I'm a bit concerned that the first time my astropath transcendant's Lord-Captain asks him to send a long-distance message, say to another star system, I'm going to be stuck telling him, "Come see me when I'm Rank 5." Is it just expected that you will always have 5 other astropaths with you for sending such messages? Or do you only need to send as far as the nearest other astropath in the choir? Any explanation of how it has worked in games you all have played would be welcome.

It's not as bad as it seems at 1st. You need an effective psi of 6 which is hard, but here is how you do it. Remember it's a rare astropath that sends a signal to another system on his own. Also remember that sending messages a long way is dangerous. That said it's generally assumed that the RT ship has a choir, and some sort of hexgramic warded area to operate from .

2- Starting psi

1- invocation

3- Push

This gets you to a nearby system with some risk, but with soul binding p. 72, and the talent Rite of Sanctioning it's not very risky. Not to mention the -10 to phenoma, and perils rolls from hexgramic warding. p 163 black box.

1- Wyrdling mutation

Nice bonus to psi early on.

1-5- Choir

Heck with a 5 astropath choir you could reach nearby systems fettered, and the subsector with a push.

Ps- Honestly if your GM doesn't give you at least a 3 astropath choir I suspect he doesn't want you sending off messages regularly.

Or you could have astropathic relays around, so you can send to those, which then relay it on to the planet in question. Takes slightly longer, but means you get the message to where you want it.

This is what most single astropaths tend to do in the books, anyway.

Also, you can still send the message, you just start getting the cumulative -20 modifier for the person picking the message up for having too little Psy Rating.

So what are these astropathic relays? Is that a device? If so, I'll have to convince my RT to start dropping them all over the Expanse.

OK, pushing involves risk, and I'm risk averse, so I'll tell my RT I need a choir to reach a nearby system. From there, is it assumed that another astropath can pick up the message and forward it if the actual destination is further away? Say we need to get a message to Terra; if I can get it as far as Port Wander, will other astropaths be able to send it from there in several small "hops," or does it have to go from me all the way to Terra (i.e. segmentum+ distance) in one hop?

What about the rule that says bonuses to your Psy Rating can only come from one source? Does that mean the benefits of pushing and an astropathic choir will not stack? It seems like the answer should be that they do stack, since the black box on p. 163 talks about burnout for members of the choir, so I guess I answered my own question there.

Are there items out there that could boost effective Psy Rating for astral telepathy only? I didn't see any in the book, but it would be very handy if those staves with the eyeball symbols on top were actually useful in the astropath's duties. Maybe that will come out in a future supplement?

It says what they are in the book, page 163.

A relay is nothing more then a place where it is safer to make an Astral Telepathy roll. Nothing more nothing less. It is not a method of communications.

Sister Callidia said:

Except that, in the fluff, they are often used as points where the astropathic message is intercepted and rebroadcast, therefore keeping the signal strong and meaning you don't need a full choir with an astropathic relay on every ship out there. They are used as a network to get messages across subsectors/sectors/segmentums.

OK, so it's not some psy-repeater satellite or something, it has to be manned by astropaths. So, I'll have to convince my RT to create a chain of such installations with at least 6 astropaths manning each one (more likely 12 or 18 so they can sleep in shifts), all of which are at the "nearby system" distance apart, and safe (that is, not prone to the astropaths getting killed all the time by warp phenomena) astropathic communication becomes possible. It isn't by any means reliable, though. If we assume "average" astropaths have Per 40, WP 40, and Psy Rating 1, then the chance of both the send and receive rolls being successful for a "nearby system" hop is as follows:

Roll to send is 50% likely to succeed (base 40, +30 for Psy Rating 6, -10 for "nearby system" distance).

Roll to receive is 50% likely (base 40, +10 for meditative state, +10 for the astropathic relay, -10 for "nearby system" distance), but there are 6 astropaths at each location who can receive it, so that's (1.0 - 0.5^6 = ) 98.4375% chance of successful receipt.

That gives a roughly 49.2% chance that the message will go through on one try. Each successive hop basically cuts the chances that the message with get through on the first try in half. In order to have a pretty good chance (93.35%) of getting a message through, you need to send the same message 4 times.

So now all we need to make the system work is a protocol. Each message must contain the galactic address of the intended recipient and a unique message identifier that includes the originating astropath's name and a message number (for example, "Psyguy1349"). When a message is sent, the sending station waits 10 minutes for the acknowledgement that it was received by the next station in line towards the intended recipient, and if it doesn't get one, it sends the message again. When a message is received, an acknowledgement is sent back containing the unique message identifier, and once that is successfully received by the sending station, it stops trying to send the message. Each station knows where it is in the galaxy, so it can work out for itself what the next station in line is that it needs to send to in order for the message to reach the intended recipient.

Now that I think about it, expanding this system to sub-sector distances, and still only sending at Psy Rating 6, is still pretty reliable: 1.0 - 0.7^6 = 88.235% chance to receive. I'm not sure if the sender and receiver would have to take a -20 penalty or not in that case, but if so, it would just increase the number of times you had to send the same message before it finally went through.

MILLANDSON said:

I can't recall any fluff around that but that is probably because I fail to remember. Unfortunately there are no rules about them in the book, and as they arte so vague to begin with we have no way to know how they should work if they exist.

However, we do know that a lot of planetary centers have astropaths choirs that can trancieve signals and broadcast them further on if need be. Probably one of the reason why a message that needs to travel to earth takes many months to reach it. For the Koronos expanse it seems logical to assume that Port Wander and Footfall can act as relays in that way.

I think that Astroptaths are rare enough to not waste them on small relay stations in the middle of nowhere though.

Sister Callidia said:

Though, given that space stations (Port Wander and Footfall) can have astropathic choirs (which requires the use of a relay, according to the RT book), I can't see why some Rogue Traders might not have seeded protected space stations (perhaps solely for Astropaths) with Astropathic Relays around the Expanse in order to better facilitate communications.

The cost I think would be prohibitive. Even one would be a whole endeavor by itself.
Find a suitable number of Astropaths and convince the authorities to grand them to you and not to that hive planet that has requested them for ages.
Acquire the relay set itself.
Acquire a defensive satellite not as expensive as a raider but still expensive to give you a pause and give it enough manpower and food to last for years without supervision.

Call me cheap, but I prefer to have a choir of 5 astropaths in my ship. That would give me a psy rating of 8 for a starting Atropath. Which should do the trick quite well.

Sister Callidia said:

Even when you can then charge RT's slightly less than it'd cost themselves to set up their own choir, but enough for you to make a profit? You could make a lot of money off holding the monopoly on sector-wide communications for the majority of people.

I strongly suspect that the "manned satellite" station idea would, within a year, end up with at least one of the Astropaths going nuts and killing the others. Either that or, you know, Orks, or raiders, or warp storms, or whatever. The Expanse is uncivilised space and nothing, no matter how powerful, will deter everything that lurks out there in the deep horrid darkness. Communications would go down all the time, and you'd be chewing through Astropaths like The Emperor with a bad case of the Soul-Munchies.
Further, RTs don't strike me as the type who would stint the setting-up of their own choir and have their communications handled by a third party (I was going to say "a third party they don't trust", but that's pretty much a given) just to save a few thrones on their Space phone bill. As far as I can figure, a Rogue Trader won't get anywhere by entrusting important messages to strangers.

Rakshasa said:

Not all Rogue Traders are as rich as others though, so not all can afford their own Astropathic Choir. It was only a suggestion though, I didn't say it'd be easy to set up.

MILLANDSON said:

Well setting up a series of relays between Kornos and the Empire would make a grand endeavor yes that might make a lot of profit. But for your own personal use, it would be impractical and to costly.

It also would mean that you have a lot of fragile assets that needs to be protected vigilantly. It might work though, depending if there are enough customers availoable in this rough area of space.