Now before anyone jump the gun, I feel the handling of this idea was done poorly on GW part.

Now to a more serious and more lore friendly note, I'm sure we can come up with a reasonable answer as to why would the custodes do this? I can think of one that would make a lot of since to me.

The horus heresy. lets be honest here, everyone got there teeth kicked in that war. And more then one chapter was reduced to a mere hundred strong or less. So I can see them taking anyone as long as they can pass there training, regardless. So I guess I want to hear your thoughts on this matter? And what you think?

Any other ideas as to why they would be driven to do this?

7970609

I like them and I personally think the’ve been around since the unification wars, since it was the authors first intention to have female custodians but the higher ups at GW said no. So obviously the higher ups have changed their minds now.

Actually the thing is that lorewise, on terra the custodes COULD (NOT ALWAYS) be selected from noble houses to serve the imperium, also it is also lorewise known that the custodes geneterapy enhancement is not sex dependant (contrary to space marines) so yeah, it is possible actually to have female custodes, but GW did not care untill now

7970640
that is the thing..."they did not care until now"'
so why at all?

look, I like 40K, but I'm not some purist or diehard fan, I don't play tabletop...so technically it does not matter to me

but in general I just think that "fantasy" and "sci-fi" does not need to reflect real world
and that you should not retcon things that exist for ages just because someone on twitter wants it

and that goes for ANY franchise in my opinion
Star Wars, Lord of The Rings, 40K, whatever

40K has one badass female army - but that si not enough for them - they want YOUR army too
it is just their Modus Operandi
---we have thing
---they feel excluded
---we include them
---they change thing
---then they throw us out
---then they stop caring about thing they ruined and try to ruin something else

7970609
I am perfectly fine with it, there is nothing really to celebrate or make a huge pissy fuss over it, it just is and I will roll with it. I am willing to entertain the idea that there are Female custodes, but to be honest I doubt they would look any different from their male counterparts sense they are recruited way before puberty which is where the sex differences really start to appear. And, girls and boys are functionally identical in terms of strength brain processing power and whatever hormones they use to create these killing machines completely overwrites puberty. I would also call bull crap on the space marines, they recruit children as young as 10-12, if not younger. But still, girls would hit puberty sooner, so it could affect the growth a little bit, but nothing drastic enough that gene seeds can't really overwrite or overpower and the candidates. The sex of the recruit would be irrelevant for them, given what they put them through unless maybe they are well into the later stages of puberty, but that is also the issues with older males being more risky to die from complications. And gain, just like I said about the Custodes a female space marine would virtually indistinguishable from the regular male ones, and with the brutal training, and I mean brutal, there wouldn't be any gender expectations put on them other then male, and what ever is left would have been beaten out of them. Along with that Space Marine are canonically asexual, as in no sex drive, so they just wouldn't care about it, they for they would all act and think alike with all the hypno indoctrination they are subjected to regardless of gender assigned at birth. If I were a Chaplin on on some godforsaken feral world and have a 12 year old little girl potential recruit who has already killed a man at that age in front of me, you bet your ass I would take her in to be trained as a scout, that's a prime space marine material there, with the one in a hundred chance that she would become a space marine, sex doesn't matter for them only results and if the girl manages to beat odds to fill a candidate criteria it's all the better. If everything I just said is crazy that's because it set in an insane brutal universe, it's not called the grim dark future for nothing.

The Custodes are so tall most people just assume they are men.

7970609
As long as there have been warriors, there have been warrior women. Never as many as men, but they've been there since prehistory. The Astartes are all super-roided up super-males, mass-produced grunts, but the Custodes are something beyond that, the Emperor's finest work of art and science. Why exclude women when you're already combing through the population to find the best of the best, rather than harvesting people en masse to be put through a grinder that turns boys into supermen?

7970609
Poorly handled? Understatement of the month
Motivation? Quite obvious, pandering
It could be? Well as they said quite clear here, terra got the ass kicked in the HH... And the war of the beast too. And given that custodians are made one on one basis and quite differently than astartes, it may be possible, although i doubt they would do many of muscle momma... Trials for an astartes recruit are the stuff of nightmares... Who knows what are the custodian candidates exposed to...
I have the impression that GW was "testing the waters" so to speak with this matter. If they keep having something resembling a brain they will stop just there and just leave it at that after the community reaction.
They have the guard, that its a real blanquet army for absolutely all kind of styles and themes, and they would not break the lore at all, they have the SoB who were given quite a lot of love recently... One may argue if the AdMech keep having men and women... But well TECHNICALLY they have. Good amount of eldar models are women, etc etc... Damn even the Tau has women... So no... I don't really see the need of it... They could come back to use two things they had in spades when i began, IMAGINATION and PASSION for what they are doing. Unlike now

7970749
How many male members of the Sisters of Silence is GW retconning in?

7970861
Absolutely none, this pandering and inclusion only goes one way.

The issue with FemStodes is how terribly they where introduced and later how they tried to gaslight us into submission and compliance.

But from a lore perspective the answer is relatively easy.

The Emperor in his quest to create super soldiers for his coming war experimented on millions of not billions of subjects, obviously he experimented on countless women in order to create his perfect warriors, his Custodes.

In doing so, he succeeded in elevating Females to the standards of the Custodes, but in doing so he realized that they would not serve for the army he envisioned to conquer the galaxy as the Female Custodes rate was far lower to the Male Custodes.

Thus when he created his Thunder Warriors and later Astartes, women never became either, the procedures being far too crude excruciating and dangerous for women to ever pass, as these procedures where far more crude and invasive than the Custodes creation method.

Thus while Female Custodes exist, no woman has ever finished the elevation to Astartes warriors as women cannot survive the invasive and brutal procedures and the Astartes organs have shown rejection to women.

7970958
Of course.

I wonder when Femstodes will be confirmed as also forsaking their armor to show grief for the Emperor's death, as the Custodes did. Would certainly make for interesting character models, promotional artwork, and rule book illustrations. You know, so they're included as having actually been present the whole time and actually doing everything the Custodes did, for maximum inclusivity points.

Well, I'll just declare that lots of the Sisters of Silence have always been men. That's my terms of equality for accepting this bullshit, and not one nugget less.

Edit: seems we've picked up a downvote gremlin who hates equality and inclusiveness.

7970970
Not going to lie I've thought about kit bashing a female version of the old shirtless custode model

7971152
Truly ahead of the times. If you painted a squad and got it featured on one of the big miniature painting channels/groups, you could get out in front of this whole thing for recognition and reconciliation. That'd even drive up miniature purchases with a younger demographic; Penitents of the Ecclesiarchy wear the same amount of armor, but their aesthetics have always been...lacking.

Or it might be too late on that angle, in which case: if you think it'd be fun, go for it!

7970675
Agreed.

I'm still amazed GW continues to go for controversial things, yet still hasn't made female Imperial Guard models which would be something basically everyone would laud them for.

Not that it really matters to me one way or another. I've been boycotting GW for years now over their generally hostile attitude to their fan base and exploitative pricing. I play other games now.

7971324
They could also choose from Rogue Traders, every branch of the Inquisition, every branch of the Astra Militarum including armored vehicles and aircraft as well as the Guard and other infantry, Sanctioned psykers, the Officio Astrotelepathica, every branch of the Imperial Navy, the Officio Assassinorum in general and Calixus Temple Assassins exclusively, the Commissariat, every branch of the Schola Progenium, the Arbites, the Sororitas, the Hospitallers, Imperial Saints, both the Adeptus Mechanicum and the Dark Mechanicus, the Sisters of Silence, Eldar, Tau, or Dark Eldar. All of which canonically either have both male and female members from top to bottom or are exclusively female already, and which fact no one objects to. Lots and lots of choices available that would be honest to canon and internally consistent with the setting, and that's just the ones I can remember while typing this post without looking anything up.

But no. GW would prefer to lie, gaslight, and destroy in order to manufacture controversy and whip up the title-skimming outrage mob on Twitter. Anyone who says women aren't represented in 40k should be shown that list and then told they're full of shit.