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Warhammer 40K Lore Discussion
- Thread starter ObsidianJones
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Eh, I gave up on the lore sometime around 1993. Adding a few shards of broken glass to a mixture that is already 50% sewage and used needles doesn't make much difference to me.
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Personally the Space Marines being all male was always a lot more justifiable to me than the Custodes. They're mass produced products in a time where the Emperor prioritized speed above all things. Reworking the geneseed to work on both men and women is not something he would have wanted to exert effort. That's a good enough reason for me, compared to the basically non existent explanation of why Custodians and Sisters of Silence aren't coed.
As to the transhumans being asexual, that's fair I guess. But specifically for the Custodes, given that the Emperor supposedly intended for them to be the next step of humanity, it would be weird if he wanted to just cast aside biological sex. Something something purity of human DNA something something death to all mutants. I just don't see asexuality as the "peak" of humanity.
There were a fair few people making jokes about "Brothers of Quiet", like it was "revenge" for female Custodes. Frankly, male Sisters of Silence make a lot more sense than even Custodians, especially in Era Indomnitus.
Sure: that's the sensible, logical argument. Unfortunately, the sensible, logical argument has very little sway in the face of the incoherent rage of sectors of fandom.
If technology can biologically engineer a baseline male into a transhuman space marine, there's no reason tech can't biologically engineer a baseline woman into a transhuman space marine. On the other hand, accepted 40K lore has much more shut down the latter in the setting, and that increases resistance. It could easily be put into plot: someone rediscovers an ancient, lost, research project that accomplished this, or the head boffins of the empire discover a way to make the necessary adjustments to existing tech they have. It's not like this would be some particularly weird and egregious novelty by the standard of game lore or comics, etc.
I don't think female space marines will happen for a good, long while yet.
Were the Custodes intended to the be next step of humanity? I think maybe they set a standard to aspire to, but they themselves lacked a lot of things that the Emperor would've wanted.
First of all they are still artificial transhumans incapable of sexual reproduction. If they could sexually reproduce they wouldn't bother with Space Marines and the painstaking cost of hand crafting every individual new Custodes.
They seem to lack any psychic potential, and the Emperor seemed to have wanted to usher humanity into a psychic ascension phase.
Ah yes, that's what I meant. The Custodes are meant to resemble humanity at its peak, but I don't think the Emperor wanted to literally make every human into Custodes. So if humanity is meant to aspire to be them, it wouldn't make sense for Custodes to look (too) inhuman. From what I recall, Custodes are different from Space Marines in that they can still be called beautiful by human standards. I mean androgyny can be beautiful but given that Custodes are all unique, having both male and female forms of beauty makes sense to me.
As for the psyker aspect, yeah honestly I am still quite confused about that. I have seen it mentioned that the Emperor wanted humanity to unlock it's psychic potential, but I always thought that the point of the webway project was to end reliance on psykers/navigators.
Really ? I always thought, increased psychic abilities in humans with time was just something inevitable. And that the emperor was rather lukewarm towards it, as shown with the whole Thousand Sons debacle.
One of the fun fan theories is that the Custodes were supposed to do to the Space Marines what the Space Marines did to the Thunder Warriors: after the Space Marines exhausted themselves taking back the Galaxy, the Custodes were supposed to wipe out the survivors and be Thunder Warriors mk 3
But, the marines were in massive numbers, had their own fleets and worlds and never stopped recruiting more members.
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Yeah, people complaining that it doesn't work with the in-universe tech seems incredibly silly to me. Like they can manipulate genetics but can't deal with a 1 chromosome difference? Really?
If they wanted an excuse to exclude females it's as simple as saying "it's a male dominated fascist society and they wouldn't want to integrate women because of tradition" which would be accurate to the universe. They don't have to try and pull lore reasons out of their ass. The Imperium in 40K isn't meant to be aspirational, so them being exclusionary bigots would make sense.
Eh, did they actually ever say there weren't female Custodians? I mean, male only marines has been a thing for ages, but I don't recall them ever going into that detail with custodes.
(Also, having male primarchs seems a tad odd, as they weren't intended to reproduce sexually, were they?)
(Also, having male primarchs seems a tad odd, as they weren't intended to reproduce sexually, were they?)
Depends on who you ask. Lore consistency has never been 40k's strong suit. Theoretically, they were all sucking on fumes until the Primaris showed up because their replacement capped out at 2:1 in absolutely ideal conditions
Yes and no. A couple lines in previous codex's said "It is known" that a lot of the high born houses of Terra give up a lot of their sons as infant prospects, there weren't female ones detailed before, and they only ever used male nouns and pronouns (with a fluff writer saying it's because the model guys didn't make girls ones at the time), but the actual creation process is never detailed in any way outside of having exacting demands and including high-level alchemy, and quite frankly the imperium "knows" a lot of stuff that just isn't true
So there was never any fluff reason for why not, they were just off screen to the left the entire time, you just missed them
I meant before the Heresy, "modern" stuff doesn't really have much to do with the Emperor's original plans. And you don't need to wait until he marine dies to harvest their geneseed, according to some fluff, it can develop and then be removed prior to that, and they grow more. And you can implant them into vat grown humans for the sole purpose of making more, not making more marines, again according to some fluff. But not all, of course.
I mean, the Emperor dying kinda put a stop to all of his plans. Still, wouldn't've been the first time be replaced his genetically enhanced super-soldiers with better genetically enhanced super soldiers.
Oh sure, but if that was the plan, by the time everything fell apart that wasn't close to being on the table.
Never said it was a short term plan. Emps was building a webway portal in his living room because logistics were becoming a problem and he wasn't even close to purging the galaxy
From what I've heard, female Space Marines ARE possible technology-wise, but the Emperor didn't bother further exploring it because he was running after time. So the only reason we don't have female Space Marines today is because if anyone were to try researching into it in "modern" 40K, they'd be condemned as heretechs and no one would ever trust these new Space Marines.
That said, Primaris happened, so... I guess the biggest issue GW would have is justifying them. The Primaris were a counterweight to the Great Rift and other major xenos threats. But for majority of SM chapters, recruitment is hardly an issue. What problem or threat are female Space Marines going to address?
There is that theory that the rivalries and hostilities between different legions were intentional, so that once the Crusade was finished, the Space Marines would turn on themselves (like they basically did) and I suppose the Custodes were left to mop them up. But given The End and the Death books, the theory probably holds less water. Emps seemed like he genuinely trusted his Astartes to safeguard the Imperium.
I'm personally fine with this, but I think GW wouldn't dare stir the hornet's nest and the people wanting female SMs and whatever will definitely not shut up about it.
I'm not against inclusivity and representation, but at the same time there's a time and place for it. Part of the fun of 40k is representing humanity at its absolute worst. Are we not allowed to portray fictional whatever-ists these days?
I do feel like all the arguments surrounding female Space Marines tends not to be about the lore or whether it makes sense in the context of the setting, but really more about real life issues which I rather just.... not have seeping into my long running fictionlands.
And it's not like 40k doesn't have female representation, there's plenty of interesting and important female characters about the place but people are strangely fixated on the gender representation of the Space Marines.
Originally it was all about sci-fi dystopian parody, but a lot of later stuff (especially the books) is about noble heroes fighting off evil. Meshing those two together hasn't been great, as a rule.
What I liked about Rogue Trader in its initial form, and it took a few decades for a forum user here, Gethsemane I think, to put it into words for me, was that humanity had basically won. There was no great existential threat. No chaos, Tyranids were a minor footnote, orks were a nuisance, no tau, no necrons, dark eldar kind of existed as a vague concept as eldar raiders. And life was still terrible, the galaxy was still a shit hole, because it was run by us.