Warp Hazards

Warp phenomena are the most unnatural and unexplained occurrences in reality – where the energies from the Immaterium – the dimension though which ships travel to cross vast differences in short leaps – leak into reality, twisting the natural laws into nonsense mockeries of physics.

The majority of warp events are classified by the Holy Ordo, but the most frequent are the so-called Warp Storms. Originally misidentified as black holes or nebulae, warp storms form around rifts between the warp and reality. These can be miniscule tears that bathe a household in warp energies, or grand formations engulfing multiple star systems. The actual tear is rarely huge – but the exotic warp energies spilling through them can twist and mutate those exposed to them into madness and foul mutations, while often distorting or breaking down the rules of reality in an affected area.

Though the details of warp travel are the guarded provenance of the Navigator Houses, there are known hazards to travelling in an impossible realm. Every Imperial vessel is equipped with a ‘Gellar Field’ generation, The field creates a pocket of reality within the madness to protect a ship and her crew from madness, and worse. The Warp has tides and currents in an analogous way to an ocean, and a vessel unfortunate enough to be caught in them can emerge far from their destination, both in time and space, many miles from and many centuries after – or before – they left. Those that arrive displaced but intact are the lucky few – most vessels subjected to warp phenomena are destroyed. Some, worst of all, end up twisted and warped by the energies beyond reality, emerging as horrific ghost ships filled with the mutated flesh-creatures that were once their crew.

Warp Hazards of the Prosperitas Sector

One cannot talk about the dangers of the Prosperitas Sector without first considering the threat of the warp. The sector is prone to strange warp travel fluctuations, where ships can suddenly find themselves ejected into real space as the warp is suddenly becalmed. This was one of the many reasons the sector was isolated from the wider Imperium for many years, as the warp tides around the sector border left few passages for vessels to make it through until the Sol-Prosperitas Passage was rediscovered by Jacinta Durovera. Prosperan Captains and Navigators have long learned the routes where these eddies and tides do not cause trouble, and so they have been compensated for, but there is one warp hazard which none dare risk

Eyestorm Tenebris sometimes referred to as the Tenebris stormfront, is a lesser part of the greatest warp storm in the Galaxy, the Ocularis Terribus or ‘Eye of Terror’ that consumed the region during an unprecedented swelling known as the Lash of the Eye in 328.M41. The edges of this storm boil with the seething energies of the warp, twisting and altering reality on the worlds in its grasp. The only mercy of having this twisted space so close to the sector, is that along the Eye’s edge, where the light of the Astronomicon touches it, a halo of burning worlds makes the border near-impassable, except for the space around the Cadian Gate in the nearby Cadia Sector. At times the cancerous smear on reality is a benign threat, but during times of rising warp activity it can send ripples through the Immaterium into the sector. At these times, Imperial authorities will implement curfews and forbid citizens from looking into the sky at night, for fear of them seeing the unreal madness in the skies.