Just a quick question on travel times, as the fluff seems to vary.

How long do you think it would take a ship to get from Scintilla, or there abouts, to the Solar System?

2 Months? 2 Years? 2 Lifetimes?

Blackat

Lifetimes seems appropriate for travel outside the Warp. Otherwise it's up to GM to decide. I would judge from several months up to years of traveling.

Given that sanctioned psykers are tested and sanctioned on Holy Terra I suspect that two lifetimes is a little large. Personally I'd have thought a round trip would take a few years, akin to an ancient voyage to china and back in 17th Century Europe.

Unfortunately, I can not recall the source on this, but I seem to recall it takes approximately 10 years to get from calixis to Holy terra. I don't know if that's in any way "official" (such as it is with 40k) or not. And, after all, sanctioned psykers, who all must go to Holy Terra, are further aged by 1d10 years. Considering that the 1d10 years can't be completely for training it's self otherwise why wouldn't a Tech-Priest be aged further for being trained to be a tech-priest and having all forms of tubes shoved through his face, this must be indicative of warp time spent getting to and from terra as well as some extra training. As warp time seems to be less then real time (usually) 10 years might be a good ball-park figure.

note that the time spent to travel is the time perceived by the travelers you don't actually age as tiem in the warp passes differently.

also of note you can end your warp journey before you have even left. sometimes minutes sometimes days

The matter is discussed here: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=101&efcid=3&efidt=32336

Short answer: Between 26 and 54 days in experienced travel time, and between 7 and 29 years elapsed time in the outside world. This is for a continous one-stretch journey, return trip Calixis-Terra-Calixis (About 54 000 Light years).

In practice, a ship would probably make multiple stops at various systems, using stable routes that might add to travel distance, need to stop between jumps, etc etc.

But it's not the actual journey that makes the psychers older, I guess. They will only have aged weeks or months, even though their families have aged a generation. It must be the sanctioning process on Terra that takes time.

The Misericords trade route of scintilla/iocanthis/sepheris secondus takes well over a year. Or so says the core book.

In truth I nave not seen a single adventure or fluff novel that takes into account the variable nature of warp travel as outlined in white dwarf.

Do any of you remember any examples of that put into practice? It is mentioned alot in cannon and in the fluff, but have you ever read anywhere where the people chasing someone got to the location BEFORE the people they were chasing? Or even thought it a possibility and checked to see if they did? In short if they were to actually inplement the warp travel tive in that white dwarf article it would have profound changes on the story narrative as a whole for the 40k universe.

Think about it for a bit and more than just my one example will become obvious as you apply the travel times and varability of them into the mix.

Actualy, the empire has a couple of tricks and devices that prevent such variability. The Orks just go at random but the Empire's ships can decide where they are going and take the safest route (so their travel times are a bit easier to predict). Of course it doesn't work 100% of the time so...


Anyway I guess something like a betrayal, a warp storm or just plain bad luck might throw the ship off the usual time schedule but its not likely. Would make for a good intro too:

The Litany of Salvation just made it out of the warp, the occupant where running away from planet X on because a major demon was invoqued there. The demon conjured a warp storm which destroyed most of the ships around the planet and prevented any call for help. The ship managed to make it out of the warp storm but a lot of the instruments where damaged and all the astropath died in the storm.

While they had to survive a year long warp travel with an unusualy high quantity of passengers(ressorting to cannibalism towards the end of the journey), the survivors where much surprised to learn that they got out of the warp before the tragedy on planet X ever happened.

There is still time to save Planet X. If you dont do anything Planet X is doomed. Thats why the inquisition sent you there.

Do your job now.

llsoth said:

Actually, said variation occurs and is noted in Star of Damocles , Desert Warriors and, to a lesser degree, in Eisenhorn and the Ciaphas Cain series.

The variations (as I stated earlier) are mentioned alot in many novels. but it never seems to have any effect, is never planned for, and is completly ignored for story narrative. There is the cavyhote that I have not read all the novels (good god there are alot of them) but Eisenhorn and the Cain novels I have (among a great more) and while indeed the time dilation and randomness of warp travel is mentioned it never actually happens. Nore do any of the characters actually think that it might have. I remember one part of Eisenhorn (or possibly Ravenor) when they were chasing a guy (but did not know exactly where he headed) when they got to the system system and found that the ship was not there, and did not appear to have been there, they figured oops wrong place.. Not once did they go.. "Did we beat them here?" Other example include meet up with someone at a certain calendar date (no so easy to do without alot of waiting), etc, etc.

My point being that the speed of warp travel seems to run at the speed of the story narrative. I am sure there may be a story out there or maybe even a novel where they it is done correctly. Let use an example.

You want to have a meeting so you set up a randevous in space or even on another planet (common enough in the novels). How do you do this? You cant set a date within the variable allowed for the distence traveled in warp. What you have to do is set a date outside the possible time frame and then whoever gets there first will have to wait (for possibly a long time). You want to meat someone in another sector or emperor forbid segmentum.. the time difference would most likely be years. That is only one example... there are many more but you get the idea that the way things are done would have to handled very differently than is usually presented.

Another take on it.. You are a gm. How do you account for it in your adventures. Well first off you have to abandon the notion of the hot pursuite notion when warp travel is involved. Planet hopping missions are suddenly very problamatic and could easily shortcut the whole adventure if the acolytes (due to the vageries of the warp) get to a place to late are to early. I am not saying that there is no way around it but it would have to be planed for in advance. To fix this you have to make the travel times fit the narrative. Of course you could let it play out and stand a good chanc eof haveing the players fail the mission through no falt of their own (always good for player moral) or have them end it on the first warp jump with a lucky roll on travel times(kinda boring for the players).

One source of confusion that I see referenced above is the difference between a chartist vessel and a navigator directed ship.

For example, a chartist vessel (one using no navigator and taking well-travelled pre-calculated routes) takes 800 physical/standard days to get from Scintilla to Malfi. A Navigator could make the trip in anything from a few days or weeks to a few months, depending on the vagaries of the warp.

With a Navigator they may even do it in negative time, with the way things go. In addition, the varience between experienced time and standard time seems to be random as well, though by default it tends to be 1 to 1 from what I can tell. For things to slip is so common it is not regarded as noteworthy, but it does not seem to be a constant issue either. I'd imagine time distortion is also less common on chartist vessels. This is not well explained anywhere, but it is clear that chartist vessels are abysmally slow compared to navigator directed ships. I think given the cost, power, and prestige of the Navis Nobilie makes them impractical on any but the most time-critical (planet saving) of cargo runs.

The difference between the calculated and the navigated jump is one of the few explanations that we have for explaining the difference between the published figures in Dark Heresy and the earlier materials of WD139/140. The bright side to these somewhat crazy travel times is that it reinforces the strategic importance of the Navigator, though it does make it difficult to judge how long journey times are since we don't have those pretty little tactical diagrams that GW normally produces for their BFG sectors.

With all that said, for me the material in WD139/140 holds true in terms of the average warp journey. The whole time travel thing, or the crazy stuff that we often read about in the 'fluff,' are all what I like to consider as the exceptions to the rule rather than the rule themselves.

As always, your interpretation is likely to differ from my own, though I'm guessing that they're both 40k...

Kage

I do see your point Ilsoth- the true and full implications are generally ignored for story purposes. I will note (with a slight spoiler warning) that they do indeed plan for such variation in Star of Damocles , and that there is a rather chilling encounter with the future hulk of one of the ships in the flotilla while the wait at the rendezvous.

Likewise, the issue of warp variance is the major plot twist of Desert Raiders, a similar twist as is used in a sub-plot in Cain's Last Stand , but with the variance in the other way (in Desert Raiders , the protagonists are despatched to investigate/answer a distress call, only to find that due to a severe analeptic variance, the distress call they were to investigate was their own. The book's closing scenes show us that this wasn't the case of the message arriving before it was sent, but of the protagonists arriving before they left (despite the fact that the concept of simultaneity is meaningless over interstellar distances).

And I'm fairly sure that they do worry about arriving ahead of Estrum's (iirc) fleet at 56-Izar in Eisenhorn. However, when following a ship interstellar, unless you are travelling along a different route (predicting their destination and taking what you believe to be a shortcut) I don't believe you could arrive before your quarry, as you are following/riding/using the same currents and flows he is- barring a storm or possibly a sudden sqall at least, you could not arrive ahead without sighting him in the warp, unless he took a detour or spent longer making observations/starfall in an intervening system than you did.

To leave the spoilers and return to my point of argument- with a navigator, such temporal variance can be predicted and occasionally minimised: the variance is due to oddities and changes in local warp flux and flow, and a navigator is able to read these changes to warp currents. A vessel making a calculated or blind jump will see the currents prior to entry and choose the best path at that time, but is at the mercy of those currents after making empyrean ascent; a vessel with a navigator can compensate.

True, this method is not 100% successful, and does have its' limitations (a meeting being attended by persons from different sectors, to use your example, would require, to have its' participants arrive in a timely fashion, that the meeting be set with knowledge of the probable currents along the routes from all starting points to the destination, in order to set a viable window for transit); it is worth noting that many of those limitations also applied to transatlantic voyages, or those round the Cape, during the Age of Sail. Travelling without a Navigator would be akin to setting out from Boston, taking a compass bearing as you leave harbour and pointing your ship so that, if the wind stays constant, and the currents negligible, you would sail directly to your next port of call (Kingston, say, or Port Royal), with your leeward drift exactly countering the variance between your actual heading and desired course. And then not changing sail or heading until you make landfall, at which point you consult the charts and repeat. A very slow and inaccurate way of sailing, generally speaking, with a potential variance of months between possible arrival times at Portsmouth (assuming that is your intended destination), depending on the winds. It also has the least inaccuracy over short distances (island-hopping in the Caribbean, to continue the metaphor), with the greatest problem being the open ocean.

A Navigator would be the equivalent of a captain/sailing master with a good head for spherical trigonometry, an accurate and reliable clock, and an eye for the weather; he can compensate for changes in the winds and currents, avoid shoals, and generally do a great number of things to ensure that you arrive when you thought you would, if not slightly before.

Alasso.

I might have to pick up the star of damocles sounds interesting.

<SPOILERS> In Cains Last Stand (which I just finished) are you refering to the message from the relief fleet that was supposedly on its way to help out, but was actually just an echo of a message sent years before? If you remember that fleet never actually showed up (or more correctly showed up years earlier in response to a different threat). It was the necron ship wich pasted the chaos fleet... BFG is rolling in tis grave at the thought of a single necron ship pasting a whole chaos fleet described as containing mostly captital ships, but oh well. </SPOILERS>

I like your idea that different routs would have different but mostly stable travel times. I will likely end up using that one as a house rule.

As to the usefulness of navigators I agree 100%.

Where does it say that chartest vessels (normally) don't have navigators? I am curious as to this one as it seems to be commonly bandied about but I can't seem to find where it comes from.

Aureus said:

Not quite. T.S. Luikart addressed the "800 days standard" issue in this thread:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffgforums/posts/list/4268.page

The trouble here is the unexplained word "standard". As in, "Malfi is 800 days standard from Scintilla." Standard is in this case would be "not using the warp all that much".

He goes on to talk about the difference between calculated and navgated jumps, and points out that one of the restrictions on calculated jumps is that one jump can go a maximum of 5 Light years. At 61,5 Light Years, the journey would require about 13 jumps. Each jump would take at most 30 minutes travel time (1 day out in the real world), so the real time-factor would be the calculations for each jump, for which I have no idea how long time would be required. Hours? Days? Weeks?

However, the Misericord is said to use a year for its round-trip of about 147 Light years, and that includes time taken in anchor while loading/unloading at its different stops (which can take weeks). It is also not clear just how many stops are made on its trip. Is it just the main 3 planets, or does it stop by other worlds on its route? Either way, it travels longer than the journey from Scintilla to Malfi, and it does so in much less than 800 days (800 days is about 2,5 years). And it is a chartist vessel.

Ilsoth- the echo. Maybe not quite germane to the discussion, but related.

Also, the bit about chartist vessels not using onboard Navigators or astropaths is in the sidebar 'The Chartist Captains' on p254 of the core rulebook.

Darth Smeg- that discrepancy between the 800 days standard and the travel times of the Misericord can be resolved if you rule that the word standard there means that it is referring to Imperial Standard Days/Year Fractions, in which case those 800 Days are merely most of a year (each year containing 1000 of them, and each Day being 8hrs, 47min, 56.whatever seconds long).

Until we are presented with an official system from the writers, my groups will continue to use the Light Speed travel times chart from the Star Wars roleplaying game. Works pretty well for the time being.

Alasseo said:

Well, thats 80% of a year. On a journey of 61,5 Light years. The misericord manages more than twice that in a year. I've looked, but I conclude that the whole "800 days standard" is a mistake, something that should have been corrected during editing.

Alasseo said:

Except that the year fractions aren't a standard measure beyond the bureaucratic masses (nobody uses them except for administrative/bureaucratic purposes), and are referred to in the 5th edition rulebook as Chronosegments. Assuming that they're "Days" (which is, IMO, a very context-heavy term) is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.

Well, maybe you're right that 'Days' is a heavily value laden term. However, it makes sense when you consider the only group aside from the bureaucrats of the Administratum (or indeed the Adeptus Terra in general) who would have a need of a baseline time to compare to- interstellar travellers. If every 'Day', or 'Year Fraction' or 'Chronosegment' is one work shift, you have a very simple method of reckoning which can be understood on every single world, and so you don't have the trouble of converting your home day-cycle to a completely different local one every planetfall. YMMV, of course.

Darth Smeg- possibly, or maybe there's a nasty current making travel from Scintilla to Malfi far slower than it could be. Which would make the return journey much, much faster than you would expect...