Before there was an Imperium, there was Constantin Valdor. Forged by the Emperor's own hand in the earliest days of His rise, Valdor became the first of the Custodians and their unquestioned master, the template of perfection against which all the Ten Thousand who followed would be measured. He was more than a bodyguard; he was the Emperor's confidant and instrument, entrusted with duties too vital and too delicate for any other, and his loyalty to his maker was as absolute as it was incorruptible.
Through the Unification Wars that bound Terra beneath the Emperor's rule, Valdor commanded the Custodian Guard as they cut down the last tyrants of Old Night. As the Great Crusade carried humanity to the stars, he remained the shield ever at the Emperor's back, and it was he who oversaw the Blood Games, the merciless trials by which the Custodians tested the defences of the Imperial Palace and honed themselves to lethal perfection. Wherever the Master of Mankind walked, the towering figure of his Captain-General was seldom far, the Apollonian Spear gleaming in his grasp.
When Horus fell to Chaos and plunged the galaxy into civil war, Valdor's resolve did not so much as waver. He marshalled the Custodians through the darkest hour in human history, defending Terra as the traitor host battered against its walls and leading the Emperor's chosen in battles that would decide the fate of the species. Cold, disciplined and utterly without fear, he was a peerless warrior and a general of rare vision, and the survival of the Throneworld owed much to his hand.
Yet for all his greatness, the end of Constantin Valdor's story is lost to the ages. After the Emperor was interred within the Golden Throne and the Heresy at last spent itself, Valdor passed from the certain record of Imperial history, his final fate unrecorded and unknown. Whether he perished in some unremembered war, withdrew into silence, or endures yet in a manner known only to the highest powers, none can say. He remains a figure of legend, the first and foremost of the Emperor's guardians, whose shadow falls across all the Ten Thousand who keep the eternal watch in his stead.
Heroes & legends
More Adeptus Custodes
NavradaranWatcher Beyond the WallsNavradaran was a Custodian of the Ephoroi and one of the rare few of the Ten Thousand to walk beyond the Imperial Palace before the Indomitus Crusade. A warrior of unusual insight who came to admire the spirit of ordinary humanity, he counselled the young Shield-Captain Valerian and played a pivotal part in the defence of Terra during the Thirteenth Black Crusade, gathering the scattered Sisters of Silence to the Throneworld in its hour of greatest need.
The Emperor of MankindThe Master of MankindHumanity's immortal ruler, enthroned upon the Golden Throne of Terra, worshipped across a million worlds as a living god and the wellspring of the Imperium's faith.
Trajann ValorisThe Emperor's First SwordThe current commander of the entire Adeptus Custodes order, whose word carries authority second only to the Emperor and the High Lords.
ValerianHerald of the Golden HostA celebrated Shield-Captain whose victories beyond Terra have made him one of the Custodes' most recognized champions in the current era.