The 40k Lorecast - Episode 48 - The Talons of the Emperor pt 1 - Adeptus Custodes

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

On Today’s episode we dive into the Adeptus Custodes. We start with the process of making a Custode, both the creation and training of them. We then move into their history within the Imperium and what their purpose was for the emperor and how it evolved as the imperium grew and changed. We then move into their resurgence at the conclusion of Abaddon’s 13th black crusade. We then finish with a dive into the stories of Valdor and Trajan.Get the show ad free on at: patreon.com/The40kLorecastMerch available at: etsy.com/shop/The40kLorecastYoutube channel: www.youtube.com/@40KLorecastOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast with me John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. Today we're going to start our dive into the talents of the emperor. And we're going to start with the least hard to see of all the playable armies in 40K. Golden bananas, baby. Yeah, seriously. Like custodes are giant gold beings who have rules allowed them to sneak.

No. Anyway, before we begin, as always, please comment and subscribe on the podcast. We actually do see all the comments. So you know, or by we, I do. I laugh pretty hard then morning when drinking coffee and reading some of your guys' comments. Also, they do help our analytics, which lets us reach a much wider audience. So by doing something as simple as that it really does help us. Obviously, we talk about it all the time.

I'm not going to stop talking about it. Please join our Discord. It is free for you guys. It's been a great resource for 40K lore, just general conversations. We are, we have some wild conversations. That's fun. I'm saying today. And I love it.

Like they're all over the place. Yeah. I mean, like we were talking music the day. We just literally we're talking about life, family, what, what kid you were. Are you the oldest? Are you the middle kid? Are you the youngest?

And you know what that was sandwich in between? What was the best faction? It was best faction. We also at one point we're discussing how bad your eyes have gotten post 40. That was a fun one we did one day. Sorry, guys. We're old. But it's,

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So hopefully it's been a nice change for your ears. and it's also been a nice saving to my free time. And thank you guys for doing that. But as always, we also finish up with Brad is a coach of 40K. So if you want to play Warhammer on the tabletop online via TTS, Brad has coaching for it, everything from the basics of gameplay, all the way through up advanced concepts and tournament preparation. And you can reach him at...

Old man, Brad, 40K at Gmail. I'm not even going to tell you the website. Good luck figuring that out. So let's jump into the topic at hand. So today we're going to dive. It's a two-part episode we're doing. It was especially going to be three. And then I realize assassins take more time than I thought.

So two-part episode on the Talons of the Emperor. You mean the detachment in 40K? No, God damn it. Like, why is the GW is totally comfortable just making up words and then randomly just reuses something over and over again to create confusion? It is designed poorly. Anyway, the Talons of the Emperor is referred to as kind of the left hand of right-hand of the Emperor.

The one hand is the custodes. The other hand is the sisters of silence, and he hits you with both of them because he's a terrible father. True story. Bad English dad. Yeah. Well, this is more American dad, actually. Because a bad English dad that doesn't talk to you, this is more bad American dad. He just beats you.

Like, that's if we're like global. Are you eating bacon and shooting into the air? Yeah, exactly. So the key things on the talents of the emperor is where they overlap is that they don't, they report to nobody other than the emperor themselves. I mean, they did report to Malcador, but he's... How's he doing today? He's not good. Not great.

He's not doing great. Yeah. He does not exist. Yeah, he dissolved and he was a perpetual. So anyway. I think bad things happen. Yeah. So they also can override orders.

They carry, because they report to the emperor, it is inferred that they take their orders directly from the emperor. So that means that if a custode or a social silence tells you to do something, they're speaking with the authority. of the God Emperor himself. They actually have a slate, well, slightly. They have more authority than Inquisition, where the Inquisition is the inquisitorial writ.

Then you have the custodial writ. So it's funny, that's that junk. I actually looked that up. And yeah, because I was like, wait, which way does this go? It took me a while to find it? Yes, the Inquisition are overridden by the custodian guard. Yeah. They carry more authority than the inquisition.

That's cute what you were trying to do, but also, no. In fact, they can order an Inquisitor to do things. Also, I'm nine and a half feet tall, so if you want to get into what argument is... Well, yeah, there are definitely two parts of this argument. Part one is, I have the authority to do this. Part two is, you can challenge my authority, and no one will know you did. Just let you know I'm pretty tough. In a future cast, we're also going to cover what has become recently the third talent,

which is the officio-assinorium, which, by the way, Microsoft Word, loves when you type that out. The level of red squiggly marks again is pretty impressive. I do like the fact that you completely bailed on it. Yeah, I just gave up. Because it's not writable this many times. So we're going to do these two cast back to back. And then we may go right into assassins afterwards.

I haven't decided yet. So on today's cast, though, we're going to start with the custodian guard. Brad's second favorite chapter after Imperial Fists. My biggest problem with custod's is what we're going to start with right now, which is what is a custod. Because custodes are the biggest disconnect between lore and the table. That's what I was about to say. Does your dislike of custod's custode lore or tabletop custod? It's tabletop custod.

Because we're going to hit on that a lot today. Because I didn't even know. So I knew about custodes and what they were in the lore. Because remember, I learned lore first, then learn the game. And they were the worst transition into the... Yeah, you know what? We actually, I didn't put them in the notes. So let's take a little bit of a left turn from our notes and start with custodes in on the tabletop.

Because I do think this is important. They didn't... The custodes have been in the lore since 1990. You know, somewhere in that realm, maybe even earlier. They are the end-all-be-all. They are what the emperor wanted to make Marines, but he could. mass-produced custod. And we'll get to that in a second,

but custodes entered the game in 2017. Yeah. So for 27 or more years, they'd been talked up. They hit the tabletop. That's my issue. They hit it like a piece of sludge falling off for roof. I was playing, playing or reading 40K for 20 years before the custodes came out. Custodes were these figures of lore.

They were misdemeanor. That's such a great way to try because they could only exist in the lore. Yeah. Because of how powerful and incredible they were. Because they also didn't travel. They only went to certain. Their biggest thing was they guarded the emperor. They were in the keepers.

And then they only went out on these very secret little whatever, you know, you saw a custod and people were like, no, you didn't. You might as well just saw, I saw Godzilla, you know. And they were these unbelievable creatures, basically. of mystery. And then they came on the tabletop, and they were good. Yeah. And you're like, okay. And you're like, no, that's not what they are.

They're, you know. Yeah, our last like four episodes, we've spent kind of largely laughing at how broken and fun Eldar were because they made them lore specific. Custodes are the opposite. And every custod player listening to this is probably already on their arms up in the air. It's, thank you. Because it is completely true.

Costodes are useless. It's come out multiple times and been good. And then people went there, they're too. good and they immediately nerfed them. You're like, they're not even close to what they are in the Lord. Well, yeah, I mean, that's nerfed custodes are maybe 30% potential. You should be able to put three custodes in the table and table an opponent. Yeah. Custodes joke around about Marines. They just don't even consider that anything. So let's jump into that, actually. We'll start there. So let's talk about what it is to make a custod. So whereas like space Marines, we cover that whole process and the,

exceptional amount of broken organs that they put in them for apparently no reason. Also, yes, the night lords deal bothered me so much because they showed people spitting acid and getting poised. Like once. I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. It's like once. Yeah.

So custodes, whereas a space marine gets kind of brought in in there, like just either pre-adolescence or early adolescence, custodes are taken as infants into this process. They're almost always of noble birth, and they're handed over the emperor willingly. These are not taken. The noble houses couldn't be happier than to give over their infants because of, not in a crappy way, but in a like, we believe in the Imperium. This is the biggest honor you could possibly have. Because these are the best of the best of the best. And they are also, effectively, they are.

Customs are just, every one of them is nobility. Their position is. Well, their nobility is they're second to the emperor. Right. I mean, they are, and some of them can rise up. One of them is a Lord of Terror. That's true. Which is like, yeah, so this is the ultimate of the ultimate.

So the noble houses of Terra happily give over their infants to this process. And this process is a big deal because it's one of the reasons why custodes and people can argue, but there's multiple stories where they say this. Custos disdain Marines, one, because of the black carapace, which they think is insane. Well, there's also, and because they're tainted. And we'll get to that a little bit. So these infants when they're taken over are actually infused with the emperor himself. That's what it's written in the codex. There's a lot of variances on this.

At some point it was they actually have some of the blood of the emperor put in them. Some are they actually are, the emperor is able to reach out his psychic essence and push into them. Yeah, it's what they refer to it as the spark of the end. Exactly. We don't really know how they do it, but we do know the results. And the results are as, because it is rewritten at the genet. level to the point where, as we just mentioned this, a moment ago, these nobles give their kids over, even if their child was standing in front of them as a focus.

Because the genetic rewrite is so significant, they have no resemblance to anyone. So there's kind of this, which is also a good thing goes, nobles are shitty people in 40Ks. They would totally be like, yeah. They're horrible. Yeah, my son's Constantine Valdor. Like, no, it's not. Like, it's like, no, he's not. He totally, look, he's got my chin.

They all have the same chin. But it goes beyond that. So this genetic rewrite affects them in physique, mind, and spirit. That's a really big thing because of the fact that you have to have a rewrite of all of these things. Because most of the time you look at, I guess, the stats. Yeah. And that's the physique. Thanks for doing air quotes while talking to a microphone.

I mean, I also want everybody to know every time I do this guy, I do double thumbs to myself. Yeah. And I also put down... On the side note to any of you who ever get to come to a tournament that we're at, watch how much Brad talks with his hands and I talk with my hands and then realize that we speak into microphones. Yeah. I also put down whatever is in my hands to do the double thumbs up.

Yeah, Brad has put down to Dr. Pepper so that he can talk with his hands while speaking into a microphone. None of this matters to any of you. Yeah. But back to my excellent point, which I'm probably going to forget now that I've went somewhere. One of the bigger part, not the physique, not the physical elements, is the mind and spirit because these have to be super intelligent, also unbelievably powerful psychic defense. Exactly. But let's dive into it.

So we'll start with the easy bit, which is the physique, because the physique is kind of the ease one to explain. They're huge. They're 10 feet or higher, which is, you know, throw over three meters for the rest of the world. Like literally all of you. They are, so they're actually, they're larger than that space marine by a good margin. They're still larger than a primaris Marine. And they're, for the most part, smaller than a primark. But there's a few primarks that are bigger than.

They're also faster. Oh, they're so much faster than that space marine. They're pushing into Eldar speed in the way that they can move. But not Eldar strength. They're stronger than Eldar. I mean, these things are monstrous. And so there's a lot of stories if you read the Horace heresy novels. And I realize that's not narrowing it down when I say the Horace heresy novels.

Everything with the custodes, when they meet CSM, which means that they're fighting other Marines. They just wrote the shreds. Like, it's nothing. They leave, they look at Soron at the beginning of Lord of the Rings. They're just like, oh, yeah, that guy was there. All right. Let me stab him real quick. They're like, hey, let me stab him and cleave the rest of the people in my way.

They also are good at killing demons. They're surprisingly. They're surprisingly resilient to poison. It's for you. I mean, that's probably because they didn't get the three different organs that's supposed to make you. That do nothing. They just gave them a mild genetic change and they're like, yeah, I'm okay now. They gave them four gallbladder.

But let's talk into kind of the more esoteric ones, which is the intelligence that we're going to do spirit after this. So space marine, we covered space marine intelligence. Space Marines are extremely intelligent. The prime marks even more so. but it's combat intelligence. Their ability to take in lots of information, diagnose a battle situation, this type of thing.

That's what they're good for. Custodes do that, but they also can run, not just like when I would say run a government, they can run the Imperium. Like that's where they're at. That's what they were groomed for. Because the emperor didn't actually want to make Primarks first.

His first goal was to make Custodes. And he was making them to be his advisors. And the emperor knew he could never make them as intelligent as he is, but he could make them close. And so that was his big focus was I wanted to be able to take these beings, create them. And I could send them around the galaxy to handle my business without concern of them having to call me and say, hey, how do I do X?

Well, these guys are like, and we talk about just guys that can handle problems. It's not handle problems like I eliminate people. It's handle problems like, what are the ramifications on a society if I make this decision? And also, what are the ramifications when we think society long live? What's going to happen in 300 years? I will caveat what Brad just said. He's completely right. But they seem to always go with stab them.

I mean, but they're in a little more, they're not supposed to do just that. Every single story that involves Kestot, it's like, They're intelligent. They can think through things. They can see both sides. But every time the side they choose involves murder. Anyway, you're not wrong. The biggest one, though, I think, is actually the souls.

This is one, and this one's really important. The emperor does imbue some of himself or the custodes imbue some of the emperor. Spark of the emperor. Yeah, every single custode. And so this does a few different things to them. One, it creates a sense of loyalty to the emperor. And that's the part I kind of don't love about the story where it's like, Oh, they put some of the emperor in them.

And then they're insanely loyal to the emperor. They kind of can't be. I know, but it's a little bit creepy. Yes, but. Yeah. It is like, and this goes beyond like a desire. It is, it's the need. We talked to actually, it's good we're doing this after Eldar because in the

Eldar we talked about the paths. The idea of failing the emperor is so just horrifying to a custode. Oh, it's the, it's your worst fear of anything. Yeah, they're just, they would rather, they're very happy to die up, you know, upholding the emperor's will. Which I want to go on a quick side down, which is we have one good Lord of Terror who also stopped a plot effectively against the emperor. Yeah. And they were surprised when he did it. Why?

Because he'd totally be on our side. Why wouldn't? God, the Lords of Terror suck. And I want everybody to know this. They're supposed to. Since the beginning of the existing. I need to, you all the time with Brad. When he talks about how much he hates Lord of Terra,

he says this as if they were real. Yeah. I have a real. His hatred of them is not like a, man, I don't like this one, but he makes a face talking about the Lords of Terror, where I'm like, Brad, does Brad know they're not real? Like, I need to have that pro wrestling conversation with Brad pretty soon of like, hey, you know it's fake, right?

About to drop an archaille on those games. You know it's, you know it's fake, right? They are just at fault for every big, bad thing that's ever happened. The other piece that also does help with their soul is custodes are resistant or more resistant to chaos than anyone else. They're never psychers, which is a key thing on custodes. None of them have ever manifest a psychic power, but they are naturally resistant to them, not at the blank level, which we'll cover in our next cast. The Aegis level, though, just like the Grey Knights, basically. They're able to actually resist psychic powers in a way that no other non-parageneed individual.

It's a big deal about this because the spark of the emperor, the infusion of the emperors, so whatever they can, is a big deal because they can actually go deal with chaos incursions and they don't have corruption, which is huge because almost everybody has something that you bring back with you. Yeah. It doesn't have to be, I'm possessed by chaos. But you bring back. We're going to cover this. I'm going to foreshadow the cast a little bit. Custodes also are aware of everything in the galaxy and always have been. So they would be deployed against demons routinely before anyone in the Imperium, even new demons.

When we were still nuking worlds consistent. Yeah. And they were able to resist that. They could come back where it's like, you know, we talked about like routinely the Inquisition, the more modern the Inquisition. But even we do believe before this, the emperor would kill people off who'd fought a demonic incurs or certain psychers so that no one else in the Imperium would know about it. Because he was worried about them being corrupted by it. Whereas custodes, he's like, yeah, you guys got this.

For sure, they're not corrupted. Yeah, we're good. Now, all of this, you know, positives and the custod's things we can do does come with a pretty serious negative, which is. Let's talk about the creation process, which is, hey, remember when we gave you all these babies? How many became custodes out of the last thousand we sent you? Well, less than one. I mean, it is thousands die in this process. And what's crazy is that I actually, I've known this lore for a long time. Doing the research for this, I realized most actually don't die in the beginning.

They die in the middle process. So the infusion of the emperor will just kill things. But just being infused with the emperor is not enough. You then have to begin a transformation, both in training and in like testing. And at any point in those processes you fail, they will kill you. And when I say they will kill you, like, I thought it was a, they show a bunch of the emperor in you and then you have a heart attack and you die, right? It's not. They put a bunch of the stuff in you and then you just don't develop muscularly at the way they thought that you should.

And then they cut you down. They killed you. You know, you, you, we're going to Asian tiger mom here. You get, you get a 98 in the exam. You're dead. Yeah, you're dead. This is like... I don't know why you failed me so horribly.

Yeah. This is everything about them is all testing and failing. Even beyond, let's say you succeed physically and you're in the training room and you're fighting really well and all these things happen. And we're now in your, you know, 250th year of life and you're fighting a demonic incursion and you don't run away. you just hold for a second of a sight of a bloodthirster.

They kill you. Also, a training process is something I don't agree with because they just go, hey, man, you should figure it out faster. You're like, I started training yesterday. You're like, well, why aren't you better? I mean, we talked about on the guardcast,

the commissars, the custodes are like just, I would consume them as superhuman commissars is where they're at. Just I'm the greatest fighter. I will, never be afraid of anything. And anyone who is afraid of them, I probably will just kill.

So custodes are fun. This has led to a simple challenge that custodes have, which has been, there's not a lot of them. We don't actually know how many there ever were. We know that we used to, there used to be a set number of custodes. Now there is not. Well, no, we've always, it's been the 10,000 for a long time. Yeah. But we don't know if that's a real number.

That's what I'm getting. I'm saying we have no idea. Well, they also changed it a bit. This isn't a retcon. This is just how they changed because they started deploying customers to places. And before they... Well, yeah, that's very new. Yeah.

So at the dawn of their existence, the expectation was there may have been a few hundred to low thousands. And actually, sorry, donnie's there's probably three. But eventually, you know, when they got deployed kind of run Great Crusade time, probably a thousand maybe less existed. But the nobles keep giving babies over and they keep doing the process. And the good thing of custodes is they're kind of hard to kill.

So, you know, the numbers have kind of flourished a little bit. They also do look awesome. They're intimidating. They're terrifying. And they have, yeah, they are terrifying. But let's dive into, though, real quick, what it is that the custodes are.

What is their actual purpose? the emperor. Yep. And by shield of the emperor is not just protecting the emperor on the throne, which they'll do, and the palace. They also protect the Imperium from secrets in that, this is a piece I like a lot. We talk, and we'll talk more about it a little bit. We talked about the First Legion. You're about to say one of the most, when I read this in the notes, I went, well, you're not wrong, but also that sounds so fucked up. Continue, because this is crazy. So they also perform secret missions around the galaxy. Oh, yeah.

Missions too secret or sensitive for the dark angels. You're like, what? Didn't they genocide people specifically to keep things in the right? They did some of the most effed up stuff the emperor ever needed. Another one real quick note, before we dive too far into this, custodes are not immortal even in life. There's something that a light will get wrong when I talk to people about the custodes. They think that they actually are immortal.

They're not. They do get old. And in fact, this is kind of a cool story about this. as custodes age, just like anyone else, their vision gets a little bit worse, their reaction time start to lengthen, just like all of us, right? It just takes them 700 years or 1,000 years to get there.

When a custod begins to age out, they actually have something else that they can do. They become almost a spy for the emperor. So they will one day, and by the way, they're not told to do this. They just do it on their own. one day they take their armor off, they put down their weapon.

They yolo into the galaxy, and they walk out, wearing a robe and a hood. Yeah. And then they become the eye of the emperor. And if you think I'm not about the shit on this, you're out of your goddamn mind. Why? Because it's, bro, look,

the other day, I was sitting at a bar and I was talking about things and I did barely even notice the 10 foot tall guy that weighed 700 pounds standing next to me. I was like, oh, I didn't even notice you were there. And so the two examples I thought of when I was reading this was, one, in Thor Ragnar Rock, when Chris Hemsworth puts a scar over his face, the scarf over his face.

Or for those of us in America who they were old enough, there was a really good S&L sketch where the Rock was playing Clark Kent. Just so much bigger. Just so much bigger. And he's just billowing out of his shirt. Watch either of those and said, that's what these custodes would have looked like, just wandering around. like the bar on Tatouine, taking up the entire section of, like, I am also here,

fellow traveler. What are, have you heard any rumors of the emperor? Normal human. How is it going? I am also. The Steve Bouchemian. I am also a local factory worker. Yes.

I, too, farm the fields around the nearby village. You can tell by my weathered skin from being out in the sunlight. Why? Also, why are you half my size? I'm confused by this. Like, they stand out in a second. Also, I accidentally killed multiple people in this bar because you guys are so tiny. Exactly.

I didn't, yeah, he's entering arm wrestling contests and just like just pulling them up, pulling people apart. Like, oh, my bad. Yeah, it should be, sorry, now it's just my brain's going to like, they keep breaking all the glassware at the bar because everything they pick. take something up to shatters. You're using tiny little teacup. It's like, he's like trying to drive a car.

And it's like the scene in the Incredibles where he's just, we just stuck it. So this is fun for me. Anyway, on to actual substance. We'll be right back after a quick break. Let's talk about, I think, we'll start off with again, the prehistory of the custodes. And this is actually, I think this is really important because we don't,

we didn't talk about enough. custodes date back to around the dark age of technology, we're not really sure when. Because the emperor fought his war of unification on Terra. But the thing is, is that he got ready. The emperor started his preparation for... What you took a sweet time. The reclamation of Terry. You took a sweet time.

Yeah. It was thousands of years that he was like setting up what he's going to do, apparently just contemplating on a mountain what he was doing. figuring it out, taking his time. Because he let some shit get real bad. Yeah. And so at one point where this is, again, this is a John interpretation. So if I'm wrong, hop in Discord and tell me if I'm wrong. But we know that the emperor went to Malik.

You went through the portal at Malik and met with the chaos gods, at which point he made a deal with them. We know that he got out of the deal, the ability to make the prime marks and manipulate DNA. We don't know what he promised the chaos gods other than he did not follow through. Also, it is as much as. we shed on the emperor sometimes. That is such a big dick move. To just go, hey, what's up? Chaos gods?

Let's have a chat. Let's have a chat. And also, I want your greatest secrets. Give them to me. Yeah. He's just like, what? Do it. And they're like, I don't know what's happening, but I think I'm just going to do what this guy has. You got to wonder if they talked about that later of, I don't know what just went on.

Why did you? I just, I'm convinced they were all yelling at each other. Why did you tell him? Yeah. I'm like, you know, what did you give them that information? What just happened? Like some guy, a human showed up. Yeah. Honestly, what I think is they all afterwards talked about, like, corn public,

oh, I could have killed them. I just chose not to. And they were all like, oh, I could have done this. But, you know, I didn't want to show off in front of you guys. Yeah. But anyway, after that, the emperor comes back. And my opinion is that his first attempt at the information was to make gods with it, which is what he tried to do, which were the custodes.

They are, nothing has ever, nothing has ever existed. the Imperium as powerful as a custod as an individual. No. But the thing is, is that he... Although the Eldar fans are going to point out, yes, there's some solitaire that have jacked up some custodes. Pretty bad. Multiple. So, all right, fine.

There's only two things as powerful in the custod as a custod. It's still Imperium. Oh, very. Imperium, yeah. I think it's a galaxy earlier, but in the Imperium, you're right. But the thing is with it is the emperor realized right away that he can't take over the galaxy with this limited numbers. Right.

Well, because, yeah. And that's where he began. And that's later, he begins to kind of expand his experiments. So we covered this before, but quick jump back into the Unification Wars. The emperor has made his custodes, but there's not enough of them. So he makes the Thunder Warriors, which is the precursors to the Space Marines. The Thunder Warriors are, they're actually pretty close to Space Marines and strength and power. They're just morons and bloodthirsty.

Well, he didn't give the ability to, like, you know, it's a custod's episode. But space Marines, again, one of the things they really undersell is how quickly they disseminate information. Yeah. They have a screen that is effectively full of a billion things that they have to understand. And they assimilate that immediately. So the space Marines were able to understand, think, take in. And the Thunder Warriors were able to put the beat stand. Yeah.

Take pointy thing. Run over there. stab person with point ETH. Yeah, that's when they went, hey, this bolter works really well. But I like this story, and I think we've told it before, but I'm going to tell it again. At the end of the unification wars, the emperor

realized that his thunder warriors were going to be a problem, and he had to kill them all. And these were, these were, the thunder warriors had just conquered Terra running over. And by the way, every other warlord on Terra had genetically modified soldiers. The thunder warriors were so powerful that they made

those genetically modified soldiers look like children to them. Like, whatever. Every single battle they talk about is the emperor's forces destroying. Yeah, not even close. So the emperor brings all the thunder warriors together. And by brings about, I mean, we're talking tens of thousands of them in one area. And he sends in the custodes, which is a couple hundred of them and maybe a couple thousand dark angels. It was, it was First Legion. They killed every single Thunder Warrior. And they weren't on, and they weren't unarmed, by the way, because you couldn't unarm a Thunder warrior. It just was nothing. The custod just went through them like, whatever, and killed the greatest warriors that

Terra had ever seen, the custod's... In a short afternoon. Yeah. Yeah. So from there, we'll jump into the next big part of imperial history, which is the Great Crusade. So again, the emperor, he has his space marines at this point. We're going to expand out. We're going to reconquer the galaxy. And he doesn't really need the custodes for this. This is also a weird time for the custodes because of the way that they wrote. Because they kind of just went, custodes exist.

Here's the Great Crusades. And we'll get back to you. Yeah. There was a dark time. There's some stories, but like, for the most part, custodes just exist and that's enough. Yeah. They're around the emperor. Every now and then he would send them somewhere.

I mean, so the stories at this time in the codex are effectively that he used them in this era to kind of handle crap he couldn't get to. So, you know, if he had to be, you know, he's with his space marines conquering the galaxy, but there's a, like, there's a meeting back on Terra, he sends the custodes. You know, there's a somewhat friendly, you know, system he has to deal with. He sends a custode. The only place that we saw a lot of the custodes was they were always next to the emperor as he moved places, just as a little, like, bullworking as problems. a couple stories because one of the last things that they did is if the emperor wanted to drop the hammer and not tell anybody about it.

Yeah. He would send the custodes and the custodes would just go, bummer for you. Yeah, all of you are dead now. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, what I would say is this is completely John, but whatever, I'm still right. We have two primarks who are redacted, which means there were two legions that had to be removed from his forces. That's probably a customs thing.

That would be customs. That's 100% guzzles. Hey, there's 10, what, how big was the Legion? Was it 10,000? Or is 100,000? Oh, legions could be whatever. The chapters are now. The chapter episode would have been, so probably 50 to 100,000 space Marines had to get, had to get removed.

Yeah. And who can do that? Well, yeah, and kill a Primark, by the way. Constantine Valdor, does I feel like something he would, he might be part of? Yeah, he was, he was, fell door was, did not shy away. Yeah. From having to do some bad shit. So, wow, that is a big thing.

You know what, screw this. I'm going side note on that. Yeah. The emperor was distant British dad. Valdor was the guy that just did the dirty work. Valdor was horrifying. Like, man, that guy was like, and the emperor goes, these are the ten things we can do.

And Velders like, yeah, there's an 11th. I'm already on my name. There's an 11th and I'm already doing it. Yeah. By the way, I'm calling you from there. Yeah. Just letting you know that also, not even I'm calling you from there. I'm calling you after I did the thing.

And it's never called out explicitly, but it's pretty well implied that, you know, as human, because the emperor knew what was out in the galaxy. He was directing where his forces would go. It's quite likely and more clearly, it's correct, that he knew worlds that had demonic incursions. He would send the custodes there because they could go clean with it. He would also send the custodes to worlds where he wanted, if there was an artifact he wanted to recover, he would send the custodes. And we know this because there is a mini black library under the Imperial Palace that's guarded by the custodes. And they put all this shit in there. Because this is, remember, the custodes predate Greenites and Inquisition.

So someone had to do this crap. And it was Constantine Valderon's buddies. Also, those attachments don't give them justice but continue. Yeah. That's another reason why I have issues with custodes is the shield, hosts are a cool rule in the game. However, there's a goddamn big difference between things like the keepers and stuff like that. Yeah. Because they have specific jobs and they are, God, they're phenomenal. The truth is like, all right, let's just call it up. The tabletop standpoint, it would be very rare

to have only one of the shield hosts arrive. It would be multiple shield hosts because they'd be taking on multiple things. More of it came back to what you're trying to do. Back there was it Eighth edition where we could, yeah, it was eighth edition where we could have multiple in an army. We need to go back to eight edition to make custod's function correctly, which, spoiler, they were terrible during. Like, oh. It would be good in ninth, though. Yeah, eighth edition, they were just, they were just bad. So let's jump into the more fun part of the history, which is the Horace heresy.

The first line is just my favorite here. What? No bias whatsoever. All right, I'll read it out. So after the victory on Ollanor with the end, quote, is your temporary defeat of the orcs. I'm sorry, what's Ulinar also called today? Armageddon?

Yeah, feels very temporary. I'm going to throw it out there. It seems like you didn't get rid of all the or the orcs or the orc presence there. Anyway, the emperor returned back to Terra, and in doing so, he left all of the space marines under the very, you know, positive tutelage of Horace. It was positive at the time. Yeah, it was totally, this went great. Anyway, the custodes left with him, and they all went.

back with the emperor. If you stayed around with, you know, with Horace and them, just as for a lot, just read the Horacee. You'll see. There's lots of reasons for this. But the custodes, for the most part, retreat back to the palace with the exception of, because there's some stuff that comes up. Once the heresy explodes, the custodes get pretty heavily used. One of the biggest ones is a demonic incursion in the basement of the palace because a certain one-eyed jackass. He had to tell him about it. Yeah. And for those who don't know, it's actually called the war on the Webway.

It's the secret campaign of the Horace heresy because the custodes were stuck in this like pseudo-webway, pseudo-Portal to the Imitarium. I mean, the Vulcan did show up until this wasn't going to work, but continue. Yeah. It only ends with the Emperor actually warping into there at one point to help them close in. So the custodes are busy. They also got stuck. Let's pause that because it sounds not even as bad. but you're making it sound not as catastrophic as it was.

The emperor was effectively trying to create his own webway. And demons were like, we're wrecking this. And there is, on every 24-7, the demons are at the door pounding on it. Not a nergling, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. It is a full incursion. And the emperor's being the emperor, like, yeah, this is probably no problem because I'm the emperor.

Well, I'm the best. And then Magnus went, I need to tell dad what's going on and punched a hole through that. And all of the demons spilled into the Imperial Palace. They fight them back. And so for five years, the custod spend fighting a war in the, it's called a war in the webway. But I'm going to be honest and call the emperor out here. It wasn't a webway. He built a portal to hell.

It's a war in the basement. Yeah, it's a basement. It's a portal to hell. Yeah, I always hate when I open a portal to hell in the basement. my house. And so they spent time fine there. The custodes also were stuck in. We'll talk about on Mars because the problem was that, thanks to a certain fabricator general, Mars was in full rebellion. So he had to send the custodes over there to make sure they got some level of weapons. Then you have the nobility and Lords of Terra who need to be reminded every so often of like

which side you're going to be. Because they would also be like, well, what if the Emperor Lewis is? The Lords of Terror were legitimately wearing hats with two bills that had Emperor and Horace on them. They were just flipping around until the custodes would walk in and just take the hat off their head, maybe with their head. With their head, for sure. More often with the head, yeah. And they were having to travel around dealing with demon incursions because the emperor

doesn't think he's going to lose this battle. It's those when I wouldn't know about demons. The custodes went from this kind of like lazai fair, let's guard the embassy, hangout thing, to you're going to be deployed in every single place in all the worst spots, all around the galaxy. It's not even just deployed. They were only deployed in shit that was shit. Yeah.

The shittiest of the shittiest nest. Oh, it's horrifying. So we'll skip to the end then of the Horace heresy because it's been covered a lot. The custodes are obviously there helping defend the imperial palace. Not Terra, by the way. The imperial palace, because Terra got wrecked. Well, this is a big thing because the custodes think of this as a failure, but... It is, though.

No, but it actually... Yeah, but also the emperor just literally went No, low swagons. They went with him and they got teleported to the wrong part of the ship. But whatever, the emperor does, and we'll cover more on that, and we cover Valder in a bit. So the emperor gets felled by Horace and he's only saved by being entombed. And this is it.

This is the first time the custodes have failed in their number one charge to protect the emperor. This is a big deal because of the fact that the custodes were on the brink of just not existing at this point. Yeah. Well, yeah. So, yeah, so in the post-Harrison, era, the emperor is pseudo-slain, he's in tomb and the and the custodes disappear. I mean, they exist.

They disappear and is that they just, they move completely into the imperial palace and do not leave it. They also shut it down. Yeah, they, though they lock the doors. Yeah, they're just, we exist here. The guys that were around the galaxy solving problems. Also, remember, diplomatically solving problems with their amazing skid.

That's the thing. The custodts might be actually better at some. I know they talk about it. You joke about it. But like the custodans were actually wildly skilled negotiators. Well, they were, I mean, this is, in my opinion, what causes the quote unquote downfall of the imperium. It's because the most intelligent members of the entire Imperium, one of them's entombed the golden throne. And the rest of them are within 100 meters of said golden throne.

Yeah. They won't go anywhere. They won't govern. They're also the people that are supposed to be the guys that take. care of all of these problems. Yeah, and so what the custodes end up doing is they just become obsessed with the shame, and it's a weird thing to do where they kind of just focused on the teachings. Well, they were close to the end.

The custodes were just going to not be custodes anymore. They were just like, we had one mission. I mean, they had 100 missions, but the thing they considered their core mission, to them, they failed. The one area that actually I couldn't figure out here, and I read it enough times and gave up. So I'm just leaving it here as a question. I don't know if the custodes were speak to the emperor. I think that I this is probably unpopular opinion. I think the custodes have always been in connection with the emperor. But the emperor, screw it. I'm going to take the

Brad version of this because they wrote multiple things. The emperor, because he was fighting horace in soul, spirit, physical, everything, the emperor didn't get felled. The emperor got shattered into multiple bits. They connect with the emperor and they speak to the emperor, but speaking to the emperor is like speaking to a thousand personalities of the exact same time.

I like that take, because that's the thing. We know, like, we know of only two times that people have spoken to the emperor. And it was the start of the sisters and then later it'll be guilty. I was saying, the beginning of the sisters, she has a conversation

and then bad things happen to somebody? Does she, though? Because the question I have is like, you know, is this a Wizard of Oz situation? Where is it, you know, like, true. Did she just speak to the custodes? Yeah, she speaks to that. And there's some guy with a microphone behind the Golden Throne saying, that guy's a dick, go kill him.

And she's like, all right, I'm on this. Like, who knows? Also, they weren't, whether it was the emperor or not, they weren't wrong. Yeah, accurate statement. So we really don't know what's going on are the custodes in communication with the emperor? Are they just guarding the emperor? Because the thing about the customer, is they can keep a secret better than anybody.

I mean, there is nothing. They make the dark angels seem like they don't have secrets. Yeah. I mean, to the point where I reference it really, but I do want to talk about this, there is a mini black library under the imperial palace. The custodes are in charge of that has everything the Imperium has ever done going back through the. They tell them no one about it. Yeah.

This, by the way, these are records that go not just into the dark age of technology, but for the dark age of technology. By the way, to be a dick, a little bit of a dick about it, the custodes have the answer to so many problems. Everything. And they just don't tell anybody. Because, well, the emperor told them to keep a secret. Yeah. And they're like, oh, that, we could solve that tomorrow.

Yeah, we know where every single world the Imperium has ever founded was, was. We know, we know everything. Great. Let's use that. The emperor said we couldn't. Yeah. And we also have all the old technology, too. But we're not going to use it.

Yeah. the emperor said we're not allowed to talk about this, but it could save humanity. Yeah. But he said we couldn't use it. They also have a banana amount. I'm going to give my term. I'm going to give the banana pants amount of the emperor has a shit ton of Xenos technology.

Yeah. Like just chilling out, which is also, he's such an hypocrite. He's like, we have to kill all the Zenos, but also I have the world's largest repository of alien technology. I made a short list here of like, we know, they know who and what happened to the missing primarks. They know how to make a prime arc. They know what the emperor said to the gods in the Mulek. They know how to make a man of iron. They know what is actually powering Mars.

Spoiler alert. Not a good thing. I mean, this is, they know everything. And nah. So then we're going to dive into what the cosodes actually do. which is they put on black cloaks and wander around in a goth phase, which I was really hoping that Brad had a goth phase because my dream, I would give a lot of money to get a photo of 1987 Brad dressed.

It's not. As a goth, I know you work. I did show you the picture, which I'm going to share it with the cast, which is Mullet Brad, which a friend of mine found and went. Oh.

It goes, I wasn't, it made a meme of it. And it's just me walking in my high school graduation, still in the 80s, by the way. Yeah. And it goes. It would have been 1988, 89. 89. It goes, the quote was, I wasn't always a douche. Ha, ha, ha, just kidding.

I was like, why are you guys my friends? God. Yeah, I'm not surprised you had a mullet. It was glorious. I am 100% you had a lot. Glorious. Yeah, I mean, the problem is there's not a lot of business in the front. going on for you.

There wasn't the time. I know. No, it was all party. That's what I'm saying. Part of the back. There was party in the front, Brad. You should just had a long hair. I did after.

Yeah. So the custodes more seriously do sequester themselves away from the Imperium. And just don't interact with it. Yeah. It's the, and the Imperium just begins to completely fall apart around. The Imperium implodes. I actually think the beginning, the first few thousand years, and I know that's a huge amount of time.

Yeah. But things were kept together for a while until we had the fall of a couple of the primarks. Mm-hmm. Specifically, Bobby G. Who gets felled. But once we get... At some point, we should cover that in the podcast. Whatever.

Yeah. I'm just saying once you lose a couple of the people that were the administer, administorum part of the... Yeah. But the good administorum. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Not the bad. Not the 400 miles of paperwork that doesn't get done. but once you started to lose those, it went a nosedive. Like shit kept together. It was bad. And then it went to shit. Yeah.

Fast. And this is all happening. The point where we talked about last time, and I can't raise off top of my head. But when the one guy killed all the lords of terror and put himself in charge and like one custode popped his head out, went, oh, that's not good. All right, hold on. And they just, and they went and fixed it real quick.

And they went back. And they were, they fixed it. They literally murdered. everyone. Yeah, we're like, all right, we got this. Hold on. By the way, they didn't even set up new lords of terror. They just went back home.

Yeah, just like, all right. Like, you're, you're fucking up. Yeah, you guys are idiots, but we took care of that problem, your turn and just wandered off. Yeah. But at this time, the custodes,

though, they were not, like, letting themselves fall apart. They were actually still taking in noble children and making custodes. Their numbers are growing. Yeah, the numbers are growing. It's not losing anybody. That's the thing.

There's no wars. They're just living. And then they're only, also importantly to kind of like the later portion we get to, they're working on their weaponry, their armor. They're actually improving themselves. And so this leads to kind of when it comes time to kind of come out of this, they're very much so ready to go.

But one thing that they did do, the one part of the dead woodleaves is one of my favorite parts of the custodes, which is the blood games, which are super weird though. Yeah, but this is such, okay. I'm sorry, you like this way more. Because I shit on GW writing on, like 90% of these casts.

And every now and then they get one really right. And I have a... This thing's like so weird, though. No, but it's so clever, though. The idea, the problem... I agree with you on that, but it is still so... Yeah. So one of the biggest problems the custodes have is

they can never fail at their task. Their task is to keep the emperor alive. If they fail, the emperor dies. And there aren't a lot of threats in the galaxy that can actually hold up to them. We'll be right back after a quick break. Luckily, this is actually again pre-horis heresy. They get a glimpse into what they should be doing thanks to not everyone's favorite

prime mark, but I've noticed a label who read a lot of lore's favorite prime mark, Alfarious. Yeah, because he's also doing some ninja shit. Alfarious is pretty badass. So Alfarious, and I don't know the full reason why he did this, I think there was no reason, one day decides to infiltrate the Imperial Palace. Yep. I think he was just bored. He also completely dresses up and a different deal, too.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, but so the Alphir, because Alfarious, it's a little bit tricky if he can shape shifts or not. He may be able to or may have been able to because I don't even know if he's alive or dead. No one does. But Alfarious is sneaking through the Imperial Palace, bumps into a guard name whose name is Garudo, or as I read the first time, Gardo, which I really wish GW had named him. Guardo. He's doing this as a random exercise, and he just murdered. He was it.

But I just want to point out, G.W. missed by, he could move two letters around. And I could have had Gar, Gar, Gar, Gar, Gar, the guard. And damn you, G.W. I read that quickly and got super excited and then went, oh. You know what? He for all, for all time now, John. He is. He should be guard. He should be Gardo.

He should be Gardo, who was on guard duty. Anyway, Al Faris just murders him. And then. shoves his body in a locker and puts on his armor. He just age in 47. Yeah, which, again, this is why I think Alphairs may have been able to shape shift because custode armor is custom fit to each custod. And it's not just custom.

It's custom, like, perfect in every way. Because somehow, and this is something Brad and I both have lived pretty heavily being focused on weight. I mean, I do a weight class, but Brad also just was obsessed of how he used to look. I love that you looked over with Brad used to. Yeah, I had that a pattern. He does an eye contact with me, by the way. I love Brad to death, and he's in the middle of some things.

But anyway, apparently custodes, once they reach maturity, just don't change shape or size at all. They never gain one inch anywhere. But anyway, yeah, they can suck it for that ability. So the, but Alferius puts on this custod's armor and just starts wandering through the, you know, the imperial palace. on team Constantine Valdoor, who we're going to get to later, who is the captain general of the custodes,

looks at him, speaks to him, and recognizes that the voice he's using doesn't match the voice of Gardo. I'm doing Garo from that one. And his entire response is, hey, give me that spear back and don't kill anyone else. He doesn't get mad at the prime market. He's just like, hey, don't do this again.

Which is basically how the custodes operate, period, though. Yeah. Hey, well, this guy should have found it, should have won. Yeah. Maybe you killed him, but like, well, you should have not got killed. I had to go pull the actual story here. There wasn't, this wasn't even a firm talking to.

This was a solid, like, can you leave now, please? Yeah. And Alfarious went, all right. But after Alfarious leaves, Valdor has this moment of like, there's a hole in our system. And also, well, should we do testing? Well, yes. What kind of testing? Let's make it super crazy.

What we need to do in order to keep ourselves the top of our game is we need to employ custodes to come and try and kill the emperor. Like actually, and they're full-blown, supposed to murder everyone in play. They do pull out at the very last second. We know this because of another captain general who successfully succeeded in two blood games and the emperor is not dead, so I have to go with, all right.

They don't just stab the emperor in the face. Yeah. But yeah, this is like... Which would, by the way, fix a lot of things, we continue. Yeah, and these stories, by the way, are nuts. And the 10th edition has a story about it right now. The 10th edition is great. We'll hire assassins, like, officio-assanorium to the launch attacks on Imperial Palace.

The new, like, they'll, they get, like, pirates to do an attack. They'll still try to sneak in themselves and they'll slit the throats of a bunch of custodes. Let's talk about the, like, screw it. We couldn't get an assassin in. How about if we teleport a new... Yeah, this is in, so in the 10th edition codex, I'm not even going to address what comes up in that if you have an issue with it, you're an asshole.

But anyway, the custodian, her plan is, because it's her, deal with it, is to teleport a tactical nuke into the imperial palace. Right. And gets caught, like, right before she does. Like, it's super bad. Like, that's how hard they're going for this. Oh, there's another story where they actually captured a bunch of Heretic Astardis

and released them. inside of the Imperial Palace. Let's back up on the tactical new. She was going to let the nuke go off. Maybe. I mean, we don't know. I feel like 100%. Like, figure it out.

It's actually really cool. If you don't have access to the book, just go read it. It's two pages in the 10th edition codex. Just go to your games or read it. It's a cool story where, like, she talks about like being able to sense the telepatorium, like, as the custod's teleported onto the bridge and they're like,

oh, hey, we caught you. And then what they do with the crew, is freaking messed up. It's really, I was like, oh, this is, this is some good writing. Good, good job, GW. But this has done to keep the custod's a massive hiler at all times because they're not just trying to keep Captain Dum Dum from,

you know, just regular human from derping into the palace and killing the emperor. They're ready for anything. Well, one of the biggest things about protecting the emperor now. We have to, I have to point this out. Yeah. Because it used to be just. just the guy on the throne, he's powering the Astronomicon, he's defending the Imperium versus Chaos Incursions.

This is, went to the tent, you know, the emperor. This is because, and they know, just like Abadon knows, the Imperium revolves around the emperor. Well, it's also, the emperor has become significantly more. Yeah. Than he was before. And he's also the figurehead. He is the God emperor.

And I would argue he's also weaker than before. In this sense of, he's more mortal than before, not weaker. He's more mortal than before. So if you could get, because before, like, we think like pre-horis killing him, you break into the imperial throne room. You're now facing the emperor. Like, not a great situation. But the emperor is sitting on the throne doing, again, why he's fractured.

I mean, he got fractured in the thing, but he's doing so much. Yeah. Like, he's legitimately fighting. And it's possible you could just unplugged. him and he would die. Like that's, that's where we're at. But he's also on the cusp of becoming a god.

Yeah. So like there's a lot of entities that are like, yeah, I'd really like that not to happen, you know, so people are actively, you know, we used to send a guy every couple years.

Now we're like, how about every day, every second? Yeah, we're going to find a way to get to this guy and kill him. We have almost unlimited resources. Oh yeah, chaos.

They do. Yep. And then we have cultists. We have everything else. And the thing is, is that they try. And High Lords of Terra. Which sucks so much. So much fun to watch if I get upset about this.

Do you think they could poison him? I would stop playing for the K if they poison the embryos. But he hasn't had the organs. However could he prevent it? The ivory I poison. I'd punch so many babies. A custod babies, of course. But anyway, the custod spend this like 10,000 years just sitting inside the Imperium,

and then they stop. And this happened. because of kind of two things happening in tandem. And we'll jump into them now. So the first one is they're actually all revolver on Gilliman's return. Bobby G. shows up and effectively stomps into the Golden Throne. Well, it's more than that. So Bobby G gets resurrected by the Eldar God of Death, then goes on a chaos ass-kicking quest.

Oh, he goes buckwock wild. Yeah, he's not. He's so angry when he wakes up. Well, he's so pissed all. So there's a religion and all. Oh, yeah, but he was basically, well, because that's why it's funny. The stories are great because he wakes up and just goes on a chaos ass-kicking quest, then discovers that all the people on his side are worshipping a God,

which he then discovers is his dad, which his dad was super against. So then he's like, well, screw this. I'm going to Terra. But the whole way to Terra, chaos keeps getting in the way, to which he keeps just ass kicking those, all the chaos. And you're wrecking them, by the way. These stories. So many first-wrought knockouts.

If you don't like Bobby. I'm sorry, read the books, you will like him. He is a champion of champions. Anyway, he eventually gets to Luna, where shit goes south pretty quick, and he gets his ass saved, basically, by the custodes. And afterwards, his great thank you to the custodes is cool. I'm going to talk to the emperor now.

Also, not even just, I'm going to talk to the emperor. I'm going to talk to the emperor. I'm going to be back in a moment. And also, I'm not. super happy with anything you guys are doing that you guys also suck by the way like we're doing i'll be back tomorrow with a full somebody's going to put their cover letters on the tps reports yeah yeah we are i am not happy anyway he comes out of meeting with the emperor declares himself lord commander of the imperium no one says shit about that by the way who is going to say this is a good point i just like

the fact that he does that he goes i'm now the lord the lord the commander of the imperium and everyone went also all right The thing is that you have to ask what sort of communication he had because Bobby G. Set for a while. Yeah, this is actually, it's much longer than what's or nuts going in there. Like he had a long. Yeah. Psychic communication, whatever he did.

Doesn't say a word about the ecclesiarchy. Nope. Not a single word. Side note there. Not a single word. But Bobby G is, there's pragmatist and then there's Bobby G. G. pragmatism. And he just went.

I'm going to make this work. Yeah. And so the big thing for the custodes that Bobby G does is he comes out and tells the custodes, you're no longer on guard duty. Ditch the stupid black cloaks, that's over. And you are on offense. He gives them, he kind of shames them. Yeah.

Bobby G. comes out and goes, I don't know what you've been doing for 10,000 years, but it's not. There's certain, it seemed to be a lot of you, and you're not really doing anything with that. So how about you get in a ship and go kick some ass? Yeah, we're doing some shit. Which on the positive side, the custodes are like, ah, yeah, fair enough, let's go do this. And thereby break Brad's soul, because this also

coincides with 2017, where they then were given models and then proceeded to lose to Imperial Guard income. Badly. Routinely. Like, they get surprised by Gene Steeler cult. By the way in the Lord, they lose zero times. Yes, yeah. They never.

lose. Yeah, Geneziller cult surprising them. Drew Carrey are too quick for them. I mean, we can keep playing through all of them. Yeah, they, the thing nights still suck back then. So maybe they beat knights. In one of your notes, I have to go with, Bobby G. Did shame them, call them out, but he did ask for it. True.

Yeah, he couldn't, even as Lord Commander of the Imperium, he still doesn't have authority. Someone that always dots his eyes and crosses his team, Bobby G knew that he did not have authority of the customs. So while he does talk shit to them and calls them out for their bravery and everything else, he has to, in the end, still ask of them. Can you guys please come with me on my quest? Yeah. He talks the mountain of shit before.

Yeah. But then he has to ask. And after all of that, you guys want to. Could you pretty please come with me? Could you please get in the car? Because we have to go somewhere. Yeah. Like also, I know that I just talked.

a mountain of crap to you, but also, please? Please, yeah. So from there, I want to spend a little bit of time on the captain generals of the custodian guards. It was hard from obviously, you guys, from an episode structure point to where to put these guys in. Because anything we talk about in around kind of like 40K lore, always kind of, it always intertwines brutally. The problem is that they, I didn't want to cover Constantine Valdor and then cover Trajan. Trajan. Like later, I just wanted to do it back to back.

That's why we're doing this. The problem is everybody in the middle doesn't do anything. Oh, yeah. So we'll talk about that. So we'll start with like the Captain General is the highest ranking in custode. And I have to give GW credit. This is a real military rank.

Captain General exists in most militaries in the world. It is the highest ranking military officer in most militaries. So they just went, they just copied it. And this person has three roles. He is the absolute commander of the custodes. So all the custod listen to him and he reports the emperor. And I want to make this a side note again. The custodes are a completely independent fighting force.

Yep. No one has, they report, they report, all custodes report up to the Captain General. The Captain General reports the Emperor. Full stop. That's it. Full stop. No one can say shit about shit. So the Captain General is a powerful role.

Yeah. My favorite one he has is the second rule, which is he has the authority of who's allowed access to the Imperial Palace and the Golden Thirteen. throne. And he's currently sitting at a 99.9999.99, continue that for infinity. No rate. We are aware of two people who he said yes to ever. And one of those basically snuck in. Yeah. And then the third one he has, and there's some moves around a little bit, is a high lord of terror. There were times where they were. There's a couple of guys who were not actually for little bits of periods of time.

But yeah, this I also like a lot because there are 12 high lords of terror. not, I think one, one's a fabricator general of Mars. Always. The other, one is a custod. Gleesarchy. Well, yeah, but the other 10 are humans. There's a borderline God in the room. Oh, yeah.

That's going to be a weird. If you get into a heated argument, you're like, I hope the God doesn't kill us. He's three times the size of all the rest of them. Could probably just murder them all if he felt. He can also kill them so fast that they wouldn't know they're being killed. If you had a button that you had to push. Yeah, like to stop him, you might not be able to hit the button.

So I just, I just enjoy this idea of like, again, going back to the, uh, Chris Hemsworth and Thor Ragnarok. I actually know this is this is more the Hulk and Thor Ragnarok sitting there being like, I'm also on the council. And everyone's like, well, what are your qualifications? I'm sorry, little bitch says what? You guys, you know, you're right. Someone should escort me out. I'll wait for it. Yeah, exactly.

You guys want to tell you what, I'll go stand in the doorway. Let's see if all 11 of you can push me out of it. I'm actually super excited to talk about Tray Jen, but we're going to talk about Valder. Let's start with Valder. So, Valor is actually possible. Valder has actually a lot more lore. There's a lot more on Valgo. Valder might be top three coolest dudes in the Imperium.

He's also the most. and the most noble of the Imperium. Yeah, he's like Dick Cheney Empower. He is horrifying. So Valdoor, interesting story, they believe he is the first custode ever made. He's definitely the first to Imperial to ever appear in an Imperial record, but the rumor is he was the first successful custode made by the Emperor. He was there for all the Unification Awards, and he did all of the bad shit. I mean, he...

So first off, it was him. he was part of, this is before the Lords of Terror, they called him the Triumvirate of the Emperor, is him, the Emperor, and Malcador were the ones who were in charge. So every secret of the Imperium went through him, and when Malcador and the Emperor

needed something done, they would send him. Melchador did messed up shit. Valdor did, whoa, dude. Like, one of my favorite things about Valdor, though, was Valdor knew everything.

So when the Primark got whisked away by chaos all around, Valdoar wanted to go kill them all. His viewpoint was that there's no way that chaos gods would have grabbed these primarks and not corrupted them. Let me and my custodes go and find them all and murder them.

We're just going to stamp every one of those. Yeah, we're going to go kill every primark. Dude, Valdoor is so... Like I said, Melchdo... That's bad ass. Malcador is the guy, you know, doing the puppet strings and making everything happen.

Valdoor is the guy that's standing over. He's like, oh, I didn't hire anybody to kill the guy. I just killed him. Yeah, like this, yeah. But I just love that. Valdoor's plan was to kill every Primark, which if you know that story, now think of all the times,

you read Horace heresy novels. Like, wow, Valdo was kind of a dick to the primarks. Yeah. Because he was convinced they were all chaos corrupted. Before they were chaos corrupted. They just have right. Yeah, 50% I'm right. Maybe, maybe more.

It's like sex. 50% of the time works every day. But yeah, he did all the horrible stuff. So he killed all the Thunder Warriors. He was known as a merchant of death for the noble houses. So if one of the nobles did something bad, that noble and all of their family would be found dead. You said like he killed. He killed yes.

Yeah. You're like, hey, man, I'm out here washing the tires. You're like, sorry, bro, shouldn't work for this house. Two of my favorite stories on him, though, because we talked about earlier with his viewpoint, if we should just kill all the prime arcs. He was with Lehman Russ when Lehman sacked Prospero. He was completely aware that the emperor said, bring Magnus back here and was like, I mean, Velder was just like, so you're going to go kill one of the primarks?

You know what? I see this as a net positive. Not only do I support this, I'm going to help. I could tell you what he actually said, but. Yeah, I was there with you when he said it. I have a perfect memory and can completely correct all the things you're about to do. Horace is wrong, but I think I'm about to go kill one of these stupid demon primarks, so I'm super into this.

Pretty okay with that. Yeah. He also created the officio assassinorum. This is his biggest dick move. Yeah. He created it. I got to get my Chi together, and I'm doing the Chi mojo, right? Yeah, Brad also does a thing.

Come see us in person at an event. We'll be a, this will be. I was going to say, come see me at something that happened. Come see me. And I'll able consume our cast like months after we published them. So that's why I stopped telling, hey, come see us at an event. People are like, oh, I love that. When is that?

It was a year and a half ago. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But he knew what he was making when he made the, the assassinorum. Yeah. And the thing is, is that we're going to get into it in another cast. Assassins are so much more horrifying that you understand. Yeah.

It is nightmare scape. Holy. shit what's going on. And he was like, yeah, I know. The Vindicare is the best assassin to be. Just be accurate.

That was always the rest of the rest of Marr again. Yeah. Nightmare. We're going to have some fun with that one. So, but Valdor does eventually come to an end. And he, so Valdor is actually does teleport.

So at the end of Valdor is this. Valdoir teleports on the vengeful spirit with the emperor, with a bunch of custod, but gets separated. and he wakes up just, you know, with the other custod, it's realizing he's nowhere near the emperor and just goes on an ass-kicking mission through it. This is a tactically the dumbest thing I've ever heard,

but it's so badass. Yeah, he wakes up realizing the emperor is way too far away from him. He's probably about to feel the emperor. He doesn't try to come up with a plan, just assumes that he's too far away, and just goes into a... And it says, well, fine, I'm going to kill everybody. And him and the custodes just start ass kicking their way through the ship.

And we're talking potentially tens of thousands of demons and chaos marines just get slaughtered by an exceptionally angry custod. He's wrecking everyone. Bad plan, but awesome. And you guys should read the book because it was a great scene where he comes face to face of the bad. This is one of the best dialogues in a GW book, for sure. Yeah, and it's, I'm not going to foreshadow it. But just go ahead and read it.

I was going to write a bunch of stuff about it, but read it. It's one of the best parts of the entire book, actually, is his interaction with Abadon. Anyway, Emperor gets stabbed. He feels terrible about it. And one day, he just walks out of the Imperial Palace, puts his armor down, everything down, and just says, only in death. And if you want to read more about him, read the Pariah novels. Because he, even also. Yeah.

He's not dead. He, he's out there doing work for the emperor, and it's some really good stuff. And I don't know if like covered you here. For the emperor. Yeah. Veldor's a dick,

by the way. Valdoer's a horrifying dick, but I just get a kid. But he's also mildly influential. Yes, but he's all, he's, I got to pause this when I say, he's crazy loyal.

Oh, yeah. But also, he, he's the guy in the mob movies where they have the guy that's always doing terrible shit and the main guy's like, dude, please stop, you know, murdering everyone. And he's like,

but that's, I thought that would be the best thing for you. Yeah, this just makes sense. That's what Velro why are you guys? consistently does. But yeah, so let's fast forward now 10,000 years because there's a bunch. Because why not? Well, it's because all the captain have a little bit of a moment,

like one guy fought in the War of the Beast. One guy did, it just, it's all this, but who gives a shit? They don't do enough shit. Yeah, it's like, they get, A paragraph. If you're going to be emo for 10,000 years, you don't do a lot. Yeah, you don't give props.

So we now get up to modern 40K, where we have Trajan Valores, who's the captain general of the custodes currently. And Trajan is considered maybe the, he is the greatest warrior in the Imperium. Or Bobby G's back, so it's a little bit dicey on how this one goes. Trajan's so badass.

So he has, he holds the record. He's complete for successful, Lee completing two different blood games. So he's outsmarted and outfought innumeral custodes. He single-handed a genealricult infection

invasion. He broke up I think one or two wags and that's two, sorry. And that's just the stuff that's public knowledge. Like this is like, Trajan has been waging wars for the Imperium forever. Recently though,

dude, this is such a, one, read the stories. Yep. This is very good writing. We're wildly not going to do this justice. But man, they... We want GW to give us money. I got to sell books. There we go. Let's sell some GW books by just giving... By doing Cliff Notes, they have not called. Not once. Not once. Not once. I could see why they haven't. I've heard my words. Also, again, I think it's hilarious that they...

the guys that are psychically bonded the emperor, the Lords of Terror were like, you're definitely going to betray him. Yeah. And the Trajan's like, oh, no, I'm going to kill all of you. You're all just useless to me. Yeah. And then waited until the last moment and then went,

how did you not see this coming? It's really good. Let's dive into Trajan just real quick. So Trajan may or may not have been in possession of an artifact to let him see the future and the return of Gilemon. So Trajan takes control right at the start of Abidon's 13th Black Crusade. And his main task, aside from all the ass kicking he's doing is he starts really ramping up the custodals. He starts mobilizing them.

He starts getting them ready to be. To be deployed for no reason. He just says this. Exactly. He starts getting them ready to be an attacking force as opposed to a defensive force. Yep. And he explains how we're going to do. do this. He also separates the customs. Yeah, yeah, he makes the shield, he makes the shield hosts.

And so eventually, as we just discussed, Gilliman comes back, gives them all a pretty firm talking to, followed by a polite request. Which is so good, by the way. It's just great, by the way. And, you know, to be fair, Trajan's all in. So they begin, they begin the full mobilization. Trajan also takes a much more active role in the Lords of Terror than ever before, because he decides that fine, if the custodes are going to be this aggressive fighting force, then we're going to know what's going on in the Imperium, and we're going to actually take real charge of this. He does some cool shit.

Well, let's go into, we're going to talk about a lot of shit, but one of the, I know it's going to sound, one of the coolest bureaucracy things that he does, which sound super lame compared to the rest of the shit we're going to talk about, but he does start slicing through red tape, like Voltron. Oh, yeah, because he realizes there's an issue. I mean, like, we've got forces of chaos ever, so what's he do?

He takes gray knights and partners him with custodes to go fight significant demotic incursions. We've got rebellions all over the place. Cool, custod's in the Inquisition. You guys are going to work together. We've got Trader legions waging battles, custodes and space marines. We're going to go there. This is what he does. But his biggest one, and we cover this on the tyranny cast a little bit, but we're going to spend

a little bit more time on it here. Trajan detects that High Fleet, Levi, when it comes back in to the galaxy, we're talking about like launch open the galaxy. One of the tendrils is pretty damn close to the soul. It's for sure coming to the soul. And he grabs

Christodes, guardsman, Death Watch, sisters. Specifically Death Watch on this. Because he takes all of the Death Watch that again are focused on killing Zenos. Specifically, TANETs. Also, but also he has the Ultramarine

ones. Yes. names I'm forgetting off the top. Tyrannic War Veterans. All of them. And he takes out a hive tenderal just solos it. Well, it's solo. Swallows it. Yeah, they just go through and remove it from existence.

Like, yeah. Because remember, when you kill a hive tendril, it will usually split into new hives. Not this one. This one's all gone. Yep. They decimated. Yeah.

And so now what we have is coming into the 41st millennia, basically the fate of the Imperium is sitting in the hands of of Trajan and Gelleman, although as of like a year ago, now also Lion Johnson's here. Do a better job in that codex. I can't fix it. Yeah, I can't fix it. But the idea is Trajan

and the custodes are now here to deliver the Imperium from the darkness into the light. Well, they're movers and shakers and they're not just great warriors. They're great diplomats. They're great. He's Bobby, not Bobby G. level,

but like still a wildly great bureaucrat. Yeah. He's slicing through, hey, the Imperium is going to collapse. Well, the advantage he has that he is a lord of terror. And the lords of terror are all afraid of him.

So he can kind of do whatever he wants from a rule standpoint. Well, it's a big thing that he's making things happen, though. Hey, man, the eye of terror became the rift of chaos. Shit is happening everywhere. Teherans are coming to get us.

I'm pretty done with all your, your infight. Yeah, this has been cute. I was, I was hanging out in a palis. for a while. I'm done with, I'm going to go stretch my legs. Yeah, exactly. He's like, Bobby G's doing that. I'm going to fix all of this. And also, you can get on board or I have a weapon that's wildly larger than you are and I would kill all of them. Yeah, he also has a musicordia. So I can I can use my real weapon to kill you or just this. Or my backup stabby thing. Or you know what? I'll just use this piece of paper. I mean, like he could John Wick the situation pretty quickly. Sure. And the thing is, is that one of the things I love about Trajan, and I love great warriors, don't get me wrong. I love great stories. But I just love the fact that this guy is as imposing in every theater. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter if he's in a meeting, if he's on a battlefield. You know, he's every time he is the master of his environment. Yeah. And that's what makes him a great, exciting character. To be fair, Trajan is a really great character. His rules are useless. And the model and actually, I hate, I mean, to be honest, I, I mean, Yellowfants, I hate the model.

He was so good, Lester. Really? Before the cortex. I isn't it. But have you ever played custodes? No. Okay. Have you ever seen the size of Gilliman or the size of Lion and then seen the size of

Trajan? He is tiny. Yeah. And he's supposed to be Primark size. He might actually, he should be Macari size. That's, that's my point. That's my issue. He should carry, he should carry a banner.

This is actually like my biggest issue because I actually, a couple times is. Wow. He's smaller than the regular Jordan's. And stuff. Didn't even realize that, did you? Yeah. I just started to think about it. He's like, he's actually smaller than a warden. Yeah. It's been, it's driven me nuts for a while that when I play against people of because I went to build a custod army. And that was what helped me back. He should be gigantic. Yeah, all them are though. All the custodes are the same size as a primaris marine. That's annoying. About the same size. They should be, yeah. The Gilliman model is 30% for, I mean, I have to, I don't, I don't have a lot. This is why you had to psych me out before this gas. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because that's, that's the disappointment. So anyway, on that disappointing note, we'll actually break until next week. So next week, we're actually going to cover someone I like a lot in the lore, and God, their rules are useless. The sisters of silence.

Models are cool, horrible pain in the ass to paint. Lour is incredible. They did fix seven edition. Yet, 10th edition rules are decently okay, but not great. And we'll cover that. So until next week, this has been John Barci and Bradchester. This guy.