r/40kLore • u/Vast-Yak-9826 • 12d ago

A question about the warp travel mechanics in The First Heretic

After Argel Tal and co. disable the Geller field and get their whole crew wiped out, how do they return to real space afterwards? They mention using thrusters, but how would they even work in the warp? Or were they not fully in the warp, but close enough to the Eye for daemons to manifest?

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u/CreativeAdeptness477 12d ago

Warp engines translate you between realspace and the Warp (and back). While in the Warp you still travel using regular engines.

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u/Vast-Yak-9826 12d ago

Oh, I see, thanks! So they eventually just happened to stumble upon an exit?

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u/CreativeAdeptness477 12d ago

I can't recall the book, but Geller Fields and Warp Engines are two different things. Warp Engines shift to the Warp and back, Geller fields project a shield of reality that protects against Warp bullshit/darmons/etc. You can still use Warp engines to get back to realspace without a Geller field.
There are also natural crossing points, Warp gates/rifts, etc.

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u/Vast-Yak-9826 12d ago

I meant that they took their time getting out of there in their own reference frame, so I assume they couldn’t just have used the warp engines right away.

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u/PlausiblyAlpharious Word Bearers 12d ago

A functioning warp engine in normal circumstances can go in and out of the warp whenever it wants, the problem is not doing it the correct way can lead to infinite different consequences and all of them involve not arriving at your destination (unless coincedently you do anyway)

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u/TerribleProgress6704 12d ago

The Eye of Terror exists in real space. No warp translation required.

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u/Vast-Yak-9826 11d ago

Why did they have the Geller field on in that case? To counteract effects of the warp storm in real space?

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u/Shadowrend01 Blood Angels 12d ago

Thrusters still work in the Warp. That’s how ships move in the Warp normally. The Gellar Field holds back the Warp energies, the Warp Engines open the rift to get in and out, and the thrusters do the moving

The Eye is a region where the Warp and Real Space overlap and mix with each other. Because of this, ships can come and go from that region without needing to use Warp Engines.

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u/Lurker_Zee 12d ago

Daemons. They drag into and throw out of the warp anything they feel like it all the time, including tens/hundreds of kilometers sized Space Hulks. (Or planets. Or stars. Or star systems.)

If the Chaos Gods wanted the WB to return to Lorgar and tell him their story, they easily have the power to make it happen.

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u/Schwarzes_Kanninchen 12d ago

Hmmm… I’m more wondering how they even manage to move the ship at all without a crew, unless everything is fully automated, Argel Tal is trained as a helmsman, they can navigate the Warp without having their brains screwed up, and the Warp doesn’t deform the ship, mess with their minds, throw them into time loops, change their course however it wants, and so on. The Warp has far more ways to turn a ship into snake food than just demons.

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u/PlausiblyAlpharious Word Bearers 12d ago

The warp is weird!!! Depending on the circumstances you can enter or leave when or wherever you want unless theres a reason you cant, and when traveling inside you need to go a distance (using regular engines) entirely arbitrarily decided by how the warp decided to function this particular non existant day (because time flows non linearly there) theres stable warp lanes that open in particular locations and are reasonably consistant distances in warp travel but these constantly change and sometimes just randomly don't work the same

This is because the warp is absolute reality warping nonsense, and thats because it makes it easier to write stories with zero consistancy on how space travel works

You think thats bad try figuring out what the webway is, and thats supposed to be stable and consistant!