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Hey everyone. I'm fairly new to the tabletop but a fairly old hand at the Dawn Of War Franchise.

I was just wondering everyone's opinions on the nature of the Warp. I have some theories, but I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions.

I imagine its an alternate universe in every way possible, where you can't have some things here, you can have everything there. Where you use senses in reality, over there, everything is senseless. And then there's the part where everything is utterly alien to anyone who's never been in there. Time might go backwards one moment, then fast forward, then slow then, and then speed up, and the order will loop back on itself. Or you might find yourself walking in some place where there's nothing but color, and you see colors that don't exist in reality.

I imagine you can walk around inside a building, open a door and suddenly you're swimming in a marshmallow lake, swim to the bottom, and you end up in a world that's upside down. All of this would be fun if not for the malicious inhabitants there who would taint the warp in madness, sickness, wickedness, horror, and greed. They will corrupt you and try to make you their slave, they might try to greed you into going someplace or into doing something and voila, you're stuck in a cycle of eating donuts for all eternity or find yourself humping something with three arms eight legs, and covered in flies. Or you could be tossed into lava, taken out, sculpted back into your original form, or even something else, then tossed back in and sculpted into something else. All the while, you maintain your memory, thoughts, opinions, experiences, and senses that you were born with in your own dimension.

Interesting.
Well I just read a little thing in Lexicanum about the Old Ones. I don't know it it's 100% accurate, but it's made me think.

So the Old Ones, apparently, build the webway and are the first race to deal with the warp. In fact it says they did all sorts of dimensional engineering, which the Necrontyr couldn't deal with. The C'Tan are unable to interact with it, but is that because of psychic dimensions? The C'Tan appear to be intelligent and have thought. So wouldn't it be natural for them to have some affect on the warp?

So did the Old Ones create the warp? And, as they created most of the life in the Galaxy, they are intrinsically linked to the warp as part of the Old One's legacy?
If this was the case it may explain why the C'Tan and the Tyranid do not interact with the warp. It might also explain why they are able to psychically effect the warp.
I believe this might also help to explain something in the Space Wolves lore, that their totems and whatnot make them 'foggy' when trying to be noticed psychically (or something like that).

Hashbeth wrote:Hey everyone. I'm fairly new to the tabletop but a fairly old hand at the Dawn Of War Franchise.

I was just wondering everyone's opinions on the nature of the Warp. I have some theories, but I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions.

Warp = Hell
Nuff said.

I don't know much about webway's or the Old Ones, but yes the Old Ones built the webway's, and then the Eldar expanded it until it is what it is today. The warp has been around for as long as the old ones have, but it is not certain if it is longer. The webway's are used as efficient travel through warp-space with none to minimal contact with the corruption of the Warp. So this suggests that the old ones are susceptible to corruption by the warp. Which in turn suggests that the old ones have feelings and which in turn suggests they use senses much like Humans and Eldar do. The Necrontyr do not understand Old Ones technology because the Old ones were both technologically and psychically superior to the Necrontyr. However, judging by reasonable knowledge, I don't think the Old Ones are in any way linked to the warp other than the suggestion that they are susceptible to it.

The Tyranids are parasites, bacteria, cockroaches. They can't feel anything but primordial instincts like fear, hunger, exhilaration, and agitation. As such, the Warp can't feed off them. All I know about Necrontyr (which is very little) is that they are a race that has gone extinct because they encased themselves in living metal. They might have used to been susceptible to warp corruption, but now all they have are memories of emotions, which is not enough to feed the Warp.

The C'tan are like the Chaos gods of the physical universe. While the Chaos gods feed off emotion, the C'tan feed off solar energy and life essence. They are made into being in two different universes, and can't mix whatsoever. They are polar opposites. You can't corrupt the C'tan, nor can you can you get the C'tan to feed off warp energy. Perhaps this is why they effect the Warp. Because they are the "antibodies" of the Warp.

The Warp is indescribable as it's never the same for two different people.

It's usually described as a shifting realm where time stands still and the impossible is possible and the possible is impossible.

Basically it's a place which is like a riddle inside a mystery inside an enigma.

That probably doesn't help at all but...yeah

Iranna.

The Warp.... IS AWESOME!

deffskulla wrote:The Warp.... IS AWESOME!

If it's awesome for your soul to be tortured then eaten by sadistic beings then you need to check your morality...

Brother Coa wrote:

Hashbeth wrote:Hey everyone. I'm fairly new to the tabletop but a fairly old hand at the Dawn Of War Franchise.

I was just wondering everyone's opinions on the nature of the Warp. I have some theories, but I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions.

Warp = Hell
Nuff said.

No. If there is an analogue to hell in Warhammer 40,000 it the Eye of Terror. The warp is something far less crude or easily defined. Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness describes it as "...a parallel reality... devoid of recognisable matter and life, with its own fluid laws of time and space... a random, unstructured dimension of energy and unfocussed consciousness... unfettered by the limits of matter and undirected by intelligent purpose. Warpspace is Chaos; Chaos is Warpspace. The two are indivisible."

English Assassin wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:

Hashbeth wrote:Hey everyone. I'm fairly new to the tabletop but a fairly old hand at the Dawn Of War Franchise.

I was just wondering everyone's opinions on the nature of the Warp. I have some theories, but I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions.

Warp = Hell
Nuff said.

No. If there is an analogue to hell in Warhammer 40,000 it the Eye of Terror. The warp is something far less crude or easily defined. Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness describes it as "...a parallel reality... devoid of recognisable matter and life, with its own fluid laws of time and space... a random, unstructured dimension of energy and unfocussed consciousness... unfettered by the limits of matter and undirected by intelligent purpose. Warpspace is Chaos; Chaos is Warpspace. The two are indivisible."

Like I said: Warp = Hell.

The Warp is an alternate reality where emotions, egos, willpower, and thoughts have tangible effects on the reality around them. It is tangentially connected to realspace, and because of that connection, sentient beings in 40k feel emotions and have souls. And said emotions and souls allows tham, in turn, to effect the Warp.

The Warp is entirely different from Chaos, which is merely one set of sentient beings within the Warp itself, namely the ones aligned with the four "Chaos Gods", whom are collective sentiences gathered from millions of years of emotions fermenting in the warp, collecting into separate beings whom have developed their own personalities until they are, effectively, people in the loosest sense of the term. Essentially, the chaos gods and their daemons (And non-daemonic warp entities, and creatures such as the Enslavers) are the natural denizens of the warp.

To said denizen of the warp, realspace is a dangerous place. Everything in realspace has strictly defined qualities, ruled by unchanging physics. Existing in realspace is as bizarre and confusing to them (and hazardous) as existing in the warp is to us.

Melissia wrote:The Warp is an alternate reality where emotions, egos, willpower, and thoughts have tangible effects on the reality around them. It is tangentially connected to realspace, and because of that connection, sentient beings in 40k feel emotions and have souls. And said emotions and souls allows tham, in turn, to effect the Warp.

This. I would think, Brother Coa, that hell would be a lot more civilized than the Warp. At the very least, hell is comprehensive, and has its own equal. The Warp has no equal, and you should remember well not to under estimate the daemonic entities the next time you enter battle.

LumenPraebeo wrote:

Melissia wrote:The Warp is an alternate reality where emotions, egos, willpower, and thoughts have tangible effects on the reality around them. It is tangentially connected to realspace, and because of that connection, sentient beings in 40k feel emotions and have souls. And said emotions and souls allows tham, in turn, to effect the Warp.

This. I would think, Brother Coa, that hell would be a lot more civilized than the Warp. At the very least, hell is comprehensive, and has its own equal. The Warp has no equal, and you should remember well not to under estimate the daemonic entities the next time you enter battle.

And taht is what I am trying to say. Legions of Daemons, river of souls suffering by the hands of Chaos Gods - a realm that is by far the true definition of Earth Hell.

And Warp has alternate - the matterium.

Brother Coa wrote:And taht is what I am trying to say. Legions of Daemons, river of souls suffering by the hands of Chaos Gods - a realm that is by far the true definition of Earth Hell.

No it isn't.

The Warp is a place where you're limited by your imagination, willpower, and ego. What you're thinking of are the parts of the Warp where the Chaos gods ahve taken control, which isn't the entire thing.

Melissia wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:And taht is what I am trying to say. Legions of Daemons, river of souls suffering by the hands of Chaos Gods - a realm that is by far the true definition of Earth Hell.

No it isn't.

The Warp is a place where you're limited by your imagination, willpower, and ego. What you're thinking of are the parts of the Warp where the Chaos gods ahve taken control, which isn't the entire thing.

Oh, so Chaos Gods don't control the entire Warp realm?

The concept of "space" itself doesn't really exist in the warp as we think of it, but essentially yes. The four "chaos gods" don't rule the entirety of the warp.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
The presence of the Forge of Souls which produces Soul Grinders is evidence of that. The Soul Grinders are bound to defend the Forge of Souls from attack by the Chaos Gods, as it values its independence.

Brother Coa wrote:

Melissia wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:And taht is what I am trying to say. Legions of Daemons, river of souls suffering by the hands of Chaos Gods - a realm that is by far the true definition of Earth Hell.

No it isn't.

The Warp is a place where you're limited by your imagination, willpower, and ego. What you're thinking of are the parts of the Warp where the Chaos gods ahve taken control, which isn't the entire thing.

Oh, so Chaos Gods don't control the entire Warp realm?

Probably not. Think about it like this.

The universe (Materium) is infinite (or at least close enough as to make no difference to us).

The warp is the non-material reflection of the universe, so it is infinite.

The ruinous powers, while quite powerful, do have definite limits to the scope of their powers.

From there, you've got finite powers in an infinite space, so it's not really possible for them to control the entire immaterium. If it weren't for the grimdark nature of 40k, you could even imagine that some galaxy far out there was populated by creatures who only had happy thoughts, and any warp entities that manifested there would be much closer to what our religions consider God (or Gods) to be like.

Coa your confusing The eye of terror and the warp. Where the warp and realspace overlap you get daemon worlds. Due to being an easy crossing point between the dimensions chaos is keen to hold onto them.

The warp itself is just a swirling mass of warp energy. All Chaos is warp energy but not all warp energy is chaos. Chaos can't controll all of the warp as there is no "all", space and time don't exist in a way we could understand.

The best example is a to imagine it as a giant dimension sized ocean. Emotions from reality effect this ocean by moving the water. The Chaos gods are giant storms moving through it. Their realms are just the area of ocean around their core that they have influence over. When they fight they is no real fighting they just collide and try to abosrb each others power. Daemons are smaller disturbances in the water like the gods but much smaller. Each one is linked to a god which spends some of it's power to create the daemon. Other wrap predators are creatures which live inside the ocean. Souls entering the warp create ripples which other warp entities can absorb. This isn't a perfect analogy but that would be in possible as we could never describe the way the warp really works

What humans see the warp as isn't its true form but it's the only way we can really understand it. It's so alien that even at the most basic level the rules that control this dimension don't work the same way. The different types of disturbances look different to humans. One type look like nurgle another like khorne. They look different to all humans but the general idea of them is the same- khorne is always war and blood, nurgle is always decay and rot. In the calm areas humans can use their thoughts and emotions to create disturbances of their own, to them this appears as them shaping the warp around them. The emperor is doing similar, he is using the astronomicon to calm the warp around imperial space reducing disturbances (daemons).

As to the chaotic areas they depend on your views. To non chaotic humans they are pretty hellish- aside from some of the milder slaaneshy bits which look bad but bearable. However to chaos worshippers it's heaven. Khone lets you fight for ever, while slaanesh lets you feel any experience you desire.

The way I see it is a swirl of incomprehensible emotion that you float in and go crazy, but powerful warp entities emit so much of one specific emotion that places like the garden of Nurgle and other such places come into being inside. So it's either drift outside and go insane or go inside and be consumed by one emotion and thus whatever entity is taking in those emotions.

Brother Coa wrote:Like I said: Warp = Hell.

I'll elaborate, since you seem entirely to have missed the point. Nebulous as it is, the the commonly-established cultural concept of hell is one which revolves around the judgement of human souls and their divinely-ordained punishment at the hands of a devil-figure. Games Workshop's background creates analogues to (among innumerable other sources) elements of Judaeo-Christian mythology (i.e. Horus is Lucifer, Abaddon is the Beast of Revelation, the Eye of Terror somewhat resembles Dante's Inferno, etc.), but there is in the Warhammer 40,000 universe no 'God' (with a capital 'G') to judge souls and no singular 'Satan' to visit pitchforky indignities upon them either.

Incomprehensible, maddening and in all thoroughly unpleasant - indeed 'hellish' in the looser sense of the word - as the immaterium is, it is nothing so straightforward as 'space-hell'.

The warp is made of six areas- most of it is the formless wastes, which noone owns. Vast swarms of souls of dead humans roam the formless wastes, which daemons munch on at their leisure. There's also the forge, where soul grinders and all manner of daemonic weapons are made. Then there's the realms of Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne, and Slaanesh, which grow larger and smaller as their master's power waxes and wanes (side note- Tzeentch has secret passages to the other god's domains) This really can't be represented by a map, as the warp is a constant flux of energy. Also, the warp is chaos, the two are inseparable. This is all from the Daemon codex. Also, in order of power, here's the chaos gods currently (subject to change, as is the nature of chaos) Khorne is the most powerful, as bloodshed is extremelyprevalent in the galaxy as of now. Then Tzeentch, then Nurgle right behind him, then a distant last is Slaanesh(nobody's having much fun now)

SnaleKing wrote:The warp is made of six areas- most of it is the formless wastes, which noone owns. Vast swarms of souls of dead humans roam the formless wastes, which daemons munch on at their leisure. There's also the forge, where soul grinders and all manner of daemonic weapons are made. Then there's the realms of Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne, and Slaanesh, which grow larger and smaller as their master's power waxes and wanes (side note- Tzeentch has secret passages to the other god's domains) This really can't be represented by a map, as the warp is a constant flux of energy. Also, the warp is chaos, the two are inseparable.

It's a nice interpretation of the warp, but not the only one. The Warp is incredibly subjective.

So a question guys.
I heard someone say the that tyranid are brutish, instinctive, etc. and have no place in the warp, but they do have a hive mind which is, at some level, intelligent (or so I would assume, given the normal trope of the Hive Mind). As well, the necrontyr still have thoughts and souls (or at least, the NEcron Lords do). And even before they became necrontyr I believe they were unable to access the warp.
Idk, but I think I'm beginning to be swayed by the idea that the warp is a construct of the Old Ones, which is specifically effected by the psyches of creatures that owe their existence to the Old Ones.
Unless this is contradictory to major lore that I'm overlooking (and if I have done so, I humbly apologize)

Hashbeth wrote:So a question guys.
I heard someone say the that tyranid are brutish, instinctive, etc. and have no place in the warp, but they do have a hive mind which is, at some level, intelligent (or so I would assume, given the normal trope of the Hive Mind). As well, the necrontyr still have thoughts and souls (or at least, the NEcron Lords do). And even before they became necrontyr I believe they were unable to access the warp.
Idk, but I think I'm beginning to be swayed by the idea that the warp is a construct of the Old Ones, which is specifically effected by the psyches of creatures that owe their existence to the Old Ones.
Unless this is contradictory to major lore that I'm overlooking (and if I have done so, I humbly apologize)

Like I said before, the Warp has been around for as long as the Old Ones have, perhaps longer, but no one knows. What can be reasonably believed is that the Warp has been around for as long as organisms in the universe has had emotions. Or it may even be the other way around, organisms has had feelings ever since the Warp was created.

The Hive Mind is intelligent, but you can probably compare it to an Alpha wolf. Its cunning and powerful where it has to be because it has to survive. But it's will comes from its primordial instincts. Example: It has to feed, so it learns the best ways to do so. There's no more food on a planet, so it learns to space travel. There are inhabitants trying to stop it, so it learns to fight for its food.

All thats left of the Necrons are its memories. The C'tan ate their souls/life-essence. The Necron Lords might be capable if independent thought, but they are devoid of feelings. They only know their former emotions as it is through their memories. The Necrontyr might have had psykers, or they might not have. That is unknown. What is known is that the Necrontyr were adept at science, which is how they became so advanced, although the Old Ones were more advanced than the Necrontyr, having both mechanical technology and psychic technology. And so, because the Necrontyr either had no psykers or believed in science more than psychic powers, they never harvested or researched technology that lets them access the Warp. It probably is both.

The warp has existed as long as realspace has. They exist beside eachother, separate, and yet intertwined.

Think of it like the difference between the land-based ecology and the ocean-based ecology today. Generally speaking, they're separate ecosystems, but they have a dramatic effect on one another. Of course, this being 40k, the ocean-based ecosystem would have to have landsharks with diamond-tipped teeth and superpowerful digestive systems.

Melissia wrote:The warp has existed as long as realspace has. They exist beside eachother, separate, and yet intertwined.

Think of it like the difference between the land-based ecology and the ocean-based ecology today. Generally speaking, they're separate ecosystems, but they have a dramatic effect on one another. Of course, this being 40k, the ocean-based ecosystem would have to have landsharks with diamond-tipped teeth and superpowerful digestive systems.

And jellyfish that control your mind, mermaids that eat you, and lots of poisonous disease spreading fish.

SnaleKing wrote:The warp is made of six areas- most of it is the formless wastes, which noone owns. Vast swarms of souls of dead humans roam the formless wastes, which daemons munch on at their leisure. There's also the forge, where soul grinders and all manner of daemonic weapons are made. Then there's the realms of Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne, and Slaanesh, which grow larger and smaller as their master's power waxes and wanes (side note- Tzeentch has secret passages to the other god's domains) This really can't be represented by a map, as the warp is a constant flux of energy. Also, the warp is chaos, the two are inseparable. This is all from the Daemon codex. Also, in order of power, here's the chaos gods currently (subject to change, as is the nature of chaos) Khorne is the most powerful, as bloodshed is extremelyprevalent in the galaxy as of now. Then Tzeentch, then Nurgle right behind him, then a distant last is Slaanesh(nobody's having much fun now)

I have never heard of such a thing as their being six areas of the warp. But the places you speak of do exist.

And nobody is having much "fun" these days in the grim dark future. Lot since the fall anyways. Poor Khaine.

Ok, after reading all of this about the Warp my mind blow up... But I am glad Chaos Gods are not that powerful at all. They are just 4 creatures who are addicted to mortal emotions and use beings from our universe to get them more and more.

Oh, they're still ludicrously powerful-- combined, they set in motion events that would lead to their empowered champion mortally wounding the Emperor-- but they're still limited in what they can do in realspace, and given the nature of the Warp, they aren't exactly dominating the entirety of it.

The only reason they have not taken the imaterium already is because of the emperor. Makes you realise how strong he actually is. Even on his big old throne, in his weakened state, he can keep them at bay. The best description I have found of the insanity of the warp is from the Tzeench article on Lexicanum. Paragraph four the maze of Tzeench. I think that is the closest to the truth we can get while being still comprehensible.