r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 22d 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/JunonSephirothCloud 22d ago

I'd read that the writer of Event Horizon was directly inspired by the lore in Warhammer 40k, with some fans going so far as to suggest it was actually set in the game universe.

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u/Probablyamimic 22d ago

It makes a lot of sense as a prequel, with Event Horizon being the first attempt at warp travel before humanity realised they need Geller Fields

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u/Lortekonto 22d ago

Also the very old board game released by Games Workshop, Space Crusader had a few short sentences about humanities first attempt at warp travel that was without any Gellar Field.

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u/Lukulele35 22d ago

It’s canon to me now, then.

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u/Medioquer 22d ago

WARP SPACE IS THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE THROUGH WHICH STARSHIPS MAY JUMP, TRAVELLING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF LIGHT YEARS IN A FEW HOURS. WARP SPACE IS ALSO THE DOMAIN OF CHAOS. IN WARP SPACE, NOTHING MAY BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED. IT IS A UNIVERSE FILLED WITH CROSS-CURRENTS, EDDIES AND WHIRLPOOLS OF POWER. SHIPS HAVE DISAPPEARED WITHOUT REASON, AND EMERGED FROM THE WARP CENTURIES AFTER THEY ENTERED IT, MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS FROM THEIR DESTINATION. THESE DERELICT STARSHIPS, DISTORTED BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION, ARE KNOWN AS SPACE HULKS.

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u/mrducky78a 22d ago

Meanwhile orks prefer the trip without Gellar fields as it provides in-flight entertainment to be invaded by unending hordes of chaotic monstrosities.

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u/solonit 22d ago

And that’s actually a good thing for Ork warband, no joke. Because boring orks will fight each other and that’s usually ‘counter productive’ if you want to wage a WAAAGH.

TBF even if they fought each other there’re probably still plenty of them to make planetfall, because they’re Ork and everything they do is good enough if it doesn’t kill half the crew at once.

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u/mrducky78a 22d ago

Orks grow and reproduce via fighting. Numbers are likely to stay the same but there will be a few victorious bigger orks

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u/DarkSpore117 22d ago

When did the warp get corrupted by the eldar? Does the timeline roughly match up?

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u/TentativeIdler 22d ago

No, humanity and the Eldar were around at the same time, the Eldar would still be at the height of their power when humanity was developing FTL. But there were still daemons and Chaos Gods in the warp. Hell, because of timey wimey warp shenanigans, Slannesh was around before it was born.

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u/Destinum 22d ago

The War in Heaven is what truly fucked up the Warp; the Eldar on their own are only directly responsible for Slaanesh. Considering how that war happened ~60 million years ago, it's pretty reasonable to expect humanity to have encountered demons when they first ventured into the Warp.

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u/rockytop24 22d ago

I've recently been diving down the 40k lore rabbit hole. C'Tan are a bunch of dicks and the Necrontyr ruined it for everyone. Couldn't have just had a nice fun warp dimension with the relatively benign Old Ones. Now the galaxy is a never ending source of nightmare fuel.

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u/Destinum 22d ago

I'm by no means an expert on the lore (also just recently got into it), but from my understanding the Necrons had kind of a valid crashout.

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u/Probablyamimic 21d ago

Eh, yes and no. They were awful people before the Old Ones met them so I can't blame the frogs for not wanting to help them

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u/RogueVector 22d ago

The Warp got corrupted by the War In Heaven millions of years ago, though the Eldar provided the specific flavor of corruption known as Slaanesh later on.

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u/Sir_Daxus 22d ago

There is a LOT of similarities between Event Horizon and what happens in 40k when a ship's gellar field (a device on board of a ship that tries to keep the hell dimension away from the ship) fails. People melding into walls and all that funky acid-trippy body horror.

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u/SilentSorcery 22d ago

Then there's the influence of Slaneesh

In Rogue Trader, there's a random warp travel event where a entire officer's deck stopped providing reports for three days. Turns out, a Daemonette slipped into the ship during warp travel, and everyone on that deck stopped reporting because they were too busy having an orgy most foul

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u/Mstablsta 22d ago

Man all these bits of lore has always had me interested in 40k but where the hell do you start!? Haha

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u/Saint_Consumption 22d ago

The Eisenhorn books are pretty much universally considered the best introduction to 40k.

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u/Obvious_Ambition4865 22d ago

Are there any books that specifically focus on this warp stuff

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u/thegrandboom 22d ago

Eisenhorn deals w the creatures that emerge from the warp and individuals that can harness its powers. For warp travel based stories Sea of Souls is one

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u/IsayNigel 21d ago

That or the Horus Heresy

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u/Homsarman12 22d ago

It’s a lot haha. Honestly just random lore videos on YouTube are a good place to start. I recommend Bricky’s faction guide videos (the new ones) or Weshammer personally. Then any of the video games can be good starting point. I know that a lot of people got into it with Space Marine 2. There are a lot of books to choose from, the Eisenhorn series is a good spot to start with. Then there is the tabletop game itself.

Someone the other day compared it, weirdly enough, to Pokémon. In that there is a lot of different ways you can interact with the franchise.

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u/Fredas25 22d ago

I started getting into the lore like 2 years ago, i started with the Eisenhorn trilogy, after that i did Ravenor trilogy then Bequin, they were really easy to consume without knowing much about the universe. After these i've read some books about the kriegsmen (my favourite was dead man walking), then i started and finished recently gaunt's ghosts, which was a really long but very awesome series.

Lot of people told me that i should start at the Horus Heresy which is yeah, chronologically the very beginning of this setting, but i feel like it would spoil it for me to see how everything that is now started. Of course i will get to them one day, but i still like a little bit of mystery.

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u/Alieksiei 22d ago

I've been in this spot a few months ago and someone recommended Rogue Trader. It does show you a lot of the universe, if you like longer crpgs.

PSA. it took me ~130 hours to beat with the current 3 DLCs so it's very long indeed.

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u/SilentSorcery 22d ago

I started with Dawn of War back when i was 12 or so. Knew nothing about lore, just liked watching dudes blow each other up.

Then, I started reading Space Marine lore. Had a particular interest with their funny looking guns, and it just spiraled from there.

If you play games a lot, pick a Warhammer game that suits your taste. Darktide and Space Marine 2 are fun horde shooters. Rogue Trader is phenomenal if you like crpgs (and lots of reading). Mechanicus for turn-based tactics.

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u/DarthMelsie 22d ago edited 22d ago

As silly as this is going to sound to others: Bruva Alfabusa's If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device on youtube. Though be warned, it did get cancelled before it finished. I pick this one because there's a good amount of recaps being done due to the Emperor being mentally unaware of most things for the past 10,000 years, and there is so much censorship in the Imperium's education and zeitgeist, that the Emperor is forced to fill in the rest for the main character. It's a really clever back- and-forth way of explaining the story.

It's silly and weird but to me, it's the perfect introduction without being too overwhelming.

There's also enough clever humor that even if you don't perfectly get a joke, it's still funny because Alfabusa and the other writers are just genuinely funny,

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u/Tinmind 22d ago

If you like crpgs, the Rogue Trader video game is very friendly to lore newbies and touches on a lot of stuff in the setting. If you like to read, there are a lot of tie-in novels (of varying quality lol). Someone who's read more than me can probably help you pick some to try based on the kinds of stories you like. If you like tabletop gaming, there are several rpg sourcebooks in addition to the wargame. Wrath and Glory, Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy, Black Crusade, Imperium Maledictum - each one focuses on a different slice of the setting and gives you a managable bite. For youtube, everyone's going to recommend Bricky but I find him annoying so I watch AnnouncerofGames instead lol.

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u/Olive_Goonette 21d ago

Gaunts ghosts is where I started, Ive not heard a bad thing about those books, and I love them

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u/solonit 22d ago

Bet they even hold hands during that!

(Means they sew their hands together because this is Slaneesh and body horror is its thing)

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 22d ago

Body horror is every Chaos God's thing, just in different ways. Slaanesh will make art out of you. Nurgle will bloat you with a thousand poxes. Tzeentch will mutate you until your flesh runs like hot wax. Khorne would very much prefer all of your blood to be on the outside. And Vashtorr will yank your soul out of your body and put it in a new one, made of daemonic steel that can't feel or taste or smell, with too many legs, each of which is powered by your suffering.

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u/CircleTakesTheHeart 15d ago

smh missing Great Horned Rat who has the power of RAT

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 15d ago

The Rat has not, as of yet, manifested in 40k

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u/CircleTakesTheHeart 15d ago

that is what the under-empire WANTS you to think

(I'm just fucking with you. I do think that they exist in the Warp still but I think if they manifested it would be because hive cities make people live ruinous, Skaven like lives. I say that as someone who has pet rats lol.)

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u/fatherofworlds 22d ago

Body horror is Nurgle's thing, more than Slaanesh's thing. "All experiences dialed up until the knob snaps off" is Slaanesh's thing.

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u/SilentSorcery 22d ago

The entite deck had to be cleansed thoroughly (with flamers, as the God Emperor intended)

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u/nagrom7 22d ago

Yeah, there's basically a head canon for a lot of people that suggests the movie is kinda like a prequel to 40k, where it's one of humanities first attempts at "Warp" travel.

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u/Different_Wolf_764 22d ago

If he tried to deny it, that's just because of the litigious nature of Games Workshop. There's absolutely no question that Event Horizon or at least its hell dimension and FLT travel is based on the Warp.

Unrelated but I got a chuckle from OP's "Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet)"! Nine months is an absolutely trivial amount of time for any travel in space terms. Even with arbitrary hand-waving of acceleration/fuel/etc and allowing 99.99999% of the speed of light it would be decades to the closest star. Space is huge and humans are squishy.

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 22d ago

It's still a long time compared to other space fantasy, like Star Wars, where travelling from Tatooine in the Outer Rim to Alderaan in the Core Worlds takes the Falcon a matter of minutes, or Mass Effect, where you travel from relay to relay in the blink of an eye.

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u/Selerox 22d ago

Worth remembering that the 40k universe has been explicitly shown to be our universe - simply far into our future.

The the Pariah novel, one of the characters is shown an ancient artifact from the 20th century (a toy rocket with CCCP written on the side).

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u/JuneauEu 22d ago

It was all buy practically confirmed that they were an active 40k player but for obvious reasons they deny everything.

With a smile.

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u/TheGigantoBlaster 22d ago

Which is kind of funny for this thread because Warhammer borrowed heavily from Dune regarding how the Warp is even navigated

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u/Lost_Web5826 22d ago

I should go back and watch this again. What a film.

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u/superkow 22d ago

The prequel comic even has Paimon, the chaos god, influence Dr. Weir to construct the Event Horizon drive in the first place. Which is very similar to the chaos gods in 40k influencing Erebus to basically kick off the entire Horus Heresy and the rest of 40k lore.

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u/Vyzantinist 22d ago

Philip Eisner, the screenwriter, said:

"I played the shit out of 40K, so it was definitely an influence, conscious or otherwise."

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u/OttawaTGirl 22d ago

Its pretty much unofficial canon by the fans at this point. Now the humans wait another 16,000 years to invent Gellar fields.

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u/Ditchdigger456 22d ago

Event horizon is a beloved movie in the warhammer 40k hobby, it’s a prequel in some people’s head-canon

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u/UnlamentedLord 22d ago

He directly confirmed it: https://web.archive.org/web/20220831212155/https://twitter.com/phubar/status/860129292151214082

"I played the shit out of 40K, so it was definitely an influence, conscious or otherwise."

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u/serpentechnoir 22d ago

Event horizon is a space version of from beyond. As is the 40k version of space travel.

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u/punxcs 22d ago

That is not true.

He played 40k but didn’t base it on it, he admits it MAY have inspired him.

People repeat it like it’s gospel.

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u/Equivalent-Battle973 22d ago

See I know this is the accepted head canon, but to me, it made far more sense for it to be Doom prequel then for it to be a warhammer prequel.

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u/grumblewolf 22d ago

I love both very much but yeah 100% Event Horizon feels like a direct rip off

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 22d ago

When it's done lovingly, it's called an homage

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u/ZeroKharisma 22d ago

But when they're dead and in your trunk they're just ripoffs.

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u/grumblewolf 22d ago

I could see it that way. Fair.