What would you say is the approximate travel time between Scintilla and Iocanthos? I know that Warp travel is an imperfect science, but a ballpark figure would help me greatly, since my Sister was given a few months off by Inquisitor Kaede and is heading back to the Abbey of the Dawn for the interim. Our campaign may be on hiatus, but I'm still writing about my character's exploits. :-)

Well, the length of warp travel is covered in Rogue Trader, but given that info, and the time given in the adventure in the back of the Dark Heresy book, I'd say between 4 days and 2 weeks, depending on the warp.

Of course, this is in subjective "warp time". It would feel like 4 days to 2 weeks for your character, but in the real world it'd have been around 2 weeks to a month and a half, according to the rules in Rogue Trader.

Ah, good to know. I haven't gotten a chance to peruse Rogue Trader yet, but we're gearing up for our first RT campaign next year!

In a Chartist ship, I'd ballpark it at 2 months give or take a few weeks. While the warp part of the journey wouldn't take long at all, the in system part of each journey would add a bit of over-all time to the voyage. This is also based on the misiricord's (sp?) projected journey of "over a year" to complete the Golgenna Triangle. In a ship with a navigator, I'd say 5 days to two weeks, again, the largest portion of the journey being in-system travel.

Indeed, according to the ole' charts in White Dwarf the actual Warp trip won't take more than 3 hours, even for the slowest of Warp ships. The distance is only about 30 Light Years, and as such not very far as these things go.

The real-space part of the voyage will take much longer for sure.

In Innocence Proves Nothing the Miserichord takes 2 weeks (objective) time from Sepheris Secundus to Scintilla and seems to be faster than a bulk cargo freighter.

Sephiris Secundus - Scintilla is about 53 Ly, significantly longer than Iocanthus - Scintilla. Even so, the Warp Transit time for a "normal" (if there is such a thing) warp-capable vessel should not be any longer than 5 Hrs 25 Minutes

Considering that the description in the Core rulebook states that its roundtrip takes more than a year, and the complete circuit travelled is about 147 Ly, this means that even travelling at the rather "slow" speed Sandy suggests, the Misericord will be spending most of its time in port, spending about 3 months loading and unloading at each of it's 3 ports of call.

Luthor Harkon said:

I just finished reading that book, too. But I can't recall: was this 2 weeks just the warp-transit time, or did it include the in-system, realspace travel to and from the warp-point?

Remember, the Misericord is a chartist ship, and so doesn't travel in the warp. At least, that is what is suggested in the main DH book.

It travels via the Warp in Innocence Proves Nothing . It's noted to be somewhat slow for a warp capable vessel, however. I imagine that a warship would be able to make the journey in less time.

Darth Smeg said:

IIRC it is the estimated objective warp-transit time calculated by the Tech-Priest. I have not read far enough to know whether he is right or not. In my view the whole in-system normal space travel takes rather long to get away from the high mass objects (ie. planets and stars) until the ship is able to traverse to the warp. Especially for a huge and old ship like the Miserichord.

MILLANDSON said:

Chartist vessles travel in the warp. They just have no Navigator under normal circumstances and thus travel by chart (ie. traversing to real-space once in a while to double check the actual position). Otherwise the Miserichord would take centuries for the trip...

Just that the main rulebook makes no statement of it travelling in the warp at all, and made the impression of it taking centuries to travel on it's circuit.

Chartists travel according to warp-charts, usually without navigators aboard. Without warp-travel, you are restricted to sub-light travel, thanks to Einstein.

A trip of some 32 Light years will therefore, necessarily, take AT LEAST 32 years.

A trip of some 32 Light years will therefore, necessarily, take AT LEAST 32 years.

And that's a very, very optimistic assumption since most ships don't manage more than 1%c. So that would generally be more along the lines of 3200 years. According to the Deep Void Run rules of RT, a ship would only lose... let's see... 76794 points of morale.

Let's just say there's a reason RT notes that any imperial ship intended for inter-system-travel has a warp drive...

According to Rogue Trader (Page 311):-

Navigation of the warp can be in two ways: calculated jump and piloted jump.

In a nutshell: calculated jumps are done without a Navigator and are no more than 4 light years. Piloted are done with a Navigator and are generally no more more than 5,000 light years but longer has been recorded.

A typical jump:

A ship heads slowly towards it's rimward 'jump point' reaching approximately one per cent of light speed and takes "several weeks" to arrive. Then I assume another "several weeks" to arrive at it's final destination.

It then activates it's warp drive. 5,000 light years takes "almost two weeks" to complete. "Meanwhile, because of time shifts in warp space, over a year has passed in the real universe."

So a typical 5,000 light year journey would take approx 6 weeks warp time but 1 year and 4 weeks real time.