If you could change anything in the lore what would you change?

[Ahzek451]

32 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

Youve got your male ego stroking brotherhood with Space Marines. Not every warrior faction needs to be delineated by gender; it's actually cooler when they aren't. 

Really what it comes down to is preferences, to paraphrase the Dude, that's just your opinion man. Not everyone agrees with the above. Clearly. Amazonians exist and it appears plenty of people like that idea/theme just fine.  If you like it, good for you, if someone else does not, good for them. I think its been shown time and again that a lot of people do not like wholesale retcons, *points to necrons* to this day people still prefer the pre-c'tan enslavement lore and in this case, gender just happens to be the aspect of the change. 

 

[DemonGSides]

12 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

Really what it comes down to is preferences, to paraphrase the Dude, that's just your opinion man. Not everyone agrees with the above. Clearly. Amazonians exist and it appears plenty of people like that idea/theme just fine.  If you like it, good for you, if someone else does not, good for them. I think its been shown time and again that a lot of people do not like wholesale retcons, *points to necrons* to this day people still prefer the pre-c'tan enslavement lore and in this case, gender just happens to be the aspect of the change. 

 

I think you wilfully missed the point. Space Marines are a gendered warrior faction. Sisters of battle are a gendered warrior faction. Custodes don't HAVE to be gendered, as the niche of "Gendered warrior faction within the imperium" is already quite well squared away. 

 

You thinking EVERYTHING HAS to be gendered is just your own brain soup doing its thing. It's not a requirement. 

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

 

This is factually wrong.

 

They are known for taking young boys and forcing them to endure a harsh 13 year training that moulds them both physically and mentally.

They are THE archetype for the idea behind Space Marines and Custodes. 

 

You fundamentally don't understand the history and identity of these historical groups. Your other points are also built on fundamental misunderstandings of the environment, history and culture.

 

You threw samurai in there as if there weren't female samurai so I think you're just a bit of a "My opinion is always right" kind of poster at this point. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:35 PM by DemonGSides

[Orange Knight]

2 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

You threw samurai in there as if there aren't female samurai so I think you're just a bit of a "My opinion is always right" kind of poster at this point. 

 

I actually wasn't aware of that. Scratch Samurai and replace them with Knights Templar, and add the Bene Gesserit to the list!

I'm more about European history, truth be told.

As for my point on the Spartans - yes, their gender is an integral part of their identity.

They were known as the "Wall of Men"

[Orange Knight]

7 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

 

Custodes don't HAVE to be gendered, as the niche of "Gendered warrior faction within the imperium" is already quite well squared away. 

 

 

 

 

They don't have to be, but they were from the onset of their creation in the lore.

Their original identity was literally "The Golden Brotherhood"

 

The Sisters of Silence were another gendered warrior faction with their own unique identity. You say it was all "squared away" but the truth is the original lore featured two all-male, and two all-female warrior groups inside the Imperium.

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:43 PM by Orange Knight

[Ahzek451]

13 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

I think you wilfully missed the point. Space Marines are a gendered warrior faction. Sisters of battle are a gendered warrior faction. Custodes don't HAVE to be gendered, as the niche of "Gendered warrior faction within the imperium" is already quite well squared away. 

 

You thinking EVERYTHING HAS to be gendered is just your own brain soup doing its thing. It's not a requirement. 

 

You threw samurai in there as if there weren't female samurai so I think you're just a bit of a "My opinion is always right" kind of poster at this point. 

It sounds like you're projecting. You've willfully missed the point numerous times yourself and have made numerous assumptions. Ive seen your posts for some time, the "my opinion is always right", just sounds like you. 

[DemonGSides]

14 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

They don't have to be, but they were from the onset of their creation in the lore.

Their original identity was literally "The Golden Brotherhood"

 

The Sisters of Silence were another gendered warrior faction with their own unique identity. You say it was all "squared away" but the truth is the original lore featured two all-male, and two all-female warrior groups inside the Imperium.

 

Who's original lore?  Lore quite literally changes all the time.  Space Marines used to be lead by a half elf Inquisitor; are you up in arms that the Imperium is xenophobic now?  No care about Sherlock Clouseau?  Wild.  So lore history doesn't actually matter.  It's just feels. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:55 PM by DemonGSides

[DemonGSides]

3 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

It sounds like you're projecting. You've willfully missed the point numerous times yourself and have made numerous assumptions. Ive seen your posts for some time, the "my opinion is always right", just sounds like you. 

You wrote a whole post that didn't actually speak to what I wrote; my apologies if you think "Not everything has to be gendered" means "Nothing should be gendered" but those are two different positions and only one of which I took. 

[phandaal]

Since we are sharing opinions that are right (mine always are, for example):

 

Looks like I altered the timeline with my first post about Primaris, and we are instead arguing if it is ok to like muscle mommies or if that should be punishable by bonking. (It isn't and it should be, respectively.)

 

Always in motion is the future...

 

Wait, wrong franchise.

[Rain]

I have a feeling that the Femstodes discussion is really about a broader topic that is out of scope for the B&C, and that I am personally sick to death of. Carry on gents.

 

[Kaede45]

Wow! Things got heated quickly. Allow me to defuse by giving a controversial statement:

 

I would remove the existence of the man called Erebus.

 

IMHO, he adds very little to the story & only really cheapens the Horus Heresy by basically doing a “It was me, Barry” to the audience & Horus. Honestly, his only real purpose is to pin everything that happens on one complete & utter ed up sadistic, sociopathic psychopath who manipulates everybody in the setting, then when all is said & done, he just s off & does nothing in the current millennium. He feels like D’vorah from Mortal Kombat, a character who exists to kill other, fan-favorite characters, making them hated by the fans, but is loved by the creators so much they suffer no comeuppance.

 

I would’ve preferred if the decision to betray the Emperor & serve the Chaos Gods was Lorgar’s or Horus’s decision alone & not the machinations of some low-level scumbag. Lorgar would’ve been better as the instigator, given how upset he was when the Emperor destroyed his favorite planet & he could’ve easily swayed Horus by disillusioning him with how the Emperor treats them all as nothing more than weapons.

Edited Wednesday at 04:11 PM by Brother Tyler
Profanity removed

[Orange Knight]

22 minutes ago, Rain said:

I have a feeling that the Femstodes discussion is really about a broader topic that is out of scope for the B&C, and that I am personally sick to death of. Carry on gents.

 

 

Not for me.

 

To me it's just a fundamental alterations of the identity of the particular faction.

 

External elements may well have influenced the decision, and that would be a shame. Chasing trends only dates ideas.

Timeless concepts that have captured the imagination for literally thousands of years are a better basis for fiction.

 

The Custodes were based around one such timeless identity that was so influential people still recognise it today.

Take this for example:

"Spartan boys deemed strong enough entered the agoge regime at the age of seven, undergoing intense and rigorous military training. Their education focused primarily on fostering cunningness, practicing sports and war tactics, and also included learning about poetry, music, academics, and sometimes politics."

 

That could literally the description of the Custodes.

GW weren't original with their creation, they took what already exists in order to determine their identity beyond them simply being "genetically engineered super warriors" but it's precisely why it works so well.

 

[Scribe]

You all woke up and chose violence I see.

 

The Custode change is just one of those "modern" Corp retcons for reasons outside the confines of this forum.

 

Not even worth debate, and ultimately tossed into a memory hole and forgotten.

[Brother Tyler]

Yes, any further debate about female Adeptus Custodes needs to be taken up in the Talons of the Emperor forum.

[Rain]

@Kaede45

 

Agree wholeheartedly. Horus’s fall as a whole was rushed as the Heresy was not originally planned to be 50+ novels. They rushed through by far the most compelling thematic element of the Heresy, and then spent dozens of books messing around with side plots that didn’t need to exist, and that are nowhere near as interesting as the fall of Emperor’s most beloved son.

 

More to your point directly, giving Erebus and Kor Phaeron such central roles was a mistake as well. ADB’s writing talent goes a long way toward carrying the fairly absurd plot of The First Heretic, and how easily Lorgar is played by his demon worshipping sons.
 

Actually, this goes to the bigger point that the Heresy was a lot more interesting when there was some twisted logic to the rebellion beyond literal demonic possession and evil for the hell of it. Horus Rising tried to set up reasons for Horus to doubt what the Imperium was becoming, which False Gods follows up with “evil sword!” Granted, the evil sword was pre-existing lore, but it could have been handled much better.

Edited Wednesday at 04:19 PM by Rain

[apologist]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

the Heresy was a lot more interesting when there was some twisted logic to the rebellion beyond literal demonic possession and evil for the hell of it. Horus Rising tried to set up reasons for Horus to doubt what the Imperium was becoming, which False Gods follows up with “evil sword!”

Absolutely – I’ve always felt that the Horus Heresy made a lot more sense (and had a heck of a lot more potential) when there was more character-driven conflict and less Chaos God magic machinations. 
 

The Primarchs are great (if melodramatic!) character archetypes – showing the conflicts and exploring genuine philosophical differences through their disagreements makes for compelling stories. The best HH novels are the ones where you find yourself rooting for both sides because they’ve got strong, principled arguments, rather than ‘well, they’re Demons.’

[ThePenitentOne]

23 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

You threw samurai in there as if there weren't female samurai

 

I'm not going to wade into the extended conversation you guys are having, but I wanted to share a tangent about my favourite female Samurai, and one of my personal heroes, Tomoe Gozen. It's a tangent, so I'm putting it in a spoiler.

 

 

Tomoe is semi historical character from the Heike Monogatari. I say "semi-historical" because the details are very hard to verify- many believe that Tomoe was real, but some of the deeds attributed to her in the story are exagerated. The story, basically, is that she is a "general" under a leader named Yoshinaka. He leads an army to rescue the Emperor, who has been kidnapped by a rival leader- and he succeeds, and earns the love of the people. However, he then is put in the position of LEADING the folks whose Emperor he saved... And Yoshinaka isn't great at leading civillians- he's just a military genius.

 

So people start to dislike his rules. To make matters worse, the dudes who kidnapped the Emperor start using propaganda to incite the civillians even closer to rebellion. Yohinaka ends up retreating, fighting a series of battles against the kidnappers that reduces the size of his army until they can't possibly win. He decides to commit seppuku to deny the enemy a kill. But he insists that Tomoe leave the battle rather than dying to buy him time to get it done. Being a loyal Samurai, she'd rather die than stop fighting, but he INSISTS. So she asks his permission to make one last charge into the oncomming enemy. He grants the permission, and of course, she's hoping to die in the charge... But it doesn't happen. She identifies a leader, goes right at him. She jumps off her horse and catches him with a clothesline- but because they were both at a full gallop, she hits him hard enough to take his head off. She hits the ground rolling and comes up with sword in hand, but by then, the rest of the army has moved past her, and she is forbidden to pursue. She leaves the battlefield, cursed with the burden of outliving her master.

 

I first encountered the story while researching classical Noh theatre. There are five types of classical Noh scripts, and my favourite type is the "warrior ghost" play. There are only 15 of these scripts in existence! Tomoe's script is the only one that is about a woman. To make matters worse, there are five schools of Noh theatre, and not all of them perform every script. When I did the original research back in the aughts, I had thought that Tomoe was performed exclusively by the Kita school, but in the modern era, AI is telling me a different story.

 

Finally, the femist author Jessica Amanda Salmonson wrote a trilogy of novels about Tomoe, and I went on a 17 year pilgramage to find each of the books in the series because I didn't want to cheat and buy them online. Tomoe is also a character in Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld (which was made into a television miniseries).

 

All of this research was done so that I could write my own play about Tomoe, riffing on Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog- I finished a draft, but ultimately abandonned the project over fears of cultural appropriation and a medium mismatch- I think the project would have been better as an episodic Anime than a stage play.

 

Here endeth the tangent- if you openned the spoiler and read it, thanks for indulging me!

 

[phandaal]

My favorite Samurai is American Policeman Joe Marshall, also known as Samurai Cop. (He speaks fluent Japanese.)

 

His greatest accomplishments are the destruction of the Katana gang and his defeat of the master swordsman Yamashida.

 

Edited Thursday at 07:08 PM by phandaal

[Scribe]

On 10/15/2025 at 7:54 AM, DemonGSides said:

 

Who's original lore?  Lore quite literally changes all the time.  Space Marines used to be lead by a half elf Inquisitor; are you up in arms that the Imperium is xenophobic now?  No care about Sherlock Clouseau?  Wild.  So lore history doesn't actually matter.  It's just feels. 

 

There's a major difference here, but of course you know that already. ;)

[DemonGSides]

12 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

There's a major difference here, but of course you know that already. ;)

 

Of course; one came about nigh on 30 years ago so no one cares about it besides the 4 dudes who were into Warhammer at the time (And trust me, at least one of those guys PROBABLY does have a MAJOR problem with that shift, but that's how opinions work!) and the other is an easy hammer to bang on with wrt whichever political crusade you want.

[Magos Takatus]

Personally I think that the Custodes being turned from an elite bodyguard unit into an army wandering about through space away from the Imperial Palace is a far bigger departure than anything else. It's too late to put that cat back in the bag now that people have entire armies of golden super-elite-not-marines in their collections, however.

[Evil Eye]

I was going to post the video from Burialgoods and basically say "Retcon this to be canon" but it appears to have been bonked into oblivion by GW so I will have to put more effort into my post. Woe is me!

 

Anyway. We all know the "Why do I still live?" speech. Personally- my big change would be to move it from being woken up to after meeting the Emperor. Notably, the Emperor attempts to speak to his son- with great difficulty due to the whole "god chained to a corpse body in constant agony and guilt" thing, as per Godblight. And THEN, instead of falling to his knees in reverence... Guilliman replies. And he is not happy with his father.

 

To quote the hypothetical alternate universe Black Library book:

 

 

Quote

For a moment, Guilliman was silent, his mouth dry, his words choked behind a barricade of grief and rage.

 

Then, he spoke.

 

"Why do I still live? What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you... To THEM. Look what they've made of our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is fuelled not by reason and hope, but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus's ambition than lived to see this!"

And though he was but a mote before the Emperor, an ember in comparison to the blazing sun that was the god before him, his words cut through the Master of Mankind to His very core. All the psychic might, the soul-sacrifice and divine power in the universe could not protect Him from Guilliman's words. From the despair of a worshipper forsaken by his god. The resentment of a soldier betrayed by his commander.

 

But worst of all, the bitter anger of a son failed by his father.

Guilliman wanted to say more, but he could not. He felt himself begin to weep, a sorrow and fury ten thousand years in the making finally overcoming him. But then- something stopped him. He sensed a change in the atmosphere in the throne room. And it shocked him.

The storm of psychic energy emanating from the wretched thing on that terrible throne was changing. It was calmer now, yet more focused. The voices were silenced- and yet, they were unified in their silence. Something was different...

Then the truth dawned on him. He was not the only one weeping.

 

[TheVoidDragon]

For me it's everything about Primarchs, or more specifically the Horus Heresy and the (what to me is) negative effect it's had on 40k. So often now you see Primarchs made out to be the centre of the setting, as if it's all about them and nothing else overly matters. It feels like it's fundamentally altered a core aspect of 40k and made it seem so much smaller with there now being characters who are considered just better than everyone else. I much prefered when they were relegated to being long-gone figures from the past who were never meant to have an actual effect on the lore. 

 

On 10/15/2025 at 2:35 PM, darkhorse0607 said:

I just wish they had put more effort into the explanation rather than trying to gaslight people by saying they've always been there since they've never said they weren't there, even though there's language to imply the opposite in the novels that's been covered to death

 

"After the second Battle of Lion's gate they needed to rapidly replenish their numbers for the Crusade, so when Guilliman talks to the Emperor at their meeting, he tells him how to get Cawl to be able enhance the conversion process between baseline human and Custodes, so now gender isn't an important factor when selecting canidates"

 

It would be that easy

 

But they chose the lazy way. That's what bugs me

 

 

They chose the way they've always done things. The very same way basically every bit of lore over the past 30 years has been done; a retcon.  They haven't "tried to gaslight" anyone at all, and thinking so comes across as either a weird double standard where for some reason this specific retcon is a huge issue but others weren't, or  just being oblivious to what they've added and changed over the years. Do you think it was "gaslighting" to have Genestealers be changed to being Tyranids all along despite originally being seperate? The Leagues of Votann existing? The Necrons being changed to the Newcron version? Space Marines being genetically engineered warriors? Primarchs being demi-god heroes rather than ordinary human generals? Zoats being a thing, then gone, then back again? "Custodes have stayed On terra for 10,000 years" being the lore for years, until suddenly it was "Actually have have gone out quite a few time" to have them show up in 40k?40k lore operates on retcons. Things are one way, until suddenly they're just different because they've changed the lore. Operating like that has been a fundamental part of the setting for entire time it's existed and without them, we wouldn't even have 40k as we know it.  

 

The comment from GW wasn't saying "They've always been like this! Did you not notice all the lore about them?!", but instead "From within the setting, they were always there and aren't some new thing that showed up later". 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

Custodes should have remained all male. 

 

If they were already all female do you think GW would have retconned them to have always been male Custodes knocking about too? Of course not.

 

@Kaede45 I actually like Erebus. I like having characters with depth of course. But it is also refreshing to have the odd character who is unapologetically leaning into thier trope.