What do we know about...

Obrex

War Moons of Talax

Gullet

Scoured Lands

Pillars of Eternity

Pyurultide

Exile

Ghibeline

Guelph

The Skull

Sadarix

Dread Korvaska

Also, do such things as chaos tainted navigators exist?

They're probably just places for the GMs to use. There's no information on them because you're suppose to make that up.
Or for future releases.

Chaos navigators don't exist because they aren't needed. Imperial navigators are used to go through the warp and come out alive, but since chaos and warp are the same thing, chaos worshipers come out unscathed or get a mutation blessing. Navigators are just trained psykers anyway...

Incorrect.

The beings of the warp are capricious and full of malevolence (not to mention hunger for your soul). They don't care that you might worship them, they'll treat you just as awful as any Imperial whose caught in the Warp without a Navigator and/or Gellar Field.

Chaos navigate the Warp via dark rituals or bound daemons, primarily. Rogue Navigators are a secondary method, but are quite rare in the grand scheme of things. A lot of chaos raiders probably do without, and stick to small local areas, preying on targets of opportunity, for lack of ability to perform long range jumps.

It seemed to me that Navigators would be a lot more free as a character choice in BC than in RT.

In Soul Hunter by Dembski-Bowden, the Night Lord ship has a navigator

SPOILER !!!!

killed in the battle with the loyalists at the end and is replaced by Octavia who was taken prisoner as a Navigator earlier on. She has to fly them to the Eye of Terror and chooses to help her captors realising she has no choice that spares her life.

signoftheserpent said:

It was implied during Soul Hunter that the original Navigator on board the Night Lords ship was their ORIGINAL Navigator; he had been apart of the ship's crew since the pre-Heresy Crusades. In the second book of that series ("Blood Reaver") the Night Lords are forced to figure out how to navigate two vessels through the Warp with only one Navigator. Not to spoil the plot, but a Chaos Sorceror fills in as the Covenant of Blood 's " navigator" while the actual Navigator is used onboard the other ship. (awesome series of books btw, I'm really hyped for "Void Stalker" to drop in May)

I bring up all that to state that I don't feel a Navigator is a necessary player character Archetype for Black Crusade. Fun idea, but not necessary. My group has toyed with the idea of incorporating some of the Warp navigation rules and tables from Rogue Trader into a format that would allow a Sorceror/Psyker character to fill in the role of ship's "navigator". A straight up Renegade Navigator would almost be too valuable of an asset to do anything but sit on board the party's vessel while the other character are out and about accomplishing compacts and what not... you know, actually playing the game. lol.

All that said, I think it'd be cool to see a Renegade Navigator character fit into a house ruled setting. Maybe a few tweaks to the base Psyker archetype and porting in the Rogue Traders rules for Navigator powers? In a specialized campaign setting I can see that being ALOT of fun to roll with, from both a player and a GM standpoint.

BC doesn't really discuss warp navigation enough in my view.

It's not discussed because it's best done narratively - the effort it takes to acquire transport should include everything necessary for it and the GM should just narratively describe the entire process of transit, maybe with some encounters within a vessel whilst en-route. Black Crusade is not about 'chaos guys in the stars!' so much as 'what do you get up to if you are a chaos followed and given a sandbox?'

Kasatka said:

Haha, my Heretics are starting next game in a sandbox...

As far as Warp travel being an integral part of the game, I can only compare it too how Warp travel works for my Navigator character in the Rogue Trader game I play in. As fun as it is be to the only player character to be able to do something like actual navigation, it can be time consuming. The tables are in depth, and several different skill checks are involved to be successful at a simple point A to point B jump. Most of the difficulty for my character and the group in general comes from being rank 1 on a stripped down ship, but still... lol.

When it comes down to it, I enjoy my Navigator a lot. There are other Navigators aboard our lil' Trader vessel, but at rank 1 my character's the best qualified to handle the most important warp jumps. Frightening, I know. I keep that in mind in an RP sense, and I rarely elect to go off ship for any of the planet side missions we get involved with that has any sense of danger to it... you know, like anything involving adventure? It's too the point where I've rolled out an alternate character for (adventurous) planet side excursions, just so I can stay involved in the game.

I don't feel that a full Navigator character in Black Crusade would work except in the most specialized of campaign settings. While it's totally appropriate in the Rogue Trader setting (where a lot of the action lends itself to space travel, combat, and interaction) it comes off as a distraction in the BC setting. Probably why the FFG crew chose not to (initially) focus on it.

xXGhostBladeXx said:

While I agree that BC doesn't really need a full Navigator race/archetype, I have to point out that a navigator who stays on the ship is a bit of an anomaly. I mean, they only got so long before they mutate into a form that, one way or another, precludes every getting off the ship and, eventually, out of the basement of your Navigator House.

So why not take every opportunity you can to enjoy some adventure and excitement, since, well, it's that or wasting what little time you have left on doing nothing worthwhile.

Reverend mort said:

Some Navigators might have the fatalistic adventurer streak in them that you speak of, but I don't see that being the standard. Noble born and bred, their position holds a lot of clout in Imperial space. They're one of a kind, especially among a crew of space faring tradesmen who rely on the Navigator to move them from point A to point B. Why would it be necessary to leave their personal quarters, the Navigator's private little castle, to go trekking through some dangerous jungle chasing after an unimportant distress signal. Bah! A high brow Noble of such fine and distinguished breeding wouldn't want to bother with an endeavor such as that. Send the Arch-Militant, the Missionary, or even the Explorator. They're the adventurous sorts, and much more (dare I say) expendable.

When it comes to seeing the universe at large, there are plenty of "safe" ports of call that the Trader vessel would come upon that would entice a (prissy) Navigator such as the one I described. Places of culture, mystery, discovery... and much safer (sounding) than treks through carnivorous jungles or journeys across a toxic hell planet. On top of everything else the Universe at large has to offer, the Navigator is unique in his ability to stare into the Void itself. No one else on board the vessel can see what a Navigator gets to see... save perhaps the other "true" pskyers on board, and they can't really peer as deep into the darkness as a Navigator can without falling to complete madness. Just another perk of their position, one that can sate a lot of their natural curiosity IMHO.

Now, that's just my take on the stereotypical House Navigator. Regardless of how an individual Navigator feels about adventuring himself, within most settings in the 40k universe Navigators are just too valuable of an asset to be ALLOWED to go on dangerous off ship excursions. Rogue Trader is the perfect game system to use when justifying an adventurous Navigator as a player character. In the Black Crusade setting however, I see renegade Navigators being a pretty rare and valuable commodity. Not like a bunch of heretics can call up a Navigator House to order in another one if they get their original killed off some how. Sure, a bound daemon and some powerful chaos sorcery works just as well most of the time and would make a fine substitute in a pinch. Long term however, Navigators seem to be a safer way of plying your way through the Warp and are just way too valuable to come off ship very often at all.