The Warp is a sea full of sharks. If you serve a Chaos Power, a small number of those sharks might not try to eat you. The Eye of Terror is a region where the material universe and the Warp mix together and lots of chaos worshippers live their on the daemon worlds.

The Slaugh may use some kind of FTL other than the Warp, with a variant of the Necron drive being the most likely if true. They're believed to be from the Charnel Stars in the Kronus Expanse, a region which hasn't been successfully Warp navigated and their whole disgusting xenos race should die in fire.

After I'm through using them to make my players' lives hell.

Mantis Sine said:

That fully painted Ancestor Lord sitting on my shelf begs to differ. I miss those guys. What they lacked in speed they made up for with range. You can outrun a squat easy. Out running his lascannon is a bit trickier.

Nids would have to have FTL, or else it would be centuries between tyranid attacks. Sublight speeds would never make it from planet to planet for the game times.

Spook said:

The Dwellers may be Iain.M. Banks' best alien species.

Slaught does use FTL travel without the warp, Page 78 in DotDG under "Nightmare Science"

"the Slaught.....and most mysteriously seem to be able to traverse interstellar distances without recourse to the warp."

Tyranids do indeed travel through the warp. They have three things going for them to help them survive in the warp unmolested.

Firstly, they have the "Shadow" that blankets the warp , blocks astropaths, occludes the astronomicon and drives psykers mad. At a guess, this shadow may also flatten out warp storms and repel daemons, giving them the equivalent of a nice peacefull trip across a lake instead of a voyage through kraken infested North Atlantic stormy seas.

Secondly, they do have a type of astronomicon available to them. Every Genestealer patriarch on heavily infested worlds gives out a psychic beacon that the 'Nids can home in on. Multiple beacons could lead to much more accurate navigation than the Imperium has, as they could triangulate their position rather than the simple "well, Holy Terra is that way now" method used by Navigators. Less powerfull, and therefore more short-ranged, than the Astronomicon, but more versatile. And when all you want is your next meal, who really cares about a range of 2/3 of the galaxy?

Thirdly, Nid ships have teeth. Any Daemons silly enough to be a pest will be eaten in short order. ;-)

As for the Slaugth, I always liked the idea of them being able to simply "cease being" in one location, and "be" in a brand new location. Not teleportation through the warp, just a mysterious ability to change planets with no "rational" explanation. Would drive Ordo Xenos inquisitors barmy... :-)

I like the Slaugth...I was always a big fan of the Necron Codex and its suggestion that there are multiple layers of xenos galactic occupation over millions of years, and that there were in ancient times two principle xenos factions, those who fought for the Old Ones (including the Eldar, Jokaero etc) and the Necrons on the other side.

I saw the Slaugth as either a Necron allied xenos race, a Necron slave race, or a dark race which evolved after the events in the Necron codex, and which was somehow polluted or influenced by the Necrons in the same way that the Saruthi were influenced by the Necroteuch.

There are some similarities between the Necrons and the Slaugth: they both work to a manipulative vampire archetype, they both prey on human misery, both possess very high technology and they both seem to dislike the warp. I always saw the Slaugth as either using human ships to get around or their own tech which resembles Necron tech.

Hygric said:

I wonder if the Astronomicon is ALSO drawing the Tyranids into the galaxy, like the genestealer patriarch psychic signals? Like moths drawn to a flame?

Webway

Is not outside warp as such. It exists between the material universe and the warp, part of both but not fully within either. Within the Webway are countless gates or portals leading to many areas across the galaxy. Webway can be penetrated from warp side and this has happened from time to time, leading to demons entering webway.

Warp

Even the most demented and corrupt Chaos cultists will want to use gellar-fields in Warp. This is because most of the Warp (99.9999%), including the areas through which ships normally travel, is not actually Chaos domain, but Formless Wastes. The Formless Wastes refer to the Warp uncontrolled by one of the Chaos Gods. Other powers such as Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes who have become capable of forcing a small influence over their surroundings sometimes create their abodes here. The Wastes are also the home to Furies, grotesque gargoyles forbidden from entering the Chaos God's realms. They roam the Wastes searching for new helpless souls of mortals not yet absorbed by the Warp. The Formless Wastes is also filled with various life-forms native to the Warp. These are often voracious entities which are drawn to the psychic emanations of mortals of real space - these creatures include the Vampyre, Psychneuein, Astral Spectre, Astral Hound and Enslaver. The Warp is simply utterly hostile to all creatures of the material realm no matter who they worship.

For Tyranids I’m not sure what previous codex’s stated as their space bound movement, but the most recent codex stated that Tyranids use a modified space dweller, which through adaptations and changes brought about by the Hive Mind, uses its extremely advanced sensory organs to feel for Gravitational forces exuded by stars and planets in solar systems. By latching onto the gravitation produced by the stellar bodies the ‘carrier’ Nids can open a ‘gravity corridor’ which allows for near FTL travel by creating a ‘net’ around the hive which uses the solar systems gravity to pull it close to it’s eventual destination. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending for who your rooting for) this gravity band can’t be used to close to the planets themselves less the planet in question be destroyed by the Hive Fleets arrival (though the more likely explanation (mind you ‘likely’ is a pretty loose term in this universe) is that the ‘Carrier’ Nids would be destroyed if they were to close to the star/ or planetary body in question), so the Nid’s from their Gravity band far outside the system uses conventional propulsion for the years it takes to reach said system. Also the use of the Gravity Corridors causes aberrant weather, gravitational anomalies and solar flares which contribute to the eventual downfall of the systems.

As for how they know which planet/ system to attack, they don’t. It’s more of a guessing game as to which systems have resources to use, but between the uses of genestealer infestations and the freakishly potent Gestalt Hive Mind powered by literally TRILLIONS of Nid’s (and every Nid big or small, smart or stupid as a rock powers the Hive Mind) which allows it to categorize systems encountered, defenders beaten or beaten back by, and populations destroyed. By using these methods (and ones to alien for my non GW mind to fathom) they’re able to efficiently move from system to system striping the galaxy bare.

Even with normal suspension of disbelief, I can't really see it being worth crossing an intergalactic distance that way. And the time between systems is about the same as a sleeper ship.

I guess because it's more "magical," I don't have much trouble thinking that the concerted psychic power of the Hive could keep it safe in the warp (likewise Ork waaagghhs, which generate manifestations of their gods, after all). Or they could just generate a Gellar Field biologically. 'Nid minds probably aren't that tasty anyhow, although I'm sure a daemon would love to possess a Hive Tyrant's body. Actually, since sometimes the Hive Mind ends up dying but leaving stranded 'Nids, why has this very awesome thing not yet happened? I swear that GW forgets everything that makes their universe neat when it comes to the Necrons and 'Nids.

SomVone said:

Tyranids do not use the warp. They use a specialised bioship known as a Narvhal . This creature has thread-like sensors at the bow, which allow it to sense gravitational disturbances like stars and planets. The Narvhal also has the capability to manipulate gravitational fields, creating space tunnels through which hive fleets travel.

Hodgepodge said:

Two points
1) The concept of worth needs to be addressed, the Nid's are an aeons old species that have moved across the universe for Emperor knows how long, the concept of time is something of a non-factor for them, they just need to feed. Any galaxy our size (Roughly 200-400 billion stars) has got to have useable resources and a lot of them, so hypothetically speaking using gravity tunnels via their Narvhal (thanks Wilfred Owen for the name) and pulling the rest of the hive would probably use less energy than have each ship move under it own power or having to battle through the warp against daemons and thus save resources better used for destruction and planet harvesting. As to the mention of sleeper ship speeds I don’t know, maybe they’re significantly faster than sleeper ships approaching close to light speed, or maybe not.

2) Don’t underestimate the power generated from Trillions of Nid’s, if the human Astronomican is powered (predominantly) by ten thousand human psykers and it reaches out to about roughly 35k light years radius. The Nid’s are numbered in the trillions (or at least hundreds of billions) so say that there are 10 trillion Nid’s that’s 1,000,000,000:1 Nid to psyker ratio, no lets say that every psyker is worth fifty thousand Nid’s that’s still a 20,000:1 that’s double the Astronomican output. Not to mention the miniature signals produced by the Genestealer cults and all their members (which via the patriarch project their minds into the warp) which act as homing beacons for the Hive Mind.

Rezsif said:

Assuming, of course, that the majority of creatures are alive (but hibernating) between invasions. IMO, the average battlefield creature has a natural lifespan measured in weeks at best, and powerful, intelligent creatures like Hive Tyrants can remain 'stored' as a disembodied consciousness for apparently long periods, without the need for a corporeal form to endure within (allowing them to learn from their mistakes should they die). Consequently, I imagine that there are very few battlefield organisms present at any time that a Hive Fleet is not attempting to consume a world - they're spawned as required either by the Hive Ships themselves or on the ground in brood nests.

And, well, the Astronomicon can't be all that insignificant by comparison... afterall, the Tyranids were more than able to notice it and are headed towards it, as explained in the new Codex.

Sorry, math was wrong on the Astronomican part, it's still 20,000:1 but instead of the signal strength comparison being twice as strong it's actually (just by my guessing, so it's probably off) twenty thousand times stronger, which is probably why the Shadow in the Warp phenomenon can block out the Astronomicans light.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Fair enough, can't really argue with that logic...yet.