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So we’re all familiar with the webway gate under the Golden Throne, and how Magnus ruined the Emperor’s plan to use it for humanity’s space travel needs.

But why the webway?

The Emperor was so concerned about chaos that he banned religion. He knew exposure to the warp was corrosive and dangerous. Even on the best day, the webway is treacherous and difficult. Such a disaster was not a matter of if but when.

Now, it’s not like he wasn’t aware of an alternative. He personally imprisoned the C’Tan (shard) The Void Dragon on Mars in order to spur technological development. The Emperor was aware of the Void Dragon’s abilities and some of its history. The Emperor knew that the C’Tan and the Necrons travelled without ever entering the warp. With a C’Tan guiding the Mechanicus, unlocking the secrets of the phase shift, portal, or inertialess drive was a matter of time.

Why did the Emperor suddenly grow so fixated and impatient?

Because the Webway has ginormous advantages over Warp Travel as the Imperium practices it, the Eldar built theirs for a reason (and it was way safer and more extensive before the fall) and the Big E wanted in on that. Being able to literally walk between worlds as if walking between rooms in a house has a lot of utility.

The Emperor also envisioned humanity eventually evolving to become different, where psychic ability was far more common if not universal, where humanity had a greater "one-ness" or whatnot, and would be better able to maintain the webway and deter/combat/prevent the inhabitants of the Warp from messing with stuff.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So we’re all familiar with the webway gate under the Golden Throne, and how Magnus ruined the Emperor’s plan to use it for humanity’s space travel needs.

But why the webway?

The Emperor was so concerned about chaos that he banned religion. He knew exposure to the warp was corrosive and dangerous. Even on the best day, the webway is treacherous and difficult. Such a disaster was not a matter of if but when.

Eh? On the best day the Webway is pretty fine, as long as you avoid damaged areas. And in its heyday, it was even better. Bit of bone and souls, it could probably be fixed right up.

Now, punting a cathedral directly into the Warp and hoping the super special shields don't fail and the mutant steering the thing doesn't go mad? That's risky. And travel time that can sometimes stretch out to plus or minus centuries isn't exactly reliable.
Plus the big E has to keep that bloody lighthouse running 24/7. Superhuman or not, that'd be maddening. Stable webway makes that unnecessary.

Something else of note... periods of enlightenment follow improvements to communication. The “enlightenment” period followed the printing press because it allowed information to rapidly spread. The internet allowed ideas to exchange quickly as well. Intercontinental ships allowed people and ideas to rapidly spread as well. The web way may have been his gambit for pushing the human race in the opposite direction of where they are now... the equivalent of the dark ages.

I like to think that the great crusade was the emperor's last great gambit after millennia of a hidden war, a sisyphean unending task. He fought behind the scenes and did so ceaselessly.

The golden Age was his greatest victory and the closest he'd ever come to complete success, but the sudden destruction and fall to the age of strife (for reasons that were terrible and yet hidden from everyone) threw him on the back foot.

The primarchs and great crusade were his 11th hour ass-pull, where he stepped to the fore rather than remaining in the shadows.

However because it was fast, desperate and less planned it came with very high risks, bit he felt he had no choice. The web.way was part of this last gasp, rather than working a golden age humanity he has to cobble the bits of other civilisations in order to find a path forward through the destruction of the age of strife.

Because using Warp Travel is like using a submarine made of marzipan to cross a fast flowing river filled with driftwood, boulders and 666 Barracudas per cubic foot, whereas the Webway is like building a solid stone bridge over said river.

 Hellebore wrote:
I like to think that the great crusade was the emperor's last great gambit after millennia of a hidden war, a sisyphean unending task. He fought behind the scenes and did so ceaselessly.

The golden Age was his greatest victory and the closest he'd ever come to complete success, but the sudden destruction and fall to the age of strife (for reasons that were terrible and yet hidden from everyone) threw him on the back foot.

The primarchs and great crusade were his 11th hour ass-pull, where he stepped to the fore rather than remaining in the shadows.

However because it was fast, desperate and less planned it came with very high risks, bit he felt he had no choice. The web.way was part of this last gasp, rather than working a golden age humanity he has to cobble the bits of other civilisations in order to find a path forward through the destruction of the age of strife.

This makes the most sense to me. It also answers my question in a more satisfying way. The DAOT was the Emperor’s main plan, and from what we know may have indeed eventually lead to inertialess drives and other tech to allow humanity to avoid the warp until it was ready to transcend into psyker Vorlons or whatever. When that all came crashing down, I could see that making the Emperor desperate enough to step out of the shadows and throw one last Hail Mary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Because using Warp Travel is like using a submarine made of marzipan to cross a fast flowing river filled with driftwood, boulders and 666 Barracudas per cubic foot, whereas the Webway is like building a solid stone bridge over said river.

No, inertialess drive is the bridge that avoids the water. The webway is more like a 2nd hand pontoon bridge with a few of the floating barrels missing and some of the duct tape losing adhesion.

I am talking about pre-fall webway.

The Great Crusade was post-fall, though.

Even pre-fall, there were sections lost to demons and enslavers, as well as some damage from the War in Heaven that never got repaired. And there were Eldar and other Old One progeny running around causing trouble. Granted, it was a lot safer then than after the fall, but still not ideal.

Webway is like walking through glass tunnel in an aquarium.

Travelling the warp is like scuba diving in body of water infested with piranhas & sharks with no observation cage.

Inertialess drive is like traversing a body of water infested with piranhas & sharks, except you never actually tread through the water because you teleported to the other side.

The problem is we don't know how far short of Necrontyr inertialess drive the Dark Age human civilisation was before it collapsed.

Perhaps far enough along for interested parties, like the Chaos gods, any woke C’Tan or the Eldar, to take notice. The fall of Golden Age humanity may not have been an accident of history.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps far enough along for interested parties, like the Chaos gods, any woke C’Tan or the Eldar, to take notice. The fall of Golden Age humanity may not have been an accident of history.

It wasn't. If it had been enough to get the Eldars attention in any capacity beyond "oh look the monkey can use tools" then humanity would have died. They didn't use subtlety then either, why bother when you have a 0 effort way of just exterminating them?

Voss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So we’re all familiar with the webway gate under the Golden Throne, and how Magnus ruined the Emperor’s plan to use it for humanity’s space travel needs.

But why the webway?

The Emperor was so concerned about chaos that he banned religion. He knew exposure to the warp was corrosive and dangerous. Even on the best day, the webway is treacherous and difficult. Such a disaster was not a matter of if but when.

Eh? On the best day the Webway is pretty fine, as long as you avoid damaged areas. And in its heyday, it was even better. Bit of bone and souls, it could probably be fixed right up.

Aye. This was the original idea too. The portion of the webway that connects to Terra is actually manmade. IE: The Emperor built it. This was the part that Magnus breached when he told the Emperor about the traitors. Had everything gone to plan, the Emperor was planning on making more webway tunnels too. Using what already existed, but also expanding on it.

Sure, the technology the necrons use is definitely superior FTL than the webway. But such tech would, even in the best scenario, have been millions of years in the future. Necrontyr FTL is the product of billions of years of development. Even with a legup, the mechanicus would probably take millennia to reverse engineer it. During which time they need something else.

The Webway also has the advantage of not needing to be on a space ship. You can walk through a webway portal. So its more versatile in how you travel between planets. With the Necron stuff you still need a space ship.

pm713 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps far enough along for interested parties, like the Chaos gods, any woke C’Tan or the Eldar, to take notice. The fall of Golden Age humanity may not have been an accident of history.

It wasn't. If it had been enough to get the Eldars attention in any capacity beyond "oh look the monkey can use tools" then humanity would have died. They didn't use subtlety then either, why bother when you have a 0 effort way of just exterminating them?

I don’t think things were that clear cut. If you take the feats we know the pre-fall Eldar accomplished and compare them to Golden Age humanity’s feats, they’re not all that different. However, the Eldar has become insular and uninterested in galactic events long before mankind ventured to the stars. Humanity was definitely a threat to them, even if only in a “cause Chaos” kind of a way. I suspect the Eldar simply didn’t notice humanity until after it was too late for a risk-free, 0 effort purge, if they ever noticed at all.

The Tau became quite a nuisance after they were unobserved for a thousand years. The Eldar were far less vigilant for alien threats than the Imperium.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Grey Templar,

The webway at Terra was man made? Was it built using technology, or something more like the Emperor’s will?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Perhaps far enough along for interested parties, like the Chaos gods, any woke C’Tan or the Eldar, to take notice. The fall of Golden Age humanity may not have been an accident of history.

It wasn't. If it had been enough to get the Eldars attention in any capacity beyond "oh look the monkey can use tools" then humanity would have died. They didn't use subtlety then either, why bother when you have a 0 effort way of just exterminating them?

I don’t think things were that clear cut. If you take the feats we know the pre-fall Eldar accomplished and compare them to Golden Age humanity’s feats, they’re not all that different. However, the Eldar has become insular and uninterested in galactic events long before mankind ventured to the stars. Humanity was definitely a threat to them, even if only in a “cause Chaos” kind of a way. I suspect the Eldar simply didn’t notice humanity until after it was too late for a risk-free, 0 effort purge, if they ever noticed at all.

The Tau became quite a nuisance after they were unobserved for a thousand years. The Eldar were far less vigilant for alien threats than the Imperium.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Grey Templar,

The webway at Terra was man made? Was it built using technology, or something more like the Emperor’s will?

The actual Eldar may have ignored things but their military was automated so that wasn't a factor. The fluff is very clear that nothing at all was a threat to the Eldar Empire, that was one of the major contributors to the Fall.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

@Grey Templar,

The webway at Terra was man made? Was it built using technology, or something more like the Emperor’s will?

A mixture of both most likely. The Webway is a dimension that sits between the Immaterium and Realspace. So it is both physical and mental in nature and would be made using both sheer mental power and normal materials.

This was the reason the Emperor left the Great Crusade and returned to Terra, to work on this first human webway portal. He was directly involved in its construction, probably so he could experiment with it and learn how to do it on other planets too and probably because he was the only person who had the knowledge and power to do it. Eventually he probably would have trained other psykers to help with the construction of other portals too.

The collapsed portion of this webway portal is currently held closed by the Emperor, without him the daemons could breach it and pour onto Terra like they were doing during the Siege of Terra.