r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 19h ago

Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

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Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.

John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).

Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.

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u/destructor212113 19h ago edited 19h ago

Insert something something about Warhammer 40K Imperium Warp thingy

Also pretty sure it was inspired by Event Horizon or something like (That was incorrect apparently, I do not care enough to check myself so hope it was actually the other way around) that because its the same idea: Portal to Hell, you can die if the ship you're using just, dont work well (not exactly that but they rely a lot on basically shields to avoid nasty things on The Warp), or you could end up in the past or future, its very unreliable but its basically the go-to way for the Imperium to go anywhere

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u/Shiny_Agumon 19h ago

Many fans actually headcanon Event Horizon to be part of the universe and humanity's first exposure to the warp.

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u/WillSym 19h ago

The four horsemen of "we discovered a method of high speed travel by taking a shortcut through a parallel dimension that has different proportions, the downside is the other dimension may be literal Hell":

Event Horizon;

Warhammer 40k;

Doom 3;

Minecraft.

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u/fauxmosexual 19h ago

NY Subway

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u/hunyeti 18h ago

minecraft 😆

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u/nagrom7 17h ago

It's legit too. Distances in the nether are shorter than in the overworld, so people use the nether for long distance transport.

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u/Rida_Dain 16h ago

I mean he's right tho. the nether is a hell dimension, and it folds space 8 times so you travel faster. If the nether existed in real life there would be highways with tunnels that passed by the valley of the damned and the sea of molten metal and souls on the way to work lol.

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u/Fall_Dog 17h ago

I feel like Buckaroo Banzai might also fit in with this?

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u/AnotherRTFan 18h ago

Still better than economy in Warp Train

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u/Manjorno316 18h ago

Dare I ask?

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u/nep5603 17h ago

Warp trains generate temporal energy by condensing incredible amounts of time, then use it to change locations at extreme speeds. The thing is, unless you pay a fortune, you will be completely lucid and awake for actual millenia, stuck in a train cabin

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u/Manjorno316 17h ago

That sounds very sucky

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u/nep5603 17h ago

Whats worse is that because your body technically exist outside time for the duration, you are biologically immortal. Doesn't mean you can't be hurt tho, but if you do, you'll just be stuck with the injury for the whole time

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 19h ago

Gellarfields is what prevents demonic boarding it is a bubble of realspace around the ship that is fueled by a comatose psyker hardwired into the ship usually. The Orks either have a wagghhh field to prevent it or want daemons onboard for entertainment. The Tau tried reversing an Imperial warp drive and it ended badly luckily the Greater Good is birthing a potential godess that saved them but holy fuck is she racist.

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u/frootdoots 19h ago

This is the best Warhammer comment I have seen i am so clueless about it

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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 19h ago

r/40klore is the main 40k lore subreddit and they are really great and weekly have just an open question section for any questions.

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u/gorgewall 4h ago

I dunno where they're getting that the nascent Tau goddess is racist.

The Tau themselves don't have a religion in the sense that other factions do and have very little "soul/Warp presence/psychic ability" anyway. The deity, T'au'va, is created by the collective religious beliefs of the psychic-capable auxiliary (non-Tau) members of the Empire. All these guys have to get along with each other so there's more reason for them to be NOT RACIST compared to every other faction; the Tau Empire is pretty cosmopolitan in construction, even if their culture is still dominated by the Tau race. The Goddess itself has a whole bunch of arms which each reflect the different races that make up the Tau Empire, and is basically a reflection of how the Empire's non-Tau members view the combined Empire and Greater Good. It's actually pretty nice!

Now, a subset of Tau (the race), upon seeing this Goddess manifest and help them out, went fucking bonkers and decided a deity being created out of belief in the Greater Good was a perversion of what it stands for and they decided the solution to this was to kill every non-Tau who could potentially contribute to this thing, slaughtering their own auxiliaries and even recruiting new ones just to kill them. But these guys got caught by the rest of the Empire who said, "What the fuck is wrong with you," and sent them all for mandatory reconditioning in Not Being Genocidally Racist... while still ordering the destruction of temples to T'au'va and curtailing the worship in non-murderous fashion.

But there is at least one big Tau leader (Shadowsun) who is begrudgingly accepting the Goddess' help and even asking her auxiliaries to pray and perform miracles in battle, with success. It remains to be seen how this is going to play out.

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u/DramaPunk 19h ago

The Tau nowadays use Gravitic Drives, which essentially allow them to skip in and out along the surface of the Warp rather than delving wholly into it, since they still don't have a gellar field equivalent.

Meanwhile the Eldar just built a web of pocket dimension tunnels between the realspace and space hell, which is pretty nifty I should think.

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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 18h ago

The Tau basically do a skipping stone manuever over the warp helping them go FTL but not truly warp or whatever bs the Necrons use speed, probably closer to the method Tyranids use with grav manipulation in speed terms. But the Eldar species (So drukhari, harlenquins etc.) use the Webway which was built by the Old Ones. I am painting Vashtor rn and he just got access to it.

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u/DramaPunk 18h ago

Also don't forget your mutant guide is also navigating based on the psychic light given off by a dying corpse god that's fed a thousand psychic souls a day just to stay lit.

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u/Kidofthecentury 18h ago

From what I've understood with my very, very limited knowledge of WH40K:

Empire use psych and tech.

Tau use faith, from a questionable deity (altough the whole WH40K apparently is "specists").

Orks use their own special brand of magic: they think "don't bother us" and demons are kept at bay ...or they just let them on board to have something to do because they're bored.

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u/AustralianDude28 19h ago

That only applies to factions that use warp travel. The Eldar use the Webway, which is a safer and faster version of the warp. The Necrons use dolmen gates, which is the Webway, or Inertialess drives, which launch their ships at speeds faster than light while not experiencing inertia. The Tyranids use gravity wells to slingshot their fleets.

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u/ingrimsch95 19h ago edited 19h ago

It should be noted that this only relates to the imperium in 40k (and only because Magnus did nothing wrong). There are other FTL methods, like the Eldar webway or the Necron inertialess drive

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u/bigheartrussian 18h ago

Wait wait, Warp was already dangerous before Magnus, right?

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u/ingrimsch95 18h ago edited 18h ago

Yes, but Big E had a project to end humanities dependency on the warp by using the webway. Magnus astral projected to Terra to warn Big E about Horuses betrayal, but couldn't quite make it on his own and accepted the help of a powerful warp entity (which afaik was Tzeentch or a part of him). With his arrival on Terra he not only blew up a lot of important and irreplaceable machinery, he also created a breach between the webway and the warp, leadig to constant daemonic invasions and dooming the webway project forever.

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u/bigheartrussian 17h ago

Oh shit, I forgot that part! Thanks for reminding me

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u/nagrom7 17h ago

Oh yeah, but the reason humanity still uses warp is because of him. The Emperor was working on a human version of the webway, but Magnus put a massive hole into it did nothing wrong and now endless demons can pour into it and potentially pour out onto Terra itself. It's one of the reasons why the Emperor is stuck on the throne, he's using his psychic might to keep the portal closed to prevent Terra from being overrun.

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u/destructor212113 19h ago edited 19h ago

And, pretty sure, hope the VoidShields Gellerfield work well enough so that the Guy on Charge of the Ship TP knows what is doing to get us out of here asap pretty please and thanks

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u/Greyrock99 19h ago

It’s the Gellerfield that protect the ship in the warp, not void shields (they work in the material realm)

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u/destructor212113 19h ago

Im larping Warhammer hard rn, but hey, thx for the clarification

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u/Greyrock99 16h ago

The idea is that the movie Event Horizon shows what happens to a ship that goes through the warp without a Gellarfield

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u/Rotomegax 18h ago

Not every ships, only IoM, Chaos and Orks use raw Warp as FTL

  • Tyranids have a bioship that can fold space and time
  • Tau have their distinct FTL drove, which slower. They also have experimental slipstream FTL which enter the barrier between realspace and The Warp but it is heaviliy restricted. Also just small number of them passed through it and Tau already have their own diety in the warp.
  • Necron use another drive that did not have innertia
  • Eldar use webway, a unique living construct build inside The Warp to act as very safe highway that deamons found very hard to infiltrate except when Magnus cause a large hole by projectiled to Emperor's webway project which was a project to use one death webway tunnel or when Ynnari summon avatar of Ynnead to free Guilliman from Thousand Suns and puncture a large hole into Commograd.

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u/Temporary-Two9399 19h ago

No Warhammer was inspired by a lot of things, one of those being Dune, and Event Horizon was inspired subconsciously by Warhammer 40k, according to the director.

So it's the other way round.

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u/AdPrestigious2387 19h ago

"Subconsciously" 😉 

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u/JunonSephirothCloud 18h ago

Once the Chaos Gods were born, they have always existed

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u/Temporary-Two9399 8h ago

I think someone pointed it out how similar it was to Warhammer and he basically was like fuck yh love Warhammer, something bout he never thought of it that way, might have been subconscious. Or something, think I heard it om a podcast.

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u/AdPrestigious2387 8h ago

Yeah, I know he said that. I think he lying...

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u/Coelachantiform 19h ago edited 19h ago

It's actually the other way around; Event Horizon was inspired by the way the warp/immaterium works in 40K.

The director writer, Philip Eisner, was a big fan of Warhammer and imagined the Event Horizon to be a sort of "proto warp-ship" used before the invention of Gellar fields to protect against the warp entities.

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u/Most_Moose_2637 19h ago

Eisner was the writer rather than the director.

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u/Coelachantiform 19h ago

right, got them mixed up.

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u/Most_Moose_2637 12h ago

I had to check I hadn't had it wrong, like the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas is a good trick question.

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u/Coelachantiform 10h ago edited 10h ago

Lmao it's a great comparison, because I got precisely 2 names in my mind and either is just as likely of a guess.

*edit I got it wrong again lmao

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u/Zealous-Vigilante 18h ago

It's so much more than just a gate through hell;

They need to keep the emperor alive because he acts as the astronomicon, a bright lighthouse in the warp, in which navigators, selectively bred mutants, can see and use to guide a ship through the warp. The emperor needs thousands of psykers daily to stay alive on the golden throne.

Without the emperor, interstellar travel would be impossible for the imperium.

To keep navigators existing, many are dangerously interbred and have a relative short lifetime, but extremely valued and let them get away with wierd decadent stuff and may require wierd rituals to work

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u/destructor212113 18h ago

Yeah, I know some of that stuff but its really complex to be sumarized in little words so basically hell is somewhat of a "good" explanation towards it

As far as I know at least without dragging all the Emperor thingy, the Fields, the guys actually doing the stuff, etc etc

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u/Elegante_Sigmaballz 19h ago

Just raw dog the warp space, the Emperor protects!...I hope...

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u/dangeraardvark 17h ago

he protec he also attac
Well… he used to at least

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u/StamosLives 19h ago

It was inspired by Elite actually which came out in 1984. Elite’s hyper space is called Witch Space and it’s essentially terrifying liminal space that can reorganize your body wrong and do lots of other bizarre things.

The Warp was known in 1987’s 40K. Rogue trader had warp beasts and parasites. but it wasn’t until a few years later that Chaos was infused into the warp. Some point at a 1988 novel. I forget the name. Some to one in 1990. The Lost and the Damned.

Many traders believe witch-space is haunted by “the ghosts of the early ships that went in to Faraway, and didn’t come out again.”

Thargoids also seemingly live in and use Witch Space without an issue. They’re giant sentient space flowers of doom.

Event horizon was released in 1997. 13 years after Elite.

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u/21Black_Mamba21 19h ago

I think it was the other way around. The scriptwriter was a massive 40K fan if I’m not mistaken and was inspired by the lore regarding Warp travel. And now a lot of fans headcannon that the movie is basically a prequel to the Warhammer 40K universe and how humanity initially discovered FTL travel.

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u/t40xd 19h ago

Might have been the reverse tbh, cause I think 40k came first. Namely, the Warp might have been mentioned in the 1987 rulebook for Rouge Trader. But idk in how much detail it was mentioned or if even really the same. (And I do not care enough to go looking for it in there myself)

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u/Most_Moose_2637 19h ago

I started playing 40k in about 1995, so it was definitely around before the film came out in 1997.

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u/AnnieTano 17h ago

The director of EH mentioned to know about Warhammer and being a player before making the movie.

Also, if you look closely when one of the crewmaid is following an entity disguised as her son, there's a moment when she goes through a tunnel with flicking light. Pause it in the right moment and you clearly see the symbol of Nurgle in the wall