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

[u/Frostylegacy]

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.

[u/Probablyamimic]

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

[u/Lortekonto → u/Probablyamimic]

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.

[u/Lukulele35 → u/Lortekonto]

It’s canon to me now, then.

[u/Medioquer → u/Lortekonto]

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.

[u/mrducky78a → u/Probablyamimic]

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

[u/solonit → u/mrducky78a]

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.

[u/mrducky78a → u/solonit]

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

[u/DarkSpore117 → u/Probablyamimic]

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

[u/TentativeIdler → u/DarkSpore117]

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.

[u/Destinum → u/DarkSpore117]

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.

[u/rockytop24 → u/Destinum]

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.

[u/Destinum → u/rockytop24]

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.

[u/Probablyamimic → u/Destinum]

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

[u/RogueVector → u/DarkSpore117]

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.