Let’s take a look at the history and actions of the Emperor’s first genetically and psychologically altered warriors, the Adeptus Custodes!
Via our friends at Lexicanum
The Adeptus Custodes (The Guardians, Watchers of The Throne, The Thousand Companions, The Ten Thousand) more commonly known as Custodians, are the guardians of the Imperial Palace and the Golden Throne, as well as being the personal bodyguard to the Emperor. Due to the vast size of the Imperial Palace, the Custodes always act as a defensive army. For the most part the Custodes themselves never leave Terra, and only rarely leave the Palace. It is the Adeptus Custodes that decide who may enter the throne room of the Emperor, and when. Such is their authority that in this matter that Space Marines and Inquisitors must kneel before them.
The Adeptus Custodes were known originally as the Legio Custodes or Custodian Guard. The original Custodians were the first genetically and psychologically altered warriors to appear in the Emperor’s armies during the Terran Unification Wars, where they served as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. The original recruits of the Custodes were from the offspring of Terran nobility. The first known appearance of the Custodes was early in the Unification Wars during the fall of Techno-Barbarian fortress at Nas’sau. However the origins of the Custodian Guard are shrouded in myth and legend. Some say that the Custodian Guard are to the Emperor what the Space Marines are to the primarchs; that the Emperor’s own genetic matrix was used in their Gene-seed creation and through this, their loyalty to him is assured. Others argue that the Custodians are not like the Emperor in the way that a Space Marine is like his Primarch, and that some other source was used as a template for their physical and psychological form, a source that was lost during the anarchy of the Age of Strife. Recent sources however seem to firmly establish that the Custodes were created from the flesh and blood of the Emperor himself.
The genetic enhancement that forms the Custodes is different from and predates that developed to create the Space Marines. Each Custodian is a unique work of art, the product of genetic lore collected over many lifetimes. During the Great Crusade, the Custodes always kept a contingent with the Emperor for his protection, but also traveled individually as envoys. The Emperor valued the Custodians above all his other warriors, and while he was willingly to expend countless of his servants he was always hesitant to bleed his Praetorians. Since the Emperor’s internment in the Golden Throne, the Adeptus Custodes have taken a more limited role as protectors of the Imperial Palace, as ordered by Roboute Guilliman during his reorganization of the Imperium.
The Custodes were equipped with the best power armour of the age, and had access to the most highly advanced weaponry and vehicles of the Imperium Equipment, including designs that were not permitted to the Space Marine Legions. After the end of the Horus Heresy and the enthronement of the Emperor, the Custodes were said to have changed the colour of their cloaks from red to black to symbolise the darkness that had fallen over their order. By the end of the 41st Millennium with the reappearance of Roboute Guilliman, the Custodes abandoned their shrouds of shame and were seen again wearing their traditional red garments.
During the Age of Apostasy, the Adeptus Custodes reemerged briefly during the siege of the Ecclesiarchal Palace of Terra in the reign of Goge Vandire. During this time, the Custodes attempted to make their way towards Vandire, halted only by the Brides of the Emperor whom Vandire had convinced into becoming his personal bodyguards. After a long and fruitless discussion, the Custodes convinced the leader of the Brides, Alicia Dominica, to return with them to the presence of the Emperor. What happened during that moment is unknown, but the effects resulted in the Brides of the Emperor rebelling against Vandire, ending his reign once and for all. Centuries later during the Terran Crusade Custodes arrived to reinforce the reborn Roboute Guilliman as he battled the Thousand Sons on Luna. Later, the Custodes permitted Guilliman to enter the Emperor’s Throneroom alone for an entire day. The reappearance of a Son of the Emperor galvanized the Custodes, and a sect of them left Terra for the first time in ten thousand years to serve as Crusaders. Now members of the Custodes will bring war to the enemies of mankind, while the Companions oversee the safety of the Emperor’s mortal form.
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