Hey folks, I'm relatively new to GMing Rogue Trader and my group is about to do it's first real warp travel into the maw. We're an all new table of players although some of us have prior 40k experience. Basically I'm trying to confirm if my idea of the theme is right so i can then paint the picture of shipboard life for my players right.

Question Set 1: Of the Maw itself:

Ok so we've got the Maw right? It's this semi stable passage between two massive stable warp storms. Occasionally smaller storms either flare up across it or the two big storms lunge forcing everyone to drop out of warp space at one of the stations of passage so they don't get broken on the reefs of the warp or have their geller field battered down and become demon chow. That's presumably where the Stations of Passage comes in, their a well known set of co-ordinates that when you see a warp storm on the horizon or just want to drop out of the warp so your navigator can stretch their spindly elongated legs for a bit. Their easy to find, well known and well mapped and so you can plot a course to them and do a transition in a hurry if need be? Does this all sound right?

Question set 2: Navigators, Helmsmen, the Augur Master and their respective Jobs

So you've got the Navigators, specially bred mutants who are mankind's keys to the stars. They maintain their own bloodline and have a my brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against everyone else mentality. There are certain levels of political infighting going on but ultimately it rarely goes to out and out bloodshed as every single dead navigator is a loss to the "race's" breeding stock and therefore a risk to all of them. Now they have the nifty ability to either look out a port hole into the warp or supernaturally cast their perceptions out into it, either act would cause a mere mortal or a psyker to instantly either go stark raving mad, kill themselves, start chanting unholy litanies, or maybe all three. The Navigators however do this while sipping a cup of recalf and on quiet runs doing the port wander crossword (36 down, word for stick in mud, ends in issionary). They can see the relative storms for (thousands of) miles around. Now I'm presuming the warp is never actually calm, there's just stuff you can pass through (like mist, rain, etc) stuff you steer around (stationary storms and shoals) and stuff you just transition to real space and wait for it to blow over.

Then you've got the helmsmen(note: that I presume most ships are mixed sex, but helmsperson just doesn't roll off the tongue as well). Now they can't look into the warp so what they do is stare at the augur display and grip the controls pretty much white knuckled for 8 hours a shift, because if the word comes down from the captain or duty officer for a course correction it's going to need to be punched in right then and as accurately as possible or everyone onboard is demon chow. Likewise the master of augurs (etherics?) is responsible for providing a thin window into the fog that is the warp for the helmsman and everyone else to see. Because while you trust that crazy mutant because you have to they might miss something right on top of you while trying to figure out a five letter word for squig or while their plotting out the direction and speed of an oncoming storm. Their also responsible for seeing things that the navigator won't pick up. Echo's of other ships or vox transmissions from ships lost in the warp that their captain might nobly want to attempt rescue or salvage on. (totally no demons or genestealers here guys we promse)

Some of this comes from the fact that my navigator wants to pick up pilot space craft way early (rank 1) which i'm fine with as we don't have a dedicated VoidMaster or such to undercut. What I want to stress is that at least in warp she's navigating, not streering the vessel as their seperate jobs. Out of warp i'm fine with her taking the com if everyone else is.

That's actually a better described and thought out essay on the nature of warp travel and navigators than I've seen from a lot of people, so well done

Pretty much the only thing to add is that the warp is more like a three dimensional (usaully, but let's leave time dilation out of this, shall we?) ocean with strange tides, shoals and predators. Navigators can perceive these otherwise intagiable tides and steer the ship through them. Given that the tide may consist of "Forgotten longings from my childhood" and the direction to tack across it might be "The smell of caffiene in the morning", a regular steersman won't cut it - while in the imamterrium, the Navigotor has complete control over direction.

It's actually pretty cool thematically for the Navigator to also be the pilot. The bridge is simply a tactical station where the captain barks orders overlooking the auger pits, weapon shrines and choirs that pray for the shields to be maintained, but under a nearby heavily armoured and isolated crystalk dome, the Navigator steers the ship in peace.

First- Awesome, great to see a new RT group out there. Second- all my answers are as things apply in my campaign. You may decide I'm full of it on a particular point (or all of them) and decide to completely ignore me. If I have a point with a concrete piece of fluff to back it up, I'll reference it so you can see how I came to it, but you're still free to completely disregard it.

Question Set 1: Pretty close. I see the Maw as fairly often wracked by minor storms and squalls- enough to make Navigation a pain, but generally not massively dangerous. The Stations of Passage are relatively well known points that are usually clear enough of squalls for your Navigator to make. However, you won't always exit the warp at a station of passage- if the warp "ahead" is clear, and you haven't had a particularly onerous run thus far, the odds are that particular station will be skipped. It should be remembered, however, that the Navigator is not going to be the only one aboard feeling the strain of travel in the Empyrean: everyone is likely to be cranky and suffering from warp dreams (astropaths and other psykers will probably have it worst, likely followed by the children inevitable on any ship with a mixed crew), the ship's techpriests and enginseers will be complaining about the strain put on their precious ship's Geller field and warp drives (even if the run has been sweet and smooth, with any strain well within tolerances), and the constant uncertainty of how long your ship has been sailing the Immaterium by the rest of the galaxy's reckoning is going to be at the back of everyone's mind.
Frequent drops back into real space are therefore **** useful, and comparatively restful for everyone.

It's probably worth noting, however, that just because a station is "well known" and in a relatively clear/stable volume of the warp, doesn't mean it will always be so, or that it will always be possible to plot a quick translation to there (or indeed, from there), as local conditions will change things. For that matter, not all of them are well mapped or well known- the Stations of Passage listed are merely some of the better known and more common ones. It is entirely possible that your crew may shift back into real space in the long dark void between the stars...

Question Set 2: Pretty much spot on with the Navigators, although they should never find Warp runs that easy. No Navigator can afford to devote attention to anything but navigating while he guides it through the Warp, as the currents there are ever open to sudden change. Hell, even if he misses a small eddy it can throw the ship progressively further off course- and that's without the threat of warp entities attacking the ship.
It's also worth noting that the Navigator Houses do lose a proportion of their candidates to insanity from looking upon the Empyrean, and equally worth noting that looking upon the Warp is not always an instant crazy-maker for regular humans (First And Only and the Inquisition War trilogy have examples of viewing galleries and portholes used while in the Immaterium by non-Navigators; the view is described as mesmerising but disturbing, and something likely to drive an observer mad if he spent sufficient time looking out at it).
In addition, the Houses of the Navis Nobilite have been known to go to war, on scales reaching from trade embargoes and sanctions, through route stealing, sanctioning pirac... privateering, up to assassinations and all-out warfare. At that stage, the Elders of a particular House are priority targets, followed by the Paternoval Heir, the Novators and then any Navigator known to be sterile or over childbearing age. However, even young, fertile Navigators can become targets (Wolfblade, by William King features just such a Navigator's War).

Helmsmen- Yup. Probably worth noting that some craft have the Navigator's Eyrie linked directly to helm controls, meaning that your ship's Mr Sulu can take a break while they're in the Warp, but those are the exception. They're probably more common than the ships that don't have a separate Eyrie though (The Wandering Star, from Barrington J Bayley's Eye of Terror was always conned by the ship's Navigator, from the bridge. Everyone else left the bridge when they entered the Warp).

Masters of Etherics- Sort of. They don't do distress signals though,(that'll be the Astropath Primus, possibly the Master of Vox), and a ship is extremely unlikely to pick up any sort of signals (real or fake, distress or otherwise) when out of real space. Unfortunately, a ship's auspex and augur arrays are going to be very unreliable while in the warp- at best, and assuming a ridiculously calm stretch, you might pick up something cruiser-sized at 60,000km, maybe 65 (noted with extreme disbelief in Execution Hour). Most of the time, all they'll show is a soup of roiling static, as the auspex cogitators try and make sense of energy readings that fluctuate wildly and often cannot be real (not to say that they don't exist, it's just that anything beyond the Geller field is inherently unreal). Assume a "reliable" (and I use that term very loosely) range of may be 1 VU. Your helmsmen aren't going to be able to dodge that, unless they've been given prior warning by the Navigator (they're still going to have a very narrow window to make the course correction, it's just the Navigator is going to be steering far further ahead than they can see via auspex).

As to the Navigator picking up Pilot (Space Craft), it's entirely possible that your ship has a helm linkage to the Eyrie, or that the Navigator comes from a House that emphasise real-space pilotry as well as Warp Navigation. Hell, that Navigator in particular may just have a fascination with flying his own shuttles... I will note, however, that the skills needed to plot a course are different to those needed to follow it (or adjust it on the fly for local conditions). This is why Navigation (Surface) and Drive (Ground Vehicle) are separate skills, but you'd need both to make a journey across a significant distance on a planet. Similarly, if a Navigator is going to get the best route and times when guiding a ship if he knows how to handle it and steer it himself (incidentally, giving directions to the helmsmen is pretty much what the average Voidmaster is doing when flying the ship in real space anyway...).

Hope all that helps.

Thanks for the inputs guys, I may have to seek out some more 40k literature although i hear in many cases the quality of said work is all over the place and subject to more then a little lens of the particular fandom.

Some of my questions come from printed adventures seeming to indicate that ploting and piloting the ship inw arp space are two different duties, but the seperation of them seems to be fairly anticlimactic for the navigator. That and I can't imaging how you'd be able to pilot the ship in warp space but not be able to pilot it in regular space.

Add to that the fact that the closest approximation of scale for 40k. (for certain degrees of close) real world heavy lift, tanker, and cargo ships, don't really have just a wheel but a complicated system of turning the main rudder and then possibly selectively powering down certain engines. Actually real world subs might be a closer example in the three degrees of space.

Alasseo maybe i'm misunderstanding but I'm thinking piloting checks on the big ships are made with pilot space craft, that's what the printed adventures and such seem to indicate. While i love the detail of navigation(warp, stellar, and ground) I think they might have broke it out a little too far.

lurkeroutthere said:

Piloting in realspace is a matter of three dimensions and navigating based on naturally observable reference points (stars, planets, etc)

Piloting in the Warp is a matter of countless dimensions other than the conventional three, and navigating based on ephemeral subjective phenomena (a desire for toast, the difference between jealousy and envy, the concept of Tuesday, etc). Navigators are trained from a young age to not only perceive the Warp, but also to be able to interpret it as a collection of traditional memes and abstractions filtered through their own personal experiences and inclinations.

While hardly definitive, I've had a workable interpretation of the dynamics of the Warp for some years now, that I've always found helpful in understanding the role of Navigators.

Fundamentally, the Warp is empty of everything - at it's most basic, the Warp is an infinite sea of untapped potential, utterly absent form or substance. An object in the Warp - say, a normal housebrick - is inherently more 'real' than anything around it, and thus the Warp attempts to become like the object. In doing so, the un-stuff of the Warp suffused the object, breaks down the physical laws that define it, and cause it to dissolve into nothing. With the Warp being inherently empty, even the most idle of thoughts and dreams is inherently more real than the Warp, and thus capable of influencing the Warp-stuff around it, and thus mortal thought produces echoes within the Warp.

The end result is a ripple of mimesis - echoes in the Warp of an object, thought, emotion or concept, repeated again and again until the original concept is lost to the entropy of replication, like a picture photocopied too many times. A thought or emotion (for example) that repeats itself or is particularly strong may last longer and thus have greater impact, creating more potent ripples, which may cross other ripples to create areas of calm (where the ripples cancel each other out) turbulence or strong directional pressure - essentially, a current.

Navigators can employ these currents, when observed, to guide a ship safely, while trying to avoid turbulent or becalmed regions. This may require frequent changes of course, effectively hopping from one current to another to reach an intended destination.

That's the relevant part - I've theorised a whole lot more that goes into the concept of warp storms, the formation of Chaos Gods, psychic powers, the dangers of the Warp and the Warp as a meta-universe that exists between all other universes and from which all universes came (sort of like the ancient Greek concept of Chaos), but that would take much, much longer to detail.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Well I don't know about anyone else, but I'd still like to hear it!

I'm open to hearing it as well.

For my part I see the warp as anything but empty, a torrential storm of fog and echo, evil things lurking in the black of nightmares. As a system gets more settled and the number of imperial faithful in the system increases the warp becomes calmer. The storms are pushed back maybe by the emperor's will but maybe by people's faith in the emperor's will. Likewise that's why as a passage becomes more widely used it becomes safer, as peoples belief in it's stability grows it's ability to be traversed grows. While warp travel will never be what a normal person will call routine there must be routes out there that would be "boring" by Navigator and certainly Rogue Trader standards. Maybe these routes lay in segmentum solar and are the ones you can actually plod a vessel along using calculated jumps much to the Navis Nobile's dismay.

At the same time things can be easily unbalanced, wide scale rebellion, loss of morality amongst the faithful, ork invasion, all can cause worsening warp storms. And even that's before we get into direct correlation phenomena like the Tyranid Warp Shadow and chaos witch summoned storms.

Part of that, at least in the mental concept I've come up with is why the Maw won't be a safe passage for a very long time. There's just not enough of the faithful on the far side, nor will there likely be for some time to come and maybe not even then without a full scale Imperial Crusade.

lurkeroutthere said:

Yah, looking back at that I see I wasn't at my most coherent. Ah well, 'twas written late at night by someone already woozy on meds.
The point I was trying to make was that the various Navigation skills (Surface, Stellar and Warp) involve planning turns to call out far in advance, while the Pilot (Space Craft) skill (on a big ship, at least) represents calling out planned turns and acceleration changes virtually as you need them to happen (there are likely more controls required for the turning process than one person can physically manage).

At the same time, a Navigator is going to get the best performance out of a ship if he knows not merely how to plot a course, but how to handle a ship a tight volume (if, say, serious warp squalls blew up just ahead)- so having Pilot (Space Craft) would be an asset.

lurkeroutthere said:

I could have been clearer with that.

The Warp - by itself, with no other factors influencing it - is empty. The Warp is potential with no catalyst, a literal blank slate upon which all of existence can be written. IMO, the majority of the Warp is exactly this - only those parts relatively close (for a given value of close when dealing with the Warp) to a source of influence (such as a universe) are going to differ.

The Warp as experienced by those who can perceive it, those who can touch it, and those who travel through it is anything but empty, but the 'content' is nothing more or less than an echo of reality. Every thought a sapient being has ever had, every object ever lost in the Warp leaves an echo, and as the Warp is fundamentally timeless and without physical dimension, those echoes can appear in relation to observers at any time and in any place. The Warp is continually churning and moving because of the ripples of notion spawned from every creature that has ever and will ever live across the entire lifespan of the universe. Indeed, traversing the Warp is only possible because of this motion, allowing vessels to ride the perpetual tides of the Immaterium to an eventual destination.

As for the other stuff... it'll take a while to put my thoughts together in some coherent form.

I guess my problem with the above is it just doesn't seem dark enough for 40k. Ditto with the first and only depiction of staring out the port holes into the warp. Maybe that's the point of the crystal viewing domes, that plus gellar field renders the eminations harmless.

I guess my thought based on my reading is that the warp was once a tranquil place, a peaceful realm like what you describe, but not any more and in a self full-filling prophecy likely never to be again. People believe it's chaos so it remains a realm of chaos. I would think it would take a major cosmological event, Death and full ascension of the emperor, or a rediscovery and expansion of Webway technology to render the warp calm again for any meaning of the world. As it stands now even if it's a stiring sea of lost meme's there are still demons hiding in it no?

Also i didn't mean to imply that the crew didn't take their steerage crews from the navigator mid warp travel or that he/she wouldn't serve as the duty officer mid warp travel. I'm just trying to convey for my players the sense of bustling activity going with every relatively minor action, that they are the decision makers and order givers but there are a hundred little cogs in the wheel made of men that go into carrying out their commands.

lurkeroutthere said:

Daemons in the warp are just the manifestation of ideas. If enough people think of something it creates a ripple in the warp. That ripple can manifest into a form. That form, if feared by enough people, can become a Daemon. This is, for me, why the Emperor outlawed religion and pushed science so hard. If no one believes in them the warp entities would loose power, eventually loose the ability to manifest into a solid form, and eventually the ripples would dissipate.

There is different fluff too, some say the navigator steers in the warp from is command throne in the warp copalu or whatever that chamber is called, other he orders courses corection most agree that the navogator is isolated during the warp traval in the Warp Copula.

You know I've always thought that the Helmsman did the non-Warp piloting and the Navigator did all the Warp piloting. This made some of the warp encounters seem odd to me. "Why would the Helmsman be needed to avoid a shoal? The Navigator steers the ship..."

But, it seems this is not the case most of the time? A helmsman steers based on coordinates and positions given to him by the Navigator while in the warp? I much prefer this actually.

Now I feel dumb.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

professor_kylan said:

I am now imagining a group of multiple Navigators traversing the Warp together.

"CONCEPTS OF TUESDAY AT TWO O' CLOCK, CAP'N!"
"Taking evasive action from flood of toast-desires, Sir!"
"Mother-Locking-Me-In-The-Basement from all sides, Sir! We're doomed!"

Fgdsfg said:

It's no joke. The Navigator in my group once described the Shoals and Reefs entry from the Warp Encounters table as "running aground on a great big lump of purple".

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I'm very much on board with this vision of the warp. In fact, I will be quoting you here and sending it to my PC navigator when we get back to RT.

One question though. How does a ship "move" within the warp for the purposes of catching a current, moving between currents, or avoiding a hazard? Are commands given to the helm to fire the maneuvering thrusters? Does that even make sense, is there such motion in the warp? Does the Navigator move the ship on his own, with his own thoughts?

I have a hard time believing the idea that a Navigator can use concentrated thoughts or emotions to move the ship from prevailing current to prevailing current. Wouldn't the random thoughts, fears, and passions of tens of thousands of crew members create a "noise" of ripples making any concentrated effort from the Navigator futile?

I'd prefer the interpretation that the Navigator senses the currents, plots the course, and directs the helm crew to steer the ship from current to current. It seems sensible and also gives part of the crew something to do during warp travel. On the other hand, I'm not sure that applied Newtonian physics have any place in the warp.

While i've got this thread I figured I'd use it to sound board some of the pre-canned "boxed text" i'm going to use for the groups initial warp jump. While I don't plan on doing this every time I figured for their initial voyage it was important to lay on the pomp and circumstance of void travel. Forgive me my trespass.

As the main engines power down upon reaching a safe jump point the ship begins to rig for void travel. Over the main bridge view port a thick armored shell comes down blocking your view from the horrors of the warp. Medical techs come forward into the navigators bubble making last checks of the Lady Malfina's vitals and confirming her water, nutrient and waste feeds have been accounted for. As they do the Master Helmsman comes forward and bows presenting a dataslate with confirmation of the initial heading for entrance to the warp for her approval and a careful double check of figures derived from the navigation plan she had previously drafted and shared with him. With her blessing all parties withdraw from the navigation bubble which she then seals behind them.

At the watch officers pulpit Firstmate Dray listens to a long string of departments reporting stowed and secured for warp travel. Once these checks have been completed he stands and comes to attention. “Captain, the Divine Inspiration reports ready to go to warp. All hands stand ready to do their duty for ship, house, and Emperor. By your leave sir.”

<Pause for acknowledgement>
Dray nods. “The Captain stands relieved. Engineering and Helm are now under sole direction of the Navigator. Lady Malfina we commend our souls and our ship into your care. The Engiseers stand ready to engage warp transit on your mark.”

Nikitas said:

Could the Warp engines be psychicly charged in some way that channels the noisy thoughts of tens of thousands of crewmen into a force that is directed by the engine as propulsion? Tens of thousands of crew whose thoughts become fuel for the Warp engine because they believe the engine will work in the warp?

Personally I go by the assumption that the warp engine itself uses some kind of propulsion based on newtonian models (at least as newtonian as Wh40K city sized spaceships get) or normal thrusters are still in play. I think the movement is technological not psychic.

Depending on which page of the RT core book you would like to believe the ship either shuts down its main sublight drives and rides the currents of the warp until it reaches its destination, or the ship uses the currents and its sublight engines to power through the warp to its goal.

Personally I will have my ships using their engines; but of course you can take your pick

DW

I always figured the standard plasma drive was used as a secondary, or to steer in the Warp, but that it only worked because the Geller Field gave it a bubble of reality to work in- plasma drives go down, you can't control your transitions between warp currents (quite aside from the possible problems of not having any power).

Gives real meaning to the Litany of Lost Souls- "We pray for souls adrift upon the tide..."

Alasseo said:

Getting lost in the Warp must be a real bummer.

A thousand years lost in a storm; generations being born, having families and dying, while adrift in a sea consisting entirely of marshmallows and spinach.

And that's provided you have enough food and air.

lurkeroutthere said:

Not to mention groups of mutants or orks infesting some areas without it even affecting operations.

On the other hand, it's just a matter of time before someone gets sick of nutrient paste and one of the factions tries to stage a mutiny to access some of the delicious, delicious spinach outside. All we need to do is shut down the Gellar fields. That's all. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Oh, look, there's a flood of the smell of fudge forming outside the window...