Games Workshop Is Lastly Making Feminine Custodes Fashions

On Friday, Games Workshop unveiled new fashions for Warhammer 40K, and in doing so, made historical past for the tabletop recreation.

During the “New Year Preview” livestream, the corporate confirmed off a variety of fashions for the Legio and Adeptus Custodes, a few of which featured female-presenting heads. It’s a marked departure from earlier Custodes fashions, which have all the time given male-presenting heads to the Emperor of Man’s private guard.

Warhammer 40K’s feminine equal to the Custodes has all the time been the Sisters of Silence, first launched in 40K’s Seventh Edition again in 2017. But in 2024, Games Workshop steadily started rolling again a few of these restrictions: that yr’s rulebook featured a brief story centered on a girl Custodian named Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh, on the time their solely consultant inside the group. Later on, the animated collection Tithes debuted a feminine Custodian named Tyrith Shiva Kyrus in its second episode, and each cases spurred reactions from the right-wing a part of the Warhammer group (and that common sect of customers on-line.)

But the inclusion of feminine Custodes right here reveals they’re not going anyplace. In the stream, Games Workshop mentions the Shield Captain’s unhelmeted head having “golden leaf woven into her hair,” (emphasis ours) as a method of tamping down any potential debates over whether or not this was a girl or a long-haired man. They additionally confirmed this isn’t a lore change: first-born sons aren’t the one option to get Custodes, and “noble daughters could also have been taken. And at some point, you run out of noble houses – even after you’ve conquered all of Terra, the inexorable war machine of the Imperium still requires a constant churn of recruits.”

The inclusion of feminine heads right here marks a major step for the corporate placing its foot down in opposition to its dangerous religion, right-wing base, and helps the followers who’ve been asking for such an choice. And for these followers, the brand new Legio Custodes fashions—which can be utilized in each Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40K—will probably be obtainable later this yr.

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