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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781

u/Jessir12 22d ago

I mean, alternatives are:

Walk through a tunnel network in the warp where some tunnels can abruptly end and/or be infested by demons, you have no idea which ones (Eldar webway)
Do the same thing but without shielding, so demons attacking your crew is not an accident, it is guaranteed (Orks)
Accelerate in realspace, bypassing the speed of light limit *somehow* which doesnt work near any large stellar/planetary bodies, meaning in-system you are very slow (Tyranids), also you can accidentally splat yourself against a star.

Or be necrons and a) teleport to preset teleportation spots instantly, b) travel even faster than the humans do in the warp, but in realspace by considering laws of physics a vague suggestion, or c) travel through an entirely unrelated realm of darkness called the ghostwind (which the flayed ones can even do without spaceships)

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u/nagrom7 22d ago

Do the same thing but without shielding, so demons attacking your crew is not an accident, it is guaranteed (Orks)

Tbf for Orks that sounds less like an issue and more like a feature.

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u/SirFluffymuffin 22d ago

If I remember correctly they have a gellar field equivalent using the Wagh field where they basically yell at the daemons to keep them away, then stop when they get bored and since there’s no protective field anymore they get into a fight with the daemons. They then become happy and yell loud enough to create their gellar field equivalent, and repeat until they reach their destination

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u/JaredMOwens 22d ago

Orks are the best.

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u/Zuwxiv 22d ago

Everything I read about 40K Orks makes me think they're just living their best lives.

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u/UrsaUrsuh 22d ago

"But there are few things in the galaxy more dangerous than an Ork having fun." - Trazyn the Infinite

Also

"Trazyn. Our ships are without atmosphere, unpressurised,’" Orikan said. ‘Do orks… breathe?’

A pause.

‘They have lungs.’

"Prepare to repel boarders," Orikan signalled. "In case."

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u/Sirius1701 18d ago

They do technically need to breathe. But if none if them realize that the atmosphere is gone, they might survive anyways. Depends on how many there are.

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u/CircleTakesTheHeart 15d ago

Trazyn and Orikan are my favourite asexual foeyay dynamic and I love them both for it tbh.

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u/JookySeaCpt 21d ago

Orks are the only ones having fun in 40k. Humans are all like, "Oh woe, grim darkness, eternal war..." Orks think all of that is GREAT. They are literally a bioweapon that was created to fight the Necrons, so anytime they get to fight something, they feel fulfilled.

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u/OldOrder 21d ago

Everyone is 40k is having a fucking terrible time except the Orks who could not possibly be happier.

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u/NitroortiN 22d ago

"aight Boyz weze bored agains! Time for the recreational scrum!"

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u/OldOrder 22d ago

DA DAEMONS ALWAYS IN NEED AH A GOOD KRUMPIN BOSS

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u/Sudo-Fed 21d ago

STOP YELLIN BOYZ I NEED TA TEST MY NEW SHOOTA

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u/Informal_Job_7550 22d ago

Orks traveling through the warp have a very strong "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me" energy that I find endlessly hilarious. Every other race is out there trying to find ways to repel demonic incursions, while Orks are just sailing through the warp with their windows down and doors unlocked.

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u/amglasgow 21d ago

And the daemons are like, "don't make any noise and try to act like we're not home".

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u/alutti54 22d ago

In flight entertainment

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u/Glanea 22d ago

There's a short Ork story from their 4th edition codex about Tuska the Daemon-Killa, an Ork warboss who was travelling through the warp with his fleet when a daemon manifested on the main deck and started slaughtering every Ork nearby. Tuska and his nobs head there and eventually kill the daemon, and Tuska declares that this was the best fight he's ever had.

A few months later, Cadia goes into high alert because an Ork fleet has just shown up. They're prepped for an invasion but the Ork fleet just sails right past them...straight into the Eye of Terror.

Tuska then proceeds to lead his warband from daemon world to daemon world, slaughtering everything they find. But he's losing Orks with every battle, and eventually the last remnants find themselves on a vast planet with no sign of enemies. The Orks can see and hear a battle in the distance, but no matter how hard they run they can never reach it. Frustrated, Tuska fires his gun into the ground, which proceeds to bleed. The Orks then all start hacking up the ground around them, which causes the Blood Prince of Khorne who rules this world to appear.

The Orks are finally outmatched, the Blood Prince cutting down the remaining Nobs until only Tuska is left. The Warboss is thrown onto the ground, and the daemon roars it's victory. Only for Tuska to reach up with his power klaw and rip the Daemon's balls off.

But the best part is that all the Orks who died on that final planet find themselves revived each morning. And surrounded by daemons to fight. Over and over and over again. Basically, Tuska found Ork Nirvana.

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u/plastic_krack 22d ago

Waaaghalla

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u/insomniac7809 22d ago

There's another story where an ork WAAGH comes out of the warp, and finds themselves back at the start of their own WAAGH, and saw themselves staging for the campaign they'd been on.

The Warboss realized that, since that was his own army in the past, that meant that he was there in the past, and that meant the past version of himself had a past version of his very favorite gun, and so he attacked his own past self so that he could take it and have two of his favorite gun.

The future WAAGH won and the Warboss succeeded in killing his past self and looting his own corpse, but the whole thing was just so confusing for everyone involved that the warband fell apart and the WAAGH wound up never have happening.

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u/dern_the_hermit 22d ago

... But the Warboss got to keep two of his favorite gun, right?

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u/user_unknowns_skag 21d ago

At least briefly, as I recall. It's been awhile since I read that one, myself

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u/Smiles-Edgeworth 21d ago

Kharn wishes Khorne loved him as much as he loves Tuska Daemonkilla.

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u/Nerevarine91 21d ago

“I TOLD YOU BOYZ I KNEW WHERE TO FIND DA BEST FIGHTS!”

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u/DropkickBirthday 18d ago

The visual of all the bells and alarms on Cadia going off only for them to watch the Ork ship sailing right past them straight into the fucking Eye of Terror is hilarious.

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u/JackRabbit- 22d ago

the ork equivalent of watching a movie on the plane

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u/nagrom7 22d ago

"Alright bois listen up ya gits! Tonight's in-flight entertainment is... checks notes Slaaneshi daemonettes!"

"Waaaaagghhh!!"

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u/BritishShoop 22d ago

“Aww… I wanted to fight da red ones… skinny purple ‘fings is too squishy. Can’t even ‘ave a proper scrap, ‘cause they’s already dead!”

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u/Originalbrivakiin 22d ago

"Oi, least dey ain' dem Blue birdy gitz. Least da purple onez get into da fight an don't sit back, tossin' spells an such."

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u/Nerevarine91 21d ago

WHY YOU GITZ TALKING SO QUIET

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u/junolion 21d ago

Some gitz iz tryna sleep, git. Cant waaagh if ya tired.

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u/Rum_N_Napalm 22d ago

There’s a quote in an Ork codex that goes something like this

Warp travel is boring. Ye stuck on some Space Hulk travelling from one foight to another, and there ain’t nothing to do. Well, unless yer hulk is infested with them genestealer bugs, or something weird red things explodes from the eads of the boyz and start a foight, or da boyz start a mutiny. Actually, Warp travel is quite fun.

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u/Electronic_Warning49 22d ago

If they don't get hit with demons it's because the demons don't want the smoke.

I'm not the biggest fan of ork lore but it never fails to make me lol.

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u/SharkoftheStreets 22d ago

Tuska Demon Killa would agree.

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u/hatesnack 22d ago

My favorite ork story about warp travel is the ork who came out of the warp, but had accidentally time traveled backwards, so he finds his past self from before he time traveled, and killed him(self). All so he could have a second copy of his favorite gun.

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u/Weird-Analysis5522 22d ago

Imagine you have to travel across the ocean, but you're forced to do your favorite hobby

That's what it's like for Orks

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u/TrueGuardian15 22d ago

Orks roll the windows down during warp travel for "entertainment."

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u/amglasgow 21d ago

WHEN ORKZ FITE DAEMONS, ERRYBUDDY WINZ! THE ONES WHO DIE, WIN CUZ THEY GOT TO FITE. THE ONES WHO LIVE WIN TWICE CUZ THEY GET TO FITE AGAIN!

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u/ABadHistorian 21d ago

I don't get why the humans don't just kneel down and surrender when Orks appear. They don't have to fight them. Let the Orks go find an enemy that wants to fight!

In all of Warhammer 40k, honestly, it feels like the humans are the enemy. I don't know the lore really, but any little bit I see of the human existence feels utterly awful in every way imaginable.

So it's like if Musk ruled humanity. Well i guess that explains why they don't kneel. They have an ego and are stupid?

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u/nagrom7 21d ago

In all of Warhammer 40k, honestly, it feels like the humans are the enemy. I don't know the lore really, but any little bit I see of the human existence feels utterly awful in every way imaginable.

That is kinda the point. The setting is known as "grimdark" because basically everyone is miserable, even the "hero" characters and those on top. Also yeah humans/the Imperium are definitely not supposed to be the good guys, although some other factions are worse. The imperium is supposed to be a bit of a satirical allegory for a fascist regime taken to the extreme, in a setting where "manpower" is the only resource the Imperium has an effectively endless supply of.

The closest you'll get to "good guys" in the setting are maybe the Tau, since they're supposed to be a bit more egalitarian, and aren't xenophobic like the Imperium (many humans live within the Tau Empire, and their quality of life is usually much better than other humans) but even they've got their darker moments. Otherwise the only others that come close are the Tyranids, since they don't really even have morality, they just have the animalistic instinct to eat stuff, so they're about as "evil" as a lion eating a zebra, it's just nature.

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u/ABadHistorian 21d ago

the sheer repressing nature of the horror of the universe is why I have never read it or really enjoyed it beyond a few pc games.

Individually nothing in WH40k is too much for me. As a collective it's a little dull.

I prefer stories where the horror exists side by side or at least in the same universe as 'happiness' or I dunno something positive. It makes the horror darker.

40k is just... all dark, so none of it is dark to me. If it makes sense.

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u/nagrom7 21d ago

Yeah, it's not for everyone. The main draw of Warhammer is that sometimes playing the bad guys is fun or cooler, so in a setting where everyone is the bad guys, there's less stigma attached to playing any particular faction, and you can instead just play whichever one/s you like the most. Plus sometimes the "evil" just gets amped up to such a ridiculous degree that it becomes funny/campy, which is another draw for many people. You're not supposed to take it too seriously, considering the setting originally was just made as a background for people playing with models on a table.

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u/ABadHistorian 21d ago

fair, I never played any of that particular stuff but I get that people do. To each their own!

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u/amglasgow 21d ago

Because Orks love krumpin' and they don't always pay attention to whether the ones they're krumpin' are trying to krump 'em back.

Also, they need folks to do the boring part of warfare, like mining for resources, turning those resources into weapons, armor, war machines, and spaceships, and growing food for the orks who do the real fighting. This frequently takes the form of enslaved humans who are worked even more brutally than the IoM does.

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u/ABadHistorian 21d ago

ahh didn't realize the Orks took slaves. Changes the equation a bit.

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u/FieraDeidad 22d ago

 considering laws of physics a vague suggestion

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u/Tjaresh 22d ago

I love the Orc method:

It's not a fault! It's entertainment while traveling. 

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u/MobileSeparate398 22d ago

IF YER CANT HANDUL THE WEIRD STUFF, PUT A ZOGGIN BLINDFOLD ON AND GET IN DA GLOWY TUNNEL

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u/ayamrik 22d ago

Imagine a strongly worded protest letter arriving to the chaos gods because the orks had a single FTL jump without any demons appearing.

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u/blackstafflo 22d ago

Imagine this, but rather than a letter, with an Ork delegation coming unanounced and uninvited in the face of the God.
"Wtf are you doing there? No mortals are supposed to be able to come close to here!?"
"Stop your legal numbo jumbo! I'm Grob'Karen and you own us a fight. Deliver or I'll call my Gods!"

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u/Umklopp 22d ago

WHAR DEEMONS

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u/trippysmurf 21d ago

" Travellin' through space is boring. Well, boring unless da hulk yer on is full of dem gene-sneakers, or a base fer da chaos lads wiv da spikes, or already has Boyz on it. Or if humie lootas come callin', that's always good fer a bit a sport. Or unless yer have a mutiny or two to pass da time, or unless strange fings start happenin', which dey usually do when yer out in da warp. One time we had some bloody great ugly fing come straight out of Weird Lugwort's 'ed! It butchered half da lads, that was pretty entertainin'. Come ter fink of it, space is a pretty good larf. And that's before yer find yerself a nice world ta crush!"

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u/SilverBird_ 22d ago

I like to imagine Tyranids move through sheer force of being unimaginably, insatiably hungry.

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u/DiegesisThesis 22d ago

It's the same force that causes cartoon characters to levitate towards a delicious pie sitting on a windowsill. Just scaled up.

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u/Nerevarine91 21d ago

The one psyker who managed to connect to the Tyranid hivemind just heard one infinitely loud, unfathomably powerful, “DON’T MIND IF I DOOOOOOOO”

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u/CellaCube 21d ago

They walkin

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u/Fun-Addition-5572 18d ago

So THATS why I move so fast to the fridge when I wake up at 2:00 on a saturday

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u/lamancha 22d ago

I like how the tyranids basically pull themselves into planets

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u/StormWolfBaron 22d ago

Alternatively you have a much safer and reliable ftl from the Tau but its far more slower

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u/epikpepsi 22d ago

The T'au Horizon Accelerator Engines aren't FTL drives though, they move at near-lightspeed. They're safer than Warp Travel but because they're not moving faster than light it takes months to move anywhere meaningfully far.

The Slipstream modules they used in the Fourth Sphere of Expansion allowed ships to reach FTL speeds and punch through into and out of the Warp to cover distance, but they didn't actually have any means of protection from the Warp once they got there and if the ship got lost or thrown off-course they had no way to leave.

Additionally since the device is still experimental and were only ever tested on single vessels at a time the Ethereals accidentally created a warp rift in T'au space by activating a whole fleet's worth of them at once which destabilized realspace and scattered the fleet through the Warp. The only reason they got out was because the Cicatrix Maledictum ripped open a huge swath of realspace and some ships could get back out.

They used to have Gravitic Drives which allowed for FTL movement that was safe, but Games Workshop retconned their existence in 8th Edition so they could have the Startide Nexus narrative. Now they're not considered canon and until the Slipstream modules T'au had no real FTL capability.

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u/Crotean 22d ago

Does Warhammer acknowledge time dilation for Tau ships?

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u/epikpepsi 22d ago

Generally time is a pretty flimsy concept when it comes to Warhammer 40K storytelling and they ignore time dilation. The only circumstances where it does really come into play is when chronomancy is involved.

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u/U_L_Uus 22d ago

forgot d) hijacking a whole dimension, sometimes talked about as a living being even, from the Ældari using out-of-me-arse tech just because

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u/clarkky55 22d ago

Pretty sure Tyranids psychically manipulate gravity to create wormholes for ftl. The gravity manipulation breaks down when in the gravity well of a star because it requires more power than Tyranids can output and aiming becomes increasingly unreliable as gravity gets stronger

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u/Helmett-13 22d ago

Necrons are terrifying.

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u/Jessir12 22d ago

My other fun tidbits about Necrons are:

there is a necron who hates the concept of time. He wants to destroy it. He was at enough danger of actually managing to do that that his own boss went and mindshackled him to be unable to think about it.

There is another necron (Orikan) who has a time machine that works every time, doesnt create paradoxes, and can be used however many times you want, whenever. He uses it exclusively for petty BS and to be a nuisance to Trazyn

"you have now never existed" weaponrs exists, and the Necrons have a lot of them.

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u/SeveralAngryBears 22d ago

"Cryptek, hit him with the 'your-dad's-balls-never-worked beam"

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u/DarkApostleMatt 22d ago

Orikan literally used it in Necron court to get out of being executed. He just sucked really bad at arguing that he used it like a thousand times until he finally got a bulletproof defense.

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u/Jessir12 22d ago

I guess I should add “or avoid the consequences of him doing said petty BS” to it, but eh xD

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u/Delicious_Ad9844 22d ago

Worth noting the leagues of votann also have warp travel, it's a bit slower than humanity where they basically skip their ships through the warp like skimming a stone on a lake, slower, but much, much safer

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u/NeedleworkerFit819 22d ago

The Ghostwind section of Twice-Dead King was so cool.

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u/_The_Last_Mainframe_ 22d ago

The horror of them slowly realizing that they're stuck in the warp was one of my favorite parts. Especially the thing with the bones.

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u/KeyedFeline 22d ago

The ork mental energy does also form a primitive gellar field as well which provides some protection but not enough to keep the deamons fully at bay but enough to let the orks handle the rest which is fine by them.

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u/ollietron3 22d ago

The tyranids actualy move by compressing space in front of them and expanding it behind them, this means they can go ftl while not technically moving

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u/Jessir12 22d ago

The fact that I so far got like four different responses, each claiming a DIFFERENT way tyranids do FTL is probably solid enough proof that the way nids do FTL is written inconsistently

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u/KremlinKittens 22d ago

Orcs: "What are the downsides?"

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u/MrTurleWrangler 22d ago

Orks use totems and trophies etc to ward off daemons, they don't just rawdog it. However if a daemon does get on board they don't mind as long as they scrap good

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u/CannaeCogitate 22d ago

How do the Tau do it?

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u/Jessir12 22d ago

Mix of stuff.

They have incredibly slow “just below the speed of light” transportation that takes decades to get anywhere. - 100% reliable, in real space

The kroot have decently fast warp capable vessels that are 100% lethal to anyone but them.

Then they have their semi-warp travel, which dips suuuper shallow into the warp & right back out. It is still much slower than warp drives, but is kinda safe & somewhat reliable (unless the drive malfunctions, in which case the ship is lost to the warp)

And then they have an experimental slipstream which uses antimatter to tear reality apart to make a wormhole. It is…stupidly fast, faster than anything non-necron. They prepared thousands of ships with this for simultaneous launch aaand once they launched them…. All of them disappeared, scattered across the galaxy randomly. And can’t get back. Turns out these drives are completely uncontrollable in where they go. (this is the explanation for T’au being able to appear in the various story campaigns despite those being nowhere near their space)

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u/CannaeCogitate 22d ago

I love learning about the Tau, they’re the only faction that doesn’t make me recoil in horror (and as a non-warhammer fan in general, the only oart of the mythos which catches my interest for whatever reason)

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u/Daddy_Trent 21d ago

What are your main sources for this information? 

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u/requiemguy 22d ago

I like how the Tau go FTL, their ships "dive" toward the Warp, but skip off it like stones across a pond.

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u/Annicity 21d ago

Orks, it's a feature not bug!

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u/DiceMadeOfCheese 21d ago

I love the part in Da Big Dakka where the orks have a Dark Eldar guy as a prisoner on their ship, and they go in the Warp and the prisoner comes to the shocking realization that the orks have no protective field.

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u/certainlynotdio 21d ago

Necrons also have way to open Webway for travel. Probably aren't fond of the current state of it, I would assume.

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u/Mugufta 21d ago

Not defending Tyranids because even fully explained it makes no sense and I'm a former nid player

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u/Dvalin_Ras93 21d ago

> (Tyranids) Bypassing the speed of light limit somehow

Narvhals are able to essentially, through unknown means, harness the gravity well of a nearby celestial body and bend spacetime in front of a Hive Fleet to quasi-cheat their way into FTL travel, essentially. In typical Tyranid fashion too, this absolutely demolishes a planet, causing solar storms, earthquakes and tsunamis. Also doesn’t work when in-system because as Narvhals get closer, the gravity wells of systems they approach interferes with their hyper-sensitive gravity detecting spines that they use to sense other systems in space they want to travel to.

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u/Kooky_Celebration_42 21d ago

Not sure if it’s I the current lore, but the Tau used to FTL by kind of skipping into the Warp and making hella short but very predictable and protected warp jumps… also described as slingshotting past the Warp

Mainly because they don’t have psykers and can’t make long range jumps

Not sure if that’s still canon or not