removed - no, just no.

Tiberias wrote:
Right, so we have female Custodes confirmed. I for one am fully on board with big oiled up muscle mommys (just also please retcon the old rogue trader artwork to also include some female custodes without armor in ridiculously stupid poses....this needs a proper update). But Sisters of Silence are also a really cool, albeit neglected faction that form the other talon of the emperor.

So, why not create more diversity there as well? Expand the model range and add male Sisters of Silence models and lore while you are at it? I am pretty sure men can also be blanks in the lore...I mean I'm pretty sure that there are also male Culexus assassins. I'm dead serious here, I really like the sisters models and their lore, but why not add some more models in general and make at least some of them guys while also expanding their lore.

Don't think the name is even a problem since GW is pushing Anathema Psykana as a description for them anyway, which basically just means psychic anathema or psychic abomination if you want to be mean, which is a completely unisex description as far as I can see.

Getting back to this thread actually being about the Sisters of Silence...

It is something I've always wondered myself, blanks are so rare that why would you limit yourself to only using half of the already limited pool of candidates that you have. From everything I'm aware, there's nothing saying that they have to be women, just that they always have been. There was the possibility that they could be clones or some other kind of genetic design which is an interesting and logical take on it given what we know.

I do wonder though, if the male blanks are being used for some other purpose, other than the handful that become Culexus Assassins. I'm very much surprised that will the veritable mountain of Space Marine books out there, that we've never had a Space Marine character (so far as I know) that's also a blank. This would make for both an interesting character and an obvious tactical boon, so... why not?

If there is some darker secret behind all of this, I think it would make a great book. If not, then we should either get male Anathema Psykana units (they very much need more in their range anyway), OR find out why they can't / won't have them and get them somewhere else. Maybe in Imperial Agents or something.

 Tawnis wrote:
I do wonder though, if the male blanks are being used for some other purpose, other than the handful that become Culexus Assassins

It is possible that (though in no way supported by lore) to be a simple split - one half of all blanks claimed for the throne, the other half claimed for the assassins and psi-titans much in the same way that the elite of the schola are split between the sisterhood and tempestus. There is no telling whether the sisters number more than the culexus or the failure rate of candidates for either.

Though now lost to history there was the matter of the necrons harvesting pariahs as well.

Based on basically nothing, I get the impression that assassin creation/training tends to have a pretty high mortality rate. It's possible that most of the male blanks are just dying in the process of becoming assassins. That would help to provide an in-universe justification for not training/augmenting most/all sisters to be more comparable in power to a culexus.

It's also possible that women might be more likely to be blanks for whatever reason.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
It's also possible that women might be more likely to be blanks for whatever reason.

While it's never mentionned in the fluff and there definitely is male blanks, I was under the impression that female blanks were much more common. Eisenhorn small school of blanks was composed exclusively of women.


On the joke side we can always say that in the masculinist power fantasy that is the 40K universe it should come to no surprise that women are more likely to be souless.

That's something I've always been a little unclear on. Are nulls/blanks *actually* soulless, or are their souls just functionally undetectable due to their null field?

Like, in D&D terms, an anti-magic field is still a magical effect.

Wyldhunt wrote:

"Warhammer is meant for everyone except bigots."

Thought that last part was implied. Funny how many people get offended by the idea of bigots not being welcome.

While I wholeheartedly agree that bigots aren’t welcome, we’re seeing that word thrown around wildly. And it’s getting ridiculous. Just because you don’t like someone’s opinion doesn’t necessarily mean they are racist, bigoted, sexist, etc… I’ll give a good example.

I don’t care how someone models their plastic toy soldiers. I’ve never had a problem with people painting their toys or modeling their Space Marines female. Idc. It’s your hobby and your lore. I LOVE the idea of putting yourself in your army. I made a mostly male (not all, but mostly) sisters of battle army. I used GW Van Saar bodies, old Cadian respirator heads, and SOB bits. I rly enjoy the idea of having these elite regular humans (of all aspects of society) in power armor and armed with bolters. I had 1000 points of a awesome converted army using various GW bits. I went to play at a GW in Maryland and not only was I told I couldn’t play with the army but I was told to leave the store because I offended someone with my army. If you knew me you would know that’s not my personality at all, and due to personal reasons I’m going to leave it at that.

The problem we are seeing is we are throwing around these key words at the cyclic rate and being hypocritical with our message. This dilutes actual problematic people in the hobby… because the hobby absolutely has some far out there people. But again, who is the judge if one is being a bigot or not? Here are what my miniatures looked like.