The Warp is replaced by The Force (RAR!)

[gigabytelord]

Jesus H. Christ They changed it in the 5th ed codex now they've changed it back? Can they not make up their minds? Is warp use official, as in codex official, or did they just not mention that either? I'm asking because I don't have 6th ed. and I've not read Shield of Baal. Thanks for the correction btw now I need to acquire the new codex :/

[NecronLord]

Jesus H. Christ They changed it in the 5th ed codex now they've changed it back? Can they not make up their minds? Is warp use official, as in codex official, or did they just not mention that either? I'm asking because I don't have 6th ed. and I've not read Shield of Baal. Thanks for the correction btw now I need to acquire the new codex :/

I actually asked the author of the 5th Edition book at Games Day 2013; he attributed a number of things about the book to Alan Merett, the GW head of intellectual property, who wants(wanted) to retcon it so that every form of FTL travel involved the warp, in the name of scientific plausibility.

However, when it comes to writing something like the Shield of Baal books, then suddenly the idea that the necrons can literally only get to go FTL from one place in a star system through a huge and very obvious target becomes unsustainable, so they just ended up writing that inertialess drives exist.

[bilateralrope]

Tau: The Tau lose their FTL. Not that it matters, as they never had any hope of surviving long-term.

No more than any other race that uses the warp for FTL travel. There is a similar domain that they can access.

Zor

Ok, I'll admit that I missed that part. Assuming that it can be accessed in the same ways as the warp, it does change things for the Imperium:
- A lot of psykers get weaker, as powerful psykers are stronger than powerful force users. Though they can also push harder.
- Astropaths still cease to be useful for FTL communication.
- Navigators are in for a shock. The astronomnicon ceases to function in the same instant that the warp calms, removing any points of reference in the warp that they navigate by. They might have a bit of trouble justifying keeping their influence in the Imperium when FTL now just involves pointing at the destination system and running the drive for the right amount of time.
- Assuming that average speed of warp travel remains the same, travel times just became a lot more reliable. No more ships arriving centuries late or before they left.

The loss of astropath communication is probably the biggest change. One the Imperium will adapt to.


As for the Tau, remember that the main reason the Damocles Gulf Crusade ended as a draw was that the Imperium realised that the nids were the greater threat. Once the Imperium realises that so many threats are gone, the Tau are going to be facing a much larger Imperium attack than they faced the first time round.

Is warp use official, as in codex official,

Why does it being in a codex matter ?

Last I heard, GW doesn't have any official canon policy. So I default to everything published with GW's permission being equally canon, except for game mechanics. Which means that I have to accept that are parts that contradict each other.

As for Necron FTL, it sounds like they have two options that they choose between. Maybe with some dynasties that only have access to one or the other.

[NecronLord]

My personal retcon used in RPG campaigns, is that the inertialess drives are relics of the C'tan rule, and that the necrons have some but do not understand them and cannot make more.

Even in the 5th edition book, there are necron FTL events that can't be explained with Dolmen Gates - like the World Engine being able to ravage multiple Imperial systems within a year - that thing's a planet, and Dolmen Gates can't possibly admit one, and it's described as travelling through space.

A shard of Yggra'nya, the Moulder of Worlds, a C'tan, in the World Engine novel, tells the Astral Knights (while talking about helping them) that he made the world engine's systems, presumably including its inertialess drives.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It's also possible that Necrons use Dolmen Gates where possible because it's faster. There is nothing I can recall which says Inertialess Drives are faster than Webway Gates. Given that the Webway apparently lets you walk to other star systems, this is hardly a strange notion.

[NecronLord]

In the third edition book the C'tan gave the necrons 'ships that can cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye' - faster than the webway even - but that may perhaps be regarded as either deprecated, or illustrative of what the drives could do when the star gods were around to maintain them.

[Q99]

Last I heard, Gork and Mork were both warp gods. While Orks being corrupted by chaos is rare, it does happen. Which means that the Orks do have some presence in the Warp.

Painting Ork vehicles red does make them go faster along with other things that don't fit with the standard laws of physics, so their tech is effected by something other than the standard laws of physics.

So it's either the warp effecting Ork stuff, or it's something else. So, without proof of this other thing, I'm going with it being the warp doing it because that's the simplest explanation.

Heck, Waaagh energy is certainly confirmed to be psyker power- Weirdboyz are called psykers, they work by concentrated warp energy, etc..

Also, they were made by the Old Ones (just like Eldar), who specialized in two things, genetics and psychics. So, yea.

Gork and Mork almost seem like amorphous warp-energy blobs rather than proper gods, they're definitely some kind of weird, but it's all warp stuff, the Orks are an intensely psychic race.