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.

Did any custodes ever turn traitor? If is, where I can find lore. If not, why?

Not that I've ever read.
Highly unlikely for several reasons, purity, distance from the influence of Chaos, total and utter loyality to the Emperor and effectively being engineered to be the ultimate bodyguards.

 Ratius wrote:
Not that I've ever read.
Highly unlikely for several reasons, purity, distance from the influence of Chaos, total and utter loyality to the Emperor and effectively being engineered to be the ultimate bodyguards.

distance from the influence of Chaos

The spent 5 years directly fighting the Warp and they never became corrupted. Well not entirely true, one did kinda take a Daemon into himself, but he still resisted.

They are incorruptible.
Well in theory.

They are utterly dedicated to protecting the Emperor. This is not quite the same as protecting the imperium..
In the Thousand Sons novel, Ahriman learns that Valdor had a hand in persuading Russ to kill Magnus, which was disastrous for the imperium.

There is one potential custode who , might, become corrupted.
If you've read the end of Master of Mankind you'll know who I mean.

I think iit's more likely that custode becomes dead, given what happened to the demon inside him by 40k

There's a chance we find out more about him in the next book of the Abaddon Series; Black Legion.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
They are incorruptible.
Well in theory.

They are utterly dedicated to protecting the Emperor. This is not quite the same as protecting the imperium..
In the Thousand Sons novel, Ahriman learns that Valdor had a hand in persuading Russ to kill Magnus, which was disastrous for the imperium.

There is one potential custode who , might, become corrupted.
If you've read the end of Master of Mankind you'll know who I mean.

Must read then. I am reading first heretic now so it can take time to get so long although.

Custodians are for individuality, not brotherhood so I started to think what it means their loyality.

It would be a shame if someone were to convert some Custodes to Chaos...

GK codex (one of the two) says explicitly that by the end stage of the HH and foundations of the GK, the Custodes were completely incorruptible. I'd assume this is still the case, as they have no reason to go traitor. Their whole existance is to protect the Emperor, without that they are nothing, and they all express content with this role. They also have effectively unlimited authority within the Imperium; I recall a quote from "Master of Mankind" where a Custodes tells a Titan to Sit Down and Shut the Feth Up, saying "you are powerful, but look upon the colour of my armour and know who's authority with which I speak." They are effectively immortal and beyond diesease more than a Space Marine, so Nurgle has no leverage. They are mighty individual warriors so they don't need to serve Khorne. They don't scheme or have ambition beyond bodyguarding, so Tzeentch is out. And they have no use of personal desire or pleasure, so slaanesh is out.

As Drach'nyen says in master of mankind: the stars would burn cold before it corrupted one of the golden ones. They are incorruptible, a trait shared only with GK (and mostly sisters of silence).

Earth127 wrote:
As Drach'nyen says in master of mankind: the stars would burn cold before it corrupted one of the golden ones. They are incorruptible, a trait shared only with GK (and mostly sisters of silence).

But to be fair quite a few stars have burned cold since the Heresy

Captyn_Bob wrote:

Earth127 wrote:
As Drach'nyen says in master of mankind: the stars would burn cold before it corrupted one of the golden ones. They are incorruptible, a trait shared only with GK (and mostly sisters of silence).

But to be fair quite a few stars have burned cold since the Heresy

A fair point but the Daemon meant "the stars" not "some stars." Meaning the galaxy would be cold, dead and lifeless before the Custodes turned.

 Deadshot wrote:
Meaning the galaxy would be cold, dead and lifeless before the Custodes turned.

Sounds like the 40k galaxy to me.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Meaning the galaxy would be cold, dead and lifeless before the Custodes turned.

Sounds like the 40k galaxy to me.

Im not sure you mean understand what the words Cold, Dead and Lifeless mean.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Meaning the galaxy would be cold, dead and lifeless before the Custodes turned.

Sounds like the 40k galaxy to me.

Im not sure you mean understand what the words Cold, Dead and Lifeless mean.

And I'm not sure you understand what a metaphor is.

That would have to be the single worst metaphor i've heard in a while.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
That would have to be the single worst metaphor i've heard in a while.

Why? Is the galaxy not cold and unforgiving? Is there not an overabundance of death in the galaxy? Can what Imperial citizens have really be referred to as a life?

If you can not see the metaphor there then I am afraid your imagination is not too expansive.

I can give you cold and unforgiving, but death does not make a place dead, and many Imperial Citizens have fairly normal lives, as do Eldar and Tau civilians.

I dont think your metaphor is apt.

You could say that seeing as though there is so much death that this galaxy has become a place of death, that the 'dead galaxy' mearly refers to a galaxy where death has taken over and become more prominent than life.
One could also say that the life most imperial citizens live is a lie, everything that makes it 'normal' is just the Imperium casting a shadow over the reality of the war that rages around them. Yes, relative to them it is a life worth living, but when taking a wider view we see how hopeless it is for those who 'live' in the Imperium. (Think of the humans who live within the matrix, is that truely living?)

the idea that the Custodes )or even grey Knights) are incorruptible, is just silly to me. The Emperor isn't incorruptible, thus the idea that anything he made being so is just bunk. Sure it's great Propaganda, but that's all it is. I'm sure the Custodes and GK are a lot harder to turn, but that doesn't mean it's never happened.

Ravingbantha wrote:
the idea that the Custodes )or even grey Knights) are incorruptible, is just silly to me. The Emperor isn't incorruptible, thus the idea that anything he made being so is just bunk. Sure it's great Propaganda, but that's all it is. I'm sure the Custodes and GK are a lot harder to turn, but that doesn't mean it's never happened.

The Emperor is incorruptible, the Chaos Gods fear him and he can destroy Daemons in a fraction of a second, overpower their psychich trickey, best any in combat, and there's no opportunity to corrupt him, nor does He have anything the Gods can tempt Him with. His entire existance is dedicated to the Destruction of Chaos.

The Custodes werr hand-picked by Him, I am 100% certain he would pick warriors who were god damnedly and singularly incorruptible.

The original GK were likewise approved by Him personally, all future GK implanted with His DNA, trained to the highest possible level to be totally incorruptible. Their entire existance prior to becoming a GK, is wiped and removed from the brain. They are built from nothing to resist Chaos. Their pass rate is less than 0.01%. Their souls are ultimately unpalatable to Daemons, and they have nothing with which to be tempted. The Purifiers are utterally pure beyond pure. Their souls are stated to actively hurt Daemons. They cannot be corrupted purely through logic and all the anti-Chaos abilities they are.

Their incorruptible ness makes more sense when you think of them as the deamons of the emperor.

Just how successful do you think tzeentch is gonna at corrupting a blood thirster, for example?

They are imbued with the emperor special sauce of specialness, whay ever that is, and even thougj the custodes were made (from what info Ive seen) without any of the warp influence that seems to jave been necessary for the primarchs, it still seems the most appropriate way to look at them, IMO. At in terms of why tje are incorruptible.

Can 'new' Custodes be made 'today' in 40K?

If so, who makes them, and how?

And if not - then the only remaining Custodes are the survivors from 10,000+ years ago?

Did the recently released CUSTODES 'codex' shed any light on any of this?

 Deadshot wrote:
GK codex (one of the two) says explicitly that by the end stage of the HH and foundations of the GK, the Custodes were completely incorruptible. I'd assume this is still the case, as they have no reason to go traitor. Their whole existance is to protect the Emperor, without that they are nothing, and they all express content with this role. They also have effectively unlimited authority within the Imperium; I recall a quote from "Master of Mankind" where a Custodes tells a Titan to Sit Down and Shut the Feth Up, saying "you are powerful, but look upon the colour of my armour and know who's authority with which I speak." They are effectively immortal and beyond diesease more than a Space Marine, so Nurgle has no leverage. They are mighty individual warriors so they don't need to serve Khorne. They don't scheme or have ambition beyond bodyguarding, so Tzeentch is out. And they have no use of personal desire or pleasure, so slaanesh is out.

Perhaps if the Emperor were to die, thus leaving them without purpose, they would turn to Malal (Chaos god of Anarchy)?

Half joking here. Regardless, excellent points.

 Alpharius wrote:
Can 'new' Custodes be made 'today' in 40K?

If so, who makes them, and how?

And if not - then the only remaining Custodes are the survivors from 10,000+ years ago?

Did the recently released CUSTODES 'codex' shed any light on any of this?

Yes it says that after the Heresy they were able to completely rebuild their numbers to Ten Thousand strong in a matter of decades.

Thanks for that!

Recently had someone tell me otherwise...

Well seeing as they come from the blood of those the Emp deemed traitor. Maybe.

Its a nice grim dark vengeance thing, Ive crushed you so much Ive taken and turned even your blood to my cause.

However Darch, drakne, drakknempurgh.
Is stuck in the body of a golden warrior. Whether it was given to Abbadons sword, or taken by it is yet to be written.

But theres always the, theyll be as incorruptible as every other incorruptible warrior in the Emps service. When they decide a 8 yr old shouldnt write the fluff.

Well we know very little about the custodies in the modern 40k setting. Everything is mostly speculation - GW has just not given us much to work with, and theories can only go so far.

Yes they were made from high grade genetic material and were bred to be the best, but that was 10k years ago. All the other marines have undergone genetic mutations and other bad stuff. The best gene seeds have a 10% chance of mutation now, custodes could face a similar prospect imo.

This could feed in/cause elements of the custodies to fall to chaos. But again we simply don't have enough information about this stuff to make a 100% sounds argument.

However if you want to make some chaos custodies, dude go for it. This game is all about having fun. And if you make a wicked, killer army in the meantime, all the better.