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What is essentially Webway?
Some kind of linked networked gates? Like Stargate, but more complex and spread all across the Warp?

Check out the 40k wiki, they have heaps of info on this kind of thing.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Webway

The Webway is best imagined as a vast and tangled network of doorways between fixed points in real space. Through the Webway the Eldar can travel farther and faster than most other races. However, if there is not a Warpgate (the exits and entrances to the Webway) near their destination, or the one present is not big enough to permit the necessary forces, the Eldar are at a disadvantage.

Think "like stargate" BUT the tunnels intersect and cross as well, and two-way transport like the "transport rings".

I see it kinda closer to the london underground in subspace.

A huge lattice of intersecting tunnels and caverns of various sizes under the universe (between reality and the warp) that allow the eldar and dark eldar to both travel and live within it.

Remembering that both the Black Library and Commoragh are within it, as well as numerous other 'sub realms'.

London Underground is an apt metaphor.

Except only a few key individuals have the entire map (Eldar have a partial map, DE have a partial map, Exodites have a partial map - Harlequins in the BL have the entire thing.).

The big difference between the webway and stargates is the webways is a place you can be. You aren't just sucked from one gate to the other. Think the door system used by the keymaster in the Matrix. You enter one door, travel a few hundred feet/miles, don't make any wrong turns, exit another door on the other side of the Galaxy.

The webway is also in the warp. It is kind of like a city built under the ocean, safe and secure from the big sea beasts and watery death around it, but if it cracks the ocean (warp) and the sharks get in. There are entire cities in the webway (Commoragh) and other installations (black library).

The new Necron dex gives some additional interesting insight. It can react to situations, shutting down sections when it detects intrusion, and attempting to self repair. However, the webway is breaking down. Huge swaths of it have ruptured. Were once the webway was a nice, orderly place, intelligently designed by a civic engineer to make it easy to get from one place to the other, in recent millenia huge swaths of it have broken down and ruptured. It is now a maze of dead ends and warp leaks, where one wrong turn can dump you among a bunch of demons.

Even so, it seems it is the safest and fastest method of transportation. It is obvious that even if the Necrons do have FTL it is considered vastly inferior to webway travel, and a world lacking webway access is considered isolated and backwater (like a town without rail access would be 75 years ago).

The webway is a subdimension. comprised of both the Warp and Realspace. existing in neither, but being part of both.

Practically, its a bunch of wraithbone tunnels and passages. some small so only a small warband can go through, others can encompass entire Craftoworlds. The DE city of Cormorragh and the BLack Library craftworld are located in the Webway.

It is immense, perhaps as big as the physical universe.

Interesting discussion - so do we think the Webway is an living entity in its own right?

They describe the webway in detail in Inquistion War....it's blue and misty.

Interesting things I read here. Thank you all very much for sharing all of this.

So, basically Webway is entirely new universe that exists as a combo of our own and the Warp...

It exists as a thin membrane between the universe and the Imaterium.

This brings up another question in my mind, why did the old ones build the webway in the first place? Back then the warp was calm and smooth with no chaos, why do you need a protective network of tunnels through it when there is no danger and you can travel from one side of the galaxy to the other almost instantaneously without it?

It's faster.

vodo40k wrote:This brings up another question in my mind, why did the old ones build the webway in the first place? Back then the warp was calm and smooth with no chaos, why do you need a protective network of tunnels through it when there is no danger and you can travel from one side of the galaxy to the other almost instantaneously without it?

Calm and Smooth are relative terms compared to today. The warp still has natural eddies and currents that can mess with things. The webway combines the efficiency of warp travel with the reliability of the material universe. It is a improvement over warp travel. One reason the Emperor was trying to break into the Webway and use it, its more reliable.

Oh, back then the Warp would probably be slower than now. Picture a sailboat on a calm ocean without waves or wind. Pretty slow going.

The thing I don't get about the Webway is its portals. It is my understanding that the Eldar can create Webway Portals out of thin air, while other times it seems like they're ancient structures created by the Old Ones. The Eldar also use it for space travel, so are there just Webway portals floating around space?

Like on Imperial worlds that have webway portals on them (many Imperial worlds attacked by Eldar talk of the Eldar suddenly appearing as if from nowhere) why didn't the Imperials ever notice the portal?

vodo40k wrote:This brings up another question in my mind, why did the old ones build the webway in the first place? Back then the warp was calm and smooth with no chaos, why do you need a protective network of tunnels through it when there is no danger and you can travel from one side of the galaxy to the other almost instantaneously without it?

This strikes me a lot like saying "if they could already get from New York to Florida by blazing their own path through the forest or sailing, why build a freeway?"

It is obviously superior for many reasons. It makes it available to everyone, even without a ship. It makes the trip predictable, and faster. You can transport things directly to wherever you need it, even in a building, without going to all the trouble of loading and unloading ships in orbit.

Harriticus wrote:The thing I don't get about the Webway is its portals. It is my understanding that the Eldar can create Webway Portals out of thin air, while other times it seems like they're ancient structures created by the Old Ones. The Eldar also use it for space travel, so are there just Webway portals floating around space?

Like on Imperial worlds that have webway portals on them (many Imperial worlds attacked by Eldar talk of the Eldar suddenly appearing as if from nowhere) why didn't the Imperials ever notice the portal?

The portals are wraithbone structures, but they are well hidden by the artifice built into the gates. Essentially, they are invisible untill activated.

the portals can also be moved if needed and new ones can be constructed.


Craftworlds contain their own Webway portals needed to enter the Webway. Presumably they can then use these same portals to leave it wherever they want after traveliong through the Webway for some period of time.

Gates are bigger, hardier more permament structures that gives a set location to transit from and to - like a bus station.

While a personal portal that's opened on the fly is going to be smaller, temporary and the exit point is going to be an approximation.

Only the Dark Eldar have the portable portals.

I would say that a webway is just a gate into the warp, where thinking of it like tunnels is wrong because in the warp reality does not exist at all.

Only the Dark Eldar have the handheld small ones.

All eldar have portable portals of some kind, and most have the ability to open a portal for passage for tanks and infantry, and it's how all eldar starships go ftl, by opening a portal


Automatically Appended Next Post:
also - it isnt just a gateway into the warp. It's a pocket dimension between the 'real world' and the warp. So tunnels and caves is a fairly apt metaphor.

Yes, they're actually tunnels. Jaq Draco walked through them. They're blue....and misty. There's a library there.....a black one.

I look at it using the earth as an example. You have the Surface which is real space. And then there is the mantle which is the warp. And in between is this layer (the crust) in which there are thousands of these caves and tunnels (the webway).

riverhawks32 wrote:I would say that a webway is just a gate into the warp, where thinking of it like tunnels is wrong because in the warp reality does not exist at all.

And you'd be wrong, i'm afraid If it was just the Warp the DE would be utterly BONED

The Webway is NOT the warp. It's between the Materium and the Warp, and it has been decribed in the fluff as a massive network of tunnels and passages, some big enough for cities and whole craftworlds to hide in.

Someone upthread compared it to the london underground. I think it'd be more like the warrens under Paris, these days (current fluff) in that there is no readily available coherent map (partial maps do exist, and one master map, but that's not for general display ), and parts of it are unexplored in centuries, sealed off, unstable and dangerous as hell or inhebited by unsavoury folk

Simply put, the Webway is a network of material tunnels through the warp, but is part of neither, and has no presence in reality. It was originally built by the Old Ones, and expanded by the ancient Eldar. The main network is large enough for fleets and Craftworlds to pass through, but most tunnels can only used by people. Temporary tunnels and portals can be made to link a fleet in main tunnel to a system without a portal, or from a ship in orbit to the surface; however, neither the Dark Eldar or the Craftworld Eldar know how to repair or build entirely new tunnels; that information is contained within the Black Library, but the Harlequins guard it well. Webway Gates are normally invisible, but powerful psykers can detect it. Should that happen, the Eldar will attempt to protect the gate, as a few well-place demo charges or melta bombs will be sufficient to seal a gate forever. Travel through the Webway is instant when viewed from outside the Webway, although time passes normally for travelers within. It is made of a warp-resistant material similar to wraithbone, but is superior since it's submerged in the warp but cannot be corrupted and is able to withstand warp storms. It has limited self-repair and self-defense capabilities. Apparently, the Emperor was able to understand how the Webway functions, that's how He was able to build the Golden Throne, but lacked the technology to replicate it's components. My best guess is that once the Emperor's tunnel has connected to the main network, either the Webway 'grows' to cover the new section, or the Emperor seizes the Black Library and uses it's knowledge to acquire the necessary technology to replicate the Webway's components.

Some of the Dark Eldar have some control over Commoragh - as it keeps expanding.

Into existing tunnels...only the Harlequins know the full extent of the Webway, and although fluff says large sections of the Webway are in ruins, remember that while the Eldar Empire only covered the area of the Eye of Terror, their influence extended over the entire galaxy. The Webway could thus be as large as the galaxy, and even larger sections of it could be empty. After all, the Imperial fluff regarding the Emperor's plans to conquer the Webway mentioned it as largely-abandoned, indicating massive sections completely untouched since the Eldar Empire collapsed.

Tadashi wrote:Into existing tunnels...only the Harlequins know the full extent of the Webway, and although fluff says large sections of the Webway are in ruins, remember that while the Eldar Empire only covered the area of the Eye of Terror, their influence extended over the entire galaxy. The Webway could thus be as large as the galaxy, and even larger sections of it could be empty. After all, the Imperial fluff regarding the Emperor's plans to conquer the Webway mentioned it as largely-abandoned, indicating massive sections completely untouched since the Eldar Empire collapsed.

Those sections were empty back in 30k, which was pretty much immediately after the fall. In 40k it's possible that the DE have absorbed all the major spaces into Commorragh.

And the Thousands Sons book makes it pretty clear that the web is actually a bunch of tunnels built within the warp. I'm personally not a big fan of that take on the webway. I liked thinking of it as existing within the non-dimension that seperates the materium and immaterium.

And Commaragh's weird too. It's not all in one place. Going down an alleyway may put you through a portal that transports you 20,000 lightyears but you would hardly notice.