Warp Travel in the Era of the Great Rift

[Ishagu]

Well, positive for mortals lol

[Schlitzaf]

Chaos Gods are to make to Frued comparison, are the id essentially made manifest. The further your devotion form them, the less primal they are (so despite themselves being derived from the id, your initial interaction with them will be coated by societal prejudices or otherwise (the SuperEgo I.e reflection of society see Honor), between that and the god, their appearance will become more of what you want (the Ego)).

 

A good example is Khaine v Khorne. Khaine is Khorne within Eldar Societal beliefs, and within that Khorne warps into being a more ‘honorable’ individual. The closer you get the less constrained by society and more you become a weapon (i.e Khorne like).

 

So do the gods have good traits? In a sense. But those good traits (SuperEgo) the clothings that society gives them and makes them when societal belief is strong enough (Khaine) makes an ultimately complete separate individual.

[Bryan Blaire]

Eh, I don’t think that we’ve seen anything that would lead us to believe that in GW fluff Khaine = Khorne. Khaine was his own entity that was actually fought over by Khorne and Slaanesh (resulting in the break up of Khaine)... Khorne wouldn’t have needed to do that if Khaine = Khorne.

 

Also, how is this discussion still “Warp Travel in the Era of the Great Rift”? I mean, it’s interesting, but it isn’t that.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Well, the Warp analogy for that was that Khaine was indeed part of Khorne, but when Slaanesh came into being, it had an equally strong "claim" on Khaine, being that it was an Eldar god, just like how it consumed Asuryan, Morai-Heg, etc, and it was Khorne fighting back for what was "his" that caused the shattering.

[Bryan Blaire]

Cool. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, since the Eldar Gods have always been presented as not Chaos in anything I've read... we do have both Eldar and Chaos forums for further discussion of the idea though.

 

Now, back to Warp travel discussion anyone, or is it played out and this should be allowed to sink and die a quiet death?

[Kinstryfe]

I think the concept of warp travel is so unlike real space travel that we're all essentially trying to make sense of something without having an (admittedly fictitious) reference point for it. There's a reason why sometimes a trip that's ten times as far as another will take half the time, or twice the time, or ten times the time, or you'll arrive three weeks before you left. I don't think any conventional navigation will work unless it's the tiny jumps thru stable routes method, and even then there's a chance you warp toward Baal and end up in orbit around Fenris. Your directions will be something like head toward the galactic North until you feel a sense of being mocked by your dead Aunt, then turn port until you pass three eyeless kittens speaking in rhyme. If you start to feel like your spleen it itchy you've gone too far. Make a hard starboard to 35° South until you smell chocolate cupcakes and imagine you've gone to school naked, then exit the warp at the feeling that you've just forgotten the word for yellow. There's just no real comparison for whether landmarks will much work, and even with the Astronomicon warp travel is still inherently dangerous, just more accurate.

[Lord_Caerolion]

"No, you fools! I said turn to starboard, not turn right! You've doomed us all!"

[Marshal Rohr]

I think the concept of warp travel is so unlike real space travel that we're all essentially trying to make sense of something without having an (admittedly fictitious) reference point for it. There's a reason why sometimes a trip that's ten times as far as another will take half the time, or twice the time, or ten times the time, or you'll arrive three weeks before you left. I don't think any conventional navigation will work unless it's the tiny jumps thru stable routes method, and even then there's a chance you warp toward Baal and end up in orbit around Fenris. Your directions will be something like head toward the galactic North until you feel a sense of being mocked by your dead Aunt, then turn port until you pass three eyeless kittens speaking in rhyme. If you start to feel like your spleen it itchy you've gone too far. Make a hard starboard to 35° South until you smell chocolate cupcakes and imagine you've gone to school naked, then exit the warp at the feeling that you've just forgotten the word for yellow. There's just no real comparison for whether landmarks will much work, and even with the Astronomicon warp travel is still inherently dangerous, just more accurate.

That would really only work if warp travel was entirely random and unchartable but we know from lore sources that isn’t entirely true. There’s currents, they can detect and determine where the currents go, and which way they are flowing relative to real space. They have the ability to navigate while in the warp, and can leave the warp if they know they are off course to get their bearings. All of these things have happened in black library, Forge world, and older GW sources.

[Arkangilos]

Yeah, the sources tend to say, “while no sane person can even hope to understand, it’s like sailing on the ocean.”

 

You have your currents, you have your stars, and you have storms. Storms prevent the stars from being seen and can slosh you around (the currents drawing you off). The astronomicon is like a giant beacon you can orient yourself to (though to be honest you still need other points, any kind of navigation requires more than one fixed point to get coordinates). The great rift would be like a giant wall of clouds that precludes you from seeing the beacon on terra, but like Marshal said, you can use the line of clouds as a rail. The problem is that it fluctuates. It’s like using a stream that changes throughout the year. The bend could be here one day, or it could be a quarter mile up the next day depending on weather. It’s usuable but not reliable.

 

The other problem is that it’s a massive storm, so the waves are going to ripple out and cause other navigational nightmares.