Fans Revolt When Warhammer 40k Retcons All-Male Faction to Force in Female Combatants
So, tell me if you’ve heard this one before.
A publisher or developer in the nerdisphere slowly begins inserting woke content into their source material. A little changing of the language here, a little retroactive continuity there — nothing that’s immediately noticeable, say, unless you look really closely.
Then, all of a sudden — WHAM! You have a full-on update that busts open that wokeness door. And not only that, when fans notice, fandom media begins branding them as troglodyte misogynists who need to be chased from whatever fandom they’re a part of.
It’s like clockwork, and it’s happened again. This time, it’s Warhammer 40K, the tabletop game which — up until the latest update to a codex, or rules supplement, for the game — had an all-male faction known as the Adeptus Custodes.
But not anymore — because, thanks to some slow retconning, the Custodians can now be women. But don’t get angry at this, gaming media tells you! As The Gamer noted in an article earlier this week, “loud, right-wing voices” are foaming at the mouth that Games Workshop, which publishes the codices, “has mentioned women again.”
“This particular flavour of misogyny comes in shiny, gold packaging. Yes, the new 10th Edition Adeptus Custodes Codex has got everyone frothing at the mouth, thanks to a story about a Custodian Calladayce called Taurovalia Kesh,” The Gamer’s Ben Sledge wrote.
“The story is a double-page spread of juicy lore about the Blood Games, a competition in which members of the Adeptus Custodes attempt to assassinate the Emperor of Mankind in order to test Terra’s defences. Kesh’s plan is to teleport a planet-levelling Exterminatus explosive right into the Emperor’s throne room. It’s a bold move, Cotton.
“However, most people have read this and looked past the great writing. It’s a story that humanises the Custodes to some extent, gives nuance to their orders, and moves away from depicting them as robotic servants, AI automata, or pompous Servitors clad in the Emperor’s finery. It’s tense and exciting, but all people can think about is the fact that Kesh uses she/her pronouns.”
And trust them: This has nothing to do with the fact that anyone is retconning the lore of Warhammer! Just ask “[p]rolific Warhammer author Aaron Dembski-Bowden,” as he was described by Sledge, who reportedly put this to rest in a Reddit post long ago.
“There is no lore saying Custodians are X, Y, or Z, because until very recently, there was no Custodian lore at all,” he wrote.
“That’s why I’d be fine with female Custodians (and the models would look bad***). Anyone saying it breaks the lore is lying and/or wrong, because we were actually in the meetings and sending the emails discussing the invention of said lore, and there was literally nothing in the old lore that weighed comprehensively (or at all) either way. I can think of reasons it would make sense. I can think of reasons it wouldn’t. But it’s a very minor point.”
But the right-wingers, they’re going insane! It’s GamerGate 6.0! They’re summoning Milo Yiannopoulos with revival spells! (Actually, I think that carbon-waster is still around, but who cares?)
This sounds like another non-controversy controversy that geek media loves to make a controversy out of in order to make an object lesson of their stereotype of the anti-woke male: fact-averse, pallid, rabid, misogynist, hateful, blundering through this 21st century world with a 1950s mentality.
There’s kind of a problem with this, though: The lore did exist, the retconning happened, and the reason why, one guesses, is all too predictable.
First, the lore. Here’s the eighth edition of the Adeptus Custodes Codex, as published in numerous places on social media:
WARNING: The following posts contain graphic language that some readers will find offensive.
Hearing seemingly verified rumors that they snuck Female Custodes into the new Adeptus Custodes codex.
If so, standard schelling point / Brown M&M rules apply: It’ll be a hard stop of my collecting the army, and probably 40k in general.
Fortunately I have a decent collection… pic.twitter.com/u6lLW5ZIHH
— KiTA (@eldarmark) April 14, 2024
“It is known that all Custodians begin their lives as the infant sons of the noble houses of Terra. It is a mark of incredible prestige to surrender one’s child to this most glorious of callings within the Imperium, and many notable clans among the Terran aristocracy have willingly given up almost entire generations of newborn sons to earn it.” [Emphasis added.]
Then came the ninth edition, in 2022, which cracked open a back door for female Custodians through weasel-word language.
“Potential Custodians are taken in at a very young age to better survive — no older than late infancy — and it is a great honor for those of Terran noble houses to submit a son … The Custodes also seek out suitable candidates by other means, or encounter them by chance on their missions to protect the Throneworld. What is clear is that none besides the Custodes themselves truly know what criteria they require.” [Emphasis again ours.]
The only Lore against women being Custodes was one line from the 8th edition Codex: Adeptus Custodes, and even then it came across as propaganda.
The 9th edition Codex expanded on it, opening the door for female Custodes.
The 10th just confirms their existence. pic.twitter.com/REqk0OT4la— G.G.Crook (@GaryGCrook77) April 15, 2024
So, in other words, it was still the role of Terran nobility to submit sons — I reiterate, sons, the male offspring of a binary, sexually dimorphic species — to be Custodians. But, you know, the Custodians might make exceptions. Hey, who knows, right? Desperate times can sometimes call for desperate measures, or something. Clearly no difference from the established lore in the eighth codex.
And then we have this turgidly written piece from the 10th codex, just released, praised by Mr. Sledge (as you’ll remember) for being “tense and exciting.” (He’d better never pick up an Agatha Christie book — because if this qualifies as “tense and exciting,” then “Murder on the Orient Express” will assuredly induce acute hypertension.)
“Custodian Calladayce Taurovalia Kesh stood upon the bridge of a Cobra-class destroyer. Named Vigilant Flame, the warship belonged to the mighty Battlefleet Solar. She lingered at the shadows at the back of the bridge, positioned at a spot where she could observe the actions of every crew member be they in the instrumentation pits, at the armament shrines or – in the case of Shipmaster Lethwyck – stood ramrod straight before his command throne.”
That being said, one is not reading this for the prose, one is reading it for the rules — part of which involves established lore. That established lore is now being retconned to “mention women,” because of course it is. Look forward to the 11th codex, where all 281 genders then discovered by sociology researchers at Oberlin (it’s a rough estimate, given the rate of expansion and codex publication) will be Custodians.
Look, whatever publisher has the rights to an IP wants to publish can do so. It is their right — just as it is the right of others not to patronize that publisher based on obvious social messaging being pushed through the product. And believe you me, there’s plenty of Warhammer players who are reacting just that way:
Whoever designed the Adeptus Custodes Codex should honestly be fired. Literal dumpster fire of a book #WarhammerCommunity #warhammer40k #AdeptusCustodes
— StormKing (@StormKingAMV) April 13, 2024
If you have a Warhammer+ subscription, cancel it, then contact customer service to demand a prorated refund on the remaining time and tell them why.#WarhammerCommunity #Warhammer40000 #Warhammer40k @Grummz @MasteroftheTDS @TArchcast pic.twitter.com/1nvb6ISRuI
— Thor Odinson (@Thor_Odinson) April 15, 2024
>When I can’t post a cancelled by Warhammer+ subscription since I did it two months ago as I didn’t use it pic.twitter.com/dUFiIH1Bfk
— Wokehammer Ls (@wokehammerLs) April 18, 2024
Gamers are canceling their Warhammer+ subscriptions because they are fed up with Games Workshop. pic.twitter.com/AHnKxfGHbZ
— Grummz (@Grummz) April 16, 2024
But that’s always the thing: When you walk away, gaming media cannot wait to flog you. What, you won’t spend your hard-earned money on messaging we like? What kind of knuckle-dragger are you?! I bet you boycotted games that Sweet Baby Inc. worked on, too! Do. Better.
Welcome to reality. You make decisions solely based on social posturing, you lose customers. At least in the gaming media, outlets have done a fairly good job of covering for publishers, both of tabletop and video games. Even with the fourth estate of geekery acting as a fifth column, however, writers and influencers can only cry “bigot!” and “misogynist!” so many times before the labels lose their meaning.
Yes, this was a retcon. Yes, this violated established lore. Yes, we can all guess the reason why. The only mouth-breathing chumps here are those who think this shaming act against those who walk away from the fandom still works.
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