Question about time travelling through the Warp

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**Ezra Tyrius**

I had this thought while writing some more parts for the Charadon Crusade thread (which is awesome, and you should check it), here's the gist of it:

Let's say Space Marine Chapter A is busy purgin' some Orks on a couple of planets, but at some point their buddies from Chapter B need some extra hands in a system close by, so Chapter A sends a small ship with a couple of squads into the Warp to reinforce Chapter B.

Now the Warp's a funny place that likes to do all sorts of wondrous things to a vessel (you better keep that Geller Field keep working!), so once they exit on the other side, the Marines from Chapter A find out they've actually arrived a week into the past, before they were even sent out in the first place.

But what happens next? What happens when the Marines from the 'present' meet their 'past' selves? What does a Chapter do when it's got duplicates of its Marines running around all of a sudden? Do the Marines get stuck in some sort of perpetual cycle of being sent back into the past and then trying to stop their past selves from doing so?

So my main question is, what rules does the 40k universe follow when it comes to time travel?

**paramedicpirate**

There actually is an ordo of the inquisition that deals with this.

Ordo Tempus I believe, the story I remember reading about had the Ordo move the affected out of circulation until the situation fixed itself.

**Psienesis**

But what happens next? What happens when the Marines from the 'present' meet their 'past' selves? What does a Chapter do when it's got duplicates of its Marines running around all of a sudden? Do the Marines get stuck in some sort of perpetual cycle of being sent back into the past and then trying to stop their past selves from doing so?

Possibly.

Ordo Tempus I believe, the story I remember reading about had the Ordo move the affected out of circulation until the situation fixed itself.

They usually kill or permanently incarcerate those afflicted by such situations. Studying temporal paradoxes is something they do.

**Mallich**

Ezra Tyrius wrote:
So my main question is, what rules does the 40k universe follow when it comes to time travel?

All kinds of rules. Usually contradictory ones, because there are so many writers. And there are orks, who run on Rule Of Funny.

Sometimes we get stable time loops. There's a story of an Imperial Guard force being sent to respond to a garbled astropathic distress call... only to arrive before the message was sent. They're attacked (by Tyranids, I think... my memory is hazy) and wiped out, but their astropath survives long enough to send out a distress call. It's this distress call that was picked up at the start.

Other times we get utterly unstable events. This example I can remember is an ork warband that found out they'd gone back in time. The boss (being an Ork) then tracked down his former self, killed him, and looted his favourite gun. He therefore had two copies of his gun.

**Psienesis**

As I recall, the Ork story ends with the Ork killing himself in order to get 2 copies of his favorite gun... but the tone of the ending is such that it suggests the Ork just erased himself from the timeline by killing his younger self.

**Animus**

Ezra Tyrius wrote:
I had this thought while writing some more parts for the Charadon Crusade thread (which is awesome, and you should check it), here's the gist of it:

Let's say Space Marine Chapter A is busy purgin' some Orks on a couple of planets, but at some point their buddies from Chapter B need some extra hands in a system close by, so Chapter A sends a small ship with a couple of squads into the Warp to reinforce Chapter B.

Now the Warp's a funny place that likes to do all sorts of wondrous things to a vessel (you better keep that Geller Field keep working!), so once they exit on the other side, the Marines from Chapter A find out they've actually arrived a week into the past, before they were even sent out in the first place.

But what happens next? What happens when the Marines from the 'present' meet their 'past' selves? What does a Chapter do when it's got duplicates of its Marines running around all of a sudden? Do the Marines get stuck in some sort of perpetual cycle of being sent back into the past and then trying to stop their past selves from doing so?

So my main question is, what rules does the 40k universe follow when it comes to time travel?

Why would they meet if they could avoid it? The Marines who went into the past could just chill knowing that their past selves would go into the Warp. If they were to meet themselves they would likely be undone by a paradox. Abaddon time travelled one time:

Black Legion Supplement wrote:Abaddon went to a world in the Warp where time flowed backwards, spinning out of sync with space around it. In the centre of the world, a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch sat coiled around its core, counting back from the end of days. Abaddon wanted this power for his own and plunged into the tides of time to confront the Daemon. Years slipped backwards as he clawed his way toward the Daemon Prince, finally arriving at its feet and demanding its obedience. Scornful of the upstart mortal, the Daemon asked why it shouldn’t slay him where he stood. In response, Abaddon challenged it to an impossible game. If Abaddon could guess the Daemon’s name, it would pledge its allegiance to him; if he failed, he would surrender the artefacts he carried, but the Daemon must tell him its name to prove it had not cheated. Unable to resist the challenge, the Daemon accepted the conditions of the game, mocking the mortal for his foolishness.

How could the Daemon have known that this was the second time Abaddon had stood before it? The first time, he had failed to win the contest but had learned the Daemon’s name as proof. Surrendering his artefacts, Abaddon had then stepped back into the tides of time and returned to the Warp years before he landed on the world, leaving a message for himself in the future before he was extinguished by paradox. Thus he ensured events would be altered and the Daemon would be his. So it came to pass that Abaddon enslaved Xyn’Goran, the fractured Daemon of Time. With the future memories of the Daemon and the dark sorceries of his cabal, Abaddon could perceive the fates and shape his own destiny.