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| - The vast Imperial fleet is a vital factor in the maintenance of the Imperium; without it, human worlds would be isolated from each other and left unprotected. Without it, trade could not exist, weapons could not reach the Emperor’s armies, and world after world would fall into the darkness. Space travel throughout the Imperium is dangerous and arduous. Most interstellar travel is undertaken using powerful, ancient engines that push a vessel into the immaterium, also known as the Empyrean or Warp. Within the Warp, a ship can cover many thousands of light years within a relatively short time, dropping back into the materium far beyond the ship’s starting point. Some parts of the Warp, however, act as powerful vortices that drag helpless vessels to their doom. There is also a constant danger of turbulence, Warp storms, and loops: ships can be thrown thousands of light years off course or trapped in stasis forever. In the warp there is neither time nor distance—only the constantly flowing streams of the Immaterium. On board a ship in the warp, a single month of time may pass, yet in the material realm anything from six months to several years may elapse. Fleets responding to distress calls and supply vessels on long voyages have been known to arrive months or even years too late. Those who live their lives on void-ships become inured to some extent to the reality-altering process of warp travel, and to living in low or zero-gravity environments and never knowing the feel of solid ground beneath their feet. Some vessels never make berth, their crews instead raising generations of families in the cold depths of space where gravitational variance, radiation exposure, genetic distortion, and warp anomalies slowly take their toll. What true effect these taints have on individual void born humans is both uncertain and varied, but there is quite evidently something strange about most of them. In many cases, their features are drawn and their skin pallid, and they may have minor deformities, or an oddness of speech, gait, or general appearance that sets them apart from others. Some, although outwardly normal, carry a strange air about them, a perceptible something “not quite right” about them that makes others uneasy. Some void born are raised on huge space stations—asteroid mining installations, Battlefleet Calixis refit stations, or Machine Cult research platforms—but the majority come from a variety of backgrounds aboard an active star vessel, be they the issue of the crew of merchant vessels or warships, miners, scavengers, prison guards (or prisoners), and even the servants of a Rogue Trader. The largest Imperial void-ships are vast, city-sized craft, many of which are thousands of years old. On such huge star vessels, lobotomised servitors and tech-adepts move about their mysterious business, whilst menial crew, passengers, and merchant guilders coexist in crowded vaults, lonely corridors, and cramped quarters. At the right hand of the ship’s Lord-Captain sits the Navigator, one of a strange and select breed of psykers who expertly guide vessels through the immaterium following the psychic beacon of the Astronomican. Worst of all are the Black Ships of the Inquisition. These vessels are part of a large fleet travelling the Imperium in a huge circuit, visiting each Imperial world on their route once every hundred years or so. Their mission is to collect the psychic levy from each world—hundreds of psykers rounded up and handed over to the authorities for some unknown fate. Only when the vast holds of these ships are full of psykers do they return to Holy Terra. Some may display the strength and potential to serve the Imperium, however most are sacrificed to the God-Emperor, their gruesome deaths ensuring the survival of the Imperium. Life aboard these vessels is particularly harsh, for the psykers themselves are packed into huge holding cells, treated little better than cattle. Those void born raised in the service of the Imperial Navy or amongst the crew of a Rogue Trader know firsthand the horrors of space and the sheer multitude of the Emperor’s enemies. This knowledge often forces voidfarers of the lowdecks into insular crew brotherhoods, afraid to look outward from their duties or small societies for fear of what might be lurking in the void beyond the hull.
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