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I heard that its possible to time travel in the warp so why doesn't the Imperium go back in time to the Horus Heresy and stop it from happening?

It is the essence of Chaos and is not predictable or controllable to that extent.

Besides if they were able to travel back in time so would chaos thus stopping any such attempt to stop chaos from corrupting horus and everyone who joined him. Besides they themselves might become tainted as well.
Only record i know of of time travel was a warboss who set out through the warp arriving back where he was before he set out killing himself so he might have an extra of his weapon. stopping his waaagh before it ever began.

One of FFG's supplements for their 40K RPGs has a report regarding an "imposter" warship. The warship got lost while traveling through the warp, and pulled into port. Once there, the Imperium realized that the name of the ship was the same name as a warship currently under construction (navies don't typically have two ships with the same name), and they had no record of a captain with the same name as the captain of the warship.

Reading between the lines makes it clear what happened - the ship was on its way to help against the 13th Black Crusade when it got lost in the warp and traveled back in time (the FFG RPGs are set at least a few centuries before the "current" 40K time period). It emerged a few years before it's launch date, in a time period in which the current captain's grandfather was still just a low ranking officer.

The Imperium executed the entire crew as traitors (since the ship was "obviously" an attempt to fool the Imperium) aside from the navigators and astropaths - those two crew elements were deemed too valuable to kill.

Eumerin wrote:One of FFG's supplements for their 40K RPGs has a report regarding an "imposter" warship. The warship got lost while traveling through the warp, and pulled into port. Once there, the Imperium realized that the name of the ship was the same name as a warship currently under construction (navies don't typically have two ships with the same name), and they had no record of a captain with the same name as the captain of the warship.

Reading between the lines makes it clear what happened - the ship was on its way to help against the 13th Black Crusade when it got lost in the warp and traveled back in time (the FFG RPGs are set at least a few centuries before the "current" 40K time period). It emerged a few years before it's launch date, in a time period in which the current captain's grandfather was still just a low ranking officer.

The Imperium executed the entire crew as traitors (since the ship was "obviously" an attempt to fool the Imperium) aside from the navigators and astropaths - those two crew elements were deemed too valuable to kill.

that is kind of cool to hear about. awesome that somewhere there is some reports telling of more time travel.

One of the BL short story collections features a force of Ultramarines who wind up getting sent back in time...

.. and wackiness ensues of course.

IIRC the ork codex has a warboss who travels back in time and winds up fighting/killing himself.

Oh the following might be of interest

http://andyhoare.blogspot.com/

I don't think the 'Ordo Chronos' is terribly fitting for the Imperium. An entire organisation to something so rare as 'Time Travel' seems unlikely, considering how bureaucratically inefficient the Imperium is.

The fact that these events would register to more than even that sharpest Inquisitors is something that I can't believe. (Yes there are some things that are unbelievable evening in settings like 40k)


It would be better if they were kept as an interesting anomaly.

If you look at the size of the Imperium and the number of craft travelling about deliberately, and remember that time dilation is a factor in most Imperial "flight plans", it strikes me as very plausible indeed that some aspect of the Inquisition would keep an eye on this sort of thing.

I would assume time dilation would be a given within the Imperium, or any other fictional universe where instaneous travel is not an option.

It wouldn't cover such things like random time jumps. The inquistion would probably look into a ship that exceeds a predetermined time frame for the distance travelled within the warp. For example a ship that arrives 1000 years late for a trip that should have taken 100.

Actually the more I think about it, you're probably right. Although I still think a whole new 'Ordo' is out of the question. I can imagine a branch of the Ordo Malleus dealing with such things.

This idea could be extremely well-executed, but it could also tumble down a slippery slope into fluff excrement (insert Matt Ward joke here).

Medium of Death wrote:I don't think the 'Ordo Chronos' is terribly fitting for the Imperium. An entire organisation to something so rare as 'Time Travel' seems unlikely, considering how bureaucratically inefficient the Imperium is.

Wouldn't that be the definition of bureaucratically inefficient?

But generally everyone has it right. Time travell is random and relatively rare. And it's usually only chaos followers who survive long enough in the warp to experience the time travel effects.

Everytime a ship enters the Warp there is a disunion between it and it's exiting on the other side.


most of the time the distortion between time on the ship and time in real space is measured in hours or days. to cross the galaxy might result in a few years of distortion, but nothing major.


but they certaintly can't control the time distortions. and they never predict the massive distortions like the examples above.

it isn't unknown for a fleet to exit the warp before they left though and arrive to help a planet far sooner then expected.