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Most beings in the galaxy have an effect in the warp. Especially intelligent creatures that can make good or bad decisions, races like Eldar and humans seem to have the most effect since their emotions and wrongdoings have created various god's. So my question is; why do humans need the Astronomicon to travel effeciently in the warp? I feel that the answer is right in front of me, so decided to just create a thread (while bored in a hospital room) . It just doesnt make sense to me though, the Eldar are a very potent species of psychers, but humans have the most incredible psycher ever. Obviously this helps the Astronomicon but why do humans need it? Eldar dont have some super psycher sitting on a wraithbone throne. Ork's are as dense as rocks and dont need help using warp travel....... thoughts?

The Orks don't need "help" because they don't care where they end up, as long as dere's sum panzies ta krump! The Eldar inherited the Webway from the Old Ones, beings that had complete mastery of the Warp until they fought their Great War with the Necrons and stuff hit the fan, turning the warp into the twisted place it is today. Before his vegetablification, the Emperor was working on a way to gain entrance to the webway, thus letting humankind use it. As the Horus Heresy kinda got in the way of that, humanity needs the Astronomican to act as a point of reference for the Astropaths navigating the ships. While you COULD theoretically travel through the warp without the guiding light of the psychic choir, it sure helps having a fixed point of reference in a plane where the laws of physics are out to lunch, don't you agree?

This was pretty well covered in a recent thread, the main results of it was:

Eldar use the webway system to travel great distances quickly (craftworlds either pretty much stay in the same place or slowly move around) as each craftworld has its own webway portals a craftworld's troops can go nearly anywhere they want.

Orks are intrinsicly pyschic and although they are 'dense as rocks' it is not their brains that control it, its genetic. Most of the time They just hop on a hulk and hope for the best, but when a warrrgh starts to grow in size the the pyschic echo of all the orks present acts as a beacon, guiding wierd boys to the location of the 'biggest fight'. Add to that to the fact that Mork and Gork are increadibly powerful, its safe to assume that on the hole orks will get to where they want to be ok.

Humans don't need the astronomicon to travel in the warp, they need to travel with relative accuracy over long distances. It acts as a 'north star', allowing navigators to see a defined point in the chaos of the warp.

You are right in some way...
Take for example the Ultramar, it's beyond the reach of Astronomican. But Terra is still in contact with them, I recon Humanity needs this device to hold a better contact with itself. Like comparing Internet with letters.
And of course, for navigation. Without the Astronomican most human ships would go to wrong places. Like the Warp isn't enough strange already ( time deletion for example ).

So what exactly is the web-way? A bad analogy of ALOT of bridges over an ocean in an everlasting hurricane? Still dangerous but safer than using a boat.

the webway is between the warp and real space allowing for faster travel with a reduction in the threat of chaos.

the best way to invision it is like an a building made with thousands of corridors and rooms (some bigger than solar systems, seeing as the Dark Eldar live in an unimaginably large city within it)

xXSir MontyXx wrote:So what exactly is the web-way? A bad analogy of ALOT of bridges over an ocean in an everlasting hurricane? Still dangerous but safer than using a boat.

More or less. The webway is completely safe as long as there's no breach. If there is, that's your cue to GTFO.

Brother Coa wrote:Take for example the Ultramar, it's beyond the reach of Astronomican. But Terra is still in contact with them, I recon Humanity needs this device to hold a better contact with itself. Like comparing Internet with letters.

There are astropathic choirs amplifying the effect of the Astronomican IIRC. These, if my memory serves me, function as relays, boosting the "signal" of the Astronomican.

The Astronomicon simply acts as guiding point of light like Polaris.


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Brother Coa wrote:You are right in some way...
Take for example the Ultramar, it's beyond the reach of Astronomican. But Terra is still in contact with them, I recon Humanity needs this device to hold a better contact with itself. Like comparing Internet with letters.
And of course, for navigation. Without the Astronomican most human ships would go to wrong places. Like the Warp isn't enough strange already ( time deletion for example ).

Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

I'm not really sure about that. The fluff about the astronomican is quite contradictory.

The astronomican is supposed to have a range of 70 000 LY. This would mean that the astronomican could pretty much reach any corner of the galaxy since the Milky Way is a disc with a total diameter of 80 000 LY.

But, when macharius reached the borders of Segmentum Pacificus with his crusade, it is said that he was beyond the reach of the astronomican. And the border of segmentum pacificus is only 35K-40K LY away from Terra.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The Astronomicon simply acts as guiding point of light like Polaris.


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Brother Coa wrote:You are right in some way...
Take for example the Ultramar, it's beyond the reach of Astronomican. But Terra is still in contact with them, I recon Humanity needs this device to hold a better contact with itself. Like comparing Internet with letters.
And of course, for navigation. Without the Astronomican most human ships would go to wrong places. Like the Warp isn't enough strange already ( time deletion for example ).

Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

That was my understanding as well that it acted as the north star or a magnetic north when navigating.

Laodamia wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

I'm not really sure about that. The fluff about the astronomican is quite contradictory.

The astronomican is supposed to have a range of 70 000 LY. This would mean that the astronomican could pretty much reach any corner of the galaxy since the Milky Way is a disc with a total diameter of 80 000 LY.

But, when macharius reached the borders of Segmentum Pacificus with his crusade, it is said that he was beyond the reach of the astronomican. And the border of segmentum pacificus is only 35K-40K LY away from Terra.

That's not contradictory. The Astronomicon reaches 70,000 light years. The Galaxy is 80,000 light years across. That leaves a few thousand light years unreached.


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Vandil wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The Astronomicon simply acts as guiding point of light like Polaris.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Brother Coa wrote:You are right in some way...
Take for example the Ultramar, it's beyond the reach of Astronomican. But Terra is still in contact with them, I recon Humanity needs this device to hold a better contact with itself. Like comparing Internet with letters.
And of course, for navigation. Without the Astronomican most human ships would go to wrong places. Like the Warp isn't enough strange already ( time deletion for example ).

Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

That was my understanding as well that it acted as the north star or a magnetic north when navigating.

Correct. Question answered OP.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
That's not contradictory. The Astronomicon reaches 70,000 light years. The Galaxy is 80,000 light years across. That leaves a few thousand light years unreached.

Well the point is that Terra is not on the edge of the galaxy. If you take the fluff that the astronomicon has a range of 70000 light years (thats a radius of 70000 light years, giving a diameter of 14000 light years) and then compare that with the fluff from the Macharian Crusade of the Segmentum Pasificus (a segmentum that is made up of one the nearest arms of the galaxy to Terra) it does cause a contradiction.

Although Ultramar is very far from Terra it would still be under the range of the astronimicon though.

Another explanation could be that the warp (the medium the astronomicon travels through) does not actually exist out in the blackness of 'empty' space (maybe other warps exist with other galaxies and another warp exists in the empty space) and so when the Macharian Crusade hit the Halo zone the astronimicon signal died as it lost its transport medium, but that is only a side theory.

BluntmanDC wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
That's not contradictory. The Astronomicon reaches 70,000 light years. The Galaxy is 80,000 light years across. That leaves a few thousand light years unreached.

Well the point is that Terra is not on the edge of the galaxy. If you take the fluff that the astronomicon has a range of 70000 light years (thats a radius of 70000 light years, giving a diameter of 14000 light years) and then compare that with the fluff from the Macharian Crusade of the Segmentum Pasificus (a segmentum that is made up of one the nearest arms of the galaxy to Terra) it does cause a contradiction.

Although Ultramar is very far from Terra it would still be under the range of the astronimicon though.

Another explanation could be that the warp (the medium the astronomicon travels through) does not actually exist out in the blackness of 'empty' space (maybe other warps exist with other galaxies and another warp exists in the empty space) and so when the Macharian Crusade hit the Halo zone the astronimicon signal died as it lost its transport medium, but that is only a side theory.

The Astronomicon is not constant. It "brightness" can vary depending on "weather" conditions within the warp and it's actual strength can vary on its own. Nontheless, although the IoM claims to own the entire galaxy upon further discussion they will admit that the far eastern fringe is not Imperial space because The Astronomicon doesn't reach there.

Yer but Segmentum Pacificus is not in the far eastern fringe, it is in the close south westerly galaxy arm, so why can the astronomicon reach all the way to Ultramar but not past Ultima Macharia?

I thought he went West to East?


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Anyways, what you said before about The Warp not existing in the void is probably true. The Warp needs life to exist.

Does this life have to be intelligent? In theory could opening up the webway not lead to travel to other galaxies in the blink of an eye? (or however long it takes). Also, what is the Astronomicons range in all directions? Is it like a giant sphere, with the galactic plane being the diameter? or is it only along the milky way? Because if it is like a sphere there could be hundreds of thousands of ships in dark space.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I thought he went West to East?


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Anyways, what you said before about The Warp not existing in the void is probably true. The Warp needs life to exist.

http://www.joachim-adomeit.de/wh40k/spacemap/map.html

He started his crusade on Macharia in Segmentum Pacificus and ended in Ultima Macharia, going east to west, from 40K fluff the distance between Terra and Ultima Macharia is a fraction of the distance between Terra and Ultramar.

xXSir MontyXx wrote:Does this life have to be intelligent? In theory could opening up the webway not lead to travel to other galaxies in the blink of an eye? (or however long it takes). Also, what is the Astronomicons range in all directions? Is it like a giant sphere, with the galactic plane being the diameter? or is it only along the milky way? Because if it is like a sphere there could be hundreds of thousands of ships in dark space.

The Webway is a construct, it can only go as far as it is built and it still takes time to travel using it, just alot less time than by regular space travel.

The creatures that live in the warp are reflections of the real world, so the emotions of intelligent beings is needed to have intelligent warp entities like the chaos gods or Gork and Mork, but the warp is full of lots of different creatures that could be created from the emotions of 'unintelligent' animals.

xXSir MontyXx wrote:Does this life have to be intelligent? In theory could opening up the webway not lead to travel to other galaxies in the blink of an eye? (or however long it takes). Also, what is the Astronomicons range in all directions? Is it like a giant sphere, with the galactic plane being the diameter? or is it only along the milky way? Because if it is like a sphere there could be hundreds of thousands of ships in dark space.

No, I don't think so. Spirit flows throw everything as System of a Down puts it. However in the intergalactic void there is literally nothing.
Like Bluntman said the webway is something different. It's like a highway and only exists in the Milky Way.
Range is about 50,000-70,000 light years radius.
The only known things to come from beyond the galaxy are Tyranids. Some think Void Whales are out there too.

BluntmanDC wrote:This was pretty well covered in a recent thread, the main results of it was:

Eldar use the webway system to travel great distances quickly (craftworlds either pretty much stay in the same place or slowly move around) as each craftworld has its own webway portals a craftworld's troops can go nearly anywhere they want.

Orks are intrinsicly pyschic and although they are 'dense as rocks' it is not their brains that control it, its genetic. Most of the time They just hop on a hulk and hope for the best, but when a warrrgh starts to grow in size the the pyschic echo of all the orks present acts as a beacon, guiding wierd boys to the location of the 'biggest fight'. Add to that to the fact that Mork and Gork are increadibly powerful, its safe to assume that on the hole orks will get to where they want to be ok.

Humans don't need the astronomicon to travel in the warp, they need to travel with relative accuracy over long distances. It acts as a 'north star', allowing navigators to see a defined point in the chaos of the warp.

They don't need Astronomican for long range jumps,only for clearer navigation(Golden Age of Technology Humanity colonised most of the galaxy without Astronomican as the Warp was calmer then).

IvanTih wrote:

BluntmanDC wrote:This was pretty well covered in a recent thread, the main results of it was:

Eldar use the webway system to travel great distances quickly (craftworlds either pretty much stay in the same place or slowly move around) as each craftworld has its own webway portals a craftworld's troops can go nearly anywhere they want.

Orks are intrinsicly pyschic and although they are 'dense as rocks' it is not their brains that control it, its genetic. Most of the time They just hop on a hulk and hope for the best, but when a warrrgh starts to grow in size the the pyschic echo of all the orks present acts as a beacon, guiding wierd boys to the location of the 'biggest fight'. Add to that to the fact that Mork and Gork are increadibly powerful, its safe to assume that on the hole orks will get to where they want to be ok.

Humans don't need the astronomicon to travel in the warp, they need to travel with relative accuracy over long distances. It acts as a 'north star', allowing navigators to see a defined point in the chaos of the warp.

They don't need Astronomican for long range jumps,only for clearer navigation(Golden Age of Technology Humanity colonised most of the galaxy without Astronomican as the Warp was calmer then).

a. most long distance travel during that time was on multigenerational ships
b. so in the astronomican IS needed for long range jumps because the warp isn't getting calmer

BluntmanDC wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I thought he went West to East?


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Anyways, what you said before about The Warp not existing in the void is probably true. The Warp needs life to exist.

http://www.joachim-adomeit.de/wh40k/spacemap/map.html

He started his crusade on Macharia in Segmentum Pacificus and ended in Ultima Macharia, going east to west, from 40K fluff the distance between Terra and Ultima Macharia is a fraction of the distance between Terra and Ultramar.

xXSir MontyXx wrote:Does this life have to be intelligent? In theory could opening up the webway not lead to travel to other galaxies in the blink of an eye? (or however long it takes). Also, what is the Astronomicons range in all directions? Is it like a giant sphere, with the galactic plane being the diameter? or is it only along the milky way? Because if it is like a sphere there could be hundreds of thousands of ships in dark space.

The Webway is a construct, it can only go as far as it is built and it still takes time to travel using it, just alot less time than by regular space travel.

The creatures that live in the warp are reflections of the real world, so the emotions of intelligent beings is needed to have intelligent warp entities like the chaos gods or Gork and Mork, but the warp is full of lots of different creatures that could be created from the emotions of 'unintelligent' animals.

Oh alright, I didn't know the webway itself was a construct. I thought you just had to construct the portal. However, now it makes since how there are cities and other things there.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Laodamia wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

I'm not really sure about that. The fluff about the astronomican is quite contradictory.

The astronomican is supposed to have a range of 70 000 LY. This would mean that the astronomican could pretty much reach any corner of the galaxy since the Milky Way is a disc with a total diameter of 80 000 LY.

But, when macharius reached the borders of Segmentum Pacificus with his crusade, it is said that he was beyond the reach of the astronomican. And the border of segmentum pacificus is only 35K-40K LY away from Terra.

That's not contradictory. The Astronomicon reaches 70,000 light years. The Galaxy is 80,000 light years across. That leaves a few thousand light years unreached.

It is completely contradictory. Have a look at a map of the 40K galaxy. Segmentum pacificus is the smallest and the closest to Terra of all segmentums. The border of segmentum pacificus is only 30-35K LY away from Terra, which is way within the reach of the astronomican.

However, it is said that the astronomican can barely be felt by psykers on this border of the galaxy. It simply doesn't make any sense IMO.

Well if the Imperioum didn't have the AT&T star map and switched to verizon this wouldn't be a problem!

ANYWAYS, is there anything in this sector of space that could disrupt warp communication to the Astronomicon?

xXSir MontyXx wrote:ANYWAYS, is there anything in this sector of space that could disrupt warp communication to the Astronomicon?

TBH there doesn't even have to be anything there. The Warp is fickle after all...

Laodamia wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Laodamia wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ultramar is not beyond the astronomicon and the Astronomicon is used for navigation not communication.

I'm not really sure about that. The fluff about the astronomican is quite contradictory.

The astronomican is supposed to have a range of 70 000 LY. This would mean that the astronomican could pretty much reach any corner of the galaxy since the Milky Way is a disc with a total diameter of 80 000 LY.

But, when macharius reached the borders of Segmentum Pacificus with his crusade, it is said that he was beyond the reach of the astronomican. And the border of segmentum pacificus is only 35K-40K LY away from Terra.

That's not contradictory. The Astronomicon reaches 70,000 light years. The Galaxy is 80,000 light years across. That leaves a few thousand light years unreached.

It is completely contradictory. Have a look at a map of the 40K galaxy. Segmentum pacificus is the smallest and the closest to Terra of all segmentums. The border of segmentum pacificus is only 20-30K LY away from Terra, which is way within the reach of the astronomican.

However, it is said that the astronomican can barely be felt by psykers on this border of the galaxy. It simply doesn't make any sense IMO.

you could have just read the rest of the thread where we discussed this.

Where exactly did we discuss this???

Because I've followed the thread from the beginning, and we did not cover this matter.

But maybe you miqunderstood my point.
I'm basically asking why some parts of the galaxy (taking the example of the border of segmentum pacificus) are beyond the reach of the astronomican who (supposedly) has a reach of 70 000 LY. The galaxy itself has a total diameter of slightly more than 90 000 LY. But Terra is situated only 25 000 LY away from the galactic core, which means that if the effective range of the astronomican was a disc with a diameter of 140K LY, it could reach almost every corner of the galaxy, except for the most distant parts of Ultima Segmentum.

Unless, as xXSir MontyXx said, some warp anomalies limit its range?

To pick the example of segmentum pacificus again, there are two major warp anomalies in this segmentum: the Perdian Expanse and the Argolis Cluster that lay between Terra and the western border of Segmentum Pacificus. It could explain why the astronomican's reach is limited there...

Laodamia wrote:Where exactly did we discuss this???

Because I've followed the thread from the beginning, and we did not cover this matter.

But maybe you miqunderstood my point.
I'm basically asking why some parts of the galaxy (taking the example of the border of segmentum pacificus) are beyond the reach of the astronomican who (supposedly) has a reach of 70 000 LY. The galaxy itself has a total diameter of slightly more than 90 000 LY. But Terra is situated only 25 000 LY away from the galactic core, which means that if the effective range of the astronomican was a disc with a diameter of 140K LY, it could reach almost every corner of the galaxy, except for the most distant parts of Ultima Segmentum.

Unless, as xXSir MontyXx said, some warp anomalies limit its range?

To pick the example of segmentum pacificus again, there are two major warp anomalies in this segmentum: the Perdian Expanse and the Argolis Cluster that lay between Terra and the western border of Segmentum Pacificus. It could explain why the astronomican's reach is limited there...

We did discuss this. It's theorized the Astronomicon does not exist in the intergalactic void.

Laodamia wrote:Where exactly did we discuss this???

Because I've followed the thread from the beginning, and we did not cover this matter.

it was discussed between posts 11 and 17 in detail it was nearly all KamikazeCanuck and i discussed in those posts, how did you miss it?

Yes, I read those posts... But I don't see how they answer my question

Or, I'm just a stupid 'umie.

As for KamikazeCanuck's answer, I went through the fluff on the astronomican, and what I understood from this reading was that warp anomalies (bad weather as you call it) don't limit the range of the astronomican in any way. Within their limits, the signal is simply perturbed and dimmed, sometimes completely lost, but the astronomican can reach areas of space beyond the Eye or the Maelstrom for example.

And the signal of the astronomican does kinda exist in the real void. This is why its range is measured in "real life" terms.

As a usuable theory:

Although the radius of the astronomican is 70000 light years this is still restricted by its medium, the warp. If the warp is tied to this single galaxy (with other warps existing alongside other galaxys) and has an edge the astronomican would be unable to continue travelling.

This would explain the contradiction presented by the Macharius Crusade final stage