In an old thread discussing psykers and their powers, TS Luikart stated that "The Imperium (along with many Xeno races) have a number of materials / wards that can block psykers from just waltzing in and possessing the local Planetary Governor for kicks."

SPOILERS for Purge the Unclean ahead!

In Rejoice for You Are True, there were some rooms with "psi-shielding" around which any psykers felt their connection to the Warp drop away to zero. I got the impression from reading this that this was not particularly unusual, and had no resemblance to the xeno-tech circuitry encountered earlier.

But I can't find any rules for this anywhere. Wards, yes. They seem only to grant the wearer some protection against direct effects. Null rods, sure. Very rare things, but with a limited range and they do not completely block a psyker.

So what would the paranoid, witch-hating planetary governor do?

How can he get in touch with the architect of the Alabaster Court to order some of that 100% psi-blocker?

Hi Darth,

the Radicals Handbook should contain an entry about "Psy-Damper", Not only as an amulett but as a non-portable unit to be installed into a room or into a vehicle. This should be what you are searching for. Cannot tell you the page, so. Have to check my books at home

3 tools I can think of, that aggresively targets the psykers ability to manifest, rather than ward you against the oncoming shitstorm.

The Witch Cage [blood of Martyrs p.121], Torpor [inquisitor’s Handbook p.194] and the Psy Damper [Radical’s Handbook p.157]

Now you probably want the psy damper since the other 2 options are forced upon the psyker’s person and could be considered rude and uncouth in the extreme of extremes.

The psydamper is a large, arcane construct (roughly the size of a rhino, or somesuch), it sucks up power like nobody’s business and takes a few rounds to come online and offline. The area around it must be covered in certain alloys and conditioned materials that allow the device to manifest the damper-field in the intended area. Once active, it reduces the number of dice a psyker can use to manifest, by a certain amount, determined by the psy dampers rating. This is only vaguely touched on, but I would suggest a deduction of 4 (like the Witch-cage and Torpor drug). If the psy damper is extremely powerful (stolen from a black ship for instance) I would raise it to a deduction of 6.

I don’t think I would go above that, since the Imperium doesn’t gather psykers of that level. Any rogue wyrd with that much power is shot on sight, while weaker specimens are collected for the Black Ships.

Just my opinion though

I think that much like x-rays are blocked by thick lead, so too are psychic assaults blunted by certain materials. There's no hard and fast rules to what these materials are. usually they are more rare metals and geological substances, sometimes taking great artifice to craft them into a usable form.

It is one of the great bonuses whilst also being one of the biggest downsides to 40k fiction - Each author can pretty much make up what they want. As such, think something up and roll with it, just don't overly use it or it loses its impact on the story.

I remember two different stories where "psy-free" rooms were mentioned.

One was in the Planetfall-Anthology where the Astropaths on a Forgeworld could withdraw to to get piece and quiet fro the warp when they were not on active duty. These were private rooms fitted with machinery (it had an on/off switch) that kept warp-influences out, or at least so massively reduced them that the normal Astropath was down to the abilities of a normal, blind, person.

The other was a shortstory (cant remember name) about the Prisoner of the Inquisition who was kept in a Psy-Cell. He was cut off from the warp in there, but when a bribed orderly smuggled in a Psy-Focus-like artifact the prisoner was able to overcome the psyblock under great stress and get a message out.

Both cases could be nicely described with the rule-mechanic of the Psy-Damper described in a previous post.

--> So the paranoid Planetary Gouvernor should get his hands on several Psy-Dampers and install these rare Techno-Arcane constructs in his Palace. Makes most Psykers to blunters, and even the strongest and most potent Psykers will be greatly reduced in their dangerousness. 4 dice less for the normal small car sized one, and up to 6 dice less for the (probably much bigger, scarcer and expensiver) Black Ship kind.

If a Noble's mansion can have a void shield as protection, why not a Gellar Field. Sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

Zakalwe said:

True, true! While reading this topic, I remember how LAX I was in regard to Psionic defenses. Psykers are a fact of life in the Imperium, the availability of anti-Psy-Technolog ymight be high...but nobles and guild masters and such are FILTHY rich. Well-funded heretics might have additional problems of getting the Equipment (Mars might not supply, they need a heretek!) but their will for sure be a black market for anti-Psyker intrusion gear.

I don't believe there is alot of anti-psyker gear out there for the everyman, and possibly not even many imperial nobles to get their hands on.

I base this logic on 2 words in the following phrase: Tech that interacts with the warp.

The 2 words in question are Tech and Warp. Both are things the adeptus terra try to control completely, and if one interacts with the other, I should think it would be some rare equipment indeed.

Also remember that Psykers are feared, but they are all in use by the imperium. There are no Administratum clerks who also happen to be sanctioned psykers. If you're a psyker, you get plucked for the black ships, tried before the emperor and then the Imperium dictates what you do for the rest of your life. Spaceport security, Attached to IG regiments, Astropath, Imperial Diviner, Working for the Inquisition. So the thing you have to guard yourself against is the Wyrd, the unsanctioned psyker, the witch. These are enemies of man that the ministorum teaches can be rooted out with vigilance and faith, so .... yeah.... I don't know. It's a huge setting so there's bound to be SOME form of anti-psyker tinkerers out there, I just don't know how common an encounter it would be.

BTW I don't remember having read any rules, stating that Geller Fields stop psykers from manifesting powers.

The Rogue Trader forums are discussing that, now, too. I don't believe that Geller Fields do block out the warp; they strengthen and carry with them the pulse of reality. As a psyker can use his power in reality, no help, but Daemons cannot just walk around in the Materium, as they please. Suckers need to be tricked into bringing them here, likely through psykers and/or sacrifices. In the Empryean, this would not hold, and the ship would be overrun. The Geller fied is sort of the ship's "diplomatic immunity" card, making the ship "sovereign soil" of the Materialverse, and making it so daemons cannot enter the ships without the usual requirements.

If the GF blocked the warp, the Navigators might not be able to see out, and steer their ships, while Astropaths would be blind and helpless. Black Ships wouldn't need special rooms if the GF fit the bill. So I would say that the Geller Field strengthens reality, sort of like a bulwark of faith agaist the Chaos, though I suppose the field is purely scientific/mechanical.

venkelos said:

Definitely true on this point - a gellar field is most certainly not a psychic/warp blocker, it is a 'reality bubble' projected around the vessel whilst it travels outside of reality. Without such protection the laws of physics do not apply and the ship would be rent asunder at the whim of the powers of chaos- the minds bodies and souls of the crew would be play-things for the denizens of the warp.

Only Navigators can survive viewing the warp, and nobody can survive direct warp exposure for more than a second. Even then they will be horrifically debilitated for life.

Another bit of anti-psyker tech: I know there are stats for Null Rods in one of the Rogue Trader supplements; I think they were also included in Blood of Martyrs , but I can't say for sure right now (don't have the book handy).

Kasatka said:

...so does it block exposure/contact to the warp or not then? All above just seems to be playing with definitions.

Kind of difficult to argue about the objective truth of the matter without recourse to empirical data really.

Glad you liked my idea Uncle Greg (shudder) if that doesn't work use a really grunty psy-blocker built into the walls. If an amulet gives +20, why wouldn't a whole room just block it?

Failing that... if you can have a vat-psyker, why not a vat-null? "Hey... Shhhh, anyone want to buy a null in a jar?"

Zakalwe said:

Artificially-grown nulls are something that exist, but which are extremely rare - it's apparently very difficult to produce them.

Nearyn said:

Zakalwe said:

Well here's a very good article explaining the mechanics of warp travel and gellar fields. javascript:void(0);/*1329482227492*/

Kasatka said:

Thanks Kastaka. So it 'maintains a bubble of reality', you're right, it doesn't appear to actually block out the warp, just warp entities. Though it does maintain a bubble of reality, (which seems to be defined as 'not-warp'), but it doesn't block the warp?

It is nearly as full of holes as Terminator 4, but it is fictional so no less plausible than psykers I suppose.

How about a new itemthen , call it an H.Keller field, a spin off of Geller field technology which renders psykers 'blind' to the warp.

Okay, now I'm taking the piss, I'm a bad boy (said with Ali G accent).

Well i see nothing wrong with having a plot focus on a stolen and heavily modified Gellar field. Perhaps a lavishly rich noble has secretly hired some privateers to ambush and steal a brand new gellar field from a naval escort ship, then had it modified in order to be fitted to his estate to shield the family from psykers. Unbeknownst to all but a close few this was all done because the nobles heir is a psyker that wasn't found and taken by the Blackships and now is in hiding. That'd make for a fairly long and funky investigation for low to mid-level characters i think.

Kasatka said:

I like it. What appears to be sabotage or rebellion on a grand scale turns out to be someone just trying to protect their family; nice.

In addition, I like it even better because the psyker is a Wytch, which means the PCs get to terminate the dirty mutant at the end of the adventure (my PC has a bit of a 'thing' about dirty mutant wytches).

Burn the Heretic, Purge th.... oh shucks, you know how it goes.

Zakalwe said:

Yeah! Like

Zakalwe said:

I find cliches in 40k to be unnecessary and so go for more varied even realistic tales, but thanks for the like of the idea.

Hey with all this talk of Gellar Fields being used on a planet, i'd like to take the time to see if I am correct in the assertion that a gellar field,

"forms a bubble around the ship and forces it into the warp"...

I may be incorrect in my translation here but i always thought that a gellar field would automatically send a ship into the immaterium, however I guess that i modifications it could be made to simply keep out warp creatures... though I thought that hexagramic warding and null field generators would do the same thing...

No, it's the other way around. It creates a bubble of reality around the ship, preventing all sorts of nastyness from eating it when it goes zipping around the warp.

With your warp-drive you can enter the Warp without a gellar-field, but it is not recommended.

Darth Smeg said:

+1.

There is an Emergency Gellar field in Rogue Trader that has a chance to activate if the ship is sucked into the warp unexpectedly.. something that can happen more often that you'd think if you're not careful.

Darth Smeg said:

Ha ha indeed Darth Smeg, certaily a classic but in our game a little less Medievil Knighty, and a little more Feral World Assassiny, less crowds, more shadows, less burning pyres, more autopistols and lathe swords, less trials, and more "argh it''s a frakken wytch! Jungo take out the wytch first!"

I know the original topic was "tools" but to me instead of rooms full of intricate and rare technology or highly modified field generators... if I were a paranoid noble/govenor I'd just seek out and employ some Untouchables to follow me around and perhaps be trained as bodyguards.

I'll be running a game soon with my first psyker player and we did some dry runs with his character so that we'd both understand the rules and to be honest he sorta scares the **** out of me. I'll have some Untouchables up my sleeve to make things uncomfortable for him you can bet on that!