In one of the least-anticipated turnarounds in Warhammer 40k lore, Adeptus Custodes wearing nothing but helmets, cloaks, and leather underwear are once again canon. The Custodes’ made their debut in this exposing uniform in the first edition of 40k, Rogue Trader, and thanks to an Aaron Dembski-Bowden short story, they’re part of the lore once more.
All but the oldest Warhammer 40k fans are likely to have encountered these underdressed posthumans via Bruva Alfabusa’s comedy fan animation series ‘If The Emperor Had a Text To Speech Device’, which introduced three oiled-up, power-posing Fabulous Custodes, based on the over-muscled Pillar Men from the manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
The Fabulous Custodes are a memed up take on the first Adeptus Custodes model, the Imperial Bodyguard, and its matching artwork from the original Rogue Trader rulebook.
The original Custodes were not the pinnacle of posthuman engineering we know today, just soldiers. They wore “leather breeches and boots with a long black cloak over naked torso”, plus their all-enclosing helmets.
YouTuber Arbiter Ian does a great job tracing the development of the Custodes’ armor style over the many decades from that original Rogue Trader description to their emergence as a full Warhammer 40k faction. Custodes were shown wearing armor as early as 1993, in John Blanche’s artwork of the Golden Throne in the Warhammer 40k second edition rulebook.
But the time of the near-naked Custodes has come again, in the short story ‘The Carrion Lord of the Imperium’. This is the last tale in the most recent Horus Heresy book, ‘Era of Ruin‘, which charts the dying hours and immediate aftermath of that apocalyptic conflict. The Carrion Lord of the Imperium is a series of letters and memories from the Custodian Tribune Diocletian Coros, recounting pivotal moments before and after the Heresy.
It includes the detail that after the Emperor’s fatal wounding and interment in the Golden Throne, Diocletian – and all the Hetaeron Guard, the Emperor’s inner circle – renounced their golden armor. They were “naked, but for their cloaks, loin cloths, and black helms”. It was a symbolic gesture, marking their shame at having failed the Emperor.
It fits in unobtrusively to a very poignant story, giving some rather silly old lore a genuine dramatic purpose. Classic Aaron Dembski-Bowden, really.
If you want to untangle the twisted development of Warhammer 40k lore, come and join me in the Wargamer Discord community; it’s a fun place to hang out with lots of activity. The next big event will be a live AMA with indie wargame designer Joe McCullough, the man behind Frostgrave, on Thursday September 11.
All the people writing Warhammer 40k books share a deep love of 40k lore and the history of the game, and often uses this to create incredible deep cut references. My favorite is in Nate Crowley’s ‘Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!’, in which he gives a fully consistent explanation for why Ghazghkull’s banner waving grot Makari died at the start of the third war for Armageddon but was alive again after the fall of Cadia, corresponding with the release of a new Makari model – and it’s not just that he was replaced with a new grot with the same name.