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OK. Here it goes...

I've been out of the hobby for close to 14 years, but I've been inspired to return and build an army based on the final battle from the War in the Webway as featured in Aaron Dembski-Bowden's novel, "Master of Mankind."

Ignoring (for now) the harder to find/or just plain not existent forces of the battle (ie. The Ordo Sinister, the Titan Legions, the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicus, and of course the Emperor of Mankind.) I plan on focusing on the Sisters of Silence, the Legio Custodes, the redemption seeking Imperial Knights of House Vyridion, and a single poor conscripted Blood Angel.

I currently have a single Castigator Knight (due to him being the only named Knight in the novel) and a some time to work on this before I start burning through my bank account.

I was hoping, dear Dakkanauts that you could steer me in the right direction and help me figure out how to make this mad dream a reality.

You've picked a really difficult theme.

In terms of practicality Custodes and Sisters have their rules in the Liber Imperium army book: https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/age-of-darkness-liber-imperium-eng-2022?queryID=1cab3640db68693478c5064c1cc4a81b

Custodes have quite a lot of units with a solid 80% of them able to be represented by the plastic kits. Sisters have naff all because GW hasn't invested in them. They have one plastic kit that makes literally all of their units except for the ones that don't have kits at all and one very big expensive vehicle.

In terms of army building it would be best to take Custodes as your Primary Detachment with a Sisters of Silence Allied Detachment while the Knight you have can be slotted into the Lord of War slot. For sad old Zephon, there isn't really a way to use him currently as generic Knights Errant rules don't exist anymore.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
and a single poor conscripted Blood Angel.

FYI - Zephon has a model.

 Gert wrote:
You've picked a really difficult theme.

If this is a bad idea, are there any other instances in the Heresy Era where Imperial Knights worked in close proximity with the Legio Custodes?

I love all the toys that the factions have, but as it stands I can't afford to buy every model. I do have an Imperial Knight Castigator, so I don't want that sizable investment to go to waste.

Lances and individual Knights fought all over the place.

You can still have a Knight in the LoW slot for your Custodes force but the specific idea you were looking for is going to be pretty expensive to run and you'll be using 3 sets of rules (Custodes, Sisters, Knights).

If this is your first foray into HH, that's a lot to pick up with a brand new ruleset to learn on top of it.

I'd advise just picking Custodes to start with and doing small games.
If you get comfortable with Custodes then look into adding the Knight in at larger game sizes.
If you really want to move on from there then that would be the point to add in Sisters of Silence when you've got a hang of the game rules and the rules of your Primary Detachment army.

Would buying the 40k Adeptus Custodes Combat Patrol box be helpful in starting Horus Heresy?

Just don't want to end up with a bunch of random minis that cost a pretty penny, but are useless to own.

You could use everything except the Terminators as units from the HH Custodes list.

The Blade Champion can be one of the HQs, the basic Custodes as, well, basic Custodes, and the Wardens as Heteron Guard or just fancier basic Custodes.

Why not the terminators?

They don't exist in Heresy and the Heresy Custodes Terminators are very different.

Cool, just so I don't burn my spending limit on unesseccary books.

Let me make sure I got this right.

All I need is the 2nd Ed Age of Darkness book and the Liber Imperius to play Custodes?

(And Liber Mechanicum in the future when I want to insert the Knight Castigator into my army.)

That is correct.

The best option you have is to buy boxes of custodian guard and wardens. They make up the majority of your army and will walk through most of the enemy army.

If you aren't averse to 3D printing, you can make the jet bike weapons, terminator weapons, and the melta spears. If you want to play 40k with them, just magnetize the arms.