Hello there,
I have a question about space travel in Dark Heresy.
In an adventure I’m planning I wish the acolytes to stumble into the bad guys’ agent, fight him a little and then chase him into his own ship, deal with him and his small retinue while the ship takes off and thus reach the sect’s «secret base», thanks to the maps therein or the already-programmed ship’s course.
In my mind it works perfectly but I ignore almost everything about space travel in the Imperium: I need some hints.

1) My idea for the ship is a small ship (10/12 people maximum capacity) capable of entering the warp, to shorten the trip’s duration: in your opinion, is this possibile or only the bigger ships can enter the warp without getting destroyed, lost or whatever? What alternatives do I have?

2) For said warp travel, is a navigator needed? Would a pregenerated course work as well? (After all, in this adventure the acolytes are investigating a heretek sect).

3) Should a navigator be mandatory, how could he be put to work without rebelling against the acolytes or betraying them? Are the navigators «embedded» in a ship? Do they have a will of their own or are their mind and what «sight» they may have projected into the warp only?

Thank you for any help you can give me!

Greetings!

1: Yes, I would assume this is much too small for a warp-capable craft, at least for anyone but the most powerful individuals. The old fluff (I recall Inquisitor Draco’s transport from the Inquisitor novel as one example) has mentioned small ships being able to do this, but as this stands in stark contrast to the description of the setting this is either a one-in-a-million exception or simply out of date.

An alternative would be to have the bad guy use a guncutter to reach an orbiting ~1km cargo hauler or passenger liner (owned and piloted by innocent neutral civilians who simply provide transport for money) and dock with it, akin to a car using a ferry to get over the ocean.

Alternatively, simply make the bad guy’s base be located in the same solar system, thus negating the need for warp travel altogether. Intra-system ships can easily be as small as the one you projected, and do not require a Navigator either.

2: As per the setting, you’ll always need a navigator when traversing the warp. The only known exceptions to this are the Tau who have developed some sort of technological solution, and the Eldar who simply stick to their webway portals. Unless you have a Navigator you have to “fly blind”, as the warp is a fickle thing and the only means of orientation for human ships in it is the psychic beacon known as the Astronomicon.

The Deathwatch RPG also mentions fleets of unmanned drone ships in use by the Deathwatch, but given that this completely negates the need to have Navigators at all I call bull on that idea.

3. Navigators do have a will and mind of their own, and even though they are a bit removed from crew and passengers (at least when doing their job, during which they go into some sort of trance to focus on the aforementioned Astronomicon), but that does not necessarily mean they identify with their employer’s goals. It likely depends on the nature of your bad guy and what sort of Navigator you have in mind – in theory he could even have been kidnapped and put under drugs or something to keep him docile.

Alternatively, use the above idea with the ferry, in which case the Navigator will be part of the innocent civilian crew and all too happy to oblige inquisitorial orders.

Hope that helps a bit!

Actually you don't need a Navigator for warp flight. You can use calculated jumps but they are slow and short in comparison to a Navigators ability. Somewhere in the realm of a very short Navigator jump would be 10 or more calculated jumps, at least.

Tau barely skim the warp and don't actually enter it. I believe it's very slow even when compared to a calculated warp jump.

Any ship smaller than a raider is generally considered non-warp capable. Those few ships that do exist that are tiny and warp capable are generally controlled by the top tier of the Inquisition or the High Lords of Terra.

Berengario said:

The setting definitely favours larger ships (much, much larger ships) than this, but if you want a smaller ship for your story I'd say go nuts. You're the GM, use what you need. Maybe this guy's ship is custom-built or an archeotech relic that only turned out to need a few small retrofits to work with current non-heretical technology.

If you go that route, I would also play up the "little ship, big ocean" facor while in the Warp. Simply put, on Earth, there's a reason that small personal boats don't go out into the ocean. Even if they have a really big motor, they'll get tossed around like a feather on the wind. I would emphasize how much effort is required on the navigator's part to maintain a lock on the Astronomicon while piloting such a small ship through such powerful Warp currents.

Alternatively you could make a bigger ship and just say the PCs need to win over the leaders of each department and then the crew will fall in line. Kinda weak, but it works. A ship the size of most 40k ships just can't be run without a strong chain of command - win over the commanders and the rest should obey.

Berengario said:

I'm not exactly up to snuff on Navigator fluff i particular, but I gather they are required for anything more than a VERY short jump made between two points that are WELL WITHIN the command of the Imperium. Longer jumps of jumps made out on the fringes of the Imperium are much too dangerous to attempt without a navigator - the odds of your arriving in the correct place or the correct time are pretty slim.

That said, I understand that all, or at least most, navigators are part of a single, Imperial operated "navigator's guild" of sorts. Even if this particular navigator was hostile to the party's purposes, as acolytes of the Inquisition they could pretty easily blackmail him into cooperating by threatening to ruin his position in the guild. Assuming they don't mind blowing their cover, of course.

Edit: Also, if you run with the "little ship, big ocean" idea above, perhaps the navigator will be more willing ot turn traitor if he's getting fed up with his old boss requiring him to Navigate in this tiny little rust bucket. If the PCs offer to help him find a better commission on a bigger ship, he might serve them willingly.

Thank you all, you gave me not only great ideas to work on but also that knowledge on warp travel I completely missed: I like both the guncutter and the "bribe the navigator by promising him a better commission" hints.

I think this time I'll go with the guncutter, I want the cult to be operational in one subsector only (the Josian Reach), therefore warp travel isn't needed (shame on me I didn't think about this before!). But I'd really like to add a navigator to the party's contacts' list too: in their future I see a long travel to a faraway border sector, likely on that archeotech smaller ship...

Thank you again!

Berengario said:

I regret having to introduce a fly into your ointment of new-found simplicity of design, but if the cult regularly (or irregularly) transfers members between different star systems within the Josian Reach, those members being transferred or moved about would still need to travel by Warp means. A single sub-sector is comprised of many many solar systems which tend to be several light years apart (and that's just the distance to any star system, not necessarily a habitable one), especially out on the fringes of the galaxy ;-)

I, my self, am a fan of having things contained in one solar system. Warp travel for independent organizations or individuals is incredibly rare. It also seems that since there's more then one star system at hand the incredible variety as well as size of a single soar system is over looked. Just because a single planet tends to be listed in the star charts doesn't mean there aren't cultivated moons, outposts on other uninhabitable planets, asteroid mining stations, distant listing outposts, in system pirates and their basses, etc, all within a single solar system. A single solar system and even planet can have an incredible verity of things happening in and around it. After all, just look at us in the here-and-now. So far, all of the craziness of human history is contained on one planet and hasn't even really touched the solar system of that one planet as of yet ;-)

For your cult, I would suggest having it operate on the sub-sector level, but mostly through coded messages "mailed" to the various sects by shipping the messages with the cargo of various chartist vessels (a bonus for any character who bothered to take Scholastic Lore (cryptology) is they could get some additional info about the cult or relevant plot hooks and happenings by deciphering the message!). Perhaps one or two of the cult's inner circle travel about establishing new cells in new systems, but, for the most part, the planet a cell is started on will be the planet that cell is burned on (or subverts, who knows). When the cultists flee in their system ship, they are trying to get to their secret outpost/base within the solar system. There the PC's would find more of the cult as well as several of the coded messages not yet destroyed by the cult. They could then find the markings on the scroll cases of the messages identifying the chartist vessel that carried the message. From there, they can track down the chartist vessel by getting it's charter from the sub-sector naval command which would not only outline the planets the vessel visits but help the PC's track down where and when it might be at port again. They could then go to a planet the vessel is scheduled to port at and await it's arrival to question it's captain and officers or acquire it's log and manifest to find out from where and when it acquired the scroll cases and if such happens regularly or just that one time. And then it's off to another planet to find out who's sending these scrolls, etc.

Graver said:

More good ideas...

Thank you all again for your suggestions, you really helped me a lot fleshing out a story whose original plot now seems quite flat to me: this adventure will rock!

In the RT core book or in into the storm there is a device that can be hooked up to a warp drive to calculate jumps so you don't need a navigator.
The description mentiones that the navigator houses hunt down and destroy all those devices, for they want to be the only ones making warp travel possible.

So yes, if they are using such a thing a precalculated warp travel would be possible without a navigator.