Master of Mankind (expect spoilers)

[Caillum]

So, I finished "Master of Mankind" tonight. At this point I will say that I enjoyed it quite a bit, but the next few days will cement my complete feelings towards it (as I'll probably think on it non-stop).

 

Want to start this thread here. Let's keep it civil, and if you haven't read it yet, don't judge it. Again, spoiler warnings.

 

My thoughts:

 

I haven't read "Talon of Horus" yet, but the revelation of Drach'nyen being the Echo of the First Murder means it's next on my reading list. Heard good things about it too.

 

The upcoming "Talons of the Emperor" list in Inferno also has me excited! Been debating what to do with the Custodes and Sisters in Burning of Prospero... Seems the Mechanicum might play a big part in that too! On that subject, there was a lot of reference to the 40k Admech and Skitarii units. Could be subtle advertising, but I'd rather see it as placeholding future unit options. Castellax and Kastelans being different units, and co-existing for instance.

 

The usual brilliant AD-B characterisation carries the book. Everyone is awesome in some ways, and massively flawed in other ways. :)

 

[helterskelter]

There's only one spoiler we of the MDRC need. It has "Choom" in it :p

[Marshal Loss]

Cannot recommend this book enough - it's amazing. So many great characters and a part of the lore fleshed out that has never really been touched before. I really enjoyed it.

 

As with Caillum, the

 

 

Drach n'yen revelation

 

 

felt awesome, unexpected and has made me chomp at the bit for the upcoming Black Legion novel. MoM also features the first Blood Angel character I'm actually quite fond of too, and Land was awesome every time he appeared.

[Athrawes]

Here are some of my favorite bits, concerning how the Emperor views his Primarchs, and his relationship to them:

 

The emperor does not view himself as the Primarchs Father. He over and over hammers home his viewpoints that the Primarchs are weapons and Generals, not his Children. in fact he verbatim says to Arkhan Land in regards to Angron "It is not my son. None of them are. They are warlord and generals bred to serve a purpose."

Additionally, he refers to the Primarchs as "The Creatures that call themselves my son. My necessary tools."

To convey this theme, He pretty much never refers to them by their names, but instead by their numeral designation or "it". For instance, referring to his upcoming duel fight with "the sixteenth" referring to Horus.

When investigating the extent of Angron's degradation, and the effect of the nails, he mutters to himself that "A damaged Primarch is better than no Primarch" And that he thinks he will return "the Twelfth" to It's legion.

[Forward Assist]

Only thing I'd point out is that is from a techpriest's perception of what the Emperor is saying. It is perhaps quite telling that he hears the Emperor's voice exactly like he imagined it would be and the 'eclectic mix of orderly High Science and ... disorder' of the Emperor's laboratory is also exactly what he had imagined. That might be a hint not all is as it might seem...

[Athrawes]

Only thing I'd point out is that is from a techpriest's perception of what the Emperor is saying. It is perhaps quite telling that he hears the Emperor's voice exactly like he imagined it would be and the 'eclectic mix of orderly High Science and ... disorder' of the Emperor's laboratory is also exactly what he had imagined. That might be a hint not all is as it might seem...

 

True, but only the bit about Angron was to the tech priest, the rest was towards Custodian Ra when discussing why the Emperor created the Ullanor Triumph. And through all of the book he refers to the Primarchs by numeric designation.

[Forward Assist]

As you mention Ullanor, at the Triumph the Emperor tellingly points out that 'humanity's perception of god-beings has never been consistent'.

 

My take on the Custodians is they are proud - perhaps haughtishly so - of being more refined instruments of the Emperor than the Primarchs or the Astartes. They were perhaps his first and finest creations, who he kept in service after the Thunder Warriors were no longer required. Perhaps that sense of pride and superiority might skew Ra's perceptions too? Indeed, given the Emperor keeps them as his most trusted bodyguards, he might find it beneficial for the Custodes to feel like they are 'special' to him over the Primarchs given half of them have turned against him.

 

Just my thoughts.

[Marshal Rohr]

I mentioned it in the other thread but I'll mention it again here.

 

The emperor is far more like Anthony Hopkins in West World or Oscar Issac in Ex Machina than he is like Odin or Aragorn. He's a scientist and creator before he is a warlord, and if the Olde fluff ADB drew from is to be taken at face value he considers himself more like a shepherd than a king. A shepherd may love his flock and care for them, but he will cull them when he needs to. The Primarchs are like his sheep dogs. He may have favorites but he'll put down the sick ones without a thought.

[Caillum]

Only thing I'd point out is that is from a techpriest's perception of what the Emperor is saying. It is perhaps quite telling that he hears the Emperor's voice exactly like he imagined it would be and the 'eclectic mix of orderly High Science and ... disorder' of the Emperor's laboratory is also exactly what he had imagined. That might be a hint not all is as it might seem...

 

Yes! This is how I saw it! There was a lot of focus on how people didn't actually hear the Emperor speaking - his transcendent communication meant people understood him exactly, despite the language he used. He "thought" the words to the individual, and the individual interpreted it as they expected to.

[Marshal Loss]

Fully agree with all of you. Doing it this way shone a lot of light on the Emperor's mind and how his plans worked, but kept the questionmark present in every interaction - he's very much a malleable figure in the eyes of whoever interacts with him.

 

As I've said in a few other places already, this is what makes me doubly excited for his confrontation with Horus - how will he appear to Horus, and what will he say?

[1ncarnadine]

Fully agree with all of you. Doing it this way shone a lot of light on the Emperor's mind and how his plans worked, but kept the questionmark present in every interaction - he's very much a malleable figure in the eyes of whoever interacts with him.

 

As I've said in a few other places already, this is what makes me doubly excited for his confrontation with Horus - how will he appear to Horus, and what will he say?

 

I find it really interesting that so far, despite having gained some measure of power post-Molech, Horus does not seem to appear different to those who behold him & interact with him (unlike with the Emperor and Magnus). I mean, we know what happens, but it makes the nature of the power he's gained seem less "his" and that's a nice touch.

[Marshal Loss]

 

Fully agree with all of you. Doing it this way shone a lot of light on the Emperor's mind and how his plans worked, but kept the questionmark present in every interaction - he's very much a malleable figure in the eyes of whoever interacts with him.

 

As I've said in a few other places already, this is what makes me doubly excited for his confrontation with Horus - how will he appear to Horus, and what will he say?

 

I find it really interesting that so far, despite having gained some measure of power post-Molech, Horus does not seem to appear different to those who behold him & interact with him (unlike with the Emperor and Magnus). I mean, we know what happens, but it makes the nature of the power he's gained seem less "his" and that's a nice touch.

 

 

Yeah excellent point - he almost appears weighed down and consumed by the power he now possesses ('eyes of a soul that had peered into the epicentre of the abyss') rather than acquiring that faceless quality of big E and Magnus. Awesome stuff.

[b1soul]

My take on the Custodians is they are proud - perhaps haughtishly so - of being more refined instruments of the Emperor than the Primarchs or the Astartes. They were perhaps his first and finest creations

How could the Custodes feel "finer" than the primarchs?

[Sandlemad]

There's only one spoiler we of the MDRC need. It has "Choom" in it

It really did seem like there were a lot more lovingly crafted sentences about volkite weapons blowing traitors and daemons to ash than any previous HH book.

My take on the Custodians is they are proud - perhaps haughtishly so - of being more refined instruments of the Emperor than the Primarchs or the Astartes. They were perhaps his first and finest creations, who he kept in service after the Thunder Warriors were no longer required.

Separate from the perceiving-the-emperor discussion, boy was this made clear. The sheer arrogance of the custodes in this book was astounding. Mostly it came from Diocletian but the casual contempt he and others had for just about everything else in the imperium bar the Silent Sisters surprised me in its scale, if not its presence. Things like calling Dorn by his first name to his face, his treatment of the patrolling Fists and the knight pilots, the wonderful scene with Zaphon and the child, the attitude the original thirty custodians held towards the thunder warriors; wow.

Not to say it's justified - that's a chunk of Zaphon's arc and the Mechanicum proved themselves heroically - and the barbs about primarchs and astartes proving their faithlessness through Horus's turning are reeeaallly petty, but it definitely ties in to that distinction between defending the imperium and defending the emperor. As an institution and sometimes as individuals they have been with the emperor as warlord, ruler of Terra, and galactic conqueror, so the little touches like that distinguish them well from all the other post-humans floating about. To the custodes, he's 'their king', not just the master of the species, and they guard that closeness jealously.

EDIT:

@b1soul: Pretty much because they've been with him from the beginning, certainly before the primarchs. Rightly or wrongly, they consider themselves his companions in the sense that Alexander's closest officers were his companions. They do spend more time at his side than anyone else and he does seem to speak... not casually but maybe a little more familiarly to them then anyone else. Some of them were with him from the unification wars and helped put down the thunder warriors. Also half the primarchs turned, so as far as they're concerned (with that feeling of... maybe ownership over their leader), that's a slam dunk in their favour.

In guess maybe because they are privy to some of the emperor's plans, they can consider the primarchs as one step in his scheme, the astartes another, and so on, whereas the Custodes were always there, at the emperor's side. They weren't going to be discarded.

The thing is that having seen what they have seen, intellectually they surely know that the emperor will sacrifice anything for his goals and they absolutely would be discarded as required. You get this a bit in his conversations with Ra. Ra is sort of plaintive about the emperor coming to fight with them but the emperor replies his goals are more important and that while he's slow to expend custodian lives (a great line about being miserly with them but spending everything else freely) he absolutely will expend them when he needs to.

Which is interesting because one of the big takeaways from this book for a lot of people, myself included, is seeing the emperor refer to the primarchs by number and sort of shrugging at the 'father-son' way of thinking about their relationship. The custodes - or at least Diocletian - see this too. But what we also have a 'warlord-treasured companion' relationship between the custodes and the emperor. This is not explicitly deconstructed in the same way but I suspect it's just as true and false and context dependent as how the emperor refers to the primarchs.

[A D-B]

There's only one spoiler we of the MDRC need. It has "Choom" in it

It really did seem like there were a lot more lovingly crafted sentences about volkite weapons blowing traitors and daemons to ash than any previous HH book.

My take on the Custodians is they are proud - perhaps haughtishly so - of being more refined instruments of the Emperor than the Primarchs or the Astartes. They were perhaps his first and finest creations, who he kept in service after the Thunder Warriors were no longer required.

Separate from the perceiving-the-emperor discussion, boy was this made clear. The sheer arrogance of the custodes in this book was astounding. Mostly it came from Diocletian but the casual contempt he and others had for just about everything else in the imperium bar the Silent Sisters surprised me in its scale, if not its presence. Things like calling Dorn by his first name to his face, his treatment of the patrolling Fists and the knight pilots, the wonderful scene with Zaphon and the child, the attitude the original thirty custodians held towards the thunder warriors; wow.

Not to say it's justified - that's a chunk of Zaphon's arc and the Mechanicum proved themselves heroically - and the barbs about primarchs and astartes proving their faithlessness through Horus's turning are reeeaallly petty, but it definitely ties in to that distinction between defending the imperium and defending the emperor. As an institution and sometimes as individuals they have been with the emperor as warlord, ruler of Terra, and galactic conqueror, so the little touches like that distinguish them well from all the other post-humans floating about. To the custodes, he's 'their king', not just the master of the species, and they guard that closeness jealously.

EDIT:

@b1soul: Pretty much because they've been with him from the beginning, certainly before the primarchs. Rightly or wrongly, they consider themselves his companions in the sense that Alexander's closest officers were his companions. They do spend more time at his side than anyone else and he does seem to speak... not casually but maybe a little more familiarly to them then anyone else. Some of them were with him from the unification wars and helped put down the thunder warriors. Also half the primarchs turned, so as far as they're concerned (with that feeling of... maybe ownership over their leader), that's a slam dunk in their favour.

In guess maybe because they are privy to some of the emperor's plans, they can consider the primarchs as one step in his scheme, the astartes another, and so on, whereas the Custodes were always there, at the emperor's side. They weren't going to be discarded.

The thing is that having seen what they have seen, intellectually they surely know that the emperor will sacrifice anything for his goals and they absolutely would be discarded as required. You get this a bit in his conversations with Ra. Ra is sort of plaintive about the emperor coming to fight with them but the emperor replies his goals are more important and that while he's slow to expend custodian lives (a great line about being miserly with them but spending everything else freely) he absolutely will expend them when he needs to.

Which is interesting because one of the big takeaways from this book for a lot of people, myself included, is seeing the emperor refer to the primarchs by number and sort of shrugging at the 'father-son' way of thinking about their relationship. The custodes - or at least Diocletian - see this too. But what we also have a 'warlord-treasured companion' relationship between the custodes and the emperor. This is not explicitly deconstructed in the same way but I suspect it's just as true and false and context dependent as how the emperor refers to the primarchs.

Awesome perspective. And it ties into a wider point I've seen come up here and there on the board, where people ask about why the Custodians aren't particularly nice to the Space Marines. But... context. They don't have the rulebooks we do. They don't know what we know, and the clearly delineated lines of who is loyal, who is isn't, and so on. Even if they did know, it's worth looking at in context.

Space Marines, let's remember, are essentially never, ever allowed on Terra again after the Horus Heresy. (Yes, I know special narrative exceptions exist, but lore-wise, it's a Thing that they're not allowed on Terra.) Space Marines are responsible for half of the galaxy burning. Right now, they're responsible for half of the Imperium catching fire and/or rebelling against the Emperor. Space Marines are responsible, setting-wise, for all of the huuuuuuuge purges to come, where the Horus Heresy is forbidden lore for 99% of the Imperium, enforced with endless sequestering of information and not-infrequent mega-murder. That's how seriously this stuff is taken. If Space Marines are angels of the Emperor for most Imperial citizens (who may or may not believe they even exist) Chaos Marines are fiction - and a fiction that most wouldn't even be able to conceive of, since the idea of Space Marines rebelling against the Emperor is impossible to most Imperial minds.

So when you come back to the surface after fighting daemons for five years, seeing the Emperor himself suffering and enthroned and unable to move because the primarchs and Space Marines broke everything, seeing the galaxy burning because other primarchs and other Space Marines broke everything else... I mean, there's no way to overstate this. Space Marines in the setting are categorically not entirely trusted (their autonomy in 40K, f'rex) and especially not in the Horus Heresy. They, and their primarchs, are literally the ones to blame for everything. The Custodians and Sisters have the most unique viewpoint in this because they're at the Emperor's side and seeing Mankind's greatest hope for the future going up in flames.

So when Rogal Dorn, or the Imperial Fists, or a Blood Angel, etc. are all "Can I help? Why can't I help? Why don't you trust me?" it's worth bearing in mind that at this point the Space Marines are a colossal genetic mistake that have literally ruined everything. How do you know if you can trust them? Any of them? Who will fall next? Where's Guilliman? Where are the Blood Angels? Where are the supposedly loyal Legions? No one really knows. Are they dead? Have they turned, as well? It's war, information is scarce, and previously adamant Legions believed perfectly loyal have turned in their droves.

They trust Dorn, but they're under no obligation to respect him - especially with the added context that they know where the real war is. The fact the Emperor has his very best forces in the Webway, and where he is himself, tells a story on its own. The galaxy is territory. Territory can be reconquered. But what's happening beneath the Palace is a now-or-never deal.

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

And, as Sandlemad points out, this all also ties in to the novel's central conceit: If your duty is to the Emperor, do you fight for the man, or for his ideals? Where is the line drawn?

[Karthak]

 

 

 

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

 

One thing I've wondered about recently is why everyone seems to only give the Space Marines grief for the Heresy (like not being allowed on Terra, for example). Take the cog-boys. Half of them went traitor too, including the flipping Fabricator-General, but nobody seems to be going "we can neeeeever trust the Tech-priests again!"

[The_son_of_Dorn]

That's because Mars is like an Indian Call center. Dammed frustrating to use at any given moment or time but all that is available. 

[A D-B]

 

 

 

 

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

 

One thing I've wondered about recently is why everyone seems to only give the Space Marines grief for the Heresy (like not being allowed on Terra, for example). Take the cog-boys. Half of them went traitor too, including the flipping Fabricator-General, but nobody seems to be going "we can neeeeever trust the Tech-priests again!"

 

Great point. I concur (and, personally speaking, the Custodians and Sisters in TMoM aren't particularly enamoured of many Mechanicum refugees for that very reason, though on a lesser scale than the folks really behind it all: primarchs and Space Marines) but I guess - in later terms - it makes a certain kind of sense. The Space Marines react after the HH with more autonomy in the 40K setting (they're not technically part of the Adeptus Terra, and have leeway that no other Imperial faction has in terms of legality/behaviour) whereas the Mechanicum becomes the Adeptus Mechanicus and loses much of its autonomy (at least, publicly).

 

Really cool point, though. Would be great to see more of that on the ground.

[Karthak]

 

 

 

 

 

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

 

One thing I've wondered about recently is why everyone seems to only give the Space Marines grief for the Heresy (like not being allowed on Terra, for example). Take the cog-boys. Half of them went traitor too, including the flipping Fabricator-General, but nobody seems to be going "we can neeeeever trust the Tech-priests again!"

 

Great point. I concur (and, personally speaking, the Custodians and Sisters in TMoM aren't particularly enamoured of many Mechanicum refugees for that very reason, though on a lesser scale than the folks really behind it all: primarchs and Space Marines) but I guess - in later terms - it makes a certain kind of sense. The Space Marines react after the HH with more autonomy in the 40K setting (they're not technically part of the Adeptus Terra, and have leeway that no other Imperial faction has in terms of legality/behaviour) whereas the Mechanicum becomes the Adeptus Mechanicus and loses much of its autonomy (at least, publicly).

 

Really cool point, though. Would be great to see more of that on the ground.

 

Like, I don't think the traitors would have gotten anywhere near as far as they did if the Tech-priests had been united against them. If Mars had stood for the Emperor, if the traitors hadn't had titans, if the Furious Abyss-class ships hadn't been built for Lorgar, etc etc. 

[Hydriatus]

Seriously loved the book, and all the high-points for me have already been mentioned - but I must say, the inclusion of Arkhan Land as a character really surprised me, as did his actual character! He was always fun to read about - an adventure archeologist with a pet cybermonkey, as proud of the agriculture STCs he found as the Raider one, and one who remained visibly human...really hope tyo see more of him in further Heresy stories!

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

 

 

 

 

 

 

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

 

One thing I've wondered about recently is why everyone seems to only give the Space Marines grief for the Heresy (like not being allowed on Terra, for example). Take the cog-boys. Half of them went traitor too, including the flipping Fabricator-General, but nobody seems to be going "we can neeeeever trust the Tech-priests again!"

 

Great point. I concur (and, personally speaking, the Custodians and Sisters in TMoM aren't particularly enamoured of many Mechanicum refugees for that very reason, though on a lesser scale than the folks really behind it all: primarchs and Space Marines) but I guess - in later terms - it makes a certain kind of sense. The Space Marines react after the HH with more autonomy in the 40K setting (they're not technically part of the Adeptus Terra, and have leeway that no other Imperial faction has in terms of legality/behaviour) whereas the Mechanicum becomes the Adeptus Mechanicus and loses much of its autonomy (at least, publicly).

 

Really cool point, though. Would be great to see more of that on the ground.

 

Like, I don't think the traitors would have gotten anywhere near as far as they did if the Tech-priests had been united against them. If Mars had stood for the Emperor, if the traitors hadn't had titans, if the Furious Abyss-class ships hadn't been built for Lorgar, etc etc. 

 

 

I think it's worth noting that although I don't think it's ever been touched on in the BL books, the writers at Forge World have mentioned that prior to the Heresy, higher-ranking officials within the Imperium believed that a civil war between the Mechanicum and the Imperium proper was entirely possible, due to their autonomy, hugely varying ideology and position as the primary source of war material in the Imperium.

 

So it might come down more to how utterly unexpected the Heresy was - the Primarchs and Space Marines were descended from the Emperor's genetic legacy, they were the leading edge of the Great Crusade. When they turned, no one saw it coming - with the Mechanicum, there was already a degree of mistrust to begin with.

[b1soul]

the attitude the original thirty custodians held towards the thunder warriors

This sounds fascinating

 

 

Arik Taranis must despise the likes of Valdor...I think these two need to fight

 

[The_son_of_Dorn]

 

the attitude the original thirty custodians held towards the thunder warriors

This sounds fascinating

 

 

Arik Taranis must despise the likes of Valdor...I think these two need to fight

 

 

 

Whatever Happened to that big guy? All I know is that there was a gene seed test involved in some half assed experiment and then *poof* gone. Although the Head Thunder warrior vs the Head Custode would be very tasty!

 

[Lords of Preyspire]

Even the review for the book is fascinating. I'm miles behind in the books. Would you say it's readable?

 

Edit: who's perspective is this book from? The way the emperors is describing the primarchs is that from a custardies perspective? Much like his appearance are people hearing what they want from the emperor.

[Marshal Rohr]

There's only one spoiler we of the MDRC need. It has "Choom" in it

It really did seem like there were a lot more lovingly crafted sentences about volkite weapons blowing traitors and daemons to ash than any previous HH book.

My take on the Custodians is they are proud - perhaps haughtishly so - of being more refined instruments of the Emperor than the Primarchs or the Astartes. They were perhaps his first and finest creations, who he kept in service after the Thunder Warriors were no longer required.

Separate from the perceiving-the-emperor discussion, boy was this made clear. The sheer arrogance of the custodes in this book was astounding. Mostly it came from Diocletian but the casual contempt he and others had for just about everything else in the imperium bar the Silent Sisters surprised me in its scale, if not its presence. Things like calling Dorn by his first name to his face, his treatment of the patrolling Fists and the knight pilots, the wonderful scene with Zaphon and the child, the attitude the original thirty custodians held towards the thunder warriors; wow.

Not to say it's justified - that's a chunk of Zaphon's arc and the Mechanicum proved themselves heroically - and the barbs about primarchs and astartes proving their faithlessness through Horus's turning are reeeaallly petty, but it definitely ties in to that distinction between defending the imperium and defending the emperor. As an institution and sometimes as individuals they have been with the emperor as warlord, ruler of Terra, and galactic conqueror, so the little touches like that distinguish them well from all the other post-humans floating about. To the custodes, he's 'their king', not just the master of the species, and they guard that closeness jealously.

EDIT:

@b1soul: Pretty much because they've been with him from the beginning, certainly before the primarchs. Rightly or wrongly, they consider themselves his companions in the sense that Alexander's closest officers were his companions. They do spend more time at his side than anyone else and he does seem to speak... not casually but maybe a little more familiarly to them then anyone else. Some of them were with him from the unification wars and helped put down the thunder warriors. Also half the primarchs turned, so as far as they're concerned (with that feeling of... maybe ownership over their leader), that's a slam dunk in their favour.

In guess maybe because they are privy to some of the emperor's plans, they can consider the primarchs as one step in his scheme, the astartes another, and so on, whereas the Custodes were always there, at the emperor's side. They weren't going to be discarded.

The thing is that having seen what they have seen, intellectually they surely know that the emperor will sacrifice anything for his goals and they absolutely would be discarded as required. You get this a bit in his conversations with Ra. Ra is sort of plaintive about the emperor coming to fight with them but the emperor replies his goals are more important and that while he's slow to expend custodian lives (a great line about being miserly with them but spending everything else freely) he absolutely will expend them when he needs to.

Which is interesting because one of the big takeaways from this book for a lot of people, myself included, is seeing the emperor refer to the primarchs by number and sort of shrugging at the 'father-son' way of thinking about their relationship. The custodes - or at least Diocletian - see this too. But what we also have a 'warlord-treasured companion' relationship between the custodes and the emperor. This is not explicitly deconstructed in the same way but I suspect it's just as true and false and context dependent as how the emperor refers to the primarchs.

Awesome perspective. And it ties into a wider point I've seen come up here and there on the board, where people ask about why the Custodians aren't particularly nice to the Space Marines. But... context. They don't have the rulebooks we do. They don't know what we know, and the clearly delineated lines of who is loyal, who is isn't, and so on. Even if they did know, it's worth looking at in context.

Space Marines, let's remember, are essentially never, ever allowed on Terra again after the Horus Heresy. (Yes, I know special narrative exceptions exist, but lore-wise, it's a Thing that they're not allowed on Terra.) Space Marines are responsible for half of the galaxy burning. Right now, they're responsible for half of the Imperium catching fire and/or rebelling against the Emperor. Space Marines are responsible, setting-wise, for all of the huuuuuuuge purges to come, where the Horus Heresy is forbidden lore for 99% of the Imperium, enforced with endless sequestering of information and not-infrequent mega-murder. That's how seriously this stuff is taken. If Space Marines are angels of the Emperor for most Imperial citizens (who may or may not believe they even exist) Chaos Marines are fiction - and a fiction that most wouldn't even be able to conceive of, since the idea of Space Marines rebelling against the Emperor is impossible to most Imperial minds.

So when you come back to the surface after fighting daemons for five years, seeing the Emperor himself suffering and enthroned and unable to move because the primarchs and Space Marines broke everything, seeing the galaxy burning because other primarchs and other Space Marines broke everything else... I mean, there's no way to overstate this. Space Marines in the setting are categorically not entirely trusted (their autonomy in 40K, f'rex) and especially not in the Horus Heresy. They, and their primarchs, are literally the ones to blame for everything. The Custodians and Sisters have the most unique viewpoint in this because they're at the Emperor's side and seeing Mankind's greatest hope for the future going up in flames.

So when Rogal Dorn, or the Imperial Fists, or a Blood Angel, etc. are all "Can I help? Why can't I help? Why don't you trust me?" it's worth bearing in mind that at this point the Space Marines are a colossal genetic mistake that have literally ruined everything. How do you know if you can trust them? Any of them? Who will fall next? Where's Guilliman? Where are the Blood Angels? Where are the supposedly loyal Legions? No one really knows. Are they dead? Have they turned, as well? It's war, information is scarce, and previously adamant Legions believed perfectly loyal have turned in their droves.

They trust Dorn, but they're under no obligation to respect him - especially with the added context that they know where the real war is. The fact the Emperor has his very best forces in the Webway, and where he is himself, tells a story on its own. The galaxy is territory. Territory can be reconquered. But what's happening beneath the Palace is a now-or-never deal.

In context, it's almost bizarre to imagine the Custodians looking upon the Space Marines and primarchs with anything more than disgusted mistrust and severe caution. And rightly so. Why would they see the primarchs as awesome "sons" of the Emperor? They're unreliable, insane, and treacherous - the most loyal force in the galaxy rightly sees them as such. This is an unprecedented situation, from an entirely new loyalist perspective. And the Talons of the Emperor have nooooooooooooooooo reason to be heavy on the trust or respect given what they're seeing and what's happening. (That said, Diocletian is... Diocletian. As noted, he's particularly "For the Emperor" and not "For the Imperium".)

And, as Sandlemad points out, this all also ties in to the novel's central conceit: If your duty is to the Emperor, do you fight for the man, or for his ideals? Where is the line drawn?

You can see why, even in context, that attitude wouldn't be conducive to putting the Emperor in a position to reconquer territory once the civil war is over. The Custodians may be the only ones with the ability to fight within the webway but they aren't able to reconquer the galaxy. You run into this problem with the way modern governments try to solve every problem with special operations guy's in our reality. The question is always 'if navy seals and rangers are so damn good, why don't we only train navy seals and rangers?' That's because the metrics don't add up. You either sacrifice quality for quantity or over train soldiers for missions they won't be doing anymore. If the webway is so damn important, then neutering the only fighting force capable of making the webway useful once it's retaken is cutting of the nose to spite the face.

After MoM there isn't any reason for the loyalists to even be loyalists any more. The emperor doesn't value the loyal Primarchs, he doesn't value the loyalist legions sacrificing themselves out in the wider galaxy in order to buy time for the Emperor to finish his work. He doesn't see, like most people in his position throughout history, he is sacrificing a concrete position for an idea. He's letting the great be the enemy of the good.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It adds a level of depth to the Heresy that wasn't ever there before. The faction holding onto power in a civil war always lacks the unity of purpose revolutionary movements have because they have to fight a war AND govern. The only issue is, it doesn't help the trope of the emperor being incompetent, because before it was 'the eneoeror is incompetent because he didn't see that the night lords and World Eaters were insane', now he's incompetant because he's doing actual things that lose wars.

Edit: Someone is going to have to address this eventually. Sanguinius, Dorn, and the Khan are going to have to have a come to Jesus meeting with the Emperor and tell him they are helping him because of the sacrifices their legions have made, not because the Emperor actually deserves their loyalty anymore.

Edit 2: And the custodians should realize that if they can't determine the loyalties of the Primarchs actually loyal, or if they are worried Guilliman and Sanguinius might've turned on the Emperor, it's THEIR fault for giving them a reason to by not acknowledging their blood and loss.