So my question is how the entire Imperium can be staffed with Astropaths. Since even if there is only one Astropath for every major planet, and maybe one fo more important ships that would put the number in the multimillions. Though it seems most planets have more then one Astropath, and even Imperial Guard Regiments have them, as represented in the new IG modles. So I am wondering how so many Astropaths can be trained, since as I understand it, all Astropaths have to be trained and soul bound to the Emperor on Terra. Does the soul binding mean they actually see the Emperor, or are they just like in a room in his vast palace and that is good enought? Any thoughts?

Does anyone have any idea if there is a way around this in the fluff?

Rogue Trade era fluff would have us believe that astropath candidates are brought into the presence of the Emperor in groups of hundreds and soul-bound over in a ritual lasting several hours (and killing, crippling or driving insane at least some of the candidates). It also says that even the smallest planet has hundreds of astropaths, large worlds have thousands and Terra has tens of thousands.

Unfortunately, I don't think the logisitics work when you start thinking about the details. Taking astropaths to Holy Terra, training them, binding them and then distributing them to worlds where they are needed in those kind of numbers does not seem to stand up to current thinking about warp travel.

LuciusT said:

I don't see why not. Warp Travel must be sufficiently reliable to use frequently and on a vast scale, or it wouldn't be used and interstellar civilisation would not exist for those species dependant on it. Beyond that, there are plenty of significant variables that I can imagine would influence the practicality of long-distance travel.

The key ones, of course, would be the skill of the Navigator, the accuracy of the ship's charts, and the power of its warp engines. A tramp freighter working a single route between three planets, with charts only of that well-travelled section of space, a serviceable if somewhat temperamental warp engine and the only navigator they could afford might well take things slowly - between the ship, their information and the skills of their Navigator, the ship cannot traverse the warp easily or efficiently over long distances and especially not beyond its normal route. By comparison, a Grey Knights Strike Cruiser fresh out of dock above Titan, whose systems are rigorously maintained by cadres of exceptionally skilled Martian Tech-priests, whose charts are of the highest levels of accuracy and contain details reserved only for high-clearance military vessels, and piloted by a rotating staff of Navigators selected from a Navis Nobilite House under special contract with the Inquisition can get to anywhere it needs in the Imperium at speeds that would be impossible for most craft.

I expect that the Blackships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica are closer to the latter than the former, their role to the Imperium being of such importance that they merit the use of the best resources in order to ensure their safe and routine passage over even vast interstellar distances.

I would agree, and also point out that the warp-routes too and from Holy Terra are probably some of the best mapped in the entire galaxy, further contributing to the speed and ease of the process.

Given that, and the massive population base the Imperium has to draw from, I don't think it is at all unfathomable to have the number of astropaths previously mentioned.

I answered in the Rogue Trader thread. Basically, there are a lot of strong Epsilons about - with soul-binding, they can serve in choirs.

Astropaths are the easiest kind of psyker to get, you can bind relatively weak ones to the Emperor and they can do the job. Also, they make up more than 90% of the Psykers in Imperial service, so a more relevant question would be how do we have all these battl-psykers or acolytes wandering around.

But the problem I see is that even if you are able to have 100 Astropaths go threw the process of soul binding at once, you would never get the numbers needed to fill the Imperium. Since I think I recall the old Rogue Trader story about them saying it took hours to soul bind. Since I would think you would get a huge bottle neck having to have ALL Astropaths see the Emperor himself. So its not about getting enough Psykers or even distributing them once you train them, its about needing to Soul Bind each and every one of them.

InquisitorGray said:

For sure the numbers do not match. And you will find a score more of such instances in WH40K. The setting simply isn´t correct. Like high fantasy settings aren´t correct. For sure one can start to re-write all those mistakes. But after that, you will not have WH40K anymore but something else.

I tend to live with those problems since I kinda like 40K

InquisitorGray said:

A hundred? During the Great Crusade, the Emperor's palace was a vast structure larger than most countries, and it has only expanded since. There are passageways in there so large they contain their own weather systems, and the throne room door is guarded by a pair of Imperator Titans who are dwarfed by the massive portal they stand beside.

It's entirely feasible to imagine that the Soul Binding is performed upon thousands or millions of psykers simultaneously. Assuming eight hours for the process from start to finish, and a million psykers every shift, you could Soul-Bind over a billion Astropaths a year - more than enough to supply the Imperium in vast enough quantities to replace those who inevitably burn out from use.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

That's one of the fundamental contradictions of the setting. On the one hand, we're told repeatedly that warp travel is risky, ships can be lost, travel times can be highly variable, even stable journeys between systems can take weeks or months. On the other hand, we have hive worlds that literally cannot survive day to day without regular food shipments from agri-worlds whose entire economy is based on exporting those most basic of supplies.

We are told that, at the end of the Age of Apostasy, six women who would become the leaders of the Battle Sisters become the first people outside of the Primarchs and the Adeptus Custodes to stand in the presence of the Emperor in six thousand years. However we are told that, daily, hundreds if not thousands of potential astropaths kneel before the Golden Throne for soul-binding.

We are told that the Black Ships visit a given world every hundred years. One wonders what happens to the local psyker population for the other 99 years? What happens to the psykers picked up at the beginning of the ships circuit? How exactly do the new astropaths return to the worlds on which they are to serve?

There are contradictions and valid logistical questions here the answers to which, as InquisitorGray says, change how you view the 40k universe. These things can be overlooked or hand-waved away in a war-game but become more relevant in an RPG.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Nope. The fluff specifically says "hundreds" not "thousands" or "millions." However, it also says the process takes "a few hours," so I'll bet on less than 8, maybe 3 or 4. Assume 500 per in a 3 hour shift, with a 75% survival rate, and you have 3000 astropaths per day or about a million per year. That might be about 1 replacement astropath per planet per year. Increase the batch, decrease the shift or increase the survival rate you improve those numbers. That's not unreasonable in my mind. It's the travel times and logistics of distribution, more than the "manufacturing" that bother me.

LuciusT said:

Is any of that a contradiction, though, when you actually think about it? Warp travel is risky... but we don't know how risky, what factors influence that risk or to what degree those factors change things. For a cargo freighter of no particular significance, a short, stable journey could well take weeks or months (though part of that is likely travel within the system)... but that doesn't mean that the same applies to all ships, and it is almost certain that military craft and others vital to the running of the Imperium (rather than any individual world or sector - Blackships, Inquisitorial vessels, etc) are more effective when it comes to interstellar travel. The busiest hive worlds do require essentially daily food shipments, but do you honestly expect that there's only one ship that supplies them? We're talking dozens or hundreds of ships arriving on a daily basis to off-load and pick up hundreds of trillions of tonnes of cargo.

LuciusT said:

What defines 'in the presence' of a psychically sustained cadavre containing the soul of the most powerful human who has ever lived? The throne room is not a small chamber with a life-support machine in it, and to be in the presence of the Emperor may well be a matter of walking the thousands of steps to the top of the Golden Throne to see him, while those hordes of Secondary Psykers kneel upon the throne room floor below.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

We are always in the presence of He on Terra!

In which case, why not train astropaths locally?

LuciusT said:

I buy this. It would still put their numbers in the "rare" side of this forr the Imperium. But I think that is fine with the background.

The original system of psyker grading was: Primaris, Secundus and Tertius. I did try to incorporate this into the Abnettverse Grading system (alpha beta gamma etc), but basically:

Tertius is the dregs, those that are unfit for service and are consumed by the Emperor. Secundus become Astropaths and I think perhaps the Astronomicon. Primaris are the sanctioned psykers.

afaik Tertius is the most common, followed by Secundus etc. So in 100 psykers, perhaps 50 are tertius, 30 secundus and 20 primaris (or even a 40/10 split). Of the secundus some become beacons, others astropaths.

The point is that the majority of relatively weak stable psykers that are collected are destined to become astropaths. It's the most common psychic path in the Imperium. I dare say that over 95% of all psykers in the Imperium are astropaths. How many astropaths depends on how many psykers are picked up per capita. I reckon you could get several million astropath candidates from the Imperium in one single round up. A few per billion normal humans isn't too much to ask.

Although I doubt the emperor could convert a million psykers to astropaths, it would certainly be quite a few. Don't forget that astropaths burn out, but are otherwise extremely isolated and protected within the Imperium (see the novel Blind for an extreme example). Their deaths are generally caused by burnout and that doesn't necessarily happen quickly. Astropaths can reach ancient ages before dying.

So if we assume that we need 50 million astropaths for the Imperium (for all uses, planetary and stellar) and we start with 50 million fresh astropaths spread across the Imperium, what kind of replacement rate are we looking at?

Assume that average burnout happens at 50 years, giving say 30 years of service. Assume also that casualties only happen in wars, of which only a very small percentage of astropaths actually appear. So a completely made up number, 5 million astropaths are killed every year through calamity. I think it would be far less than that, perhaps not even more than 200,000 astropaths a year. Consider that 5 million astropaths is 5 astropaths dead for every planet in the Imperium EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

That requires you replace 5 million astropaths every year in order to keep up with demand. That would require that the Emperor convert 13,680 astropaths every day, or 570 an hour, to keep up with demand. If the Emperor can produce MORE than that a year, it means the Imperium actually has an excess of astropaths which is good because burnout needs to be accounted for.

If we go for a more realistic number of 200,000 astropaths a year dead which is still an absurd amount just from war (how many space ships blown up or imperial planets raized would produce that number) that's only 547 astropaths every year or 22 every day the emperor has to create.

So, personally, I don't really see a problem. Astropaths don't die in droves. They live in extremely well protected astropathica basilicas, with their own security and state of the art surveillance. The overwhelming majority of astropath deaths will be from burnout, which does not happen quickly. Those who join a quoir will die faster, but even then it's not counted in days or weeks or even months.

So given all that, if the emperor produced 1000 astropaths a day, or 365,000 a year that would be more than enough to cover any small death rate.

Hellebore

Again, my personal objections are not related to "manufacturing" but to distribution, specificially the interstellar transportation of raw materials and finished products to and from a single manufacturing center, give the inherent difficulties of such transportation. I do not find N0-1_H3r3's handwaving that the Black Ships are "best quality starships" as a sufficient solution.

If you only need to replace 200,000 astropaths every year, you don't need a huge supply chain. You would send each segmentum's alloted replacements in a single ship (or group of ships) to the Segmentum navy base and then disperse them from there. Considering the size of an imperial ship, you could easily fit 40,000 astropaths in one.

There is no chance you will get your astropaths to where they need to be before they need them, so there will be planets with less or no astropaths for weeks or even months before hand. However, if each planet has a basilica of astropaths in the dozens or scores, then losing a single one is hardly a massive issue. It might slow some communication down, but nothing the rest couldn't handle until a replacement arrived.

And as I said, if the emperor could output excess amounts, they could be sent to Segmentum command for storage until they needed to be dispersed. So Bakka, Kar Duniash, etc could have thousands of astropaths training and meditating waiting for their transfer order to a new berth.

Hellebore

Warp travel is risky, but not that risky. The chance of a ship being lost to the Warp is certainly much less than 1%, assuming you don't do something stupid like trying to make a calculated Warp Jump over 5 light years. Navigators can make much greater jumps, up to thousands of light years at a time. Obviously the ships carrying astropaths will have navigators. A ship with a navigator can make a 5000 light year jump (the maximum safe amount) in 5-36 months realtime (5-21 days shiptime) according to an old White Dwarf (that may no longer be canon). Shipping astropaths across the Imperium would take a few years at most - not too big a deal

As for numbers, most astropaths live fairly safe, cushy jobs with lots of perks. Odds are they have average lifespans that measure in the centuries. This means that they only need to be replaced once every few hundred years.

Surplus astropaths will usually be found on major worlds in the Sector. These are usually being trained by the most powerful astropaths in the sector as well as helping with the vast number of communications that need to be sent and received. In the event that a world in the sector loses an astropath, one of the apprentices will be promoted and sent out and a request for a new astropath will be sent to Terra.

LuciusT said:

Handwaving?

If you're not willing to even consider how the setting might work, then you are going to find problems with it. That you do is not my problem... but don't dismiss my efforts as 'handwaving' just because you're more comfortable pointing out problems than coming up with solutions. I quite frankly cannot believe that anybody with any interest in role-playing could possibly be so unwilling to use their imaginations...

With all technology in the Imperium, there is a vast gulf between the finest examples and the poorest. This logically applies to Warp Drives as much as it does anything else. A more effective collection of Warp Jump-enabling systems will provide longer-lasting and more stable Gellar Fields, allow for smoother translations into and out of the Warp, and overall allow for swifter journeys than might be capable with a less-effective Warp Drive. It stands to reason that the vessels most crucial to the ongoing function of the Imperium, and those used by organisations whose role requires swift interstellar travel (such as those of the Inquisition and Adeptus Astartes) would utilise technology more sophisticated and effective than those found on the majority of 'civilian' vessels. That's common sense, really. Such an assertion is really little different from seeing PDF forces on backwater primitive worlds armed with muskets and crossbows and comparing them to the bolters and hellguns of the Astartes and Skitarii.

Navigators, we know, come in a variety of forms - different houses find their fortunes waxing and waning, some will secure important contracts while others instead divide their scions amongst a range of smaller contracts. It stands to reason that the Imperium would utilise the best Navigators available for the most important vessels. Compared to the calculated jumps, or the cheaper, less desirable Navigators available to merchantmen and similar low-priority vessels, the skill of those Navigators favoured by the Imperial Navy (who would logically have to travel outside of the charted routes of a sector) and other similarly significant organisaitons (Inquisition, Astartes, Adeptus Astra Telepathica) would allow for smoother, safer and longer jumps. This would be further compounded by access to better information about the areas being travelled through - knowledge of more stable routes through the Warp (what do you think the lines on every sector map produced for a 40k-related product since Battlefleet Gothic are?) allows for easier, swifter and safer jumps still.

All that together, and warp travel over long distances becomes increasingly viable - which is good, because it's necessary.

Doesn't mean it's perfect - nothing is absolute here - but just because it's beyond the grasp of merchants plying the short and stable routes between worlds within a sector does not mean that it's impossible for those organisations which rule the Imperium of Man.

If a Blackship visits a world once in a century then yes, that leaves a long gap between visits... assuming that there's only a single Blackship visiting that world. I find it hard to believe that a world would be visited so infrequently, and while an individual Blackship may engage in a century-long round-trip from Terra (the century being a matter of objective time as acknowledged outside the Warp - the time experienced aboard the ship will invariably be different), that's not to say that other ships may not arrive above that world during that interval. The idea of a sufficient number of Blackships, on overlapping (but consistent) routes, to ensure that every accessible world in the Imperium is visited once every generation (20-30 years) seems entirely appropriate, simultaneously preventing the wastage of psykers dying of old age while imprisoned for longer than two or three decades, and making each individual ship less crucial to the ongoing function of the Imperium (because, while Warp Travel must be sufficiently safe to allow the foundation of an interstellar civilisation, it's like air travel in that when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong) as each ship carries a smaller proportion of the psykers vital to the survival of the Imperium.

Put simply the Imperium doesn't wait for an Astropath to die before sending out a fresh replacement from Terra. They will generally have X new Astropaths on route to all planets at all times in anticipation of losses in the Astropaths on planet.