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Hey guys, I just kinda realized that 40k takes place only in the milky way, and not the entire known universe.

There are two trillion galaxies that we know of in our universe, and although by the 41st millenium, an overwhelming majority of them would be unreachable by virtue of dark energy and the expansion of our current universe. However, warp travel would remedy that would it not? Realistically, it is easier for the Imperium to control a galaxy compared to a few (Milky way and Andromeda and the dwarf galaxies in our microcluster).

However, what about a race like the Eldar? They are incredibly close to extinction, so wouldn't it benefit them to run away to a different galaxy or sector of the universe?

Obviously, trying to inject real life astronomy/science/logic into a fantasy universe isn't perfect, and rarely makes sense, however, does it bother anyone else that 40k is on such a comparatively small scale? Or is that just me?

~Mikey

Extra-galactic travel is hard. Very hard.

Plus, a galaxy is already a mindbogglingly big place to begin with. So much so that the space marines are all irrelevant if you go by the scale GW writes them at.

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The law for the chaos gods' makes no mention of corruption in other galaxies, yet the warp is a parrallel universe so must cover the entire universe to be parrallel and we know there are other populated galaxies because we have the nids. So why can't the chaos gods extend there reach beyond the milky way? Why can't imperial ships travel via the warp to other galaxies? Why can't the webway take Eldar to new galaxies?

My personal theory is that GW wants to keep the fighting relatively grounded; if they opened up the rest of the universe there would be millions of factions and every war would become insignificant when compared to the vastness of the universe.

 mrhappyface wrote:
It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The law for the chaos gods' makes no mention of corruption in other galaxies, yet the warp is a parrallel universe so must cover the entire universe to be parrallel and we know there are other populated galaxies because we have the nids. So why can't the chaos gods extend there reach beyond the milky way? Why can't imperial ships travel via the warp to other galaxies? Why can't the webway take Eldar to new galaxies?

My personal theory is that GW wants to keep the fighting relatively grounded; if they opened up the rest of the universe there would be millions of factions and every war would become insignificant when compared to the vastness of the universe.

Every war they write is already insignificant given their troop counts.

It's mostly just been a story convention. But even with Warp Travel, remember that the longer a distance you travel in the warp, the more vulnerable you become to warp storms and drift. That drift isn't just through space, but also through time. As such, warp travel to something as distant as another galaxy would be almost impossibly dangerous!

Of course, that's not to say it doesn't and can't happen. Tyranids are theoretically from another galaxy (though maybe not, there's always room in the fluff for a retcon), Necrons could sleep away a journey, and Orks could end up on an out-of-control Space Hulk that's heading in that direction.

Even the Chaos Gods themselves are not actually gods in the sense that they are all-powerful or all-encompassing. They exist in the Milky Way because creatures of emotion exist there, and they feed off those emotions. While the immaterium likely also exists in the rest of the universe, there will be other entities in those galaxies as well. It's very possible that the daemons battle the alien daemons from other galaxies just as the creatures of the galaxy fight the Nids, and humanity would never even know!

Martel732 wrote:

Every war they write is already insignificant given their troop counts.

Yes, but even events like the horus heresy would become insignificant.

 mrhappyface wrote:
It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The law for the chaos gods' makes no mention of corruption in other galaxies, yet the warp is a parrallel universe so must cover the entire universe to be parrallel and we know there are other populated galaxies because we have the nids. So why can't the chaos gods extend there reach beyond the milky way? Why can't imperial ships travel via the warp to other galaxies? Why can't the webway take Eldar to new galaxies?

My personal theory is that GW wants to keep the fighting relatively grounded; if they opened up the rest of the universe there would be millions of factions and every war would become insignificant when compared to the vastness of the universe.

We ASSUME there are other populated galaxies because of the nids. Nobody actually knows where they came from and may or may not have been produced by the C'tan.

As for the chaos gods and the warp, the chaos entities in general are manifestations of powerful emotions from things in the materium. The chaos gods and the warp are concerned with our galaxy because they are intrinsically connected to it. The next galaxy over very well may have it's own chaos gods (or not) that are manifestations of their emotions. Their corner of the warp may be something so much more bizarre and alien that it makes the warp we know look like a picnic on a sunny day.

I would imagine that the chaos gods don't extend their reach beyond the galaxy because they are birthed and exist purely off the life that exists in this one. Why would it even cross their minds to try to do otherwise?

 mrhappyface wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Every war they write is already insignificant given their troop counts.

Yes, but even events like the horus heresy would become insignificant.

Given the published numbers of the space marine legions, it already is. The fact that the rebellion spread to Mars is the real important part, really. There's just not enough marines, even in legions, to matter.

@Lance
The existance of life in other galaxies is sheer probability: if 1/1000 planet in this galaxy produced life then that probability is extended to other galaxies because of the same laws of physics. And if the c'tan created all life in this universe then we extend the chance that they would be birthed across the whole universe.

As for the chaos gods, due to the unknown nature and structure of the warp, we cannot know if the big 4 span an entire universes worth of warp or just a galaxies worth. But here is a question: if it is only the span of one galaxy then how would one traverse galaxies within the warp?
Perhaps a mute question as we don't understand the physics of the warp, but still worth thinking about.

I love the "The Forever War" novel, but it also clearly shows how the whole 40k setting devoid of any natural law concerning time and space that might give you a hint of scale ; )

Warp travel appears to be unstable, unreliable, and inaccurate, in rough proportion to how far you're going. Trying to make a warp jump extragalactic distances is likely suicide.

With that in mind the Eldar aren't about to wander off since they use the Webway for FTL travel, the Imperium and the Tau can't, the Orks weren't designed with the ability to since the Old Ones appear to have been limited to the Milky Way, the Tyranids have (and likely just go dormant and float for a very long time), and the Necrons don't have a technological barrier to going. So if you somehow wandered into another galaxy you'd end up finding Tyranids, Daemons, maybe Necrons, and maybe Eldar/Orks if it turns out the Old Ones were capable of extra-galactic travel.

As noted, 40k is a Fantasy universe with a thin sci-fi skin, its basically LotR with a different texture pack, so the real world doesnt translate terribly well.

That said, the gulf between galaxies is generally exponentially larger than any distance within a galaxy, and the Milky Way is big enough to host the entire 40k storyline and sill have vast swathes of unknown territory.

In theory, sure, the Eldar might be served better by migrating to a new Galaxy, but that would takr much more time than they appear to have, and the only extra galactic travel we have really seen has come from thr Tyranids.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Hey guys, I just kinda realized that 40k takes place only in the milky way, and not the entire known universe.

There are two trillion galaxies that we know of in our universe, and although by the 41st millenium, an overwhelming majority of them would be unreachable by virtue of dark energy and the expansion of our current universe. However, warp travel would remedy that would it not? Realistically, it is easier for the Imperium to control a galaxy compared to a few (Milky way and Andromeda and the dwarf galaxies in our microcluster).

However, what about a race like the Eldar? They are incredibly close to extinction, so wouldn't it benefit them to run away to a different galaxy or sector of the universe?

Obviously, trying to inject real life astronomy/science/logic into a fantasy universe isn't perfect, and rarely makes sense, however, does it bother anyone else that 40k is on such a comparatively small scale? Or is that just me?

~Mikey

So you want to jump to a random galaxy, outside the light of the astronimicon, where you have no idea what lies in wait.

Remember, the TYRANIDS came from another galaxy. Do you really want to take a random jump and run into another threat like that on it's home turf, or even worse, whatever it is that tyranids are potentially running from?

I seem to recall reading somewhare that the warp only exists within the bounds of the galaxy - there needs to be some sort of sentient presence for it to "appear", thus most of the void between galaxies is actually inaccessible via warp.

I know that the Tyranids didn't use Warp travel between galaxies - and in-galaxy they seem to use some sort of "starfall" method to travel (basically creating a black hole to "drop through" from point to point for long distance travel).

The Eldar though, have the webway, which apparently doesn't utilize the warp, as do the Necrons - they may both have technologies that would allow them to be a multigalaxy power.

The Eldar webway very much utilizes the Warp, it is built within the Warp, it's just shielded and protected from its denizens, like a Gellar field given almost physical form.

Don't orks travel into the beyond ?

 oldzoggy wrote:
Don't orks travel into the beyond ?

Unless it's been retconned fairly recently, I'm sure in the fluff there's evidence of extra-galactic Orks. I would assume their spores can go dormant for the long, frozen years of travel between galaxies.

I wonder if there are solid reasons that it might not be possible.

With the Eldar, I can certainly see why they don't flee. For them, warp travel is extremely hazardous so they travel via the webway. If the webway is only as broad as the milky way, they are trapped here.

Another theory, what if it's not just the denizens of the warp that are born from the emotions of mortals but its tides as well? You could find as you exit the galaxy that the eddies of the warp that carry you forward start to dissipate. Soon, you're cast adrift on the motionless ocean between galaxies, unable to move. Stranded millions of light-years away from civilisation.

That wouldn't explain the Necrons with their super-super special-snowflake FTL but that's broken enough as it is.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

That wouldn't explain the Necrons with their super-super special-snowflake FTL but that's broken enough as it is.

I thought the Necrons just used the Alcubierre Drive, which is something the bods at NASA have proved works.
(Two doughnut jobbies form an area of null-space around the craft, has some funny wave effect that shrinks space in front, and expands it behind, giving you absolutely absurd "bang for your buck" out of your propulsion system).
(From behind, you're infenitisemally small. From the front, unfathomably large, basically)

Either that, or just whatever it is Professor Farnsworth stuck in the Planet Express ship, which moves the universe, and not the spaceship. (And that would definitely be inertialess).

Since those don't use the warp at all, and can operate in free space (assuming Dark Energy doesn't do some freaky weirdness), that'd be able to go trans-galactic.
-----

Best thing to consider is the travel methods of the different races, and what it means they can do:

Necrons could just use conventional rockets and switch off, or zip across the blank space at ludicrous speed.
Tyrannids can survive in outer space (or rather, their hive ships can), constantly breeding out there, recycling their own mass.
Ork spores would need very little to keep them 'alive' before sprouting, so could quite happily drift out, not needing much resource at all.
Imperium: (Well explained above already)
Eldar have an established portal network, with definite entries and exits set up. They'd need something else.
Chaos is a force o' nature, so just pops up wherever there's sapience. (But warp spawn can't cross realms, as it just mirrors the prescence of sapience; no warp where there's no sapience)
Tau: You're having a laugh. (But it wouldn't surprise me if they eventually develop Alcubierre drives, or some other FTL thing we're currently fiddling with in labs)

This is basically just leaving our friends, the 'Crons, 'Nids, and Orks on an extragalactic adventure, meeting goodness-knows-what.
They'd be pulling off their normal shtik, just against other weird things. Meh.

I won't sidetrack this with another Newcrons bashing session, but giving them super-duper alcubierre drives (and their general level of tech) is broken in so many ways.

At least put limits on it. Fast, but not quite as fast as warp FTL.

That way there's still a possible way of beating the Necrons, and would also explain why they haven't expanded out of our galaxy yet.

Perhaps there's still some Necrontyr sleeper ships in the inter-galactic void?

As to why Orks haven't expanded into inter-galactic space: there's no-one to krump out there

Saying that, there is a really, really old bit of fluff about an imperial probe that went outside of our galaxy, and all it sent back was Ork signals...

The eldar utilise the webway for smaller vessels and moving troops around in THIS galaxy. There is nothing written that indicates that the first ones built the webway beyond our galaxy before they "went beyond the rim".
Craftworlds are restricted to sublight speeds. The craftworlds LEFT their home sector of space a little over 10,000 years ago, and STILL haven't got to the galactic rim (the exodites left prior, but only travelled to the extents of their empire where they stayed).

Space is big. Bigger than you think. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across.

Our closest galaxy is Andromeda. It's 2.5 MILLION light years from the edge of our galaxy. Across a starless void that is 2500 times larger than the diameter of our galaxy.

I love it when people write apologist fluff excuses for something that's one hundred percent explained by the fact that GW writers don't understand even the very basics of astronomy, and that the groundwork for the background was done 30 years ago by a bunch of gamers over pints of beer.

Vaktathi wrote:As noted, 40k is a Fantasy universe with a thin sci-fi skin, its basically LotR with a different texture pack, so the real world doesnt translate

This should have ended the discussion.

Martel732 wrote:Extra-galactic travel is hard. Very hard.

Not really. Just ask the Nids. They seem to do it with no technology, so it can't be that hard.

Also I don't see really hard either. If you can go from one star to another star, like the Tau with no warp, then going to one galaxy to another galaxy would just be the same, just take longer.

Not that it matters (because it doesn't), but there are 100 billion galaxies.

It took the Tyranids "eons" to cross the vast gulf between galaxies.

When it comes to galaxies, Mankind is like ants on a mile wide island. The next closest island is 2500 miles away.

 Gobbla wrote:
Not that it matters (because it doesn't), but there are 100 billion galaxies.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/universe-gets-more-crowded-as-galaxy-count-tops-2-trillion-1.3113870

Why are many planets without more than one type of terrain? Caliban for example is a forest world. No mention of any other terrain in the books I've read. Fenris is the same.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
However, what about a race like the Eldar? They are incredibly close to extinction, so wouldn't it benefit them to run away to a different galaxy or sector of the universe?

This assumes that the webway(created by old ones) extends as far. What if old ones never got around connecting different galaxies by webway? No webway, eldar are limited to sub-lightspeed travel there...Who's to say eldar craftworlds aren't planning to head to another galaxy? But being limited to sub-light speeds it's going to take a while to go there...

And Imperium isn't much better. Astronomicon doesn't even fully cover THIS galaxy let alone far enough to get to another galaxy and without astronomicon odds of reaching target is astronomically low.


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 Therion wrote:
I love it when people write apologist fluff excuses for something that's one hundred percent explained by the fact that GW writers don't understand even the very basics of astronomy, and that the groundwork for the background was done 30 years ago by a bunch of gamers over pints of beer.

Vaktathi wrote:As noted, 40k is a Fantasy universe with a thin sci-fi skin, its basically LotR with a different texture pack, so the real world doesnt translate

This should have ended the discussion.

I love it when people assume that just because it works like X in real life means any fiction should also work like X and therefore discussion on terms of that fiction is worthless.

Makes always laugh at that.

defwolf wrote:
Why are many planets without more than one type of terrain? Caliban for example is a forest world. No mention of any other terrain in the books I've read. Fenris is the same.

Take a look at our own solar system. Earth is the only planet with rich bio-diversity. Everything else is either a gas giant or a barren rock (either melting or frozen solid).

 chromedog wrote:
The eldar utilise the webway for smaller vessels and moving troops around in THIS galaxy. There is nothing written that indicates that the first ones built the webway beyond our galaxy before they "went beyond the rim".
Craftworlds are restricted to sublight speeds. The craftworlds LEFT their home sector of space a little over 10,000 years ago, and STILL haven't got to the galactic rim (the exodites left prior, but only travelled to the extents of their empire where they stayed).

Space is big. Bigger than you think. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across.

Our closest galaxy is Andromeda. It's 2.5 MILLION light years from the edge of our galaxy. Across a starless void that is 2500 times larger than the diameter of our galaxy.

Not only that, but that's just what we can see using the light that has taken 1,000s of years to travel that far. Therefore, at least theoretically, the galaxy (our view of it), is expanding at the speed of light. The problem being that light degrades after a certain point. I guess we need to go take a look.