Editing Adeptus Custodes (section)

==Adeptus Custodes and the [[Grey Knights]]==

''The Emperor's Legion'' gives us more than a glimpse into the Adeptus Custodes of M41. We discover several things: that they didn't choose to be confined to the Imperial Palace, but were bound within it by Imperial law enacted by Guilliman, Dorn, and Valdor after the Heresy; that they never fully respected this limitation, sending brothers on missions abroad and maintaining their own network of informants, spies and allies all over the galaxy; and that their martial capabilities have been maintained in top shape by constant training against all manner of opponents (often by capturing dangerous foes, like Chaos Space Marines or [[Tyranids]], and then [[What|releasing them inside]] deserted and cordoned portions of the Imperial Palace for a Custodian to hunt down). This isn't as insane as it sounds, if any enemy got out of hand during training there's thousands of Custodes and Gun Servitors in the palace that can be called in to put them down very quickly.

Shield-Captain Valerian thinks it possible that M41 Custodians are individually '''more skilled''' than their Great Crusade era counterparts, owing to ten thousand years of extra experience and information gathering on mankind's enemies. However, in the book ''The Emperor's Legion'', while working with and fighting alongside a Grey Knights company, Valerian does acknowledge to himself that while each individual Custodian is more than a match for their Grey Knight counterparts, the Custodes are not a self-contained army the same way as Space Marine Chapters are, since that was never their intended function. Nor are they possessed of any prescient gifts or supernatural abilities that would assist them against the Great Enemy. In this way, he further compares the Custodians to the Grey Knights, both being descended from the Emperor (in different fashions), were incorruptible and immune to the temptations of Chaos; the key difference is that the Grey Knights are a weapon of singular purpose against the Warp while the Custodians had been intended to be the guardians of mankind in a future without the Warp. Valerian privately speculates that it ''might'' be the Grey Knights who more faithfully embody the Emperor's final legacy, considering how the Imperium eventually turned out, and isn't so sure about which agency is the finest or most faithful; and while he never says that he himself actually agrees with this sentiment, he acknowledges that a reasonable argument for it could be made. Furthermore, he reveals that it is a shared sentiment that skulks around the other Custodians like a foul odour.

The missing element in their deployment had always been the [[Sisters of Silence]], noting that they were always intended to fight together. Sister Tanau Aleya believes that there is no <u>physical</u> opponent that the Custodians could not destroy, thus it was the role of the untouchable Sisters of Silence to anchor supernatural or warp tainted enemies into the physical realm where they can be wounded and destroyed permanently. They act on the opposite end of the scale to Grey Knights who fight against the warp on its own terms. Both forces cause the Neverborn they engage to suffer ''True Death'' as a matter of course, which is quite the feat indeed, but do so through extremely different methods. The Talons of the Emperor deny the warp any purchase in reality (and in doing so reflect the attitudes of the Emperor at the time of their creation - when the Talons were created it was all about reducing the influence of the warp so they try to deny the warp from permeating the veil completely. While in 40k the Imperium is so reliant on the warp and its touch is so prevalent that its pretty much here to stay now, hence the GKs using the warp to (try and) destroy the warp).

The book is not all about Custodians being uber-powerful killing machines, however, as it evokes how they spent the last ten millennia cultivating their skills as '''theologians''' (unlike atheists crowd leaders, which actually tickles the age-old fan idea that the Emperor might not have been a real atheist), historians and philosophers, so they can decipher the Emprah's plan for Mankind before everything was screwed by Horus. They are now basically an order of warriors-scholars, more prone to mysticism than their [[Imperial Truth|hardcore rationalist]] ancestors from the Great Crusade era (now that ten thousand years of space magic bullshit had hammered home that their logic is stupid and wrong) but still way more "enlightened" than most of the Imperium. They also seem to suffer some inferiority complex caused by their [[Imperial Fists|failing at]] [[Rogal Dorn|protecting the Emperor]] when He most needed them, something that has dragged them even more into isolation but has also taught some of them humility when dealing with other humans seeing as it was not only normal humans who did the bulk of the asskicking in the Horus Heresy on both sides, but also continue doing nearly all the asskicking for the past ten thousand years. Hence most of the Custodians depicted in the book are rather nice guys to be around - by 40k standards of course - far from the "single-minded autists" stereotype which has recently become abusively prominent after ''Master of Mankind'' (bear in mind, the same author gave us Aquillon, who was an alright chap).

Now it's up to you to decide whether it makes Custodians cooler and more subtle than before or insufferable [[Mary Sue|Mary Sues]], though if Colquan is indicative Custodes can still be absolute golden dickheads in the 41st millennium (Valerian's narration says that not all Custodians get on). That, or he missed the humility and mysticism lessons. Alternatively, the Custodians are stated to be very mistrustful of the Space Marines in the 42nd millennium, their (not unreasonable) theory being that "anything that has once proven fallible can do so again" (seriously, they even have plans to destroy Phalanx if the Fists aboard it turn traitor). Therefore, Colquan may be simply keeping himself emotionally distant and unattached from [[Roboute Guilliman|someone]] that has the potential to be a traitor.