Reweaving the Warp

A setting built without logic cannot stand.

As a realm of pure chaos, the warp should not be able sustain life, let alone develop it. Even masses like planets and stars are too complex and orderly to survive within that ever-changing environment. Having anything recognizable or meaningful occur naturally within it defies the concept of chaos-- no matter how many horned skulls, bloody spikes and magenta flames are involved.

Psychic power and sorcery have no reason to be different things. With a single such method, all magic-like powers belong in the same unified category with its own set of rules, abilities and limitations. This makes the entire process of magic-like powers less overt, with less emphasis on the how and more on the what and why.

The Chaos Gods are superfluous. While frequently cited as the causes of many of the disasters which befall the Imperium, it is their followers who do all of the heavy lifting; and when something genuinely bizarre and beyond the scope of a moderately normal human finally does happens as a result, such as a mutation, it's nothing even an average psyker couldn't accomplish with some effort. The Chaos Gods are carry-overs from Warhammer Fantasy, injected like everything else in 40K into a far-future space setting on a far more immense scale, without much if any consideration for how the increase of scope or indeed any other factor would affect them and everything else.

Taking all these things into account, I present a revision of the warp, psychic powers and histories of the Imperium and Chaos. These revisions eliminate all traces of Chaos and daemons from within the warp, deletes the Horus Heresy and posits a less grimdark view of everyday Imperial life.

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Within the Imperium, other than the Emperor himself, only the Priesthood of Mars and certain high-ranking Inquisitors have any idea of these events. The Imperial public is entirely ignorant of the true workings of the power of psykers, believing unquestioningly that all of the forces, realms and beings described in their scriptures are real. Many followers of Chaos are just as blind, merely choosing to place their faith in different entities.

The Eldar, being a psychic race of ancient practice, understand the deep secrets of psyker powers beyond even the researches of the Magos Biologis, but will share nothing. The Orks are even more ignorant than the Imperium, their own overwhelming psychic field so pervasive it is indiscernible from stable reality and their own approximation of psykers operating on entirely different principles. The Necrons employ anti-psyker units in the form of Pariahs, suggesting an understanding of their threat they pose in combat if nothing more. The extent of Tau information on the subject is unknown.

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The warp is a universe of absolute chaos, a boiling, churning ocean of effervescing matter and energy of every known form and classification, along with many never before observed in normal space. The laws of physics, space and time are deformed, unstable or even nonexistent in this nebulous, cosmic froth.

One in every million humans is born a psyker, a psychic mutant whose brain is a singular collapse in the seam between the warp and the normal universe. At that infinitely condensed point of distortion is a gateway through which the substance of the warp is channeled into space and time through a membrane of thought and feeling, the psyker's mind shaping the material confusion of the warp into meaningful forms. These creations are derived deeply from the soul of the psyker, from the memories, desires, fears and beliefs that define his being, and can take many shapes in manifestation when sculpted by force of will; ghostly apparitions, unearthly noises, ethereal flames and arcing lightning, creeping plaques of alien matter, deformations of the flesh, and a thousand other frightful defiances of nature.[1]

[1] What the Inquisition fails to acknowledge in their address is the number of beneficial powers psykers also manifest; the healing of injuries and sickness, the creation of foodstuffs and tools for the needy, the protection of frontier communities who are otherwise unarmed. It remains true, however, that there are risks and dangers beyond mere ideological impurity in the case of psykers afflicted by mental illness or possessing power in excess of their discipline.

While most psykers are quickly discovered by the Inquisition and sent to receive sanction, there are some who avoid detection and go unsanctioned, either by the vagaries of fortune or the sharp edge of their own cunning. These may escape into the wilderness, find shelter among friends or even obtain passage off-world entirely, becoming nigh impossible to chase down. Such an escape can spell catastrophe, for a psyker without the holy sanction of the Emperor is beyond the blessed guidance and wise teaching of the Scholastica Psykana, without which there can be no defense against the unknowable roiling of the unbridled warp, for the psyker or any who linger near him.[2]

[2] As the Imperium continues to believe that daemons and warp-born creatures are natural phenomena, so too persists the belief that the warp is clogged with these creatures, constantly exerting pressure on pliant psychic minds seeking to gain entry into the "real" world.

Within the bounds of the Imperium, on the waste worlds and wild frontier moons, in the shadowy underhives and on planets not yet blessed by the Emperor's light, there arise groups of wayward humans who pray to foreign gods, defiant blasphemers who worship the devil as spoken of in sacred scripture, turning their hearts against the Emperor's blessing and accepting into themselves the spirits of sin and damnation. Most heinous of all are those who find themselves in the company of the unsanctioned psyker who has gained mastery of his powers.

These rogue psykers and the enthralled cults that so quickly form around them give no name to themselves, and so the Imperium call them Chaos, after the ancient name by which the warp was cursed, a noise and a confusion, blighting the Imperial universe with their unholy existence.

Unsanctioned psykers who join the forces of Chaos "summon" monsters, devils and other creatures of nightmare by saturating their minds with the black scripture, uncouth attitudes, terrifying images and bloody stories of distorted Imperial legendry and history, through these media bringing idols and dark deities to life in fabricated flesh and blood.
Unknown to the ardents of Imperial faith, these demons are not called forth from a hellish realm within the bowels of the Immaterium, the realm of the dead and damned where the devil makes his kingdom-- in truth, they are born fully-formed from raw matter and energy the instant their master wizard's spell is complete.[3] From the moment of its birth from the alien substance of the warp, its mind is filled with centuries of memories of furious war, sordid debauchery and blasphemous secrets, generated on the spot by the burning cycles of the psyker's searing brain-- its entire being a living, breathing figment of the sorcerer's corrupt imagination.[4]

[3] This is the primary deviation from extant Warhammer 40,000 canon. Rather than being true gods with armies of daemons under their control, everything related to Chaos is an illusion resulting from ill-understood powers of manifestation, informed by their own religious beliefs and mythology. By the same token, the sacred entities given credence by Imperial faith, if there are any beyond the Emperor himself, are falsehoods.
This decision excises an enormous swathe of official 40K history, and in turn significantly brightens the true nature of the universe by removing the nightmare hordes believed to exist in the Immaterium-- effectively reversing the Imperial status quo from a dying empire with horrifying enemies on all sides that can scarcely comprehend the true danger they are all in, to a superstitous kingdom of loud preachers braced with hard faith against an enemy not even a tiny fraction of the size they expect, and that formed from variations on their own beliefs.

[4] This explanation denies the many and varied forms the creations of summoners may take, which are as numerous and unique as the individuals which summon them. Those who only nominally adhere to the Imperial Creed and instead dwell on their own lives may bring forth manifestations of friends and loved ones, characters and mythical beings from literature or oral tradition, or the surreal mindscapes of deep dreams. Those of faithful persuasion may find themselves creating small miracles of aid for themselves by the supposed blessing of the Emperor, or even bringing forth angelic entities to aid him in times of trouble-- though those whose sense of guilt plagues them even in hiding may find themselves calling forth avenging angels who will punish them for their self-perceived sins.

=I=
BY PROVISION OF THE INQUISITION

The following are speculated upon by certain of the Magos Biologis, who have taken as their realm of study the functionality and origins of psychic powers:

I. The exact gene which manipulates psychic power is unknown; however, it is clear that it can be spontaneously replicated by psykers in summoned creatures. By this means, it is theorized that monsters and daemons created by magicians of Chaos are capable of reproducing in kind in like manner to their own creation. In a self-sustaining cycle of creation, a single monstrosity could spawn an infinite number of horrors like itself, swarming upon blessed Imperial denizens and armed forces in a tide of unclean violence. It is upon this hypothesis that psykers of Chaotic persuasion are placed as maximum-priority targets in engagements with that enemy.
Others among the Biologis claim evidence that due to the vagaries and fluctuations of the brain, a perfect copy of the psychic funtionary template is impossible, and subsequent summonings by summoned entities would gradually degrade in faculties and psychic powers, ultimately reaching a terminal state of decay beyond which the latest creature's mind and form are too blurred to produce the needed power to continue the line. Would that this were the case, that the blessed mechanics of biology preserve us from an endless swarm of foes.

II. The majority of psykers are born of the teeming masses of common-born humanity, menial laborers, serfs and servants. However, in some instances a psyker's latent power manifests too late in life to detect, occuring in an individual of higher birth, possessed of knowledge and skill in the arts of craft and engineering. These "fabricators" are capable of mentally manufacturing from warp-stuff wargear, arms and armor from diagrammed designs long memorized. It is these who prove most useful in the mass-production of weaponry of munitions, and who show themselves most dangerous when allowed to go unsanctioned-- in the grasp of rioters, rebel forces or Chaos gangs, they become a living factory able to provide dissenters and rabble with a nigh-limitless supply of armaments and equipment.

III. Countless mysterious and unexplained events occur within the Imperium each day, in varied scale from persons being mysteriously and spontaneously relocated and animals multiplying in the night, to vast apparitions in the heavens and hideous worldwide visions of the naked warp.
Through analysis conducted alongside the Adeptus Custodes, it is posited that many of these phenomena are the result of the restless meditations of the God-Emperor, whose sacred psychic emanations continue to permeate the material universe even as he lies in repose upon the Golden Throne, his divine powers filtered through a gauze of decaying memory and troubled dreams.
As the Emperor's health continues to decline, the day may come when his holy powers wreak terrible destruction upon his own people, directed only by the ailing fever-dreams of senility 10,000 years in the coming.

Scientia est potentia.
Laudate tellus.
Laudate Imperatore.