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Hi guys,
So the Navigators and Gellar fields were both invented during the DAoT era, and were used to travel through the warp.
So far so good.
In addition, I remember that during that time, the warp was more quiet and calm than during the current 40k era (this can also be seen during the Great Crusade era). Which explains why they never understood what lived in the warp and the danger it represented, until when the troubles began during the age of strife and the turmoils of the warp and Slaanesh gestation.
But then, why and how would materialistic people such as the ones living in the peak scientific era invent shields against demons ? It would mean they actually had issues with warp travel and thus would be aware of its inhabitants, and then wouldn't have left psykers unchecked like they did (that was a part of the issues during the age of strife).
And what kind of beacon were they using with their navigators at that time ?
Plus, navigators, even at that time, even before all the religious zealousness, were able to see in the Warp, to feel it. Even if the majority of men saw the warp as another dimension just like ours, they wouldn't have been clueless, they would have been able to perceive the truth behind it.

If you travel by swimming through lava it doesn't matter if the volcano is dormant or a torrent of rumbling eruptions, you're still going to need some kind of barrier to prevent you getting burned.

Also don't forget that the average citizen has no idea about demons or chaos.

Even without daemons, unshielded exposure to the warp still means rapidly mutating insanity. A gellar field is a pocket of real space carried with the ship into the warp - its a good idea even if you don't know about daemons.
And even knowing the warp isn't safe doesn't mean you know 1) that daemons are responsible, 2) that the chaos gods are real and intelligent, and 3) that daemons can use psykersas a way into the material world.

And navigators didn't have a beacon. The Navigator without an astronomican is limited to short 'hops' of a few tens of light years but having a warp guide who can see warp turbulence is still safer than not having one.

What follows is entirely speculative. And I do not intend to be poking fun at any person of faith who might read it.

That out the way? Here we go.

It’s generally true that a more secular society advances quicker. Whilst there is something to be said for tradition and the caution it can engender, when scientific ethics are free from odd restrictions, More Gets Done.

During the Golden Age, we know mankind spread far and wide, and used Warp Travel to do so. And we know they hit frankly staggering levels of technology.

That is at least suggestive that whilst religion was by no means dead, science and rationalism would’ve been in the hot seat.

And so, any encounters with beings in the warp would be less likely viewed through a religious lens. And as such, I put it to you, Dear Dakka, the thought of worshipping such warp denizens just seemed….daft. They were a threat, absolutely. But one to be avoided and overcome by proper maintenance of Geller Fields and associated technologies. Not something to be bargained with to kindly sod off and maybe eat that ship over there, go on please, I’ll be your best friend etc.

Then came Old Night, a colossal regression in mankind. Systems cut off from one another. Worlds entirely isolated where no other could be reached at subliminal speeds.

That is when fear would’ve reined. And from fear, comes superstition. That was a way in for the beings now referred to as Gods, and bargaining with their underlings for knowledge which might allow your world to survive etc.

From what was said in Horus Rising, many people saw the daemons as simply predators that traveled through the warp. Loken had in fact seen people get possessed by them. Everyone knew that they were dangerous, and no matter how religious or secular one was, it just makes sense to invent defenses to protect people from such creatures. What people did not know, and what Loken started to discern when he fought Samus, was that daemons were intelligent, actively malevolent, and were agents of supremely powerful beings that ruled their own twisted empires in the warp. Most people before the Horus Heresy thought that using Gellar fields was just the equivalent of putting nets around the outskirts of beaches to keep sharks out.

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
So the Navigators and Gellar fields were both invented during the DAoT era, and were used to travel through the warp.
So far so good.
In addition, I remember that during that time, the warp was more quiet and calm than during the current 40k era (this can also be seen during the Great Crusade era). Which explains why they never understood what lived in the warp and the danger it represented, until when the troubles began during the age of strife and the turmoils of the warp and Slaanesh gestation.
But then, why and how would materialistic people such as the ones living in the peak scientific era invent shields against demons ? It would mean they actually had issues with warp travel and thus would be aware of its inhabitants, and then wouldn't have left psykers unchecked like they did (that was a part of the issues during the age of strife).
And what kind of beacon were they using with their navigators at that time ?
Plus, navigators, even at that time, even before all the religious zealousness, were able to see in the Warp, to feel it. Even if the majority of men saw the warp as another dimension just like ours, they wouldn't have been clueless, they would have been able to perceive the truth behind it.

You've got some of your causes and effects backwards.

"Why and how would materialistic people ... invent shields against demons?" The Gellar Field isn't an 'anti-demon' shield. It's a 'travel through the warp without the warp dissolving your ship (or your ship never being seen again)' field. Keeping the weird stuff out is a side effect.

"What kind of beacon were they using with their navigators at the time?" They weren't. Mankind spread out using warp travel that was only a bit better than what the Tau can currently manage.

And what "truth" exactly are you expecting a navigator during the Dark Age of Technology to see in the warp? Spacers who went around babbling about things in the warp talking to them probably got treated like submariners babbling about hearing things during long voyages. A "calmer" warp and shorter trips likely would have combined to fewer credible reports of bizarre things happening.

the recent leagues of Voltann loremaster episodes say the Kin use the titular Voltann, which are massive, supercomputer AI cores, as navigation beacons in lieu of the Astronomicon, as these machine intelligences have a presence in the warp. its conceivable that the DAOT humans could have done something similar.

its also mentioned that the voltann warptech is much slower than imperial warptech, but much safer and less prone to warp-F**kery.

There are also warp predators that are not daemons, which are still dangerous.

The beacon at Sotha suggests there may have been a network of lesser beacons rather than one big 'un.

The Astronomicon is not necessary for warp travel. It's just very helpful since it gives you a reference point. You can make blind jumps just fine without one, and for short distances it is more or less perfectly usable.

So a combination of a calmer warp and just making shorter jumps made Warp Travel fairly safe.

And as to the Geller field, it's keeping the daemons out is a side effect of its main purpose. Its to keep a pocket of Reality around your ship so you aren't in direct contact with the Warp itself. It's still a turbulent nightmare helscape even without a daemon trying to eat your mind.

Even Chaos cultists still use their Gellar fields because living is a good thing. Sure, sometimes certain chaos aligned individuals might turn them off because they want to. Daemon ships have no need of Geller fields. Orks sometimes turn theirs off because its fun to crump some daemons while you're bored waiting to get to your destination. But generally everyone who isn't a straight up daemon needs to use them to stay alive.

Why is there an assumption that DAOT humans weren’t aware of warp entities like demons? And they just dealt with them considering their excellent tech and chaos being less, well, chaotic.

Then it all got lost into myth and religion during the age of strife.

the things that live in the dimension that we travel through are dangerous extra dimensional aliens, we better find a way to stop them from harming our citizens.

something like that I would imagine but obviously just a guess

xerxeskingofking wrote:
the recent leagues of Voltann loremaster episodes say the Kin use the titular Voltann, which are massive, supercomputer AI cores, as navigation beacons in lieu of the Astronomicon, as these machine intelligences have a presence in the warp. its conceivable that the DAOT humans could have done something similar.

its also mentioned that the voltann warptech is much slower than imperial warptech, but much safer and less prone to warp-F**kery.

This is my current favourite nugget of lore, as it fills in a gap in the human history of warp travel. That gap being of course “if the Astronomicon is needed for warp navigation (not travel, just navigation) how did man spread so far”.

The Votann being STCs does make that make sense - and also at least partially implies an orderly migration from Terra, likely along the lines of the Tau’s spheres of expansion.

I mean, right now we can detect far flung worlds, and using physics and maths and other clever things, extrapolate which detected worlds as Goldilocks Worlds, likely to be able to support life as we know it.

Add the two together, and I argue for spheres of expansion, based on and directed by probably more accurate studying of deep space. Once you’ve detected a Goldilocks world, send a sleeper ship out there, possibly/probably doing Tau style Warp Skipping to speed it up. Once there, set up shop, deploy your STC, switch on it’s beacon, enabling longer warp jumps, making resu-ply swifter and easier.

Rinse and repeat and you end up with a network of warp beacons, and an empire with solid warp roads.

Imagine the first time a ship's gellar field failed, but the ship still got to its destination. When it docks, out bursts Skarbrand and an entire blood legion.

Possibly a Skarbrand with wings and slightly more capacity for strategic thinking too.

And it hasn't said navigators were always used. AI's can make warp jumps and even powerful computers in the current setting can jump a few light years, enough for a tight cluster of systems. For all we know navigators were a weird cult or the equivalent of having your call centre manned and in your country (not unmanned and in India, i.e. expensive).

As for people being dumb/superstitious, just look at the present day. How many thought 5G masts spread Covid? Or any other conspiracies. They aren't going to stop just with better tech. I do love the idea they were banned from warp travel due to being more likely to attract the sharks

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

xerxeskingofking wrote:
the recent leagues of Voltann loremaster episodes say the Kin use the titular Voltann, which are massive, supercomputer AI cores, as navigation beacons in lieu of the Astronomicon, as these machine intelligences have a presence in the warp. its conceivable that the DAOT humans could have done something similar.

its also mentioned that the voltann warptech is much slower than imperial warptech, but much safer and less prone to warp-F**kery.

This is my current favourite nugget of lore, as it fills in a gap in the human history of warp travel. That gap being of course “if the Astronomicon is needed for warp navigation (not travel, just navigation) how did man spread so far”.

The Votann being STCs does make that make sense - and also at least partially implies an orderly migration from Terra, likely along the lines of the Tau’s spheres of expansion.

I mean, right now we can detect far flung worlds, and using physics and maths and other clever things, extrapolate which detected worlds as Goldilocks Worlds, likely to be able to support life as we know it.

Add the two together, and I argue for spheres of expansion, based on and directed by probably more accurate studying of deep space. Once you’ve detected a Goldilocks world, send a sleeper ship out there, possibly/probably doing Tau style Warp Skipping to speed it up. Once there, set up shop, deploy your STC, switch on it’s beacon, enabling longer warp jumps, making resu-ply swifter and easier.

Rinse and repeat and you end up with a network of warp beacons, and an empire with solid warp roads.

You only need to do the generation/sleeper ship business if the target planet is outside the range of the closest beacon though. There is only one astronomicon, and everyone seems to be able to get around fine over the whole of the galaxy.

 Flinty wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

xerxeskingofking wrote:
the recent leagues of Voltann loremaster episodes say the Kin use the titular Voltann, which are massive, supercomputer AI cores, as navigation beacons in lieu of the Astronomicon, as these machine intelligences have a presence in the warp. its conceivable that the DAOT humans could have done something similar.

its also mentioned that the voltann warptech is much slower than imperial warptech, but much safer and less prone to warp-F**kery.

This is my current favourite nugget of lore, as it fills in a gap in the human history of warp travel. That gap being of course “if the Astronomicon is needed for warp navigation (not travel, just navigation) how did man spread so far”.

The Votann being STCs does make that make sense - and also at least partially implies an orderly migration from Terra, likely along the lines of the Tau’s spheres of expansion.

I mean, right now we can detect far flung worlds, and using physics and maths and other clever things, extrapolate which detected worlds as Goldilocks Worlds, likely to be able to support life as we know it.

Add the two together, and I argue for spheres of expansion, based on and directed by probably more accurate studying of deep space. Once you’ve detected a Goldilocks world, send a sleeper ship out there, possibly/probably doing Tau style Warp Skipping to speed it up. Once there, set up shop, deploy your STC, switch on it’s beacon, enabling longer warp jumps, making resu-ply swifter and easier.

Rinse and repeat and you end up with a network of warp beacons, and an empire with solid warp roads.

You only need to do the generation/sleeper ship business if the target planet is outside the range of the closest beacon though. There is only one astronomicon, and everyone seems to be able to get around fine over the whole of the galaxy.

thats becuase Big E is able to focus and control all that energy, and only really did so during the Great Crusade. Smaller beacons do/did exist in m41, at least in older lore, but they were much more limited in range, providing a reference point for maybe a sector or two, or though a specific tricky route, rather than across the whole galaxy like the astronomicon does.

Yes, but it sets the principle that you don't need to have a beacon in front of you to extrapolate a path. It would help I suppose if there is a longer distance that means you need the range of the starting point and the end point beacon to bridge the gap, but given the tech level of the ark age of technology, it might just be more efficient to seed an STC to use as a beacon in a generally unsuitable system in between rather than waiting for the sleeper ship to get to the destination.

Sending off giant ships full of sleeping colonists is a hallmark of space exploration though. How else would you have unrecorded colonies that turn into micro empires that come back to challenge their homeland?

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Imagine the first time a ship's gellar field failed, but the ship still got to its destination. When it docks, out bursts Skarbrand and an entire blood legion.

That could be a case of It Depends.

It’s entirely possible that prior to Slaanesh etc, Daemons had a much harder time manifesting in the first place, let alone hanging around after the fact. So we may have seen Ghost Ships turning up, with no sign of what slaughtered the crew and passengers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
Yes, but it sets the principle that you don't need to have a beacon in front of you to extrapolate a path. It would help I suppose if there is a longer distance that means you need the range of the starting point and the end point beacon to bridge the gap, but given the tech level of the ark age of technology, it might just be more efficient to seed an STC to use as a beacon in a generally unsuitable system in between rather than waiting for the sleeper ship to get to the destination.

This is indeed true. And not something I’d considered.

@Gert - That can also be a thing, like the Mormons in The Expanse

The astronomicon is only needed in the warp because there are no other points of reference and because the current imperium expects to complete their journey in a single warp jump.

In the DAOT they will have mapped space and had many points of reference so they knew where they were when the left warp space. So making many short warp jumps is safe because you know where you are and there’s a good chance your exiting the warp close to where to entered it so you know what to expect

Also lets not forget that the Emperor likely did not expect the Imperium to fall as far as it has and to have maintained that falling and even to have made it into its identity.

He didn't expect them to lose and forget so much technology; to see him as a god, to see technology as a god.


So chances are his plan when being put into it was that it would be a short term thing and that the Imperium would use all its might of science and resources to restore him et...


Instead they went the other way and he's now more of a prisoner within the machine. To the point where the Imperium had to bring in Eldar to help fix it.

Well, the original plan was to make it all redundant via access to the Web way...