Like I say, the way around the 1% figure is to read it as being 1% have psychic potential, but that the majority of this 1% are so weak that they don't really register as psykers as such.

After all, there is plenty of background on at least one psychic grading system in use within the Imperium, with Alpha level psykers at the top, and there are numerous grades below that. Perhaps only the top 10% of the 1% (ie 0.1%) would be caught by the tithe.

"Sanctioned Psykers are psykers trained by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica"

Yes alot of the sources say "they get this training on Terra".

Things to think about if?

Big E eats 1000 a day...

Astronomicon eats another lets say 250 of it's 10,000 pyskers...

That would make the psyker sacrifice per year for Terra a minium of 456,250.

How many Black Ships does it take to move that many pyskers?

Of course, many must be babies.

456250...it could be interesting knowing how many psykers produces a system like Calixis per year.

myth835 said:

From what we've seen on the Rogue Trader side of things, a single transport can easily carry 100,000 or more. Heck, a Lunar cruiser has nearly that many crew. Of course, psykers might require special containment, and that could cut the carry capacity a good bit. Still, they probably don't need more than one Black Ship a month or thereabouts.

You also have to remember that the Imperium has a million odd worlds. Even if the percentage of psyker births is low... that still is a lot of people to cull through... there have to be many, many Black Ships at various stages of their journey. In fact, given the amount of 'raw material' they have, I suspect the burn rate is actually considerably higher than your numbers, that, or many psykers die before they even get to Holy Terra.

Cheers,

- V.

Black ships are usually of a light cruiser or cruiser size, which when configured for personnel transportation can transport hundreds of thousands of people, while still maintaining a strong pairing of offensive and defensive systems. The ships are as much science labs and torture dungeons as they are prisons and transports. Nobody voluntarily goes onto a black ship for a reason.

I don't think it's possible to ever get numbers for the amount of psykers one can carry, nor the attrition rates... but the main reason the sanctioning can take so many years are the long, circuitous routes the black ships take around the Imperium before returning to Terra for the final sanctioning ceremonies. You can read into that as a comment on how few psykers each world produces and thus how long it takes to fill the holds, or instead that there are so many psykers that the ships spend years cruising around as they whittle down their stock of psykers to the strong few. Hell, maybe it's a little of both.