The Emperor's personal guardians, each individually crafted and far beyond an ordinary Space Marine. They have watched over the Golden Throne since the Unification Wars and only recently began to range beyond Terra again in large numbers.
4 units. Jump to: Troops · Elites. See also the Adeptus Custodes faction page and its characters.
Tower of Hegemon & Shadowkeepers Vault Dossier
Unlike the Adeptus Astartes, whose mass-produced gene-seed relies on nineteen surgical organ implants at adolescence, every Custodian is a bespoke bio-alchemical masterwork begun in infancy from the infant nobility of Terra. Their cellular re-engineering occurs at the molecular and spiritual level, leaving no Magnus-carapace or Betcher's Gland, but weaving auramite-compatible neural pathways and an innate psychic aegis that renders a Custodian virtually immune to daemonic possession or warp-mutation.
Within the Tower of Hegemon, the Ten Thousand maintain the 'Eyes of the Emperor'—veterans whose reflexes have slowed by a tenth of a millisecond over centuries of service. Surrendering their guardian spears and auramite plate, these solitary giants vanish into the galaxy in hooded cloaks, running vast, clandestine spy networks that feed threat warnings directly to the Captain-General via encrypted tight-beam astropathy.
Sub-Factions, Secret Orders & Classified Relics
- The Shadowkeepers (Warders of the Dark Cells) — Clad in black-lacquered auramite, they guard the subterranean Dark Cells beneath the Imperial Palace where horrors from Old Night that even the Emperor could not destroy are locked in runic stasis.
- The Solar Watch (Sworn Guardians of the Throneworld's Sphere) — White-and-gold Shield-Hosts maintaining rapid-strike void-cruisers across the Sol System's Mandeville points.
- The Dread Host (Instrument of the Emperor's Wrath) — Three Sanctuary-Ships carrying ratusan Allarus Terminators and Venerable Contemptors who unleash sudden, apocalyptic teleportation strikes across the galaxy.
