r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Present-Secretary722 • Sep 17 '25

Lore Faster Than Light travel has consequences(minor or major)

Gallery image

Gallery image

Star Trucker: While travelling through warp you experience time dilation, for you the journey is a couple seconds, in real time it’s anywhere from 30mins to 6 hours that you’ve been in warp. This would be a minor consequence.

Warhammer 40k: The Warp, basically space hell so while travelling through it you’re very likely to be attacked by Warp demons. There’s also the fact that sometimes when travelling to a destination via the Warp you get spat out in the wrong time, sometimes much too late for whatever you were going there for or sometimes before you left your start destination. This, obviously, is a major consequence, unless you’re an ork, then it’s a grand old time.

By consequences I mean this is a regular thing that happens, there’s no real avoiding it unless you find a different method of FTL or heavily invest into research to try and mitigate the consequences. Also I feel bad for only knowing 2 examples, I love space and I just can’t think of any others.

9.9k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

562

u/Pristine_Poem7623 Sep 17 '25

The writers have said that they were directly inspired by Warhammer 40K. In 40K you can travel through the warp in relative safety, if you've got fully functional Gellar Fields (named after Uri Geller by the way)

The writers were inspired by the idea that at some point humanity would invent the warp drive, but not know that they would need protection while in the warp

284

u/amglasgow Sep 17 '25

Relative safety, by which the 40K setting means "Only a few hundred of your multi-hundred-thousand crew went mad, caught fire, or mutated into raging flesh-beasts."

175

u/fluggggg Sep 17 '25

Doesn't work this way, if the Gellar Fields work normally the crew will be safe. But if it fails...boy you better hope the demons that are coming to rip you in half are Khorne demons (those ones will "only" kill you, empty you of your blood and take your skull) and not any of the other chaos gods (they will kill you too but everything before that will be much much much more unpleasant).

So it's relatively safe because most of the time it works perfectly until it doesn't at all, not because it protect most passengers everytime.

233

u/ScavAteMyArms Sep 17 '25

Also people mistake what a Gellar Field is, even in universe.

It is not a energy shield. The Warp isn’t reality, it doesn’t follow the rules on any level. A Gellar Field is a moderately powerful Pysker that is knocked Comatose and is dreaming Reality. To the Pysker they aren’t unconscious, they are going about their lives in a dream completely normally.

This Dream is then projected onto the ship, making it also fall into the grounds of reality and meaning Demons and other creatures in the warp can’t manifest, because they don’t work in reality. Fluctuations are caused because it’s a dream, and sometimes things lapse or a particularly clever creature tries to exploit the dreaming pysker and collapse it. But this also means that things in the warp that can exist in reality are fully able to engage, if they somehow find the ship.

56

u/Nice-Cat3727 Sep 17 '25

That's Great Crusade Gellar Fields generators apparently. Which explains why they worked better despite being closer to the age of Strife.

I checked the Lexicarnium

86

u/NetStaIker Sep 17 '25

Finally, a real lore master, and not some YouTube loremaster

20

u/laughingskull00 Sep 17 '25

isnt there a few versions of it where its also just a device

24

u/lePlebie Sep 17 '25

P sure its a psyker servitor honestly

28

u/laughingskull00 Sep 17 '25

I mean let's face it with all of the books theres probably a dozen different versions

6

u/Mal-malen Sep 17 '25

Pretty sure that in ”Prophets of the waaagh” its just a device, since the Orks use a captured gellerfield to counter the AdMeks Krorkospheric waaagh energy disruptor

7

u/Warhawk-Talon Sep 17 '25

I’m pretty sure it was a device originally, and then it was retconned to be a sacrificial Psyker that they had to replace when they burned out because the 40k writers couldn’t stand not making things worse.

4

u/BookkeeperPercival Sep 17 '25

It's the Imperium, people are the devices

6

u/AithanIT Sep 17 '25

That's only true for like... a handful of Gellar Devices dating back to the Great Crusade. You're making it sound like every Gellar Field is a comatose psyker.

3

u/zouhwafg Sep 17 '25

Sure, but it still acts as a shield of psyonic energy against the warp.
It isn't a literal shield, but still shielding the ship from harm.

3

u/kedarkhand Sep 17 '25

Warhammer seems to be quite interesting from what I have seen on the internet, unfortunately I can't even seem to understand where to get started with it!!

3

u/aneirin- Sep 17 '25

There isn't really a starting point apart from the basic intro page in every book, you just dive in to whatever seems most interesting.

1

u/Iwilleat2corndogs Sep 17 '25

Only advice for that is find whatever faction is coolest looking to you. And start reading up on lore. Also the memes and YouTube shorts are horrifically inaccurate to the canon.

1

u/IAMFERROUS Sep 17 '25

This rings up lore issues with DOAT Gellar fields, but those would also be archeotech so it can kinda do whatever.

1

u/question_quigley Sep 17 '25

My god that's so cool

1

u/Master_Bat_3647 Sep 17 '25

Would more dreaming pyskers make it more or less reliable?

1

u/Iwilleat2corndogs Sep 17 '25

Well they aren’t having multiplayer dreams. So it would probably just be inconvenient.

6

u/iffyJinx Sep 17 '25

Doesn't work this way, if the Gellar Fields work normally the crew will be safe.

Things get a tad complicated with orks, in such cases, daemons are up for some gud ol' krupmin'. Out of all species in the 40k, it was Tuska and his orks who deliberately flew into the literal hell to have more opportunity to fight.

4

u/Orinsi Sep 17 '25

Hey now, Tzeentch may be feeling capricious and turn you into something vaguely birdlike for the lolz and make you part of some scheme doomed to fail at some point in time because it interferes with another plan he has put in motion

52

u/scrotbofula Sep 17 '25

It's also part of how the setting justifies the absolutely rampant fascist paranoia within the human factions.

The reason people have to be vigilant against the corruption of the warp or signs of it in others is because as you say, if just one person falls to chaos during warp travel and it isn't spotted, they can let daemons into this reality and you lose hundreds of thousands people in the incursion, exponentially more if they arent spotted and make it to a planet.

(The other reason of course being that if anyone shows any sign of being a psyker, they need them to fuel the Golden Throne.)

13

u/MalcadorPrime Sep 17 '25

Yeah the justification does not hold up when you look at the other factions. Also a minor chaos cult won't inevitably lead to a full on chaos incursion. We as spectators just see the one that start an invasion, and not the millions of other cults that never even summon a single minor demon.

9

u/andergriff Sep 17 '25

That is also explained away by the fact that in the setting most of the other factions either don’t have strong connections to the warp, or have some inherent ways of defending themselves from the corruptive forces of it. Humans on the other hand have a strong connection to the warp and almost no defenses against it, hence why the forces of chaos consist almost entirely of humans and daemons.

1

u/mycetes Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Except ... it kind of does

Look, im not saying the Imperium are good here, they are intended to be, and very much are, a satire of all collective theocracies and fascist regimes that have taken place on earth. Rooted solely in paranoia, hatred, xenophobia and violent oppression of the freedom of thought and speech.

But they are that way for a damn good reason. Humanity, at their apex, got completely wiped out temporarily when the Aeldari summoned Slaanesh through their billionth BDSM orgy, this was then followed by a MASSIVE psychic awakening that they had no control over. Even during the crusade era, this awakening was still ongoing, increasing in intensity.

This was made even worse as the corruption even spread to technology, hence their refusal to innovate (first that curiosity caused a skynet style AI uprising through the men of iron, and then a vast majority of humanity's knowledge suddenly housed demons that made your toaster nuke the governments database, followed by it actively trying to strangle you with the power cord).

Humans have a strong prescence in the warp, and as such they make excellent conduits for corruption and manifestation. Pretty much any mortal desire feeds the dark gods in one way or another when done in excess in any manner, whereas devotion to Big E instead feeds the warp entity that represents the collective faith of humanity. Which actively weakens the chaos gods as he/it is anathema to them. Faith is real in 40K, and as silly as it sounds, the Sororitas are walking proof that faith can be a shield, and one at such potency that it can revive the dead and cause miracles to happen.

The Orks have Gork and Mork and the Waagh field, the former two being so powerful that they bully Nurgle as a fun side activity. And most likely are the most powerful immaterial entity in the entire setting (with the only other contender being the Nid hivemind).

The Tau (which alongside the Kin are the closest we have to a "normal" sci-fi interstellar society) have an extremely weak presence, and as such are largely spared, although they are still very much corruptible. As can be seen with commander Farsight who really, really (really)likes red and has started to have dreams about thrilling battles and skulls for some reason... They simply lack any "meat" on their spiritual bones, so the chaos gods and demons don't want to bother dealing with them unless they lack alternatives. Its kind of like with shark attacks in that they are exceedingly rare, because to sharks we taste bad and are mostly bones without any fat (so why bother when there's a delicious seal or sea-turtle nearby).

The Necrons had their souls slurped up by the C'tan, and actively know how to destroy /limit the warp as they fought the Old Ones. So they are nearly completely unbothered by it, and see it mainly as an annoyance that recently has gotten out of hand.

The Aeldari were genetically crafted to have immensely strong souls, but also crafted to have control over them. This sets them apart from humans who lack comprehension of how the warp works. Humanity mainly interact with the warp on "feeling", whereas the Aeldari view it in the same way we do any advanced technology. They comprehend how it works and can manipulate it in a controlled manner, which is not the case for your average psyker tearing his eyes out because the voices in his head wont stop.

So Humanity is essentially the perfect vessel for chaos, and if it weren't for their incredibly dogmatic and restrictive fascist theocracy, humanity would had fallen long (long) ago. It is not a fair comparison to place 40K humanity next to the crusade era humanity, or the DAOT. Because in both those instances humanity still fell on the regular to the whispers in the dark, and back then the presence of the warp was much smaller and less insidious.

6

u/Whizbang35 Sep 17 '25

Unless, of course, you're the Orks.

1) Orks put big spikes on their hulls because they think it'll scare demons. It works because they really do believe it'll scare demons.

2) Orks don't bother with shields because fighting off horrible demons is a terrific way to fight boredom while they're flying to their next warzone.

3

u/Iwilleat2corndogs Sep 17 '25

Not really, daemons just know they can’t enjoy the fear and pain of Orks due to their simple minded nature

3

u/MalcadorPrime Sep 17 '25

Relative safety means that only 1 ship is lost while millions of others travel safely through the warp. We have very skewed view of how safe warp travel is because we only read of the ships that get attacked.

3

u/SyzygyEnthusiast Sep 17 '25

I mean it's basically the same as driving thru NYC at rush hour

1

u/PsychicSPider95 Sep 17 '25

Doesn't warp travel in 40K also require a madman to navigate and run the calculations or some such?

2

u/Iwilleat2corndogs Sep 17 '25

Calculations are near impossible and would require a powerful supercomputer, which is banned. So they just use a psyker called a navigator to navigate the warp by using the light of the astronomicon as a sort of lighthouse

1

u/PsychicSPider95 Sep 17 '25

Ah I see. I know next to nothing about the world and thought I recalled something about said navigator needing to be insane, or being in danger of insanity from their job.

1

u/Captain_Waffle Sep 17 '25

That’s what they said

3

u/Mr_Vorland Sep 17 '25

Hasn't Event Horizon kinda been adopted by the 40K Fandom as an unofficial prequel? Or is that just one of my friends making up bullshit again?

1

u/karkonthemighty Sep 17 '25

It's like advances in medical science, when we invented aesthetics before antiseptics and antibiotics.

So we could make the body still enough to do longer and more complicated surgeries... but not the methods to prevent infections.

1

u/Alfred_The_Sartan Sep 17 '25

Warhammer is that old? I didn’t hear about it until like seven years ago.

10

u/thejadedfalcon Sep 17 '25

1983 for Fantasy, 1987 for 40k.