The Great Crusade, Warp travel, command structure and how time works

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**Musselman**

Clunky title but I have a few questions, how long would an Imperial campaign on a planet or system last? Could some only last a few weeks or usually months to years? Also how long does it take an exploratory fleet to travel around the galaxy? Again was it days, weeks or months? And finally how were campaigns assigned to a space marine Legion or Imperial fleet? Were they always given orders or did they have the ability to just travel where they want all the time?
I know that the times do vary but i have always wondered how fast the Imperium spread during the Great Crusade and if they could freely go wherever they wanted? A lot of questions but bored and trying to occupy my mind during all craziness. Thanks for any replies.

**locarno24**

Taking a well defended and fortified world takes a while.

Laeran was a xenos homeworld, and taking it in a month was a MASSIVE achievement for the Emperor's Children and Fulgrim.

At the other end of the scale, the Siege of Vraks took 17 years.

I'd suggest most crusade battles would fall between these extremes.

As to travel times, depends on distance.

With travel - and messaging times - being weeks or months, local control by Lord commanders and primarchs is the order of the day. Coordinated action only matters when facing an enemy on the scale a single crusade fleet can't handle.

As to whether the imperium could go anywhere...yes and no. Warp routes run in funny directions: you probably can't directly from absolutely anywhere to anywhere, but a sufficiently gifted navigator can bypass most obstacles.

**ArcaneHorror**

Angron expected his World Eaters to bring worlds to compliance in thirty-one hours or less, the length of a Nucerian day, and they accomplished this many times.

**Haighus**

Our understanding of how warp travel works is... sketchy at best.

There do seem to be warp routes- paths in the warp that are calm enough for ships to traverse safely. Some of these warp routes are more tempestuous and dangerous than others, and they seem to vary in size- there are narrow routes that only allow small craft through. The latter are used by fast couriers, the Inquisition, smugglers etc. Outside of warp routes, the warp is basically described as being too rough to traverse, although I am sure it is possible for ships to risk it depending on the circumstances and the skill of their navigator.

Aside from this, it is pretty vague as to how warp routes work, and how easy it is for ships to bypass planets. I vaguely remember reading that warp routes commonly link systems, and that systems naturally calm the warp somewhat, but have no idea what the source is for that. Warp routes can definitely lead to unexpected places though- one of the battles fought by the Imperial Fists during the Great Crusade was against a culture of voidborn space scavengers who had formed a civilisation at a confluence of "warp tides", where ships would occasionally get spat out and captured to sustain their people. On this occasion, it spat out an Astartes expeditionary fleet and they were made compliant.

Based on this, it appears that ships can sometimes be forced out of the void, but it is not clear under what circumstances this is the case. However, it also seems ships can usually just bypass a system, unless they need to stop for fuel/provisions etc.

Warp sensors exist, which can track ships and fleets approaching/passing in the warp. It may b that there are "warp jammers" that can force a ship to exit into realspace when it reaches a system. Would be very helpful for fortress worlds to block fleets from passing them.

Also, some ships are faster than others at travelling the void. TheGrey Knights are known for operating extremely quick strike cruisers to rapidly respond to emerging warp rifts, but they have access to the best tech. I think strike cruisers in general are known for being swift. A basic cargo vessel is probably pretty slow.

**locarno24**

It's also about risk management: the Mandeville point is the 'safe (ish!) altitude above a world or star's gravity well at which you can jump into or out of the warp.

Archeotech drives and first-class navigators can jump right into orbit if it really, really matters, which can save days or weeks of realspace flight.

**beast_gts**

locarno24 wrote:
Archeotech drives and first-class navigators can jump right into orbit if it really, really matters, which can save days or weeks of realspace flight.

Spoiler:

Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work wrote:
Qvo-87 stopped speaking. His head cocked on his banded augmetic neck. ‘Report interrupt. Forgive me. Wait…’ he said. His voice took on a more human tone.
From the partially restored desks of machinery, an alarm set up.
Daelus sauntered over to a console and glanced at a display. ‘Etheric monitor. Something’s coming in, something big.’ He looked more closely. ‘Throne of Terra, something extremely big!’
Micro tremors shook the station. A spanner crawled across a work bench. It skittered across the surface and dropped with a clang to the floor.
Felix stared at the rattling tool. His face betrayed his irritation.
‘Stand ready,’ said Felix. He grasped a railing and set his feet wide.
‘He’s not going to do it, is he?’ Daelus asked Troncus.
Troncus shrugged.
‘Lord Felix?’ Daelus said.
‘He will do it,’ said Felix.
‘Honoured tetrarch, would you expect anything less from the archmagos dominus?’ said Qvo-87.
‘Rash as always,’ said Felix. ‘Cawl may style himself the saviour of the Imperium, but his grandstanding puts us all at risk.’
‘The archmagos dominus?’ said Thracian. ‘He is coming?’
All over the command deck loose items bounced across the metal.
‘Brace yourselves, all of you,’ ordered Felix.
‘What is happening?’ Thracian demanded.
‘The archmagos approaches,’ said Qvo-87 with an apologetic smile.
‘Cawl is attempting an in-system real space translation,’ said Felix. ‘Here. By the station.’
‘That’s insane,’ said Thracian.
‘Many and glorious are the technologies of the Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl. All will be well, you shall see,’ said Qvo-87 with a zealot’s fervour.
The alarms shrieked. Servitors all around the bridge went into emergency shutdown. Purple sparks leapt over the exposed metal deck, and a throbbing roar built throughout the station’s fabric.
‘Throne!’ shouted Thracian. ‘He is coming in right by us!’
‘All will be well!’ repeated Qvo-87.
Gravity ceased to obey natural law. Tools floated upwards. Through the field-sealed rent in the hull, Felix watched the sky fill with the curdled oil colours of imminent warp breach.
The void tore. Wicked lights scorched his eyes. He tasted bitterness, exultation and the distillation of regret. A torrent of pleading voices flooded his mind.
With a great, flat flash of lightning, a gargantuan ship appeared by the Aegida. Black fire flickered around its outline. Corposant streamed off its every angle. Then the warp breach collapsed in on itself. Tools clattered down. The hideous babbling ceased. All returned to normal. A lone alarm pinged over and over again. Felix relaxed his white-knuckle grip.
Qvo’s augmetics flashed, setting the servitors back into motion. The men-machines continued exactly where they had left off, as if nothing had happened.
A vast red craft occupied the space between the Aegidan platform and the surface of ravaged Sotha. It was a vessel like no other, one of the rare Ark Mechanicus explorator vessels, and even among those behemoths it was reckoned large for its kind, a vast city in space, bristling with weapons, and containing manufacturing and research laboratoria beneath its adamantium skin to rival a forge world.
Felix knew it only too well, having spent the best part of ten millennia imprisoned inside its holds.
A legend emblazoned in lingua-technis hierofont proudly proclaimed its name.
Zar Quaesitor.
The ship, home and research facility of Belisarius Cawl.

**Musselman**

Thank you all for the replies they were very helpful and exactly what I was hoping to find out. Thank you for the screen grab Iocarno24 that helps put into context just how long organizing a campaign would take and gives great fodder for lost in the warp storylines haha.
It also confuses me when reading on the Primarchs and how they ended up on their home worlds. How long did they stay in the warp before landing and how long were they on their homeworlds before being rediscovered? Meaning if Angron was found 100 years after the scattering of the Primarchs, then was he on Nuceria for 100 years?

And it does seem that depending on the legion, enemy and tactics a world could be conquered rather quickly, relatively. To me this fits in with the Chronicles of Riddick invasion scene early on, basically overwhelming the defenses of a planet with superior weaponry and massed coordinated assaults. Yet if Imperial forces need 17 years in some cases then those must be particularly dangerous enemies or have something of value. I could see something like the Orks or Tyranids needing decades to eradicate but a planet similar to our own world probably would be much faster haha.

**Iracundus**

The Space Marines were the initial wave, with other follow-up forces doing the mopping up and long term pacification and patrolling while the initial Legion forces moved onwards quickly to the next target. That was why Lorgar was reprimanded, because aside from the religious activities, he was taking too long because he was busy fully indoctrinating the population before moving on.

Although this smash and move on method was fast, it meant the the Heresy led to many worlds throwing off the Imperial yoke because the Great Crusade happened so quickly that it was possible worlds had ruling class members with rejuvenation treatments that could directly remember their days of independence, and the worlds had not been subjugated long enough under Imperial rule before the Heresy to fully extinguish memories and histories of independence. So maybe Lorgar's slow and steady approach had something to be said for it after all.

**locarno24**

Indeed.

Though I guess the counterargument is that Gulliman did the same thing; rebuilding worlds after the war, and still keep up the pace - a second reason the Emperor used him as his 'example'.

It's also worth noting that not every crusade fleet had a meaningful astartes presence. The 670th, for example, under Namatjira, was supposed to be a pure Army formation until Alpharius got involved.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

It also confuses me when reading on the Primarchs and how they ended up on their home worlds. How long did they stay in the warp before landing and how long were they on their homeworlds before being rediscovered? Meaning if Angron was found 100 years after the scattering of the Primarchs, then was he on Nuceria for 100 years?

Warp time is highly variable, but few sound like they were on their respective worlds more than a few decades: in each case the first generation of named human characters (luthor, kor phaeron, etc) they met or are raised by are still around and not too old when the Crusade arrives. They needn't all have left the warp simultaneously.

**Iracundus**

The decentralized nature enforced by the lags in time and communication meant each Crusade force effectively became its own mobile mini-empire, with the leaders effective warlords in their own right. When the Heresy broke out, some of the more distant ones maybe thought they could sit it out or carve out their own empire.

Aside from the Primarchs' father issues, a big part of the Heresy revolved around the issue of centralized civilian authority and trying to establish this again among warlords that had grown used to their independence and resentful of the distant bureaucratic hand of Terra.