Changes

This aspect of the Custodian mindset is advantageous, given that the '''Captain-General''' often shares a seat with the [[High Lords of Terra]], which thus allows them to navigate the political manoeuvrings of the Imperium's various agencies, while still remaining an awe-inspiring warrior.{{Fn|22e}}

The Custodes do not consider themselves soldiers. Rather, they see themselves as the guardians of the Emperor. Not just the guardians of his physical form but also his ideals and what the species was meant to become. As such they are also scholars, artisans, and counsellors in addition to being trained rigorously in the art of combat.{{Fn|22b}}

==Biology & Recruitment==

The source of the [[gene-seed]] of the Custodes is a mysterious issue, if indeed they even ''have'' something similar enough to [[space marine]]s for the term "gene-seed" to have meaning. Some say that the Custodian Guard are to the Emperor what the Space Marines are to the Primarchs - that the Emperor's own genetic matrix was used in their creation and through this, their loyalty to him is assured.{{Fn|14a}} Others argue that the Custodians are not like the Emperor in the way that a Space Marine is like his Primarch, and that some other source was used as a template for their physical and psychological form, a source that was lost during the anarchy of the Age of Strife.{{Fn|12}} Recent sources, however, seem to firmly establish that the Custodes were created from the flesh and blood of the Emperor himself. {{Fn|19}} The genetic enhancement that forms the Custodes is different from and predates that developed to create the [[Space Marines]].{{Fn|3}} Each Custodian is a unique work of art, the product of genetic lore collected over many lifetimes.{{Fn|15b}}