Outside the Milky way in the 40K Universe

[Junghalli]

Yeah i gotta admit, the whole premise of this post confuses me. What's to say there aren't empires worse than man in the other galaxies? Odds are there are other life-forms in those galaxies that we don't know about that are just as bad as Tyranids. And then there are the Orks, which have been mentioned.

On the other hand, I can definitely see groups of people striking out as Zor suggests. The 40K MW is such a fucked up place it's not hard to think "man, there have got to be some nicer galaxies out there than this".

A good option for such an expedition might be to head for a distant dwarf elleptical galaxy. They're basically free-floating globular clusters, meaning they're made of old, closely packed, metal-poor stars and probably have few habitable worlds. The other side of the coin of very few habitable worlds is that, odds are, there's nobody there, or very few people, which to somebody from 40K would definitely look like a very good thing. And since the main "food source" of the Chaos Gods are humans and Eldar it's not that illogical to think they may be a lot weaker far from the MW.

[NecronLord]

For almost all races, this is nigh-on impossible. Remember, for the Imperium, once you're out of the Astronomicon, as a rule, you're lost without hope.

[Ford Prefect]

Nurgle is love, not Slaanesh. Hard to believe, true, but part of Grampa Nurgle's appeal is that he loves all his children equally and unconditionally. He'll still like you even if you're a royal fuck-up.

He's also got a pretty well developed sense of humour.

Slaanesh is pleasure, I dare say that pleasure is a positive emotion when not taken to extremes.[/quote]

Slaanesh is more specifically passion, as I recall it, for everything from relationships, to art, to conflict. Slaanesh is fairly interesting that his negative and positive aspect are essentially identical, just taken to extremes. This contrasts with the other Ruinous Powers, where their negative aspects are considerably different (honour versus war, or decay versus love, or lies versus hope). It's probably a function of the fact that Slaanesh was birthed by the excess of passion the Eldar were getting into.

[NecronLord]

If the connection between the two is severed, he dies; the corporeal part simply expires and the warpy part is beat into submission by the powers of Chaos.

Or beats them into submission. It's an 'unknown' thing.

[Adrian Laguna]

If the connection between the two is severed, he dies; the corporeal part simply expires and the warpy part is beat into submission by the powers of Chaos.

Or beats them into submission. It's an 'unknown' thing.

I don't think he's strong enough without the part of him that still resides in his body.

[Guardsman Bass]

For almost all races, this is nigh-on impossible. Remember, for the Imperium, once you're out of the Astronomicon, as a rule, you're lost without hope.

If they want to travel through the Warp. Does the Astronomicon reach far enough so that someone could go through it to the edge of the Galaxy, then simply travel relativistic sublight speed?

I'm curious as to what Tzeentch is currently fooling around with. I can't see him simply sitting around and waiting for the Emperor of Man to either die or turn into the Warp God to End All Warp Gods.

[Adrian Laguna]

For almost all races, this is nigh-on impossible. Remember, for the Imperium, once you're out of the Astronomicon, as a rule, you're lost without hope.

If they want to travel through the Warp. Does the Astronomicon reach far enough so that someone could go through it to the edge of the Galaxy, then simply travel relativistic sublight speed?

Depends on which edge of the Galaxy you are on. The Astronomicon is on Earth, and it stretches the same distance in all directions. It reaches to the edge of the Galaxy closest to Earth, maybe a bit further to the halo stars, but is nowhere close to the edge opposite Earth.

In any case, if you are doing sublight travel it can be launched from anywhere. The problem is that assuming and average speed of .5c, the time it takes to get to Andromeda is 4.4 million years. So any sublight colonists haven't arrived yet. Same speed for the closer Magellanic Clouds takes at least 338 thousand years, so any sublight colonists haven't arrived there either.

Going back to Necronlord's point about the necessity of the Astronomicon, however, it's actually not needed if the warp is calm enough. As it happens, it was just that prior to the birth of Slaanesh. In other words, it's possible that Golden Age of Technology humans might have sent colonists to the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda, and there are human settlements there in the 41st millennium.

[Junghalli]

If they want to travel through the Warp. Does the Astronomicon reach far enough so that someone could go through it to the edge of the Galaxy, then simply travel relativistic sublight speed?

With the kind of sublight engine technology 40K has high relativistic travel is a definite alternative.

Consider Project Daedalus; a hypothetical probe to Barnard's Star. It can drive a 500 ton payload up to 12% c, with 50,000 tons of fuel (D-He3) mix. By contrast 40K warships regularly achieve much higher velocities (the figure I got from some quick Google search was .75 c for Eldar ships from an old SB.com thread), and since 40K ships don't appear to have enormous fuel tanks they presumably do it with mass fractions well below 1:1 (one ton of payload per ton of propellant).

Imagine the kind of performance a 40K equivalent of Daedalus would have. If Eldar warships can get to .75 c with a fuel fraction well below 1:1 think of what something with a similar exhaust velocity and thrust could achieve with the Daedalus's 50:1 fuel fraction! I haven't actually run the math but we're probably talking deep into near-lightspeed territory here. With the kind of time dilation a ship like that might experience a relativistic intergalactic journey might not be as long as it sounds. Hell, it might only be a couple of years to the travellers; think Tau Zero.

Of course, as NecronLord pointed out, a ship like that still couldn't possibly have actually gotten to its destination yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than a few out there in the intergalactic void: 40K's more than fucked up enough that sooner or later somebody's bound to say "screw this, maybe that galaxy over there will be better". Might make for some interesting stories.

[Junghalli]

Ghetto Edit: you know, I might just design that ship and figure out what it's actual performance would be, just for the fun of it. Maybe I should do a drawing of it too. It'd probably be real weird looking; like a hard SF type ship the way the people who built the Imperium's flying space cathedrals would design one.

[Steel]

For almost all races, this is nigh-on impossible. Remember, for the Imperium, once you're out of the Astronomicon, as a rule, you're lost without hope.

If they want to travel through the Warp. Does the Astronomicon reach far enough so that someone could go through it to the edge of the Galaxy, then simply travel relativistic sublight speed?

Depends on which edge of the Galaxy you are on. The Astronomicon is on Earth, and it stretches the same distance in all directions. It reaches to the edge of the Galaxy closest to Earth, maybe a bit further to the halo stars, but is nowhere close to the edge opposite Earth.

In any case, if you are doing sublight travel it can be launched from anywhere. The problem is that assuming and average speed of .5c, the time it takes to get to Andromeda is 4.4 million years. So any sublight colonists haven't arrived yet. Same speed for the closer Magellanic Clouds takes at least 338 thousand years, so any sublight colonists haven't arrived there either.

Going back to Necronlord's point about the necessity of the Astronomicon, however, it's actually not needed if the warp is calm enough. As it happens, it was just that prior to the birth of Slaanesh. In other words, it's possible that Golden Age of Technology humans might have sent colonists to the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda, and there are human settlements there in the 41st millennium.

I'm pretty sure that the astronomicon does actually cover almost the whole galaxy. Remember that earth is quite close to the middle of the galaxy according to the maps... and also the ultramar region is on the opposite side of the galaxy (on the edge) to earth and seems to have no problems with navigation compared to anywhere else.

[Nyrath]

Imagine the kind of performance a 40K equivalent of Daedalus would have. If Eldar warships can get to .75 c with a fuel fraction well below 1:1 think of what something with a similar exhaust velocity and thrust could achieve with the Daedalus's 50:1 fuel fraction! I haven't actually run the math but we're probably talking deep into near-lightspeed territory here. With the kind of time dilation a ship like that might experience a relativistic intergalactic journey might not be as long as it sounds. Hell, it might only be a couple of years to the travellers; think Tau Zero.

R = (Mpt / Me) + 1
dV = c * Tanh[(Ve / c) * ln(R)]
where
R = mass ratio
Mpt = mass of propellant
Me = mass of spacecraft without propellant
dv = spacecraft's final velocity relative to Earth
c = speed of light in a vacuum
Ve = exhaust velocity of propulsion system
Tanh[x] = hyperbolic tangent of x
ln(x) = natural logarithm of x

Use same units for dv, c, and Ve (meters per second, percent c, whatever)

Have fun.

[Guardsman Bass]

If they want to travel through the Warp. Does the Astronomicon reach far enough so that someone could go through it to the edge of the Galaxy, then simply travel relativistic sublight speed?

Depends on which edge of the Galaxy you are on. The Astronomicon is on Earth, and it stretches the same distance in all directions. It reaches to the edge of the Galaxy closest to Earth, maybe a bit further to the halo stars, but is nowhere close to the edge opposite Earth.

In any case, if you are doing sublight travel it can be launched from anywhere. The problem is that assuming and average speed of .5c, the time it takes to get to Andromeda is 4.4 million years. So any sublight colonists haven't arrived yet. Same speed for the closer Magellanic Clouds takes at least 338 thousand years, so any sublight colonists haven't arrived there either.

Going back to Necronlord's point about the necessity of the Astronomicon, however, it's actually not needed if the warp is calm enough. As it happens, it was just that prior to the birth of Slaanesh. In other words, it's possible that Golden Age of Technology humans might have sent colonists to the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda, and there are human settlements there in the 41st millennium.

I'm pretty sure that the astronomicon does actually cover almost the whole galaxy. Remember that earth is quite close to the middle of the galaxy according to the maps... and also the ultramar region is on the opposite side of the galaxy (on the edge) to earth and seems to have no problems with navigation compared to anywhere else.

I thought the Astronomicon only created a "sphere" of navigable space (in terms of being able to see the Imperium's "lighthouse") about fifty thousand light years in diameter - or is that radius? Of course, if Ultramar is as you say, then I'm wrong.

One other thing. If you didn't want to resort to relativistic sublight, could you take a note from the Tau and do their strange "skipping on the edge of the Warp" FTL thing? It's obviously much slower than traveling through the Warp proper, but it's faster than sublight.

[NecronLord]

They could presumably use warp travel to get out of the galactic plane - there are globular clusters out there they could reach, too. Presumably these contain weird alien empires.

Also, it's more like eighty thousand light years or more. There's some bits of the galaxy that are out of its reach, but they're basically the far fringe.

[Vanas]

This contrasts with the other Ruinous Powers, where their negative aspects are considerably different (honour versus war, or decay versus love, or lies versus hope). It's probably a function of the fact that Slaanesh was birthed by the excess of passion the Eldar were getting into.

Well, arguably hope is the desire for change for the better. And honourable war is better than war for no reason than collecting a large pile of skulls to sit on.

As for the more recent posts, looking at one of the galactic maps, Ultima Macharia seems to be a heck of a lot closer to Segmentum Solar than Ultima Segmentum. Perhaps having lots of inhabited planets around helps the Astronomicon signal? Or the map is wrong, also likely.

[NecronLord]

There are relays for the Astronomicon, associated with certain trade routes and such.

[Darksider]

There are relays for the Astronomicon, associated with certain trade routes and such.

Does the imperium possess the capability to construct additional relays to increase the Astronomicon's range?

[NecronLord]

Yes. But it only has so many astropaths.

[NeoGoomba]

Are the Warp gods then different from galaxy to galaxy? Since I imagine such vast stretches of "calm" Chaos between galaxies would mess up their proclivities if they were universal entities.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Are the Warp gods then different from galaxy to galaxy? Since I imagine such vast stretches of "calm" Chaos between galaxies would mess up their proclivities if they were universal entities.

As I said earlier, a warp god is not really an entity as much as it is just the coalesced emotions of sapient creatures. So if there are sapient beings with some psychic affinity (i.e., not Tau or Necrontyr) in some other galaxy, "daemons" will arise from their thoughts and psyches. Over time, if certain emotions become very prevalent or very powerful for sustained periods of time, those daemons will merge into nascent warp gods.

[NeoGoomba]

As I said earlier, a warp god is not really an entity as much as it is just the coalesced emotions of sapient creatures. So if there are sapient beings with some psychic affinity (i.e., not Tau or Necrontyr) in some other galaxy, "daemons" will arise from their thoughts and psyches. Over time, if certain emotions become very prevalent or very powerful for sustained periods of time, those daemons will merge into nascent warp gods.

Oh okay, I see now.

[Connor MacLeod]

I suspect that ultimately the whole "what happens if he dies/is separated from his body/reborn/Star child" thing is irrelevant. He's already got a fuckload huge religious belief base to draw off of (second only to the Orks I bet) and he's been consuming psyker souls for 10,000 years -he's probably growing powerful with each soul he consumes (IIRC the same is true for Chaos gods. And there is that Teteurach dude from "bleeding chalice" who was creating the massive zombie army and sucking up life to grow powerful enough to become a Chaos God as well.

Ultimately, its bound to be only a matter of time before the Emperor bitchslaps Chaos. The Necrons and Tyranids are a bigger threat IMHO anyhow.

[Connor MacLeod]

For almost all races, this is nigh-on impossible. Remember, for the Imperium, once you're out of the Astronomicon, as a rule, you're lost without hope.

I thought the Imperium (and other races like the Eldar) have non-Astronomican means of navigation, they're just very very short range and less reliable (something like no more than a few light years) - the big benefit of the Astronomican is that it allows for more accurate/reliable navigation (relatively speaking) and for much longer-range jumps (hundreds or thousands of light years in a hop)

Thus its not so much a matter of "you're beyond all hope" as much as "you can navigate, its just really fucking slow and will probably take you will feel like you're without hope."

The real problem as I'd see it would be handling supplies and whatnot - fuel mass, repairs etc. Stasis tech might offset some of that (at least for the crew) but that's not always "common" tech.