Just a quick question about the appearance of the Custodes:

I'm aware that in the recent Horus-Heresy novels, they are portrayed as wearing gold armour and red cloaks - as of 10,000 years ago, anyway.

I'm also aware that in the original Rogue Trader 40k book from the 80s, the Adeptus Custodes were portrayed wearing disco-fantastic leather greaves, bare torsos and nice pointy helmets.

My understanding is that the change in uniform is as a way of mourning the Emperor's imprisonment on the Golden Throne.

Anyway, my question is this:- As far as people are aware, are modern-era Custodes still rocking the bare-chested black and leather look?

I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise, but I wanted to check...

AFAIK, they are still clad in gold.

I'd go with their (timeline-wise) last canon appearance - i.e. the Rogue Trader one. It even had its own miniature. And wasn't that picture even reprinted in some later Codex?

On the other hand, I understand that the images of the Horus Heresy novel series are far more numerous and of higher quality, and may have more appeal due to featuring more fancy armour, so ... your call, though you should be aware that this armour is just one interpretation (->BL stuff), and an (in-universe-wise) outdated one at that.

I like your theory about the "new" uniform being a way of mourning the Emperor's imprisonment, by the way. Haven't heard that one before, but it would fit.

Woops my mistake, you're right, black armor is black. Had forgotten it.

Lynata said:

Well it's not my theory, I must admit! I'd read it... somewhere, but can't remember where!

Coloured picture, by the way - only shows the helmets, sadly:

Lightbringer said:

Same here, but it doesn't make much sense. They are supposed to guard the Emperor in the Throne and do so by limiting their effectiveness? If I were the Emperor one of my few commands to the world outside would be "get those morons away from me".

I had to hunt a little to find this picture : http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/john_blanche_warhammer_002.jpg This is supposed to be the Imperial Throne Room, with the Emperor waaaay up top. I always took the guards in the foreground to be Custodes, but they were never identified as such, to my knowledge. I can't really see them being anything else. This picture was from (I think) 3rd edition 40K.

Mjoellnir said:

I wouldn't find it beyond belief that they may keep additional armour and weapons stored somewhere for crisis situations, but somehow I'd find it far more impressive if each of them have subdermal armour implants and a Rosarius or some other archaeotech device instead of "ordinary" armour like some rank and file Marine. A barechested body + helmet and cloak kinda lets them look like these guys, rendering them badass by default:

Also, this is 40k. Since when do we apply common sense here?

@ AlphaChaos: Yeah, I remember that one! I would assume those are Custodes as well. Either they do wear armour after all and that other picture was just situational coincidence, or it's just that some do and others don't, depending on where they are posted ("real" guard duty against intruders, or purely ceremonial).

Good point, Alpha Chaos, I'd forgotten that picture! And you're right, the guys in the front are clearly Custodes, and I too had always taken the pyramid thing to be the Golden Throne.

So we do seem to have a little bit of a canon conflict over Custodes appearance.

Old school 40k had the modern custodes with bare torsos a la 300, as Lynata points out, but the John Blanche image Alpha Chaos portrays shows them in the Horus Heresy era armour.

Now if I were writing a custodes codex, I would try and find some way to retcon/workaround this apparant inconsistancy. I guess one interpretation could be that the Custodes are a 10,000 (or 1000) strong bodyguard, who wear the early 40k leather greaves, black cloaks, spears etc, but that there is an elite inner guard, the companions, those who wait on the person of the God-Emperor, who wear the Heresy-era armour, but with black plumes and cloaks. That's one crack at a retcon, anyway!

@Lynata - The one you posted was an older picture, so you could also assume the "canon" is the more recent one. Honestly, when I got the old Custodes figure, I assumed it was an Eldar & painted it up as a Harlequin! It never really looked "Imperial" to me.

On a related note, it always interests me how many different artistic interpretations there are of the Emperor on the Golden Throne.

I always took this as meaning that the Adeptus Custodes have a number of chambers within the Imperial Palace where they have fake Golden Thrones so as to frustrate assassination attempts. A bit like Saddam and his varying body doubles. Except these body doubles are actually bodies.

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

Weren't they both in the same book (Rogue Trader), though?

Here's another one , by the way, but I have no idea where it's from! Might be RT as well.

And yeah, it does look Eldar'ish, though the plumed helmet design seems pretty prevalent throughout all pictures.

Hard to determine the actual canon look after all these years, at least without knowing each picture's "release date", including any reprints in later books (that would basically renew their validity) - I'd say just go with either bare-chested or armoured or both (depending on what you feel is right), but definitively keep the black? Black is also the colour of mourning, so the switch would make sense.

Lightbringer said:

Heh, I just took it as different interpretations and simple retcons (depending on where they originate), but this idea would serve as a neat explanation as well... though the GW books should depict the truth (meaning if it says Emperor in the caption, then it should be Him)?

Lynata said:

I'm pretty sure the one I posted was from a later edition (third, I think).

I chalked it up to artistic interpretation myself, although I do like the decoy golden throne idea. It got me thinking about Egyptian pyramids with their false burial chambers.

Lynata said:

I used to have 1st ed RT and I recognise this. I've never had any other books so that must be the source. (It might still be at Mum and Dad's back in NZ actually, I must have a look next time I'm back there)

As I recall their spears had laspistols built in to them as well.

I always got the impression that they were super skilled, in much the same way as the Imperial Assassins (when they were just called Imperial Assassins - there were no Temples then as I recall)

Remember that this was before twenty (or so) years of power hyper inflation that has left us today with Space Marines that can throw tanks.

I think they're cool, adds a nice Romanesque twist to the emporer's 'tastes'. (or Spartanesque - heh, Aawhooo! Aawhooo! Aawhooo!)

The idea about the Custodian Guard relinquishing their armour as a sign of mourning/penance for failing to protect the Emperor comes from the Horus Heresy artbooks, right at the very end.

As for depiction of their abilities - the short story "Blood Games" in Tales of Heresy and the novel The First Heretic both have fairly prominent depictions of the Legio Custodes, which collectively suggest that individual Custodians are exceptionally capable and mightier in a one-on-one combat than even the Astartes of the time, but they're warriors, rather than soldiers, each created individually by the Emperor himself (which suggests either that latter-day Custodes are either inferior copies, or that they're the exact same Custodes who fought in the defence of the Emperor's Palace at the end of the Heresy, meaning that the one who sought out Alicia Dominica is likely to have been Constantin Valdor, the Emperor's Chief Custodian) before he began his work on the Primarchs, and lacking the unity and sense of collective focus that makes an Astartes force greater than the sum of its parts (in game terms, individual Custodes are better than Space Marines, but they don't get Squad Mode abilities).

They're essentially a Rolls-Royce or Maserati, a precisely made, finely tuned version of a Space Marine, made by hand one at a time.

While the Astartes have to settle for 'merely' being a Mercedes-Benz or other mass-produced high-end car.

Soriritas are VW Bugs...

Old or new beetle?

Well, the original color of Custodians was red and in collected visions of Horus Heresy it says that following Emperors confinement to Golden Throne the Custodains abandoned the use of their armor and their official color was changed to black. If you look at the pictures in the collected visions you see that the armor is gold and all cloth is red. Ergo, the logic would say that Golden Throne era Custodians would have golden armor (helmet) and black cloth.

Just need to add... for anyone saying the last "canon" appearance was the old Rogue Trader days? Not even Games Workshop considers that era to even be remotely canon anymore.

Go for it otherwise! But they definitely would consider Horus Heresy much moreso. And from the Space Wolves books I got the impression they probably aren't much different.

FYI that black & white pic was from this book series the Inquisition War by Ian Watson.

That series ruined me for WH40K. totally wanted to play an RPG of that novel

Personally i don't see a need for Custodes to have changed their armour colours. The conical helmets and halberds are iconic and don't seem to have changed, so why should the colour? Gold is very much an imperial theme so it works very well for what is the private bodyguard force of the Emperor himself. He sits on something called the Golden Throne, and the Astronomican is also called the Golden Light of Terra.