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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.

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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.

 Gert wrote:
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.

If so, then Chaos got a very good deal out of this bargain. Would they be even half as much of a threat to the galaxy today if it weren't for the consequences of the Horus Heresy?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
19 Primarchs, not 18.

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

Oh right, forgot about Omegon. (All according to the twins' plan, I'm sure.)

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.

Sounds like an exaggeration, as bodyguarding someone definitely involves teamwork. I think it's mostly that they can work alone if the situation calls for it, that their chain of command is somewhat flexible, and that they have individual personalities and interests aside from just waging war. The Emperor created them to be His companions, not just goons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
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.

This is interesting. I met a guy on Reddit who says he uses a different color scheme for each of his Custodes (as if they were Bretonnian knights), reflecting their individuality and the often ad hoc nature of a Custodes task force.

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Also, there’s at least suspicion The Emperor did something with his soul in creating the 20.

How true that is I really don’t know.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Sounds like an exaggeration, as bodyguarding someone definitely involves teamwork. I think it's mostly that they can work alone if the situation calls for it, that their chain of command is somewhat flexible, and that they have individual personalities and interests aside from just waging war. The Emperor created them to be His companions, not just goons.

I think it's in First Heretic that Lorgar points out the flaw with the Custodes is exactly their lack of teamwork. The Legions work together as a perfect unit, their entire approach based on the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Custodes are much more individual and while they are vastly superior on an individual level, they lack the coordination and teamwork of the Legions. They don't practice as squads and when they work together it's based on complete trust in each other's individual abilities, not some deep-rooted training and fraternity.

-Guardsman- wrote:
If so, then Chaos got a very good deal out of this bargain. Would they be even half as much of a threat to the galaxy today if it weren't for the consequences of the Horus Heresy?

That's the idea. The Gods think they're playing the Emperor for a rube by giving him "ultimate" power in exchange for the worship of an entire species; the Emperor just played them in turn.

I think the easiest way to think about this is to think about manufacturing a product like automobiles.

Basic guardsmen are like most consumer cars: mass produced in huge numbers since both the inputs (human soldiers/steel) are without limit, and the process is scalable to any level. You can train guardsmen with instructors, you can train instructors with experienced cadre, etc.

Tempestus/sisters are like luxury cars:still mass produced in large numbers, but with far more attention to detail and higher quality inputs. You can scale up production, but it takes time to create the expertise required in production/training, and while there are huge amounts of potential recruits, they are not limitless like for the guard.

Astartes are like supercars. Built in batches, with fully interchangeable parts and a decent amount of backward compatibility, but definitly not mass produced. You would never try to build Ferraris on an assembly line, but continued production does not require engineerring or design genuises, just an understanding of the current blueprints and processes.

Custodes are like hot rods or custom cars. Each is bespoke, using different parts as well as a large amount of fabricated work. While each fills a similar purpose, each is also the product of a vision and extremely high level of skill. The extremely high quality of inputs also prevents scaling beyond a natrual barrier.

Finally, the Primarchs are basically prototypes and concept cars. You know those weird rocket powered cars? They don't use a lot of off the shelf parts. You're kind of building it from scratch.

In modern 40k, it's wibbly wobbly, warpy dorpy.

In older 40k, not much at all. The primarchs were specifically cited as not immortal demigods in 2nd ed, having died out after the heresy (excepting the daemon ones).

Ranulf the Strong was a space wolf character claimed to be larger and stronger than Leman Russ himself, something completely anathema to the superheroics of modern primarchs.


If we are to believe the modern lore of primarchs, the emperor has done one of two things:

Captured warp entities and brainwashed them into being his sons, trapping them in custom made possession vessels. You could claim that each primarch is a greater daemon chained the emperor's will. This would explain why he 'made a deal with chaos', I can't think of any other reason why anyone would make a deal with chaos gods - they don't have anything to offer execpt warp power and daemon slaves.

or

The emperor's 'still canon and never retconned'* Shaman origin means he's split the souls of 20 of his gestalt into the bodies he made, so each one in a sense really is a part of him.

*This origin was the only one ever printed, was written in 3rd person omniscient narrator and was published alongside the Eldar Fall Slannesh birth and HH backgroud in Lost and the Damned. No piece of background has ever been published that retconns it with a different origin.



I am surprised they didn't have him make a deal with the eldar for wraithbone to build bodies out of - it's perfect for soul possession.


The deal with the devil seems to be all image trope and little substance. There's nothing in the metaphysics of 40k that would grant him the ability to do something he wouldn't normally be able to do if he bargained with chaos - his psychic powers were already top tier, he could use them to do anything. There's nothing chaos had he would need, unless they were literally daemons to control as tools.

You what?

Magnus literally made a deal with Tzeentch for the knowledge to stop the Flesh Change.

Mortals bargain with the Gods literally all the time for power.

The Emperor goes to Molech and entered a gateway to the Warp, then he shows up on Terra again without ever coming out of said gate. That's not hearsay or imagery that's literally word of mouth from the Perpetual that went with him to Molech.
Horus then did something similar on that same world.

Mortals bargain for a sliver of the kind of power the emperor ALREADY HAD. The knowledge to stop chaos corruption isn't exclusive to Tzeentch, it's not special or unknowable. It reinforce's Magnus' folly, it doesn't make it good.

If the deal with the devil was literally 'hey if you put this gene in your clone sons, instead of that one, they'll be tougher' that is not just about the lamest concept ever, it makes the whole HH a joke.


The emperor needs a far more compelling reason to enter hell and make a 4 way deal with the Satans, than he skipped his genetics classes 20,000 years ago.

If I'm remembering my Realms of Chaos correctly, the Shamans combining their souls doesn't mean the Emperor was omniscient.

He had great power but he didn't have everything he needed to create the Primarchs, hence going to Molech to bargain with the whatever was in the Warp.

Being a super good wizard doesn't mean he knew whatever it is he needed to make the Primarchs that special something, likely similar to the theories that he imbued shards of his own self in them to give them a hint of his own psychic strength, charisma, and knowledge of the ultimate goal.
Had the Primarchs not been scattered, they wouldn't have been as wilful and independent as they are but rather mini Emperor copies, in spirit and personality if not explicit looks.

 Gert wrote:
You what?

Magnus literally made a deal with Tzeentch for the knowledge to stop the Flesh Change.

Mortals bargain with the Gods literally all the time for power.

The Emperor goes to Molech and entered a gateway to the Warp, then he shows up on Terra again without ever coming out of said gate. That's not hearsay or imagery that's literally word of mouth from the Perpetual that went with him to Molech.
Horus then did something similar on that same world.

Or The Emperor had found a Webway Portal.

I mean we have the POV from Horus going into the same gateway and the description of what happens to Horus after he steps through.

This is all in the novel Vengeful Spirit, I'm not theorising here.