Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The Emperor created the ten thousand Adeptus Custodes from His own blood. Later, He created the 20 18 Primarchs. And finally, He created the vast Astartes legions for His sons to lead during the Great Crusade. So what exactly went into the creation of the Primarchs that the Emperor either couldn't or wouldn't replicate when He made His Custodes and Marines?

The Custodes are to Space Marines as Space Marines are to regular humans. Yet it's the Space Marines who are led by demigods, while the Custodes are simply led by one of their own who climbed the ladder of seniority and experience. Did the Emperor think it was important for the Custodes to be meritocratic? Or did He want to keep the Custodes at arm's length, given the often self-sacrificial nature of their duty? I suppose even a less-than-exemplary father would realize that setting up one of your own sons to take a bullet for you is... a bad idea.

In a meta sense, I suspect this gap in power levels between Marines, Custodes and Primarchs is simply a relic of long-standing 40k lore. The Emperor's bodyguards are expected to be better than even Space Marines, but by the time the Custodes became a playable faction, the role of the Primarchs as the founders of the Astartes legions was too well-established for a retcon.

.

If the tale is to be believed, he made a bargain with the Chaos Gods, then used the knowledge/magic/power gained by the bargain to help create the Primarchs.

There is the theory that each of the Primarchs loosely adapts one of the parts of the Emperor's being, but amplified in a single form. Some are easier to grasp than others and some are far more generic in nature.

For example, Perturabo is the Emperor's genius unshackled by morals, and Magnus is his inquisitiveness unbridled by doubt or caution. Sanguinius and Horus are perhaps the two that come closest to being almost perfect copies of the Emperor, with Horus's flaw being his ego and Sanguinius's being his fear.

The analogy would be that the space marines are to their primarch what the custodes are to the Emperor. So in theory it's the Emperor who directly leads them; their head captain guy is like Marneus Calgar to Guillimon.

But why didn't he just create a million custodes for his great crusade? That's a valid question. My made-up answer is that it would stretch his soul too thin so it was never possible; he's basically at the maximum number of custodes that he can ever have already. I don't know if there's any textual support for that though.

Custodes are incredibly difficult to create, and the Emperor never had the resources to make the Legio Custodes as large as even the Legiones Cataegis, the Thunder Warriors.

The point of the Astartes project was to create what would essentially be a self-sustaining army of super soldiers.
A Legion force would conquer a region/planet/sector, set up outposts, and take recruits from the populace.
Gene-seed would be replicated via the natural processes of the organ and through the direct donation of genetic material by the Primarchs.

That couldn't be done with the Custodes as they were essentially custom-made compared to mass-produced.

That explanation is much less interesting.

Custodes have some of the worst fluff in the game to be honest.

19 Primarchs, not 18.

Alpharius had a twin brother, and strangely all Alpha Legionnaires are the same height as Alpharius.

Also, the Custodes wiped the floor with the Thunder Warriors... and can easily do so with Astartes, the issue is that Custodian teamwork is not a thing.

To borrow from the movie Expendables 2:

Space Marines are kinda like the Expendables. Really badass.

But the Lone Wolf (aka Chuck Norris) is the best of the best. But he works alone.

So, Thunder Warriors, Astartes and Custards are all Uplifted Humans.

The main difference is the level of sophistication in the process.

A Thunder Warriors was, pound for pound, stronger and tougher than an Astartes. But the process rendered them short lived.

Astartes are more refined, but still relatively mass produced. Their main advantage over Thunder Warriors is their longevity. Which means they can gather ever more experience, becoming ever more deadly combatants as a result.

Custards are custom jobs everytime. Their enhancements subtly tailored to the subject for best results. This could mean that under their hood, each Custard is entirely unique. They may not even have the same organs and upgrades at the end of it. But that last bit is mostly just speculation on my behalf.

Primarchs? Primarchs are entirely artificial organisms, based on The Emperor’s own genome.

Where they get really interesting is that, thanks to their abduction rendering everything that followed a Bodge Job making the best of a bad situation, we can never be entirely sure what the original plan was.

I’ve previously speculated there was no initial intention to leave it there. Had the abduction not occurred, we may have eventually seen More Primarchs made. Not armies of them I don’t think. But certainly more than the original 20.

And in turn we again still can’t say how close Astartes, and even Primaris, are to The Emperor’s original vision. We know they were originally a Bodge Job created in limited time from suddenly more limited resources. A “Good Enough” development. And by that time there were other far more pressing concerns which prevented The Emperor revisiting that project for the final touches.

Cawl has of course implemented various upgrades and improvements, but all apparently based on The Emperor’s own notes and records, so it’s highly debatable whether Cawl himself actually invented anything new there, so much as finished off some always intended upgrades.

But the Primarchs? As I said, each one a ground-up custom job made from the whole cloth, not an adaptation of an existing smelly hooman.