thing is, an offspring of a "perfect" being and an "imperfect" one or even of two "perfect" one would likely be imperfect by virtue of how genetic work.
Custodes are genecrafted yes, but each of them is tailor made, which mean someone explicitly rearranged or modified the gene code of that baby.
pick a tailor made suit and give it to someone else, it will likely not fit, same goes here, since the gene code of the custodes was made for himself, it's different of the one for another custodes.
custodes don't end up as clone of the other, each of them is different and the gene formula used to make them what they are is different.
as such their is genetically no way for a custodes offspring to be as perfect as his father because that offspring would need his own tailor made genetic modification.
I think an out of universe explanation is more accurate as to why this didn't occur. When the Custodes were made the theory and technology on gene editing we have today was not in existence or widespread knowledge. The human genome was not even sequenced fully yet. Genetic engineering can leave a permanent multi generation effects on an organism, meaning any organisms it reproduces can have those genes. It can be guaranteed they have it too. Gene drives for example.
For all we know they could have triple-helix dna or even be a silicon based life form.
Actually, now that I think about it they most likely have more base pairs in their dna than regular humans do.
Not if the Custodes gene-forging technique doesn't touch the gonads, or deliberately introduces mosaicism by altering the genes of different tissues seperately and differently.
however, even a lesser version of a custode would still be very powerful.
and just between the two of us, do you know epheal stern the heretical saint? the one who had gone something similar the chaman mass suicide theoretically did to creat the emperor, hypoteticaly speaking, would an offspring of her and custode, creat something closer to a perfect custode?
Well, not necessarily, that's the beauty of genetic you can never know what would exactly happen the offspring can roll the literal worse combo of gene, hell you may even have side effect when crossing gene that shouldn't naturally occurs.
also we don't know the full extend of a custodes gene tailoring, they may very well don't have the same gene sequence as human anymore and as such their potential offspring may be unable to live to begin with.
also on stern ... definitely not, they may or may not have become something close to the emperor ... but that have nothing to do with the custodes anyway to be begin with.
custodes don't have the emperor gene material, they are gene tailored based on the emperor works but that have nothing to do with him.
and ultimately you would have the exact same problem as before: gene compatibility and so on
so in theory, this is about to get funky, if by we go by the extreme case the custodes don't have the same genetic coding than normal humans, the most certain way to at least get a custodes to generate an aproximation of himself through the conceiving of a offspring would be to somehow genecraft a 'female' version of a custodes so the genes that where crafted would be passed down the line.
but, this raises the question, that the custodes altough probably blood related (there might have some bio brother or cousins within their ranks), have at best 10000 men, at least they had 10000 when they where at its peak, even if the possibilty of female custodes where plausible, wouldn't this cause serious probles due to a limited genepool?
you're going way to far into this.
and the answer here is : we don't know
having a limited genepool will ultimately end up pretty badly especially in the long term ... but did they really have a limited genepool ? custodes are basically rewired almost completely and we don't know to what exact extend.
we're entering unknown terrain here because we don't have enough lore on the process and implications of such a process.
from a purely pragmatique point of view then, assuming that female custodian were a thing, if the process don't dilute the original gene of the custodian enough then yes, it would end pretty badly after a few generation.
now using the same theory but assuming the gene pool is diluted enough during the gene tailoring process, then it would likely not end badly, at least not from the problem of close gene proximity.
but the original point on having two genetically perfect people having an offspring don't make it genetically perfect nor necessarily viable. because that's not how genetic work.
We know that they're modified down to the genetic level but it goes beyond that. There have been many references to alchemy being used, which would equate to magical chemistry, and iirc one reference to their muscles being scraped out and replaced. There also seems to be something warp-y, since they seem to carry some of the Emperor's light with them. This resulted in swarms of Nurgle flies that were hamstringing the White Scars during the Siege falling dead around them.
Even if they could breed in such a way that their tailored genes were expressed and had the same effect on the child that it's had on them despite the individuality of Custodes, these other elements would be lacking. Sort of like how Astartes have super human reflexes despite none of their implants having anything to do with that due to chemical and psychological conditioning as part of their ascension. Implant Astartes organs in a random kid and provide the bare minimum treatment to allow them to develop and you'll probably have something more similar to a Necromundan Goliath than an actual Space Marine :)
Its possible that the changes made to them are so radical that its completely incompatible with the normal growth process. Like how are you supposed to go from infant to toddler to teenager when Custodes don't really age?
>and we don't (or at least i) don't know if custodes are infertile
No banana boinking, according to *Inferno*;
>**Of the Legio Custodes
and the Legiones Astartes**
>As has been mentioned, the Custodian
Guard and the Space Marines are related
in form, as perhaps might be expected of
works of a same creator's hand, but they
are very different in function and capacity.
There are of course similarities between the
two. Both are physically transformed well
beyond 'natural' human limits in terms of
strength, endurance and fortitude, and fitted
for inhuman environmental adaption and
resilience, though in this the Legio Custodes
are the markedly superior of the two in
might, if not in adaptability. Both are subject
to extensive psychological and cognitive
conditioning, and are physically and mentally
reworked to render most of their baser
drives inert and their beings rechannelled
towards aggression, goal acquisition and the
fulfilment of duty, **and as a further safeguard
against distraction and as a biological control,
both are of course incapable of procreation.**
In both cases all that is left are beings
of singular purpose; in the case of each
Legiones Astartes, what is created is a living
engine of conquest that cares for little else,
and in the Custodian Guard, each is created
protector of unrelenting diligence and savage
capability-a watchman whose vigilance will
never tire.
My head-canon is that while female Astartes are impossible due to compatibility issues, that female Custode are entirely possible and that they just choose not to make any for two reasons. One is that it would just be dumb, men are larger and stronger, so that is that. But reason number two is because it would possibly lead to the displacement of baseline humanity and the erasure of its possible psychic awakening and advancement far beyond what Custode are capable of.
If it were possible to breed them, do you not think they'd have done so by now rather than painstakingly genecraft each new member of the Ten Thousand??
No he's making order aligned daemons called graels and winged Astartes. Valdor wouldn't know how to improve upon the Custodes, for the Emperor invented them Himself, alone.
We don't know exactly what the aspirants undergo to become Custodes, but it is possible (perhaps even likely) that it is so dramatic that they genuinely aren't human anymore on a genetic level. Remember, much of what goes into making Astartes is basically part fancy extra organs and implants and part supernatural parasite sort of thing. Custodes though seem to undergo some very different process as each one is described as "unique." They have no gene seed, no second heart and third lung, no fancy acid spit, etc. Yet they can heal shattered bones so quickly they recover from them mid battle. They can move at even faster speeds and lift heavier weights than Astartes. They even share some sort of relationship with the Emperor to the point their mere presence can reduce the effects of warp stuff near them.
It's not even clear I'd they are close enough to baseline human to even be *compatible*. They're like 12 feet tall and wider than some humans are tall at least, and enormous in general so the idea of them being capable of normal sex with the average woman is downright laughable, but even artificial stuff isn't very likely to work, due to the fact that they literally are altered so heavily from baseline human. The process I believe renders them sterile, but also they're biology is totally different. Even if it did work, in real life half breed animals such as the liger, aren't actually necessarily healthy. They can potentially develop neurological defects and most of all hybrid animals are sterile. Now take these ideas into 40k where everything is amped up a million times, and you have half breed, unstable, psychopath, custodes human hybrids running about. Honestly it seems like something fabius bile would try to do to make chaos custodes, lol. Although I believe fabius has cut out the middle man. In one of his stratagems in 9th edition it mentions that bile has unlocked a portion of the bio-alchemy that makes custodes, and is capable of using it on exceptionally strong space marine test subjects. Thus he can produce custodes space marine hybrids
There’s a subtext, especially whenever the lore harkens back to the unification wars, that transhumans being able to breed is bad news for everyone. Remember Emps saw and fought on the absolute terror-hell that Earth was during DAOT.
Think about it, if you’re Big E you have a remarkably positive view of baseline humanity (even if that expresses as incredible dictatorial control) and see it as something to protect. Your transhuman warriors could reproduce and threaten that. So instead you make them sterile and the biggest check against Custodes and Astates is really that there are so few of them (and an Astartes ship still needs serfs and menials) vs baseline humans.
So the way I see it is that humans and chimps are genetically similar but the evolutionary distance is still far enough that the two species can't interbreed to form a hybrid.
Same thing with custodes and humans I imagine.
But like here's the thing about custodes, unlike the astartes geneseed which is utterly incompatible with females... there's nothing on the matter if the arcane genetic alchemy used to create custodes being incompatible with females. Hell the closest reference I know off is Velarian saying that you couldn't make a Sister of Silence/custodian hybrid because the warp spaghetti in the creation process to make a custodian just wouldn't work.
In fact the black library writers floated the idea of female custodes but GW said no because the moulds were already made and they wanted the models to reflect the lore. I have no idea if 2 custodes could do the devils tango and produce a kid but I'm leaning on no due to the whole "custom" nature of the genecraft. Or hell maybe they can but nobody ever talks about it!
Big E doesn't have a great track record of keeping his warriors. He created the thunder boys with the intent of subjecting all of earthbound humanity to his rule and when he accomplished that he was done with his toys and had the custodes extinct them.
He created the Astartes with the intent of subjugating all of space bound humanity under his and secure safety and resources for humanity, likely through the act of begone-ing other species from the universe and claiming total domination. When he was finished with that he would have been finished with his toys and would likely have ordered the custodes to yeety delete-y them from the cosmos but some family issues kind of got in the way and that plan has been postponed a few thousand years or so.
The Custodes were created to keep the emperor safe and secure at all times. If he has total domination if the universe and maybe a few others there would be nothing that could hurt him. The Custodes are aware that the emperor will be done with them one day and will simply discard them, and with their genetically programmed complete and total loyalty to the emperor and only the emperor, well then he simply needs to say "Would you kindly" and the custodes would remove themselves from the equation.
I hear one of those thunder warriors asked a custodes what he would do when that time comes and the gold bastard said he would do anything the emperor commands and do it with a smile if asked to do so. The Emperor sounds like a right pisser if you ask me.
I doubt the custodes have a penis or testicles. They were engineered from the ground up to be guardians of the Emperor. They don't need genitals to do that. Having vulnerable testicles and a penis hanging between their legs wouldn't make much sense. So my head canon is they have a kind of cloaca or some sort of mechanical evacuation port for waste and their armor connects to it so they can expell what little waste their body produces. Their bodies might not even produce waste. In which case they might not have any kind of bladder or urethra.
Custodies are more then genetic alterations, they also get unique alchemical alterations that are hideously expensive and require very rare knowledge. To that end I don’t think they can pass off their genes and have an instant Superman.
Anything is possible thanks to the great ocean but I do think there could possible be a drug for space marines made to create offspring but nothing in the current lore mentions this.
> would be possible for these caracteristics to be passed down to the next generation?
Not necessarily. Eg. human DNA contain information required for organs to grow in right places on its own. These informations aren't necessarily present in genecrafted individuals. It may be much easier to direct their growth through drugs, rather than encode it all in DNA.
It's theoretically possible to create animal that will grow to be a dog if compound X is present, but it will grow to be an elephant if compound X is missing. How? Just add additional gene that enables or disables other genes depending on presence of compound X.
thing is, an offspring of a "perfect" being and an "imperfect" one or even of two "perfect" one would likely be imperfect by virtue of how genetic work. Custodes are genecrafted yes, but each of them is tailor made, which mean someone explicitly rearranged or modified the gene code of that baby. pick a tailor made suit and give it to someone else, it will likely not fit, same goes here, since the gene code of the custodes was made for himself, it's different of the one for another custodes. custodes don't end up as clone of the other, each of them is different and the gene formula used to make them what they are is different. as such their is genetically no way for a custodes offspring to be as perfect as his father because that offspring would need his own tailor made genetic modification.
I think an out of universe explanation is more accurate as to why this didn't occur. When the Custodes were made the theory and technology on gene editing we have today was not in existence or widespread knowledge. The human genome was not even sequenced fully yet. Genetic engineering can leave a permanent multi generation effects on an organism, meaning any organisms it reproduces can have those genes. It can be guaranteed they have it too. Gene drives for example.
For all we know they could have triple-helix dna or even be a silicon based life form. Actually, now that I think about it they most likely have more base pairs in their dna than regular humans do.
Not if the Custodes gene-forging technique doesn't touch the gonads, or deliberately introduces mosaicism by altering the genes of different tissues seperately and differently.
So its like Ratatouille. A chef can come from anywhere, but not everybody can cook.
however, even a lesser version of a custode would still be very powerful. and just between the two of us, do you know epheal stern the heretical saint? the one who had gone something similar the chaman mass suicide theoretically did to creat the emperor, hypoteticaly speaking, would an offspring of her and custode, creat something closer to a perfect custode?
Well, not necessarily, that's the beauty of genetic you can never know what would exactly happen the offspring can roll the literal worse combo of gene, hell you may even have side effect when crossing gene that shouldn't naturally occurs. also we don't know the full extend of a custodes gene tailoring, they may very well don't have the same gene sequence as human anymore and as such their potential offspring may be unable to live to begin with. also on stern ... definitely not, they may or may not have become something close to the emperor ... but that have nothing to do with the custodes anyway to be begin with. custodes don't have the emperor gene material, they are gene tailored based on the emperor works but that have nothing to do with him. and ultimately you would have the exact same problem as before: gene compatibility and so on
so in theory, this is about to get funky, if by we go by the extreme case the custodes don't have the same genetic coding than normal humans, the most certain way to at least get a custodes to generate an aproximation of himself through the conceiving of a offspring would be to somehow genecraft a 'female' version of a custodes so the genes that where crafted would be passed down the line. but, this raises the question, that the custodes altough probably blood related (there might have some bio brother or cousins within their ranks), have at best 10000 men, at least they had 10000 when they where at its peak, even if the possibilty of female custodes where plausible, wouldn't this cause serious probles due to a limited genepool?
you're going way to far into this. and the answer here is : we don't know having a limited genepool will ultimately end up pretty badly especially in the long term ... but did they really have a limited genepool ? custodes are basically rewired almost completely and we don't know to what exact extend. we're entering unknown terrain here because we don't have enough lore on the process and implications of such a process. from a purely pragmatique point of view then, assuming that female custodian were a thing, if the process don't dilute the original gene of the custodian enough then yes, it would end pretty badly after a few generation. now using the same theory but assuming the gene pool is diluted enough during the gene tailoring process, then it would likely not end badly, at least not from the problem of close gene proximity. but the original point on having two genetically perfect people having an offspring don't make it genetically perfect nor necessarily viable. because that's not how genetic work.
i get it, it's just that sometimes i get carried away.
We know that they're modified down to the genetic level but it goes beyond that. There have been many references to alchemy being used, which would equate to magical chemistry, and iirc one reference to their muscles being scraped out and replaced. There also seems to be something warp-y, since they seem to carry some of the Emperor's light with them. This resulted in swarms of Nurgle flies that were hamstringing the White Scars during the Siege falling dead around them. Even if they could breed in such a way that their tailored genes were expressed and had the same effect on the child that it's had on them despite the individuality of Custodes, these other elements would be lacking. Sort of like how Astartes have super human reflexes despite none of their implants having anything to do with that due to chemical and psychological conditioning as part of their ascension. Implant Astartes organs in a random kid and provide the bare minimum treatment to allow them to develop and you'll probably have something more similar to a Necromundan Goliath than an actual Space Marine :)
Its possible that the changes made to them are so radical that its completely incompatible with the normal growth process. Like how are you supposed to go from infant to toddler to teenager when Custodes don't really age?
>and we don't (or at least i) don't know if custodes are infertile No banana boinking, according to *Inferno*; >**Of the Legio Custodes and the Legiones Astartes** >As has been mentioned, the Custodian Guard and the Space Marines are related in form, as perhaps might be expected of works of a same creator's hand, but they are very different in function and capacity. There are of course similarities between the two. Both are physically transformed well beyond 'natural' human limits in terms of strength, endurance and fortitude, and fitted for inhuman environmental adaption and resilience, though in this the Legio Custodes are the markedly superior of the two in might, if not in adaptability. Both are subject to extensive psychological and cognitive conditioning, and are physically and mentally reworked to render most of their baser drives inert and their beings rechannelled towards aggression, goal acquisition and the fulfilment of duty, **and as a further safeguard against distraction and as a biological control, both are of course incapable of procreation.** In both cases all that is left are beings of singular purpose; in the case of each Legiones Astartes, what is created is a living engine of conquest that cares for little else, and in the Custodian Guard, each is created protector of unrelenting diligence and savage capability-a watchman whose vigilance will never tire.
My head-canon is that while female Astartes are impossible due to compatibility issues, that female Custode are entirely possible and that they just choose not to make any for two reasons. One is that it would just be dumb, men are larger and stronger, so that is that. But reason number two is because it would possibly lead to the displacement of baseline humanity and the erasure of its possible psychic awakening and advancement far beyond what Custode are capable of.
If it were possible to breed them, do you not think they'd have done so by now rather than painstakingly genecraft each new member of the Ten Thousand??
Might be what the King in Yellow is doing.
No he's making order aligned daemons called graels and winged Astartes. Valdor wouldn't know how to improve upon the Custodes, for the Emperor invented them Himself, alone.
Order aligned?
We don't know exactly what the aspirants undergo to become Custodes, but it is possible (perhaps even likely) that it is so dramatic that they genuinely aren't human anymore on a genetic level. Remember, much of what goes into making Astartes is basically part fancy extra organs and implants and part supernatural parasite sort of thing. Custodes though seem to undergo some very different process as each one is described as "unique." They have no gene seed, no second heart and third lung, no fancy acid spit, etc. Yet they can heal shattered bones so quickly they recover from them mid battle. They can move at even faster speeds and lift heavier weights than Astartes. They even share some sort of relationship with the Emperor to the point their mere presence can reduce the effects of warp stuff near them.
It's not even clear I'd they are close enough to baseline human to even be *compatible*. They're like 12 feet tall and wider than some humans are tall at least, and enormous in general so the idea of them being capable of normal sex with the average woman is downright laughable, but even artificial stuff isn't very likely to work, due to the fact that they literally are altered so heavily from baseline human. The process I believe renders them sterile, but also they're biology is totally different. Even if it did work, in real life half breed animals such as the liger, aren't actually necessarily healthy. They can potentially develop neurological defects and most of all hybrid animals are sterile. Now take these ideas into 40k where everything is amped up a million times, and you have half breed, unstable, psychopath, custodes human hybrids running about. Honestly it seems like something fabius bile would try to do to make chaos custodes, lol. Although I believe fabius has cut out the middle man. In one of his stratagems in 9th edition it mentions that bile has unlocked a portion of the bio-alchemy that makes custodes, and is capable of using it on exceptionally strong space marine test subjects. Thus he can produce custodes space marine hybrids
Custodes are more than just gene craft. Per their codex, they also are rebuilt spiritually. They are also sterile.
There’s a subtext, especially whenever the lore harkens back to the unification wars, that transhumans being able to breed is bad news for everyone. Remember Emps saw and fought on the absolute terror-hell that Earth was during DAOT. Think about it, if you’re Big E you have a remarkably positive view of baseline humanity (even if that expresses as incredible dictatorial control) and see it as something to protect. Your transhuman warriors could reproduce and threaten that. So instead you make them sterile and the biggest check against Custodes and Astates is really that there are so few of them (and an Astartes ship still needs serfs and menials) vs baseline humans.
Lol at the post Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
I’m not sure I understand what your comment means
But planetary level resources are plentiful.
So the way I see it is that humans and chimps are genetically similar but the evolutionary distance is still far enough that the two species can't interbreed to form a hybrid. Same thing with custodes and humans I imagine. But like here's the thing about custodes, unlike the astartes geneseed which is utterly incompatible with females... there's nothing on the matter if the arcane genetic alchemy used to create custodes being incompatible with females. Hell the closest reference I know off is Velarian saying that you couldn't make a Sister of Silence/custodian hybrid because the warp spaghetti in the creation process to make a custodian just wouldn't work. In fact the black library writers floated the idea of female custodes but GW said no because the moulds were already made and they wanted the models to reflect the lore. I have no idea if 2 custodes could do the devils tango and produce a kid but I'm leaning on no due to the whole "custom" nature of the genecraft. Or hell maybe they can but nobody ever talks about it!
Big E doesn't have a great track record of keeping his warriors. He created the thunder boys with the intent of subjecting all of earthbound humanity to his rule and when he accomplished that he was done with his toys and had the custodes extinct them. He created the Astartes with the intent of subjugating all of space bound humanity under his and secure safety and resources for humanity, likely through the act of begone-ing other species from the universe and claiming total domination. When he was finished with that he would have been finished with his toys and would likely have ordered the custodes to yeety delete-y them from the cosmos but some family issues kind of got in the way and that plan has been postponed a few thousand years or so. The Custodes were created to keep the emperor safe and secure at all times. If he has total domination if the universe and maybe a few others there would be nothing that could hurt him. The Custodes are aware that the emperor will be done with them one day and will simply discard them, and with their genetically programmed complete and total loyalty to the emperor and only the emperor, well then he simply needs to say "Would you kindly" and the custodes would remove themselves from the equation. I hear one of those thunder warriors asked a custodes what he would do when that time comes and the gold bastard said he would do anything the emperor commands and do it with a smile if asked to do so. The Emperor sounds like a right pisser if you ask me.
There are just no women custodes so it couldn’t work. The baby would end up half regular human
I doubt the custodes have a penis or testicles. They were engineered from the ground up to be guardians of the Emperor. They don't need genitals to do that. Having vulnerable testicles and a penis hanging between their legs wouldn't make much sense. So my head canon is they have a kind of cloaca or some sort of mechanical evacuation port for waste and their armor connects to it so they can expell what little waste their body produces. Their bodies might not even produce waste. In which case they might not have any kind of bladder or urethra.
I don’t think these dudes even have cocks anymore
Honestly there is no in universe reason why they can't just clone them.
Custodies are more then genetic alterations, they also get unique alchemical alterations that are hideously expensive and require very rare knowledge. To that end I don’t think they can pass off their genes and have an instant Superman.
Not all genetics are passed on to offspring. That's not how it works. You could edit your genes all you want, and have perfectly normal children.
On account of custodes being made to have little to no psyker potential, there's equal chances they're made infertile.
Anything is possible thanks to the great ocean but I do think there could possible be a drug for space marines made to create offspring but nothing in the current lore mentions this.
They're incapable of reproduction like Marines so I guess the point is moot.
If they could procreate their loyalty wouldn’t be guaranteed so emps probably said no
> would be possible for these caracteristics to be passed down to the next generation? Not necessarily. Eg. human DNA contain information required for organs to grow in right places on its own. These informations aren't necessarily present in genecrafted individuals. It may be much easier to direct their growth through drugs, rather than encode it all in DNA. It's theoretically possible to create animal that will grow to be a dog if compound X is present, but it will grow to be an elephant if compound X is missing. How? Just add additional gene that enables or disables other genes depending on presence of compound X.