Is there anything in the fluff that has a presence for these races outside of the milky-way galaxy?

I'm thinking of a post Imperium campaign where the PC's have been sent off to begin again in the Andromeda galaxy (the journey will take hundreds if not thousands of years while the PC's are in stasis).

I would expect to find tyranids (maybe not too many without the Astronomicon to draw them in) but I wondered if Eldar/Necrons might be there? Or perhaps other races raised up by the Old Ones long ago...

Why would you expect Tyranids in the Andromeda galaxy? They aren't a race that makes colonies, they're locusts that move from one planet to the next. If they passed through the Andromeda galaxy, there would be nothing left. As for the Necrons, they were bound to the will of C'Tan, and then later to the orders of the Silent King. No Dynasty, not even the most rabid and maddened of them, are capable of defying his orders. As for the Eldar, the Webway does not spread that far, its limited to our galaxy. As for the Orks being able to traverse the intergalactic void, I would be highly skeptical of that, considering that they navigate by orienting themselves to concentrations of WAAAAAGH! energy.

Of the other 40k races like the Dark Eldar or the Tau, none show the necessary technology to even attempt such a thing, let alone succeed.

That's my view on the matter at least.

Current Imperial Technology couldnt guarantee stasis for that length of time, if they did have staisis technology that could sustain life for that length of time (As well as enough hydrogen for the plasma engines to last that long, and the supplies to restart society on the other side (Very difficult considering the STCs are still lost and that was basically the entire purpose of STCs) ) they wouldn't be able to spend that length of time in the Warp. It would just be too dangerous. So that would require subliminal travel, which would take aeons. Even at 99.99% the speed of light, it would take 2.6 Million years to reach Andromeda.

Saying perhaps they were dumb enough to try crossing the void in the warp: Putting a little Maths to it, its stated in the crunch that it would take several years to cross the Milky Way Galaxy in the warp. I'm going to take several as meaning 3-5, and I'll take 5 as the value as they'll likely travel slower to remain safest (This raises another question of how do you navigate with everyone in stasis?) The Milky Way is 100000 light years across, which gives a rough speed of 20000 light years per year. (Which is obscenely fast) It would still be 125 years in the warp. So you're looking at over 9000 warp encounters over this time.

It's unknown if the Tyranids have devoured other galaxies or not, or if they simply exist in the endless dark of the galactic void. This largely depends on whether they were created by the Old ones or not, either way, they are incredibly weak due to their time spent in the endless black and from that, likely don't have the power to travel those distances. Which means canonically not a single race has the power to reach another galaxy as the Old Ones never did leave the Galaxy, which is why the Necrontyr and the C'tan could wipe them out.

Question is, does that mean the Warp is only in our own galaxy? Could other galaxies have their own chaos gods? Could the warp still be stable there?

1 hour ago, Magos Smudges said:

Current Imperial Technology couldnt guarantee stasis for that length of time, if they did have staisis technology that could sustain life for that length of time (As well as enough hydrogen for the plasma engines to last that long, and the supplies to restart society on the other side (Very difficult considering the STCs are still lost and that was basically the entire purpose of STCs) ) they wouldn't be able to spend that length of time in the Warp. It would just be too dangerous. So that would require subliminal travel, which would take aeons. Even at 99.99% the speed of light, it would take 2.6 Million years to reach Andromeda.

Saying perhaps they were dumb enough to try crossing the void in the warp: Putting a little Maths to it, its stated in the crunch that it would take several years to cross the Milky Way Galaxy in the warp. I'm going to take several as meaning 3-5, and I'll take 5 as the value as they'll likely travel slower to remain safest (This raises another question of how do you navigate with everyone in stasis?) The Milky Way is 100000 light years across, which gives a rough speed of 20000 light years per year. (Which is obscenely fast) It would still be 125 years in the warp. So you're looking at over 9000 warp encounters over this time.

It's unknown if the Tyranids have devoured other galaxies or not, or if they simply exist in the endless dark of the galactic void. This largely depends on whether they were created by the Old ones or not, either way, they are incredibly weak due to their time spent in the endless black and from that, likely don't have the power to travel those distances. Which means canonically not a single race has the power to reach another galaxy as the Old Ones never did leave the Galaxy, which is why the Necrontyr and the C'tan could wipe them out.

Question is, does that mean the Warp is only in our own galaxy? Could other galaxies have their own chaos gods? Could the warp still be stable there?

Simple solution there. Have the colonists in stasis while the ship is crewed. In fact, try and have some extra people in stasis then you strictly need to start a colony on the other side of the trip; That way if the birth rate among the crew and their families doesn't outpace the death rate, you can bring some fresh blood out of stasis to take over.

3 minutes ago, Senshuken said:

Simple solution there. Have the colonists in stasis while the ship is crewed. In fact, try and have some extra people in stasis then you strictly need to start a colony on the other side of the trip; That way if the birth rate among the crew and their families doesn't outpace the death rate, you can bring some fresh blood out of stasis to take over.

The civilisation would not last 2.6 Million years, and in the other case, there's still that over 9000 warp encounters to deal with, and with enough people to restart a civilisation on board, you're one big meaty can of souls for the warp nasties. It's like leaving your drink unattended at a dehydration party for a century: I can guarantee you that you wont see the drink again. That's why the Imperium has to keep their warp trips relatively short, inter-sector at best, ships just don't survive long distance trips through the roiling maelstrom.

8 minutes ago, Magos Smudges said:

The civilisation would not last 2.6 Million years, and in the other case, there's still that over 9000 warp encounters to deal with, and with enough people to restart a civilisation on board, you're one big meaty can of souls for the warp nasties. It's like leaving your drink unattended at a dehydration party for a century: I can guarantee you that you wont see the drink again. That's why the Imperium has to keep their warp trips relatively short, inter-sector at best, ships just don't survive long distance trips through the roiling maelstrom.

That does raise an interesting question; Is the Warp as messed up out in the void between universes? After all, the things living in the warp (both bad, indifferent and very rarely good) require living things to give them form... and there just isn't anything inbetween universes other then the ship. So any demon chasing after them is running to keep up rather then laying in wait.

The problem then becomes direction, no Navigator could properly guide a vessel through the open warp between galaxies since, as you stated, it would be devoid of any life other than his own ship. It would like attempting to navigate an endless, shifting desert of death and emptiness with no stars, no sun, no landmarks and to add to the difficulty no true reference to time or space as such.

Though I should mention that in my own headcanon, the intergalactic void is not empty per say, it is rather filled with nothing but death, a void that would swallow up any vessel and crush it to dust. To me this is what the Rifts of Hecaton represent, not a Warp Storm as such, but rather the encroaching wall of utter nothingness that represents the area outside our galaxy.

The fluff is pretty much confined to the Milky Way galaxy with the exception of tyranids who are capable of travelling between galaxies.

My understanding is that the warp is the product of sentient minds so it may be that there is no warp dimension in the voids between galaxies which would also help to explain why the Old Ones/Eldar etc. seem to be confined to this galaxy.

You may be able to go part of the way via warp but then need to go via realspace. Nicking a Necron ship is probably the best bet for an easy journey which begs the question as to why they wouldn't have already gone to other galaxies?

If the warp extended all the way to Andromeda you could do it in approx. 25 years from the viewpoint of the passengers if you didn't need to stop very often (which could be possible because without corrupted minds the warp should be pretty stable). That would take centuries if not thousands of years from the viewpoint of people in realspace.

In terms of navigation by FFG rules it is hard but by no means impossible to navigate the warp without the light of the Astronomicon so that's not a big problem. Another alternative would be micro jumps like a chartist captain with no navigator - 4-5 LY per jump but that's a lot of jumps and I would personally think that the translation in/out of the warp is the most energy consuming part of warp travel - gellar fields are very low power.

I think it'd be 5 times slower. In the Eastern Fringe the Astronomicon is particularly refered to as being weak and unreliable, and presumably if you leave the Galaxy it'll get even fainter. Even in "stable" Warp you'd still need a reference point to anchor yourself in order to not get horribly lost, so you'd have to go to the Tau method of travel. In which case you'd need 125 years to make the jump from our Galaxy to Andromeda.

At this point we're running into the supply line issue. Void ships are "normally" equipped with 6 months of extra supplies. Using Rogue Trader finangling you can get that up to about 6 years, and then with extreme rationing extend it to 24. Even if we can use the Astronomicon, you're facing starvation and the likely burning out of your Warp Drive along the way. Which means you could just arrive and not be able to get back, but it doesn't seem possible.

As for the Necrons well... it's not clear how their warp technology works other than "it just does". Maybe it uses gravitic distortion like the Tyranids from the black hole at the centre of the Galaxy in order to distort space to create focused wormholes for instantaneous travel (Star Trek technobabble don't fail me now). In that case they wouldn't be able to work outside of the Galaxy either.

If they could but haven't, I would believe that's because they're trying to find a compatible race to download their bodies into, and that's more likely to happen in the Galaxy that already spawned them rather than some completely new Galaxy.

I thought about the supplies issue - if you stasis pod or cryogenically freeze all bar a couple of caretakers who stay in a tiny section you could eke out the food/life support for a very long time...

Fuel wise if you just have to maintain a Gellar field for 99.999% of the trip I think a specially lightened ship filling all its holds with fuel could make it with a very small crew (maybe a thousand). Especially if it doesn't need to move in realspace - you could strip out sub-light engines and just have a couple of small craft to explore systems?

An alternative would be sending lots of doomed ships a quarter of the way with some supplies then a later wave of doomed ships to there who then refuel and travel another quarter of the distance building another supply dump etc. etc. until you have enough supply drops to reach Andromeda.

Of course this would mean millions of deaths but hey it is 40K

Edit: Oh and I think later fluff had a fast Tau ship doing 1/3rd of warp speed so 75 years.

Is it weird that I'm still wondering how the people from Mass Effect will have reached Andromeda? Spoilers, maybe, but any of the different color endings seem to involve the destruction of the Mass Relays, depriving the people of the MW galaxy of their FTL capabilities, but even with two endings that COULD involve the Reapers, and their High Science, helping, I'm wondering how they got way out there, and thus, where, in time, ME:A will be; will they know the stories of John/Jen Sheppard, who united the galaxy, and defeated the Reapers, or will they only have religiousesque tales of "the Shepard", who may, or may not, have actually existed, thousands of years before, a legend to them much as the Protheans were a legend to him/her?

As for the 40k races, most would need a reason to want to leave. That might seem silly, but the Eldar are arrogant, and might not see a reason to leave all that was theirs; the maiden worlds, the Webway, and everything else. The Tyranids need to find biomass. Hive Fleets have been stalled crossing SECTORS, if someone was willing to burn worlds, and the gulf between galaxies must be much vaster, and empty, especially without FTL. The Necrons would need to leave their tombs, and all their stuff, just to hope they find something good, when it would probably be easier to finish waking up, and cannibalize this galaxy. And the list goes on.

Its already been confirmed that the mission to Andromeda was sent before the events of ME: 3, thus noone aboard would know of Shepard beyond maybe that they were the first Spectre or the ending of ME: 3.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-how-mass-effect-andromeda-avoids-dealing-wit/1100-6445195/

And Venkelos, I don't know what you meant to say there with the Tyranids, considering they are an extra-galactic race meaning they are the only ones we know of that have already succeeded in crossing the gulf between galaxies.

5 minutes ago, SCKoNi said:

Its already been confirmed that the mission to Andromeda was sent before the events of ME: 3, thus noone aboard would know of Shepard beyond maybe that they were the first Spectre or the ending of ME: 3.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-how-mass-effect-andromeda-avoids-dealing-wit/1100-6445195/

And Venkelos, I don't know what you meant to say there with the Tyranids, considering they are an extra-galactic race meaning they are the only ones we know of that have already succeeded in crossing the gulf between galaxies.

The ME thing, I literally just found out about at work, last night, so a bit embarrassing. As for the Tyranids, yeah, I'm a bit iffy, too. They SAY they came from beyond, but they said the same about the Borg, whom we'd never met, except we had, and then... yeah, time travel, and canon changes. For the Nids, we never hear HOW FAR outside our galaxy they come from, or even if we actually have stuff on the literal edge, to know they are from beyond it, and I'm mostly just making up excuses here, huh? I'd say even if they were coming from someplace else, it's highly unlikely another galaxy, whether the Hive Mind is another C'Tan, or whatever leads them/started them, and they probably can't do it, again. As I said, they've been stopped in much smaller spans, so only the most massive Hive Fleets MIGHT be able to try it, and then, most of the biomass present would probably just be there to eat, and fuel the most necessary core organisms. There is plenty of biomass here, in the MW, so there probably isn't much of them anywhere else.

There's likely to be life in all the galaxies - the Tyranids could be everywhere by now seeing as we don't know their origin point and they could have just set off in all directions from that point.

Plus the Andromeda galaxy is a lot larger than the milky way with a lot more star systems so a good candidate for a tyranids lunch.

On 2/7/2017 at 5:40 AM, venkelos said:

The ME thing, I literally just found out about at work, last night, so a bit embarrassing. As for the Tyranids, yeah, I'm a bit iffy, too. They SAY they came from beyond, but they said the same about the Borg, whom we'd never met, except we had, and then... yeah, time travel, and canon changes. For the Nids, we never hear HOW FAR outside our galaxy they come from, or even if we actually have stuff on the literal edge, to know they are from beyond it, and I'm mostly just making up excuses here, huh? I'd say even if they were coming from someplace else, it's highly unlikely another galaxy, whether the Hive Mind is another C'Tan, or whatever leads them/started them, and they probably can't do it, again. As I said, they've been stopped in much smaller spans, so only the most massive Hive Fleets MIGHT be able to try it, and then, most of the biomass present would probably just be there to eat, and fuel the most necessary core organisms. There is plenty of biomass here, in the MW, so there probably isn't much of them anywhere else.

It's true that we don't know from how far outside the Galaxy they came, but one of the recent 40K novels has pretty definitively answered why the Tyranid menace found us, and they are absolutely from pretty far outside of the Galaxy - though it was the void "between" Galaxies, so it's hard to say.

Doesn't answer any question about what they were doing or how they were formed before they heard the dinner bell though

Is the dinner bell actually the Astronomicon, like moths to a flame, because while I CAN buy that, other stuff often claims that we haven't spread that far, because the light of the Emperor becomes too faint, so if our own genetically-engineered sighters can't see it, with a lifetime of training in doing just that, it seems sort of weird for even more distant bugs, who become more and more "psykers of a different stripe" (use psyker powers, but NOT through the Warp), can somehow perceive it, know that it means food, and then come en mass, to get it.

While it's doubtfull the 'nids detected the astronomican outside the edges of the galaxy (because as Veneklos said: it doesn't reach that far), it's becoming more and more Obvious the 'nids are homing in on it. What with Leviathan attacking from below the galactic plane.

A lot of theories about the 'nids, ranging from the aformentioned: "the hive mind is a C'tan" to "the tyranid race is fleeing from something worse ."

Even if it doesn't make sense, the idea that they're being drawn to the Astroomicon like mosquitoes to a porch light is still my preferred headcannon.

51 minutes ago, Robin Graves said:

While it's doubtfull the 'nids detected the astronomican outside the edges of the galaxy (because as Veneklos said: it doesn't reach that far), it's becoming more and more Obvious the 'nids are homing in on it. What with Leviathan attacking from below the galactic plane.

A lot of theories about the 'nids, ranging from the aformentioned: "the hive mind is a C'tan" to "the tyranid race is fleeing from something worse ."

The 'nids were attracted to the Imperium by a Astronomican-esque psychic beacon that was activated/destroyed during the Horus Heresy, or at least its alluded to. The Tyranids aren't confirmed to have devoured any other galaxies either except back in 5th edition, where they would be the oldest species in the Galaxy by that account, and by 12 galaxies in they would probably have evolved to devour galaxies much faster than they currently are. Notably the Astronomican can reach the Halo stars, it's just incredibly faint and is constantly blocked by Warp Storms. From what I remember in the book the Tyranids are almost 'awoken' by the flare of the beacon, which would imply that they were not infact travelling and were instead dormant, and it's taken them only 10000 years to reach the Imperium, which even at 99.99% the speed of light, would put them at a distance from the Milky Way of less than 1% of the distance between us and Andromeda - meaning that they've not been that far away at all, in fact they've only been about 0.05 Milky ways away! (Which means they'll probably take 200000 years to devour the entire Galaxy, and I reckon Rowboat could get the Imperium back in order in 200000 years.)

Considering the Tyranids lack of FTL travel, and their only means of travel being based on gravity wells, travelling the distances between galaxies would of taken them far too long. Especially considering the possibility of resistance by sentient species within the galaxies they devour, after all: it's entirely reasonable that a properly unified Imperium, full strength Eldar or similarly powerful race could defeat the Tyranids.

I personally put my faith in the idea that the 'Nids were a creation of the Old Ones, essentially a galactic fire-break against the C'tan, similar to the way the Imperium combats the Tyranids and the way the Emepror attempted to combat Chaos, starve them to death by denying them food. This is supported by the 'nids actively avoiding the Necrons rather than just ignoring them (Not to mention the fear the Silent King has of them), and by the fact the Tyranid consumption of life actually preserves DNA, creating a huge, terrifying DNA bank of all the life they devour.There's also the fact they're guided by psychic beacons: which would be incredibly fitting for something the Old ones intended to control.

Regardless, Imperial technology is currently far too flimsy to transport anything between Galaxies subluminally, and the Warp is too calm on the fringes of the Galaxy to make Warp travel worthwhile (Even if it was safe or could even be utilised on the edge of the Galaxy) Without the 'nids having gone anywhere but outside of the Galaxy and no one in 60 million years having canonically developed the technology to expand outside of the Galaxy, its safe to assume that reaching another Galaxy would be next to impossible for the Imperium, without End-times level muckery.

20 hours ago, Magos Smudges said:

Considering the Tyranids lack of FTL travel, and their only means of travel being based on gravity wells, travelling the distances between galaxies would of taken them far too long. Especially considering the possibility of resistance by sentient species within the galaxies they devour, after all: it's entirely reasonable that a properly unified Imperium, full strength Eldar or similarly powerful race could defeat the Tyranids;

Don't they have the Narvhal bioship now?

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Narvhal

The Tyranids are a weapon designed to take out the Emperor - homing in on the Astronomicon makes no sense in terms of evolution so they must have been built for the purpose.

or bugs attracted to a lightbulb.

1 hour ago, Robin Graves said:

or bugs attracted to a lightbulb.

I'd say "bug zapper" but I doubt the imperium can win a bug war with what's basically the 40k equivalent of Galactus.