In my game I am thinking of having one of the main antagonists start killing off local astropaths in order to delay communications to cut the planet off, but my question is... how many astropaths would there be on any given planet? Or area of a planet? The planet in question is a typical dense hive world focused on fuel processing.

DastardlyIceHole said:

This is hard to say. In the DH rulebook it is mentioned that the Bastion Pophyr on Scintilla has half a dozen astropaths and thereby the largest concentration of astropaths in the sector. In my opinion this seems a little few to me. Dan Abbnet's freelancing astopaths ubiquitously running around in his Eisenhorn novel though seem a little too much in my opinion.

Astropaths are the most common Psykers and I would imagine most hive cities have a couple of them; maybe something like about 1 astropath per 10 million inhabitants on average. Though it really depends on the presence of the Adeptus Terra on the respective hive world. The Adeptus Arbites almost always have their own astropath or even astropathic choir as has the Administratum and of course any Adeptus Astra Telepathica institutions. A powerful Adeptus like the Ministorum most probably also have their own access to one even though its sort of against their credo. Any Inquisition branch on a planet would also have their own trustworthy astropaths. Besides them only the office of the planetary governor and really powerful trading houses/cartels could have access to astropaths.

From the books and the listed fluff and the novels, the way I see it, is that a planet worth anything to the Imperium is going to have at least 1. If its a feral world, good chance none unless, again, there is something valuable there. If its a big planet that is actually important, there will probably be half a dozen to a dozen. It depends on how much information needs to be sent quickly from / to that planet.

In your case, if its a high output I would probably say 3 - 5 and they would probably be spread out. Also remember that Astropaths will use astropathic choirs to boost their power. Again the size of the choir is going to depend on the importance of the planet / city. The choir will be made out of low level telepaths and astropaths that are not strong enough to have any use by themselves.

ANY Imperial world will have an Astropath presence on it, although the aforementioned feral world might only rate a single tower with a few outbuildings staffed by three Astropaths and a small staff of guards and attendants. Major Imperial institutions will frequently make use of their own private Astropaths (especially the Inquisition, Rogue Trader houses, and the Imperial Navy) and prominent Imperial worlds will have one or more facilities dedicated for Adeptus Astra Telepathica use (and usually isolated from the population in some way, either a tall tower or a remote location). What makes the facility on Scintilla noteworthy is the number of on duty Astropaths (12!) at any given time. Usually 6-8 hours is enough to tire out an Astropath and they risk premature burnout if they push themselves too hard, so the typical practice is to have them work in shifts. I generally populate Astropaths in multiples of three, unless there has been some sort of "incident" that changes the count (perceptive and alert players/characters might notice this). It is also standard practice for the Adeptus Astra Telepathica to arm each Astropath's attendant with a large handgun, the purpose of which is twofold: 1) to defend their charge from harm. 2) to kill the Astropath if they show signs of posession.

Luthor Harkon said:

One thing to remember is that Astropaths themselves are the members and property of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and thus are not strictly part of other organisations. Certainly, powerful groups may have contracts and pacts with the Adeptus Astra Telepathica that provide them with exclusive service (for example, the Imperial Navy would require at least one Astropath on every vessel and station, and more on command vessels and isolated patrol craft), but even then the Astropaths are likely to be kept separate from everyone else, and most will instead be forced to negotiate for the services of those Astropaths who aren't specifically assigned to a single master.

Also remember that an Astropath can be used to send messages secretly through various forms of encoding and encryption, as they are not required to understand the messages they send and receive.

So it doesn't sound too far-fetched that a well informed and competent villain could take out the Inquisition's local astropath, thus cutting the PC's off from their inquisitor. That should give them a scare.

Hi,

to provide a different point of view.

I would think about one Astropath in a Major City in a standard civilized world. (see the FreeBee Deatwatch adventure. In a non-hive imperial world you have one Astropath mentioned..in her own tower).

Since it is a hive world, I would think about a little more. Perhaps 12 in the "general area" by which I mean anything reachable within a few hours of travel.
After all, your pc could simply jump into a guncutter and fly somehwere else. Let say four locations.

This makes it HARDER to cut off the communication at once... and this it how it should be! The Imperium is a militaristic socierty. Defensibility and arment is underpinning many things in life. I can´t believe that something of such a strategic value like "communication to the rest of the Imperium" would be so easy to wipe out as a one-man show is.

Luthor Harkon said:

I agree. I interpret this as being the Astropaths working specifically for the local Adeptus. I think that power noble houses, major trading guilds, and certain government agencies would all have one or two Astropaths on staff; plus I think there would be a few "Western Union"-style buisnesses that do nothing but send Astropathic messages.

Although it is worth pointing out that, as presented in the Rulebook , the Calaxis Sector is supposed to be a "frontier sector" in the Imperium (something that has gotten lost, I feel, in subsequent supplements), so maybe Astropathic communication was originally supposed to be extremely rare here...

I would probably go with each planet having at most one or two astropaths. This of course means that communications are very limited but it also makes the alternative of using, say Xeno tech or Warp sorcery, for communication more tempting. Hence I would say that most major worlds have one or two astropaths tied to the Adeptus Terra. The Great Houses can probably use some astropaths themselves but its probably more limited and the most important source of information is the Chartisan captains who travells the galaxy.