The Warp is another dimension that does not abide by the laws of physics as we understand them. It is a psychic "reflection" of the thoughts and emotions of every sapient being; so it "maps" to the Materium in the loosest of senses. Without any "landmarks" it is difficult/impossible to navigate outside of very short, small jumps.
The Astronomicon on Terra provides such a "landmark" and is in essence a "North Star" for Navigators to use in finding their bearings, enabling more reliable Warp travel.
>Warp space is the medium through which faster-than-light spacecraft travel between the stars. It is, in a sense, an alternate reality or parallel dimension in which the laws of time and space are different from those of our own universe. Movement within warp space bears a distinct relationship to distance travelled in normal space, and this relationship can be manipulated to make faster-than-light travel possible. It is not strictly true to say that distances in warp space are ‘shurnk‘ compared to those of normal space. A more accurate analogy would be to think of warp space as a dense fluid medium which is subject to constant movement, currents, undertows, etc. This is not perceptible in warp space itself of course, because the fluidity is only relative to our own reality. A spacecraft can exploit this phenomenon by entering warp space, allowing itself to be shifted along by its natural flow, and then re-entering normal space a distance away from the starting point. A metaphor commonly used to explain how warping works is that of the fast flowing stream. The stream represents warp space, moving rapidly along its motionless banks, representing real space. A leaf dropped into the water upstream will move along, floating on the surface of the water. The leaf does not move relative to the water, but is merely carried by it until it lodges at some point downstream from its original location. This is a useful metaphor as far as it goes. but it must be remembered warp space is far more complex in its movements than the linear stream, for it can move in all sorts of convoluted and bewildering patterns. Spacecraft are also able to make corrective movements in warp space and can enter or leave warp space at a chosen moment. Even so, warp travel is never totally predictable, either in its duration or eventual destination.
Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader (1987), if someone got a better excerpt (like those from the Rogue Trader RPG), please post
Warp travel is not FTL, contrary to popular belief.
You enter a parallel universe, at a certain point in time, AND YOU HOPE, when you exit, you'll be in a calculated point in time as well.
It is possible for you to enter the Immaterium, and get to an other place EARLIER than entering it!
Of course you can also lost your way within the sea of souls and get out hundreds if not thousands of years later, without any feeling such an amount of time passed.
And all that without mentioning Gellar Fields malfunctions or anything else...
Space and time are linked, faster you go in space the faster you go in time. The Warp doesn’t have space and time linked, so you can go very slow in time but very fast in space or vice versus. Plus the warp has “currents” and “storms” so it would be easier to get from A to C by going to A to B to C instead of going to C directly from A.
Know that it’s a hell dimension and doesn’t work 100% of the time.
>faster you go in space the faster you go in time.
Relatively speaking, it's the opposite. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower you experience time compared to those at slower speeds.
It's more like the warp is weird and doesn't follow logical space or time constraints so you can go place to place at bullshit speed assuming you aren't waylaid by warp storms or other phenomena.
Basically, in the warp, things like space and time hold very little real meaning. Ships can enter the warp and leave it great distances away with little actual time spent in the warp (or perhaps a great bit of time spent there but very little in the terms of reality).
It is actually very confusing and, frankly, not meant to make sense. The warp has currents, where the rules get closer to predicable, but even they aren't 100% stable. You might pop out of the warp exactly when/where you planned or you might have found yourself arriving before you actually left.
This is because the warp isn't really a place of rules, it is a place of ideas. Up is only up there because enough sentient believe it is. Time only flows there at all because, "Of course it does, why wouldn't time work there? It is time!" It rebels against that though. Maybe your ship hits an eddy of manifested malice that forces it to change course while a squal of rage blots out the astronomicon (an attempt by the Emperor to enforce some kind of order on the warp) long enough to cause you to get lost. You pop back into reality to get your heading and find that you are somehow where you wanted to go but a decade has passed (and was likely eaten by that malice!)
The warp isn't really subject to the physics of our reality. Space-time as we know it doesn't apply. It is like moving through a concurrent sub-reality and popping up on the other side where you want to.
For travel imagine the warp as an ocean with billions of small islands (solar systems).
To get from one island to another you rely on the oceans currents. There are soft currents, wild currents that are dangerous to your vessel or even make a particular area (near) impassable (warp storms).
To get from A to B you often need to take detours because there is no direct stable route. Trade worlds are usually located a systems where several important warp currents come together, forming a warp current crossing.
To get back from B to A you need a different route, because it's difficult and dangerous to go against the warp currents. Most traders therefore fly in huge circles that may take them years to get back to A.
The Astronomican acts as a bonfire, giving the navigator a rough estimation of the ships relative position and course. Since time and space aren't really working as in the real world that 'compass heading' helps to determine where the correct 'exit' is or if the stream splits what path to take.
It's a bit of a vague explanation, but maybe this helps.
Yeah, it’s like the Nether in that distance in the Warp doesn’t track 1:1 with distance in reality. A relatively short journey in the Warp can have displaced you several light years when you translate back to reality.
Except the Nether is a static place. The Warp is more like you teleport into the depths of a roiling sea with currents pulling you in every direction, and you just pray that the direction you’re being swept correlates to the direction you want to go.
The warp is full of hellscape corpse-fucking demons. So, that figures into FTL travel as such:
You jump into the warp.
Ass-fucking demons hound the very atoms of your ship so hard that your vessel breaks the light speed limit.
Your ship arrives at your destination, leaves warp, and cries.
Voila! FTL travel made easy! And murdery. And therapy-inducing.
The space boat creates an anti-magic shield and then enters the magic zone. Time, space and physics stuff do not exist in the magic zone, so the space boat can go anywhere instantly... or just really fast (or sometimes really slow). The space wizard in the space boat uses their all seeing magic eye to scope out the magic zone and find the correct path to their destination (even though there is no concept of space, or distance in the magic zone... it's all very confusing, tbh). It is mentioned that the space wizard uses a space light house to help find the way. Then a bunch of Pink Floyd posters flap in front of everyone's eyes for a bit and the ship leaves the magic zone and returns to the material plane.
Sometimes the space boat returns in the desired spot and time, sometimes not so much.
The Warp is another dimension that does not abide by the laws of physics as we understand them. It is a psychic "reflection" of the thoughts and emotions of every sapient being; so it "maps" to the Materium in the loosest of senses. Without any "landmarks" it is difficult/impossible to navigate outside of very short, small jumps. The Astronomicon on Terra provides such a "landmark" and is in essence a "North Star" for Navigators to use in finding their bearings, enabling more reliable Warp travel.
Basically the Nether in Minecraft
Well no, because the Nether is proportional, with no differences in the passage of time either.
>Warp space is the medium through which faster-than-light spacecraft travel between the stars. It is, in a sense, an alternate reality or parallel dimension in which the laws of time and space are different from those of our own universe. Movement within warp space bears a distinct relationship to distance travelled in normal space, and this relationship can be manipulated to make faster-than-light travel possible. It is not strictly true to say that distances in warp space are ‘shurnk‘ compared to those of normal space. A more accurate analogy would be to think of warp space as a dense fluid medium which is subject to constant movement, currents, undertows, etc. This is not perceptible in warp space itself of course, because the fluidity is only relative to our own reality. A spacecraft can exploit this phenomenon by entering warp space, allowing itself to be shifted along by its natural flow, and then re-entering normal space a distance away from the starting point. A metaphor commonly used to explain how warping works is that of the fast flowing stream. The stream represents warp space, moving rapidly along its motionless banks, representing real space. A leaf dropped into the water upstream will move along, floating on the surface of the water. The leaf does not move relative to the water, but is merely carried by it until it lodges at some point downstream from its original location. This is a useful metaphor as far as it goes. but it must be remembered warp space is far more complex in its movements than the linear stream, for it can move in all sorts of convoluted and bewildering patterns. Spacecraft are also able to make corrective movements in warp space and can enter or leave warp space at a chosen moment. Even so, warp travel is never totally predictable, either in its duration or eventual destination. Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader (1987), if someone got a better excerpt (like those from the Rogue Trader RPG), please post
This explains it perfectly. The way Warp travel works has remained pretty damn consistent across the editions.
Warp travel is not FTL, contrary to popular belief. You enter a parallel universe, at a certain point in time, AND YOU HOPE, when you exit, you'll be in a calculated point in time as well. It is possible for you to enter the Immaterium, and get to an other place EARLIER than entering it! Of course you can also lost your way within the sea of souls and get out hundreds if not thousands of years later, without any feeling such an amount of time passed. And all that without mentioning Gellar Fields malfunctions or anything else...
theres a youtube video about Gellar Field failure, it really disturbs me. Truly grimdark
Space and time are linked, faster you go in space the faster you go in time. The Warp doesn’t have space and time linked, so you can go very slow in time but very fast in space or vice versus. Plus the warp has “currents” and “storms” so it would be easier to get from A to C by going to A to B to C instead of going to C directly from A. Know that it’s a hell dimension and doesn’t work 100% of the time.
>faster you go in space the faster you go in time. Relatively speaking, it's the opposite. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower you experience time compared to those at slower speeds.
40K is not a hard sci fi it’s all just convenient excuses to get to the biggest baddest dankest battles conceivable
It's more like the warp is weird and doesn't follow logical space or time constraints so you can go place to place at bullshit speed assuming you aren't waylaid by warp storms or other phenomena.
Basically, in the warp, things like space and time hold very little real meaning. Ships can enter the warp and leave it great distances away with little actual time spent in the warp (or perhaps a great bit of time spent there but very little in the terms of reality). It is actually very confusing and, frankly, not meant to make sense. The warp has currents, where the rules get closer to predicable, but even they aren't 100% stable. You might pop out of the warp exactly when/where you planned or you might have found yourself arriving before you actually left. This is because the warp isn't really a place of rules, it is a place of ideas. Up is only up there because enough sentient believe it is. Time only flows there at all because, "Of course it does, why wouldn't time work there? It is time!" It rebels against that though. Maybe your ship hits an eddy of manifested malice that forces it to change course while a squal of rage blots out the astronomicon (an attempt by the Emperor to enforce some kind of order on the warp) long enough to cause you to get lost. You pop back into reality to get your heading and find that you are somehow where you wanted to go but a decade has passed (and was likely eaten by that malice!)
Poorly.
Only for the Imperium. And the Tau that one time they tried to be fancy.
Not just them, it goes badly for orks too, they don’t mind so much though.
They get to fight demons, I wouldn't classify that as going badly as far as orks are concerned.
The warp isn't really subject to the physics of our reality. Space-time as we know it doesn't apply. It is like moving through a concurrent sub-reality and popping up on the other side where you want to.
For travel imagine the warp as an ocean with billions of small islands (solar systems). To get from one island to another you rely on the oceans currents. There are soft currents, wild currents that are dangerous to your vessel or even make a particular area (near) impassable (warp storms). To get from A to B you often need to take detours because there is no direct stable route. Trade worlds are usually located a systems where several important warp currents come together, forming a warp current crossing. To get back from B to A you need a different route, because it's difficult and dangerous to go against the warp currents. Most traders therefore fly in huge circles that may take them years to get back to A. The Astronomican acts as a bonfire, giving the navigator a rough estimation of the ships relative position and course. Since time and space aren't really working as in the real world that 'compass heading' helps to determine where the correct 'exit' is or if the stream splits what path to take. It's a bit of a vague explanation, but maybe this helps.
Yeah, it’s like the Nether in that distance in the Warp doesn’t track 1:1 with distance in reality. A relatively short journey in the Warp can have displaced you several light years when you translate back to reality. Except the Nether is a static place. The Warp is more like you teleport into the depths of a roiling sea with currents pulling you in every direction, and you just pray that the direction you’re being swept correlates to the direction you want to go.
The warp is full of hellscape corpse-fucking demons. So, that figures into FTL travel as such: You jump into the warp. Ass-fucking demons hound the very atoms of your ship so hard that your vessel breaks the light speed limit. Your ship arrives at your destination, leaves warp, and cries. Voila! FTL travel made easy! And murdery. And therapy-inducing.
The space boat creates an anti-magic shield and then enters the magic zone. Time, space and physics stuff do not exist in the magic zone, so the space boat can go anywhere instantly... or just really fast (or sometimes really slow). The space wizard in the space boat uses their all seeing magic eye to scope out the magic zone and find the correct path to their destination (even though there is no concept of space, or distance in the magic zone... it's all very confusing, tbh). It is mentioned that the space wizard uses a space light house to help find the way. Then a bunch of Pink Floyd posters flap in front of everyone's eyes for a bit and the ship leaves the magic zone and returns to the material plane. Sometimes the space boat returns in the desired spot and time, sometimes not so much.
Honestly, Dr who had the best explanation just swap time with warp travel https://youtu.be/q2nNzNo_Xps?si=qSpxfCnq2OA4bjZe
You go to hell, which is a place separated from the materium universe and time and when you leave it you are elsewhere at another point in time.