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"To gaze into the Warp is to look into the abyss. To understand insanity itself is to become insane. Worst of all is the knowledge that while you are gazing upon it, the Warp is looking back at you and laughing."

— Kartr Hollis, Nobilite Emissary
Navigator 2

A Navigator defending his vessel from enemy boarders.

A Navigator (Homo navigo) is a very particular form of Imperial-sanctioned Human mutant who possesses the Navigator Gene. This gives a Navigator the unique ability to navigate a faster-than-light starship accurately through Warpspace to emerge safely at another point in realspace. This ability makes Navigators absolutely essential to the Imperium's continued survival and to all Human interstellar transportation, communication and commerce.

All Navigators have a third eye, commonly called the "Warp eye," on their foreheads, which allows them to perceive the "psychic light" projected by the Emperor from Terra known as the Astronomican, enabling them to fully use their powers in guiding Human starships through the currents of the Warp.

Their ability to sense the tides of the Warp is considered a psychic power, although Navigators never possess any psychic abilities beyond the powers their Warp Eye affords them.

Navigators possess natural life spans of as much as four hundred Terran years. As they increase in age, their abilities increase in power, and their physical appearance changes: the white and iris of the third eye gradually disappear, leaving only a hardened black orb.

All Navigators belong to a large group of noble families based on Terra in the great district of that world-city known as the Navigator's Quarter. These dynasties are known collectively as the Great Families of the Navis Nobilite.

History

Origins

Navigator Chamber

A Navigator guiding an Imperial vessel through the Warp.

The Immaterium or "Warp" is a separate or parallel dimension of exotic psychic energy that co-exists with the material world of normal space-time and is both its reflection and permeates it invisibly. It is a roiling, howling maelstrom of force and energy, utterly unpredictable and not subject to the rational laws and linear flow of time in the way that physical reality is.

It is an unquiet, shifting realm subject to massive shocks and vortexes that disrupt its fabric and reverberate across its fathomless deeps in the shape of Warp storms and ill-predicted tides, and amongst it all dwell strange and terrible inhabitants. Long ago in the immemorial Age of Technology, Humanity first learned of this realm of unreality and how in part to manipulate it, and found that they could project vessels through its depths and have them emerge into realspace having crossed vast distances that even at light speed would have taken generations to accomplish.

Such travel was always dangerous, and only relatively short jumps (although still many light years in span) could be attempted with any margin of safety as the tides of the Warp move in complex and inconsistent patterns; voidships attempting long journeys often end up wildly off-course, lost permanently within its complex weave or simply shredded to splinters.

Furthermore, such vessels may suffer bizarre shifts, aging their passengers to dust or arriving standard years after -- or even years before -- they had originally planned. Warp storms and other disturbances can also block navigation completely, cutting worlds and sometimes entire regions of space off for solar days, weeks or centuries. During the Age of Strife, massive Warp storms shook the entire Immaterium as the Chaos God Slaanesh gestated, preventing any long range interstellar navigation for over five Terran millennia.

For Terran centuries uncounted, Navigators have led Mankind between the stars. Theirs is the unique power to gaze into the Immaterium and guide Humanity's vessels across the vastness of the galaxy. This power affords them a special place and status within the Imperium of Man, and over time, it has won them great prestige, political power and wealth.

The contemporary Navigator Houses of the Navis Nobilite have a scope of power and influence that is breathtaking to behold, reaching from the farthest world of the Human-settled galaxy to the vaulted chambers of the High Lords of Terra themselves.

It is into this position of power and privilege that a Navigator is born, gifted with unique and strange powers by the blood of their ancestors. Although they may be one among many within their brood, a Navigator knows that they stand head and shoulders above the common citizens of the Emperor's domain because of their unique and priceless ability.

They also know that with training, dedication, and influence, they may rise within the ranks of their house and perhaps even take the mantle of Novator -- lord and master of the family and all of its often extensive economic, military and political power.

The origins of the Navigators have long been lost to antiquity like so much of the Imperium's history, forgotten and buried beneath the weight of millennia of strife and decay. They are an ancient mutated or deliberately engineered psyker strain of Mankind "designed" to facilitate Warp travel. Clannish and insular, they have lived amongst normal Humans since the time of the Age of Technology and during the nightmarish centuries of the Age of Strife dwindled nearly to extinction. It is not known how this unique sub-species of Humans first came into existence, though they may have been the result of long-forbidden genetic tampering with the Human genome in a long-ago age.

Some Imperial scholars suspect the hand of the Emperor (paradoxically) if not in the Navigators' original creation, then perhaps in their recreation and certain increase in numbers during the Age of the Imperium -- as their houses gathered to Him and pledged Him fealty after His conquest of Terra during the Unification Wars.

The Emperor in person granted a charter to those Navigator groups who swore Him fealty, granting them His legal protection in exchange for their services as steersmen for the many starships of the nascent Imperium. Later, after the Treaty of Mars was signed between the Emperor and the ancient Mechanicum of Mars that brought the Tech-priests of the Machine God into the Imperium, one of its terms required the Emperor to hand over to the Mechanicum six houses of Navigators from Terra.

The Mechanicum had once possessed its own corps of thrall-Navigators, but these had all been lost to the Warp turbulence of the Age of Strife, effectively isolating the Red Planet from its own empire of Forge Worlds. The Navigators provided by the Emperor allowed the Tech-priests to once more venture out into the galaxy on their own terms. This was crucial to the Mechanicum's agreement to join with the Emperor and provide the technical expertise required to bring His Great Crusade to reunify the Human-settled galaxy to fruition.

Those extreme few amongst Imperial scholars who have access to the remaining archives of records dating back to the Unification Wars of the mid-30th Millennium believe that, not unlike the Thunder Warriors, the Navigators were only tolerated by the Emperor as a stop-gap measure until His Imperial Webway Project was completed. They were to be eliminated afterwards as undesirable and potentially dangerous mutants. But with the destruction of the Imperial Webway and the internment of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne after the Siege of Terra at the end of the Horus Heresy, the once-temporary solutions to Imperial problems of interstellar travel and communication offered by the Navigators and the psychic beacon known as the Astronomican became permanent.

In the 41st Millennium, the Navigator Houses are still considered to be under the direct protection of the Emperor Himself in exchange for their unique brand of service to Humanity.

Whatever the cause of its appearance, the "Navigator Gene," as it is now known, has endured across thousands of Terran years and without it, much like the astropaths' psychic gifts, the Imperium would not exist and certainly could not be maintained. This mutation has not endured through accident, but through careful cultivation. A Navigator is the result of focused selective breeding and rigorous genetic screening by their house at every stage of their development.

The unique psychic powers of the Navigators are passed down through each generation. The Navigator Gene, which is recessive, can only be preserved by intermarriage -- it is lost when a Navigator breeds with an ordinary Human who does not possess the gene. This factor has led to the development of the closely-related Navigator families. Even when they attain the rank of full Navigator and leave the protection of their house to take up the task to which their nature calls them, their family ties remain strong and bind them tight, reminding them where their true duty lies.

Navigators are genetically empowered to see into the Warp directly without risking instant insanity or death and hence guide a vessel as it attempts to plot a course in that otherworldly dimension. This is possible because psykers of all kinds, Navigators included, use the Empyrean to empower their gifts and to this role of guiding their fellows through the currents of the Warp the Navigator is uniquely adapted.

The Navigator Gene not only allows Navigators to peer into the Warp, but it also endows them with some innate resistance to its mind-shattering and corrupting influence. A Human starship without a Navigator to guide it cannot hope to travel far without quickly being lost in the maelstrom of the Immaterium and destroyed. Even so, a Navigator's ability only enables them to chart relatively short journeys through the Warp with any degree of certainty, particularly where the Immaterium is in tumult, but combined with the Emperor's creation of the great psychic beacon known as the Astronomican, the Navigator's range was greatly expanded and without them the Great Crusade and the expansion of the burgeoning Imperium of Man would not have been possible.

Whilst the Navigator serves the single purpose of guiding Human voidships through the Warp, and has evolved admirably for this task, they are also capable of far greater control over the strange power they wield and putting it to other uses. These strange and little understood psychic powers seem to result from a Navigator's unique affinity for the Warp, another gift of their altered genetic makeup.

Little is known about how a Navigator's Warp affinity works, or exactly how it is that many Navigators are able to not only look into the Warp but also enact their will on it to some extent, making subtle changes to its currents and tides.

An Unpleasant Necessity

Navigator

A Navigator of the Navis Nobilite during the Great Crusade.

One of the fundamental tensions that exists between the Navis Nobilite and the rest of the Imperium is the fact that Navigators are obviously mutants in an Imperial culture that does not often suffer the mutant to live save as a brutally oppressed underclass. Many dark legends and fables of excess, witchery, and murderous power have grown up about them, and not all without cause.

As a result, Navigators are often shunned and feared, and the popular dread at meeting the gaze of their three-fold eyes means that many prefer to have dealings with them only when they absolutely must. The maintenance of the valuable, recessive Navigator Gene through selective breeding has also meant that over thousands of standard years many Navigator families have acquired malformations, strange afflictions, or mental abnormalities.

While some attribute these maladies to inbreeding and the close-knit relations between the Navigator families, it's more likely that the Navigator Gene itself causes genetic instability and mutation as a Navigator grows in power and age. As a Navigator ages and suffers from increasing exposure to the Immaterium, the likelihood of suffering from mutations also grows exponentially.

To offset the fickle nature of the Navigator Gene, many Navigator Houses rigorously screen the genetic material of their members and use gene-scryers to determine the best match between young Navigators when marriages are arranged. In addition to the gene-scryers, the use of divination tools like the Emperor's Tarot are employed to ensure no psychic taint threatens to destabilize the house's gene pool.

The most ancient and traditional houses often use their considerable resources to maintain strict control of their bloodlines through carefully arranged unions, which has made them more resilient to the symptomatic genetic instability that plagues lesser houses.

Others, however, have either neglected such strict control or have tampered with the gene pool of their bloodlines to produce more powerful and skilled progeny. Inevitably, this has led to considerable instability in some of the dynasties.

In some Navigator families, the genetic corruption of the line has become so severe that only a few members of the clan can move amongst the rest of the Imperium. The remainder remain confined to the family's great estates or in sealed tabernacles aboard ship, their extreme deformities hidden from sight.

These differences have often led to conflict in the past, and localised factions of the Ecclesiarchy have, on a number of zealous occasions, burned Navigator holdings and executed Navigators as Heretics. Such incidents are often brought violently to heel by the Ecclesiarchy itself, before the wrath of the High Lords of Terra is visited upon the culprits and any above them in rank that allowed such action to come to pass.

After all, no one can afford to offend those who hold the Imperium's only key to voyaging between the stars. The Inquisition is one of the few bodies that can truly move with impunity where the Navigators are concerned, and its eye is ever kept on the Navigator clans. Yet, even the Inquisition must be circumspect and certain in this task. However, in extreme cases, the Holy Ordos have destroyed entire houses and carried their patriarchs and matriarchs off in the Black Ships for final sanction when necessary.

Appearance

"They hide a darkness in their souls far more repulsive than any warping of flesh or disfigurement of limb. Would that they weren't quite so useful then we could burn the lot of them."

— Inquisitor Saffena Sengir, Ordo Hereticus
Navigator Warp Eye

A Navigator utilising his third eye to give a baleful stare to his enemies.

As sure as a star will dwindle and die, a Navigator will be warped by their genetic heritage over time. "The sins of blood," as the old Imperial proverb goes, "will out." As stable a mutation as the Navigator Gene is, it still gives rise to countless other deformities of body and soul within its host.

This, combined with long-term exposure to the energies of the Warp, almost always ensures that Navigators will be afflicted with some kind of physical aberration. Simply being born into a Navigator family means that an individual will be mutated in some way. A Navigator's resistance or susceptibility to mutation is often purely a function of the genetic stability and psychic purity of their gene-stock.

Ultimately, it must be remembered that all Navigators are a mutant sub-species of Humanity. Other than the existence of the third eye in the middle of their forehead, most Navigators are virtually indistinguishable from normal Humans; others possess such extreme physical deviations that their appearance is utterly alien.

Mutation or deformity is common among Navigators; although the deviations exhibited tend to be limited to specific traits common among Navigators. Some bloodlines sustain a set of hereditary traits that accompany their strain of the Navigator Gene, while others are subject to random mutations from birth.

Navigators tend to be tall and spindly, sometimes with pale and almost translucent skin. Other common mutant traits include scaly skin, extremely large eyes which may lack the iris, and ill-defined facial features. The hands and feet of a Navigator could be ridiculously large, and are often webbed. It is very common for Navigators to be completely hairless, either from birth or soon after adolescence when the third eye first opens.

Although many mutations can be disfiguring or debilitating, like a Navigator's teeth turning into sharp needles or his body becoming uncomfortably large and bulbous, others are beneficial. Fortunate Navigators may possess inhuman strength or agility, indomitable willpower, deadly claws for fingers, completely black eyes that can see in darkness, or incredible body regeneration.

It's impossible to predict what boons or burdens the Navigator Gene will bestow, although most Navigators are bound to accumulate at least several over their long lifespans.

Except in the most extreme cases, a Navigator would never possess all of these mutant traits at the same time. Those born with such extreme mutations might be hidden away or even killed at birth by their house to prevent their bloodlines from being contaminated by a level of mutation that would surely draw the attention of the Ordo Hereticus -- or even worse, the interest of their rival Navigator Houses.

Warp Eye

"Gaze long into the Warp and the Warp will gaze back into you."

— Ancient Navis Nobilite Proverb
Female Navigator

A female Navigator unleashing the powers of her third-eye.

Common to all Navigators is the "Warp eye" or "third eye." It almost always manifests as a literal mutation they bear upon their foreheads, although in some cases trepanning and a cybernetic shutter implant made during adolescence will be needed to affect the full release of their power.

This third eye is what gives a Navigator their power to gaze into the Warp and guide starships through its turbulent currents and storms -- more than a mere additional sensory appendage, the third eye is the source of a Navigator's power and their link to the Immaterium.

A Navigator's third eye often resembles a normal Human eye at birth, but as the Navigator grows in power and age and the eye is exposed to the horrors of the Empyrean, it changes. Gradually the eye's sclera and iris darken and the organ hardens until it becomes a solid, black sphere.

In some extreme cases the eyelids may also shrink or disappear entirely, leaving a single black orb upon the forehead. The eye retains its connection to the Warp even when extracted from the body and while it will not kill anyone gazing into it, it can still erode their sanity and send them into a psychotic frenzy or otherwise erode their mental stability.

Through their third eye Navigators can see directly into the Warp, and when their power is honed, pierce material barriers and disguises, and even delve into the souls of mortals. They can also use this third eye to read the currents of the Warp -- its ebb and flow -- and through this understanding subtly alter it, causing ripples that can be felt within the Materium of realspace itself.

In addition to these lesser powers, the gaze of a Navigator's Warp eye when fully opened can kill, its baleful light sheering the very souls from those that look upon it, extinguishing them forever in a moment of blazing madness and agony.

The Warp eye is also the Navigators' most obvious mutation but often not their only one. It marks them out as a mutant and divergent from the greater masses of Humanity, and whilst their position, wealth and bearing serve to protect them from persecution (at least most of the time), Navigators are still feared and distrusted by many others for their gifts, and not without cause.

For this reason, Navigators tend to cloister themselves away from other people, seek the protection of bodyguards, and use hoods and cowls to hide their Warp eye when in public.

The Navigators' Warp eye has other powers too, although these are employed far more rarely and are the subject of some mystique. These powers develop with the Navigator's experience of the Warp, so that they are most often developed by the potent Navigators known as the "Heirs Apparent."

It is said that the third eye of a Navigator has prophetic powers and that it can literally see into the future. Navigators are very reluctant to talk about their powers, and it may well be that only the Paternova, the political leader of the Navis Nobilite, understands the full potential of a Navigator's psychic abilities.

Not least of the Warp eye's powers is its singular ability to deal death; any normal person meeting the Warp eye's gaze can be killed in an agonising fashion by sudden mental exposure to the Warp. Due to this danger, Navigators generally keep their third eye covered with a bandanna or similar barrier except when they are taking a starship through the Warp, causing many people to doubt that the third eye even exists.

Of course, the unique abilities of the Navigators have their limits. Outside the range of the guiding light of the Astronomican projected by the Emperor's presence in the Warp and powered by the thousands of psykers sacrificed to Him every solar day, the Navigators are far more limited in their ability to guide a starship through the Warp.

During the Macharian Crusade beyond the bounds of the Astronomican, that grand Imperial conquest of the outer reaches of the galaxy almost ground to a halt as the sight of the Navigators failed, for they could sense only darkness around them.

There are places in the galaxy that Navigators avoid at almost any cost. Navigators will shun the Eye of Terror and thousands of light years of space around it rather than risk a minor deviation in course which might take them close to or across its boundaries.

Most Navigators have personal experience of close encounters with Chaos near the Eye of Terror, and many more can recall the names of others who travelled too close to the Eye in a foolish attempt to cut solar days from their journey time only to vanish forever.

Navigator Powers

Navigator's powers

A Navigator summons forth the powers of his third eye.

Without the Navigator Gene and those who bear it, there simply would not be an Imperium of Man. At best, Humanity's control of the stars would be limited to those planets that could entirely support themselves and a few scattered petty stellar empires. Contact with other worlds would be scant to non-existent, for travel between all but the very closest of star systems would be too ponderous, and too dangerous, to be practicable.

Without a Navigator, a vessel is limited to Warp jumps of only a few light years at a time, and exact calibration must be undertaken by massive banks of cogitators as even the smallest of errors will have fatal consequences for the vessel and every soul aboard.

Without a Navigator, to cross even the smallest of interstellar gulfs without the most detailed and ancient charts of the Warp routes in between is considered a desperate or foolhardy act by most voidfarers and suicidal by those who truly understand what horrors lurk beyond the material universe.

The Navigator is the scion of one of the great Navigator clans. These bloodlines are said by some to be older than the Imperium itself and by others to be a direct creation of the God-Emperor when He walked in mortal form. Over the millennia, they have garnered great political and economic power and influence thanks to the Imperium's reliance on them, but at the same time are caged by convention and tradition.

A Navigator wants for nothing, yet in reality is often a slave of their station. Thanks to their Warp eye, they are able to pierce the veil between the Materium and the Immaterium, between reality and the nightmarish realms beyond. Able to perceive the Warp's shifting contours and impossible psychic currents, they can guide a vessel by dint of their skill and the immeasurable aid of the light of the Astronomican, the Emperor-forged and soul-burning psychic beacon that shines across the galaxy from ancient Terra.

The life of a Navigator is one of duty and service to their house, yet many would have it no other way, for they are never truly more alive than when ensconced in their navigation sanctum, gazing into the insane, swirling depths of the Immaterium, pitting their will and their wits against the ravening storm of energy and thought that lurks behind all things others call real.

Each Navigator perceives the Warp in an entirely subjective manner as a reflection of their own unique nature, for even such as they may not stare into the abyss and face its true form without suffering the utter destruction of mind and soul. Some perceive the psychic dimension in terms of a journey through a storm-wracked forest, knowing that to stray from the path is to surrender to the horrors that lurk within.

For others, the Warp appears as a raging sea, or a desert engulfed in a sandstorm, or a shifting city of night, or a million other potential forms. As Navigators gain in experience and power, the abstraction fades, and they are capable of observing the true nature of the Warp through a polarized state -- their third eye filtering the horror.

But even for those so designed on a genetic level to endure the Warp's horrors, there is still a price to pay. Navigators who have served the longest may become wracked with bodily failure, incipient madness, and possible mutation, and ultimately they become virtual prisoners reliant on the life-sustaining machinery of their sanctums.

Navigators also possess a number of special psychic powers which represent their respective lineage. The powers of the Navis Nobilite are little understood by any but the most esoteric of scholars, and the Navigators themselves, of course.

A Navigator is a living window into the Warp, a fact mercifully mitigated for their own soul's and sanity's sake by the effects of the Navigator Gene that allows them to perceive the Warp's mind-blasting truth in a unique way that allows their Human mind to deal with it.

Unlike the use of other psychic powers, Navigators do not need to summon the energies of the Warp or use arcane psychic foci to activate their powers. Rather, their powers are a result of their innate connection to the Warp and the legacy of their genes.

Rumours tell that Navigators can curse a man with a glance or hold back the march of time with but a thought, though this is surely conjecture. Most would consider them only marginally better than outright mutants, although necessary all the same for their ability to steer a vessel safely through the Warp.

The following list presents an assortment of some of the most common Navigator powers wielded by these sanctioned mutants in the Imperium. These are certainly not all of the powers that might be available to a given Navigator, as the Imperium is a vast and strange place.

  • Aether Doldrums - A skilled Navigator can use this power to mark a point of calm in even the most tumultuous Warp storm. On a smaller scale, they can also use this ability to find a stillness in the Immaterium flowing around them that dampens psychic powers and pushes Daemons back towards the edge of the dark pit from whence they came. Many Navigator Houses teach their progeny how to seek this calm in the Warp, as it may be the only thing that stops the Navigator from being torn to shreds and their soul devoured by Daemons in the case of a failure in their vessel's protective Gellar Field.
  • Baleful Watcher - The power sometimes called "Baleful Watcher" or "Piercing Gaze" is a technique taught to Navigators to help them to penetrate the densest of Warp storms and find a safe path. However, when turned on an individual, this power allows the Navigator to look past the facade of material reality, and thus exploit the knowledge they gain from staring so deeply into their foe's soul.
  • A Cloud in the Warp - By understanding and perceiving the "currents" of the Warp, the Navigator can hide their presence from those who would use the Immaterium to detect them. Whilst it does not in any way mask their presence in the material universe, it can ably hide them from detection by other psykers and confuse creatures whose essence and existence are linked to the Warp, such as Daemons and other Warp entities. As the Navigator grows in power, they will become harder to detect, as well as being able to mask others' Warp signature if they stand nearby.
  • Corrupting the Flesh - A vile power that is generally only used by Shrouded or Renegade Houses. Navigators can use this power to channel the corrupting power of the Warp and bathe their targets with its malign power. This power not only inflicts excruciating pain, but it also can lead to spontaneous mutation or even death. However, the power is not without cost, as Navigators who make use of this power on a regular basis risk losing their grasp on reality.
  • Disrupting the Empyrean - Navigators possess an almost innate sense of the Warp. Through little-understood methods of psychic manipulation, the Navigator is able to churn up the local area of Warpspace, in essence, creating something akin to a miniature Warp storm in local realspace. This has an effect on voidships attempting to exit and enter the Warp. Ships wishing to enter the Warp will need to travel out of the area of disturbance or risk damage. Those voidships wishing to exit the Warp must do the same.
  • Divination - Some senior Navigators can sometimes learn to use and interpret the portents from the Emperor's Tarot. This form of precognition is much more vague and difficult to interpret than attempting to divine the future by gazing into the Warp directly, but remains far safer.
  • Ebb and Flow - Time can flow in a strange manner when travelling through the Immaterium, and over the years many Navigators have learned to move with the temporal unpredictability of the Immaterium that underlies reality. By unleashing a vision that strips away the presumptuous facade of linear time before an attacker's eyes, the Navigator can slow an enemy to a crawl. Even if the power's effect is extraordinarily subtle, many have found it to be just enough to stay an assassin's blade by a few precious moments or prevent a foe escaping the judgement of the Navis Nobilite.
  • Evil Eye - On many worlds, three-eyed mutants who can peer into your soul are thought of as bogey-men to scare children into obedience and people whisper that they are a tainted breed that can curse good, Emperor-fearing citizens with but a glance. These legends likely do not truly refer to Navigators, but they do echo with the truth of the matter, as techniques exist that can cause a person to attract the malign spirits of the Warp, drawing hungry things to them that slowly siphon away at their very mind and soul. The use of this power is reserved for the Navigator Houses' most loathed enemies, and these unfortunates soon find that their luck fails them and their allies treat them with disdain.
  • Eye of Oblivion - The Navigator snaps open their Warp eye and traces the vital lines that bind a creature's animating force in the Warp to its mortal shell. By psychically striking these places with the utmost precision, the Navigator can inflict harm on their target's very essence, and thus defeat foes that might otherwise seem inviolable.
  • Foreshadowing - By using his third Warp eye to filter small secrets from the near future, the Navigator can choose to make slight adjustments to their actions to avoid harm and manipulate the course of events. Only if the Navigator tries to dig too deep into the near future for secrets does this power become so unpredictable that the Navigator may become a victim of the Warp's lies.
  • Gaze into the Abyss - This power allows a Navigator to see a creature's or object's reflection in the Warp and learn things hidden from the real universe. This power is most useful in unmasking both psykers and Daemons, but has other applications, such as reading residual psychic taint on objects and tracking powerful psychic entities.
  • Held in my Gaze - The unflinching third eye of a Navigator locks a creature in place with a gaze that pierces flesh and bone to see the immaterial essence of all things. Most commonly employed against psykers, this ability can be used to render them effectively powerless and prevent them from calling upon their abilities. It is also undeniably effective against creatures with a strong connection to the Warp, such as Daemons, upon which it can have spectacular and devastating consequences.
  • Immolate the Soul - Navigators have the ability to tap into the Warp and bend it to their will through their Warp eye. By carefully channelling the power of the raw Immaterium, a Navigator can cause flesh to blister and spontaneously combust. In fact, it seems that the more corrupt a person is the quicker and more savage the burning process. It is powers such as this that can cause the uneducated to rightly fear the Navigators and give cause to hunt them down as witches and sorcerers. However, the more pious members of the Navis Nobilite feel that this power has been bestowed upon them by the God-Emperor Himself so that they may prosecute His enemies with cleansing flame, and it is rumoured that these pious members of the Navigator Houses use this power to hunt down errant members of the Navis Nobilite.
  • Inward View - There are many myths about the Navigators' "third eye," its origins supposedly harking from the ancient past of Old Earth itself. The Navis Nobilite knows that such stories are not wholly mythical, though, and that it is entirely possible to discover hidden knowledge and a degree of inner calm using the Navigators' own unique brand of introspective meditation. Many of the older, more cloistered members of the Navigator dynasties spend prolonged periods in their Reclusiam Chapels, meditating upon philosophical issues and esoteric lore.
  • Mind Shielding - By using a rare, ancient relic known as a Cerebrum Cowl, Navigators can tap into their innate mental resistance to the Immaterium and use it to shield others from psychic mental influences. While this archeotech is normally used to amplify the powers of the Navigator mutants for Warp navigation, it can also be used to disrupt and protect from psychic-based mental attacks and traps and other such insidious threats.
  • Obliterating the Immaterial Wake - Using arcane knowledge of Warp physics and even special techno-arcane devices (such as a ship's Warp Vanes), the Navigator can influence tides in the Warp and attempt to obliterate any trail left from his voidship's passing through the Immaterium and even realspace, making it difficult, if not impossible, to track. Using this ability is distracting and physically taxing, however, as the Navigator risks unconsciousness and physical damage.
  • Pass Unscathed - Being so closely linked with the Warp, it is no surprise that Navigators have developed techniques to avoid its corrupting influence on both themselves and those around them. With a great deal of effort, the Navigator can slow the insidious effects of the Warp for a short period of time, relying on their mental fortitude to touch the poison of Chaos without being corrupted by it.
  • Refresh and Revitalize - It takes stamina and fortitude to be able to sit at the Navigator's station day after solar day, making sure a voidship stays on course. However, Navigators can tap into the power of their genetic heritage and offset fatigue and exhaustion, allowing for a longer vigil than normal. While this isn't the same as the Adeptus Astartes' Catalepsean Node (the organ that allows Space Marines to keep half of their brain awake while they sleep so that they can be roused swiftly if necessary), it is relatively close in function and does not impart debilitating side effects on the Navigators. However, this power only postpones the fatigue; it does not erase it. Once the Navigators have the means, they must sleep or else they risk falling into a coma that can last for solar days.
  • Scourge of the Red Tide - Through their understanding of the Empyrean, the Navigator calls upon the full fury of the Warp and brings forth a scouring tide of Warp energy that jets forth from their fully-opened third eye. Flesh is seared to the bone, and vital fluids boil away as the victim's soul is consumed in the psychic attack. However, using this power can jeopardize the users as well; consequently, it is generally only used as a last resort as the power of the Warp comes flooding into realspace, consuming all in its path.
  • Seek the Path - The Navigator uses their third eye to peer through the Immaterium around them, piercing the churning clouds of the Warp to find the causeways of least resistance to their target and assessing the paths of its reaction before it can even move to defend itself. In this way, the Navigator guides their own attacks to their destination while circumventing their foe's desperate attempts at defence.
  • Stacking the Deck - Navigators, by their training, are taught the basics of starship naval combat. Navigators are also able to perceive flickering shadows of possible future events. By peering into the streams of time and space and studying the currents and eddies of the Warp, the Navigator can attempt to position their vessel for a more optimum firing solution, angle it in such a way that the ship's armour is able to better deflect an incoming attack, or even point the ship in the best direction for a tactical retreat.
  • Stripping the Husk - With this power, the Navigators are able to quickly snap open and close their Warp eye, unleashing a blast of energy that immediately shears flesh from bone. In a gruesome display, Navigators who utilize this power can reduce an opponent to a pile of steaming bones and quivering meat in a matter of moments.
  • Stupefy the Soul - Some Navigators are able to moderately control the Warp energies that can spew forth from their Warp eye. While most can kill with a look, other Navigators can stun their opponents. By only partially opening their third eye, the Navigator can shock the souls of living creatures. Sometimes this merely stuns the opponent, but there are other times when the Navigator may wish to "push" a bit further into a foe's mind causing them to suffer fear and shock as the Warp assails both minds and spirit. This has the added results of forcing the opponent into fleeing or suffering a complete mental melt-down as their grip on reality shatters from the power of the Warp.
  • The Course Untravelled - Time is not an arrow that flies straight and true, but rather, a tangled web of moments and possibilities. The Course Untravelled discipline allows a Navigator to negotiate this web, stepping fractionally from one moment to another, and in the process, altering their position in the physical world. The use of such a power is extremely dangerous, however, as the Navigator is not actually physically travelling in place as if they were teleporting through the Warp, but rather choosing an alternate future that they wish to inhabit. The Navigator risks both injury and madness in trying to step outside the flow of time in this way.
  • The Lidless Stare - If a Navigator opens their third Warp eye fully, anyone gazing into its depths will witness the power and mind-breaking unreality of the Warp. In an instant, they witness the chaos boiling beneath the skin of existence and for many, it is the last thing they ever see.
  • The Warp Unbound - By gazing directly into the mind of a psyker, the Navigator is able to pierce the barrier between the psyker and the Warp, opening a door to the Empyrean and unleashing a storm of chaos that devastates his victim from within. This terrible power was pioneered by the dreaded Elutrian Confederacy, who harbor hatred for all psykers and consider them inferior to Navigators.
  • Tides of Time and Space - By examining the flow of the Warp around them, the Navigator can anticipate near future actions and thus move outside the normal flow of causality by choosing strands of reality and slipping between them. Whilst this power can be of great benefit to the Navigator, it is also very dangerous, and should they lose control, the results can be disastrous for both them and anyone near to them in local space-time.
  • Tracks in the Stars - When an FTL-capable starship travels through either realspace or the Warp it leaves a faint trail, the lingering shadow of its Warp-Drive's emanations. Using their third eye, the Navigator can follow this trail across the stars.
  • Visions of Hell - While many Navigators simply focus on wreaking as much destruction as possible by revealing the Warp to their foes with powers like Lidless Stare, some Navigators prefer to act with more subtlety and train themselves to cast projections of the true face of that hellish dimension, causing even the most stout-hearted of warriors to collapse to their knees and weep as their sanity unravels.
  • Void Watcher - Using this power and gazing into the void whilst aboard a starship, the Navigator can learn things about space in the immediate vicinity of their vessel. This can reveal hidden dangers such as mines, void creatures, and concealed ships, as well as more mundane perils like asteroids and debris. With skill and practice, a Navigator's void sense can become amazingly precise and reach out across millions of kilometres of space.
  • Warp Vigil - Navigators must be ever watchful for danger when guiding a vessel through the Warp, and be capable of reacting at a moment's notice to the caprices of the shifting Realm of Chaos. On the battlefield, a Navigator can turn this power to his advantage, reacting to strikes before they arrive or even calling allies to move out of harm's way moments before an enemy can land a telling blow.

Navigator's Sanctum

On every Imperial Warp-capable starship, the sanctum of the Navigators was a domain unto itself. Typically designed to resemble a spheroid between two to ten decks in diameter, the enclosed kingdom of the Navis Nobilite was built into the framework of Human-made voidships while they were still in their stardocks.

Often, the great orbs were delivered by the representatives of whichever noble Navigator House was oath-sworn to guide the vessel, wholly finished, ready for interface with the new ship and untouched by the hands of common shipwrights.

Indeed, there were stories of some great vessels that had sailed the void for hundreds of Terran years, and never once had their Navigators ventured outside their sanctum. Power, communication and utility conduits would feed the needs of those within, and in return they would do as they were commanded.

With their third eye open, the Navigators would guide the way from star to star. Without them and their preternatural psychic gifts, any semblance of a galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man would be an impossibility.

Navis Nobilite

Navigator attendees

A Navigator is attended upon whilst guiding an Imperial vessel through the myriad routes of the Immaterium.

Navigators are both a mutant Human sub-species as well as a collectively powerful political organisation of the Imperium known as the Navis Nobilite, a guild of Imperial nobles that represents all of the Navigator bloodlines or houses of the Imperium.

The members of the Navis Nobilite are exempt from many Imperial laws, and even the Inquisition tends to be careful in the handling of individual Navigators due to the political power of the Navis Nobilite.

However, Navigators guilty of treason, heresy or something equally serious are hunted down without mercy. Such affairs are many times dealt with internally by the Navis Nobilite itself before the Inquisition has any reason to act and potentially blacken the name of Navigators as a whole amongst an Imperial population already superstitious and distrustful of them.

Each Navigator family is very close and often very large, and different families are usually allied by marriage, while others are political and economic rivals. Although individual Navigators are not directly employed by the Imperium, every Warp-capable voidcraft in the Imperium has at least one Navigator who acts as the Warp pilot. Navigator dynasties may also have several family branches within their clan, with one branch ruling and the others providing their invaluable Warp navigation services.

Navigators are organised into families known as "houses" (sometimes "clans"), through which both the Warp eye mutation and their esoteric but priceless knowledge of Warp navigation has been passed down through the generations.

Because of their monopolies on FTL flight, ancient lineages, and accorded Imperial rights, Navigator families are usually both immensely wealthy and influential, their power extending to all corners of the Imperium. In particular, their influence on matters of interstellar trade is beyond that of any other group in the Human-controlled galaxy.

Lesser Navigator families owe fealty to larger and more influential houses, who in turn have their own alliances. These alliances in turn form trading cartels, which compete for lucrative contracts with other such cartels. The Merchant Fleets of the Imperium must constantly deal with these powerful cartels for the services of their Navigators -- it is a strained relationship, but one which the Imperium constantly strives to keep the upper hand in.

Perhaps most importantly, the Navis Nobilite have an Emperor-given right to conduct their own affairs as they see fit and thus are effectively outside of the laws and authority of the Imperium in most cases. This freedom is only void in particular circumstances of overt rebellion or treachery, and even then great care is taken by the Adeptus Terra in confronting and punishing such crimes.

Illumination

A mob of Orks fall blind before the arcane gaze of the female Navigator.

A Navigator clan's private retainers, soldiers and bodyguards can number in the thousands. The houses largely police their own, binding themselves together within a shared culture and through lines of alliance, fealty, and marriage. However, wary of the balance of power, the high master of the Navis Nobilite, the Paternova, and his agents are often merciless when one clan or family should, by its treachery or excess, endanger the others.

Whilst ostensibly the role of the Paternova, and by extension the Novators who lead the individual houses, is to manage the power of the houses and protect their interests from the greed of the Administratum or the ignorance of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition, they do in fact have a far more important role to play.

This role is in the cultivation and protection of the Navigator Gene. Vital to the survival of the houses is the continuance of the birthing and training of skilled and potent Navigators. However, the competition between the families has also led to each tampering with and altering the evolution of some of its children, in the hopes of creating more powerful and able Navigators with which to defeat their rivals and win more lucrative and farther-reaching contracts.

Over many centuries, these deliberate alterations of the Navigator Gene has created many different Navigator lineages, giving rise to some strains of bloodlines possessing the Navigator Gene in which certain powers, abilities, and mutations are more prevalent.

Great Houses

Almost nothing is known of the earliest history of the Navigator Houses, though some amongst the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition suspect that the ancient stasis vaults beneath the mansions of the Navigator's Quarter on Terra must contain records and artefacts rivalling those of the Inquisition in age and significance.

Whatever secret histories of Mankind's darkest ages are hidden beneath those marble palaces are likely to remain obscured, for the Novators of the Great Houses are beholden to no other authority and even the most determined and relentless of Inquisitors would find it all but impossible to breach their closed society and force them to acknowledge any external law.

Few organisations within the Imperium hold as much power as the Great Navigator Houses of the Navis Nobilite. Their position of control over nearly all Imperial shipping and interstellar commerce places them in a rare position of power, one that sits almost beyond the reach of both the Administratum and even the Inquisition itself. It is a position that the Great Houses have mercilessly exploited down through the millennia and used to gather vast wealth and influence.

Though across the long span of years this power has risen and fallen, it has endured longer than almost all other Imperial edifices. The only aspect of the Great Houses that matches their political endurance is their constant struggle with each other. In their internecine struggles for position and favour, the houses use all manner of means to outdo their rivals, sometimes even engaging in open warfare against one another. Only the strict control of the house Novators and the carefully maintained codes of behaviour and tradition of the Navigators keep such conflicts from spiralling out of control.

Whatever the details of their roots, the Navigator Houses appear to have enjoyed a special status since time immemorial. They must have been an established and powerful body at the beginning of the Emperor's Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, which would have been impossible without their services. Were it not for the Navigators that guided each expeditionary fleet, the Great Crusade would have taken millennia to prosecute, not the scant two Terran centuries it actually took before the calamitous events of the Horus Heresy plunged the nascent Imperium into a galaxy-burning civil war.

It must be presumed that a number of houses fell to the insidious lies of the Warmaster Horus, for it would not have been possible for Horus to deploy his fleets with the speed and cunning he did were this not the case.

Whatever the truth, the Navigator Houses appear to have emerged from the Heresy with their power and reputation largely intact -- confirmation, were it needed, of their critical role in the very existence of the galaxy-spanning interstellar empire that is the Imperium.

Navigator Lineage

In the Imperium, there are thousands of Navigator Houses, each with a history that can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of Terran years, but still the number of Navigators is a literal drop in the ocean compared to the numberless masses of Humanity.

All these houses are not the same either in strength or makeup, and over the millennia many have diverged from the first great families that are said to have exhibited the Navigator Gene at the time of the Great Crusade. Some have dwindled and died off over the years, some few turned outlaw, whilst many others have prospered in divergent ways of life creating branches and offshoots of the Great Houses across the Imperium.

Whilst it would be impossible to catalogue and critique each of the Navigator families, many can be grouped into broad categories, representing their unique strain of the Navigator Gene as well as their area of influence and way of life.

The four groups which are prevalent throughout the galaxy are known variously as the Magisterial Houses, the Nomadic Houses, the Renegade Houses, and the Shrouded Houses.

  • Magisterial Houses - A Magisterial House is a Navigator dynasty most closely related to one of the original Navigator families dating back to the time of the Unification Wars. These houses are amongst the wealthiest and most traditional of the Navis Nobilite and will possess great holdings within the Navigator's Quarter on Terra. Their influence reaches to the very edges of the light of the Astronomican. The Magisterial Houses maintain traditions, customs and practices that have served them for millennia. They are masters of the traditional Navigator crafts and have more control over the malign mutations that afflict those with the Navigator Gene. To be part of a Magisterial House is to know without question the purity of one's blood and the ancient power and nobility of one's family. Due to the long-established maintenance of their bloodlines, the Navigators of the Magisterial Houses are less susceptible to the symptomatic mutations which often affect Navigators because of their exposure to the power of the Empyrean.
  • Nomadic Houses - A Nomadic Navigator House has forsaken ties of sector and star system, relinquishing their terrestrial holding within the Navigator's Quarter on Terra or other Imperial worlds. Instead, over the centuries, these Navigator Houses have taken wholly to the stars to become wanderers and gypsies, their bloodlines preserved on vast fleets of starships constantly on the move. Due to their void-based lifestyle the members of the Nomadic Houses are perhaps the most skilled of Navigators in the Imperium due to their long exposure to both the void and the Immaterium and the inherent necessities of astronavigation. This gives them an understanding of space and the Warp second to none, but like all of the Voidborn, these Navigators may have a great deal of difficulty relating to the Imperium's varied planetary cultures.
  • Shrouded Houses - A Shrouded House has suffered great losses or shame within the more established dominions of the Imperium. They have opted to move their powerbase completely to the edge of known space, where they cling to the barest strands of their former status and power. Though they may be rich in skill, knowledge or lore, something in the past of Shrouded Houses has blighted them and reduced them to a state so far from their once-exalted position that they are sometimes cruelly called "beggar houses" by other, more fortunate (and far less polite) counterparts. A Navigator who is a member of a Shrouded House is part of a fallen bloodline that is slowly rising again to stand defiant against those that once cast them down -- or at least, so they are told by their elders. A Shrouded House's loss in standing has often forced it to flee to the margins of the Imperium and to develop a cunning and opportunistic mindset alongside a skill that is often lacked by more comfortably indolent houses. This tends to make these Navigators far more resourceful than their more well-established kin, while at the same time their Warp eye often becomes more perceptive.
  • Renegade Houses - A Renegade House represents a Great House that has completely forsaken the traditions and ancient practices of the Navigator families in their quest for power, or it may have been turned on by the rest of the Navis Nobilite, harrowed, and driven into exile. Dabbling heavily in the alteration of the genes of their children in order to improve their lot, the tampering of Renegade Houses often leads to the development of hideous mutations and the existence of unconscionable monsters in their lineage, which in turn leads to rejection by the Paternova and a hunt to extinction by the Inquisition. In some cases, however, a Renegade House's actions have birthed new strains of the Navigator Gene and given rise to families with unique abilities and potent powers. Navigators that are a part of a Renegade House have cast aside the sacred Navigator traditions as small-minded and restrictive and instead have embraced the glory and limitless potential of their ancestry -- or so the houses believe, to comfort themselves. It is whispered that such regions as the Koronus Expanse is home to several Renegade Houses like the secretive Gazmati and the infamous Nostromo.

Resources of the Navis Nobilite

Navis Nobilite Noble

A Navis Nobilite noble.

Due to their sheer importance to the Imperium's continued well-being, the Navigator Houses have attained a vast degree of wealth and influence. The Navis Nobilite can trace its formal origins back to ages long past, and since that time the Navigator Houses have amassed unimaginable riches.

Every starship that plies the Warp routes of the Imperium and beyond has at least one, and most likely an entire cabal of Navigators to guide it safely through the Immaterium. The Navis Nobilite uses the wealth that it accrues from this critical task to amass still more. None except perhaps the Paternova -- the most senior Patriarch or Matriarch of all the Great Houses -- can have any true notion of just how much wealth the Navis Nobilite wields, and its influence and alliances stretch far beyond pure material riches.

Certainly, the Navigators appear to have interests in sundry organisations the length and breadth of the Imperium; some have close ties with Rogue Trader dynasties, the Adeptus Mechanicus, and even the vaunted Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.

The Navigator Houses act as backers and investors in some of the most ambitious Imperial undertakings, especially those the most powerful of Rogue Trader expeditions. Thus, as Rogue Traders employ Navigators to forge new Warp routes, the Navis Nobilite profits doubly, for even while establishing those routes, they can improve their charts, to their own benefit and that of the Imperium.

Despite the staggering wealth that the Navigator Houses enjoy, they do not generally maintain the sort of visible power structures that most other Imperial institutions rely upon. Unlike the Rogue Traders and Chartist Captains, they do not operate fleets of starships bearing their livery and, unlike the great Imperial merchant combines, they do not maintain their own trading centres or industrial installations. Instead, they own part interests in all manner of such endavours and sometimes the hand of the Navis Nobilite is very well hidden indeed.

The Navigators do not generally maintain large standing armies, although many Navigator Houses employ a cadre of highly-trained, well-equipped, and sometimes genetically-enhanced household troops utterly loyal to their bloodline. When circumstances dictate, the Navigator Houses draw on their vast wealth to employ the very best mercenary forces available and, with sufficient warning of impending war, can field composite armies rivalling an orbiting Imperial defence force in size and resources.

What the Navigator Houses do maintain, however, are the most splendid palaces, exquisite estates, and gorgeous pleasure gardens it is possible to imagine. Most are located far from the eyes of the average man and woman of the Imperium, though they often maintain more utilitarian, if still richly appointed, chancelleries in most large starports and planetary capital cities.

From the outside, even the most modest Navis Nobilite palace is likely to be a rearing edifice dressed with marble and decorated by the most accomplished sculptors of the age. Beyond the walls, delicate towers pierce the sky while glittering domes hint at the untold riches within. What the casual observer might not note is the banks of unseen defences, from automated weapons turrets to the most impregnable forms of Void Shielding.

Within, every visible surface is gilded with precious metal leaf or hung with sumptuous fabrics. The domes house vast libraries or ancient texts, sumptuous ballrooms, serene pleasure gardens, and luxurious harems. Lumens crafted from the rarest of cut jewels light dining halls that can accommodate thousands of guests, while serried ranks of liveried attendants stand to attention nearby.

Entire armies of servants and menials attend to their masters' every conceivable whim, while the lower levels are hives of activity where the most skilled cuisiniers prepare feasts of delicacies imported from all over the Imperium.

Beneath the servants' levels lies something far darker. In armoured and warded dungeons are housed those spawn of the Navis Nobilite fated never to guide a starship through the roiling Sea of Souls. These are the genetic rejects and hideous by-blows of the long millennia of intermarriage and genetic manipulation. They are mindless, puking monstrosities that bear precious little resemblance to anything born of a Human womb. Many are destroyed soon after birth, while others are allowed to live so that the house genetors might study them in the hope of avoiding such mistakes in future generations.

Just as the lowest levels hide those of the Navis Nobilite that the Navigator Houses wish to keep from prying eyes, so there are areas where only the most highly-ranked members of the house may pass. As a Navigator grows older and their body is ravaged by the curse of their bloodline and exposure to the Warp, they slowly withdraw from the company of their kin and shun contact with the outside world entirely.

While their mind and their ability to navigate a Warpship remain unaffected, they continue to enjoy the luxury their status affords, albeit in their own private chambers attended by their own staff of servants, guards and chirurgeons. Should their mind fall victim to the Navigators' genetic curse, however, then their fate is to descend to the lowest dungeons of their own palace where they take their place amongst the other vile monstrosities of their house.

Novators

The Novator is a patriarch or matriarch that rules over a Navigator House, the figurative -- and often biological -- father or mother of the family. It is the role of the Novator to hold the family together and manage their fortunes, fostering new contracts and contacts for the house and jealously guarding those already in its possession. Above the scores of Novators stands the Paternova, head of all the Imperium's Navigator Houses.

From his throne on ancient Terra in the Palace of the Navigators, he or she guides the destiny of the houses, ensuring their continued place of power within the Human-settled galaxy. While the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Great Houses are collectively and generally known as Novators, each house may choose its own name or title for the nobleman or woman who leads its endeavours. The Novators of Navigator Houses are usually chosen from a family's ruling branch, elected based on merits or rights of inheritance by a council of elders from the bloodline.

While the Novator is responsible for ruling the clan's affairs and making important decisions and alliances, it is the elders who subtly guide the bloodline and ultimately must choose a new Novator -- although these ancient Navigators are consigned to a life of luxurious isolation due to their gruesome and unsightly mutations, their sheer age and experience grant them great influence in critical moments of decision for the clan.

To ensure the internal stability of the Navis Nobilite, the Novators of most great houses have direct communication access to each other, both in times of peace and during trade wars. Using a special encrypted communications chamber called the Novator Cortex, the patriarchs and matriarchs of Navigator Houses can directly contact each other at a moment's notice so long as the network allows in a given star system or sector.

In this way they can negotiate and settle disputes, discuss betrothals and otherwise cooperate to ensure any issues or problems are handled with civility.

Paternova

The Paternova is the leader, and most powerful both in terms of psychic and political power, of all the Navigators of the Navis Nobilite. The Paternova lives in the Palace of the Navigators, which dominates the centre of the Navigator's Quarter on Terra.

From the moment he or she is installed, the Paternova never leaves this palace. The staff, soldiery and other retainers of the Palace of the Navigators are all drawn from the Paternova's own house, and are all replaced with each new Paternova who assumes the office.

The chief among a Paternova's servants is the Paternoval Envoy, who often serves as one of the High Lords of Terra, representing the interests of the Navis Nobilite on the Senatorum Imperialis. If anybody were to know the secrets of the Navigators' origins in the lost history of Mankind, it would be the noble who rises to become the Paternova.

The chief role of the Paternova is their ability to somehow amplify the "Warp Sense" of other Navigators. This is a direct result of the extreme mutations a Paternova suffers during their ascension from being one of the "Heirs Apparent" found amongst all the Novators of the more powerful Navigator Houses. For this reason, the Paternova is sometimes described as the guiding father or mother of the Navis Nobilite whose powers transcend the Warp itself.

The importance of this link is demonstrated during the rare interregnums that periodically occur between the reign of one Paternova and their replacement. During these times, all Navigators other than the Heirs Apparent suffer a considerable reduction in their ability to navigate the Warp. If this state of affairs were to continue for long, much of the Imperium would collapse into anarchy, as both commercial and military Imperial starships would be unable to quickly or safely traverse the Warp, with many being lost to the Empyrean completely.

The Paternova can often live for a thousand standard years. When they do die, their successor is chosen from amongst the waiting Heirs Apparent, the most powerful Navigators of the Great Families. From the moment of their death, all the existing Heirs Apparent undergo a dramatic physical metamorphosis. They grow larger and stronger, and the psychic mutations that characterise all Navigators become even more pronounced.

The Heirs Apparent gain the ability to survive underwater, in poisonous environments and even in the hard vacuum of space. Their natural aggression is increased, and they are drawn into combat with each other. As each Heir Apparent is slain, those who survive change physically even more, until only one remains alive. It is this vastly changed and extremely powerful individual who becomes the new Paternova.

As soon as a new Paternova is installed within the Palace of the Navigators, all of the other Navigators find the standard strength of their own psychic abilities restored, though not all are always restored to the same degree of effectiveness. Those Navigators belonging to the same house as the Paternova find their abilities greatly enhanced, as though their blood ties enable the Paternova to transmit their powers more effectively to their kin.

Navigators belonging to the house of the old Paternova lose this benefit, and many Navigators suddenly find their powers greatly diminished. The reasons for this alteration in power levels remains unknown to Imperial genetic science.

Traditions

Each house of the Navis Nobilite has their own unique traditions and positions within the house's hierarchy dependent upon their own histories and culture. For instance, House Belisarius is led by an individual Novator referred to as the "Celestarch" and has its own standing military trained by the Astartes of the Space Wolves Chapter.

The Space Wolves long ago concluded a special alliance with House Belisarius to provide its Celestarch with a small force of Space Wolves known as the Wolfblade to serve him or her as a personal honour guard.

A nobleman or noblewoman known as a Novator serves as the matriarch or patriarch of a Navigator house. A Novator can either be the figurative parent or a biological parent of the other members of the family, but always serves as the house's legal and titular leader. A Novator is expected to manage their household's fortunes and to keep their kin united in fostering the house's political and economic agenda. These duties include fostering trade contracts for the house whilst jealously guarding those profitable enterprises the house already holds in its possession.

The strict controls a Novator imposes along with the Imperium's legal Navigator codes prevents devastating economic and even outright military conflict from erupting between the Navigator Houses. Ranked above the many Novators of the different houses in the hierarchy of the Navigators sits the powerful noble known as the Paternova, who oversees the fortunes of the Navigators as an Imperial elite.

Trade Wars

The most common conflict involving the Navis Nobilite are the conflicts between the various Navigator Houses. Each Navigator family's power and wealth is based on the trade it can control, its contracts and pledges to various Imperial mercantile organisations, and the courses that its Navigators can plot. All these matters are areas of fierce competition between the different Navigator Houses and often the focus of campaigns of espionage, violence, and assassination.

Such conflicts can cause huge amounts of damage to the infrastructure of the Imperium, often occurring without the direct knowledge of the other Human nobility or the Imperial authorities until it is too late.

Traditionally, this damage has been controlled by the formal declaration of a "trade war" under the terms of the ancient Navigator Convention. A trade war, once declared, allows all Navigator Houses involved to act against their rivals using military and covert means. According to the terms of a trade war, those outside of the Navigator Houses involved should not be affected or harmed by its progress. However, in reality, subsidiaries, allies, and associates of the Navigator Houses immersed in a trade war are usually dragged into the conflict whether they want to be or not.

While a trade war is meant to control and contain competition between the Navigator Houses, many houses act outside of the constraints of a declared trade war. Such illegal actions usually involve intermediaries, assassination guilds, or mercenary armies for hire -- sometimes even using xenos like Orks or Kroot.

Navigator Duels

"I thank you for this lavish meal and for all of your hospitality this evening. As such, I regret - most deeply regret - that I must put forth this filthy accusation of duplicity against your most illustrious House. I am afraid that nothing short of a challenge to a duel of honour will sate my House now. You have until Scarus eclipses the Banestar to select the champion who will most certainly exonerate you."

— Aristide de Balafer, before his 23rd victorious honour duel

Navigator Houses are highly secretive and highly competitive organisations. They jealously guard the knowledge of safe Warp routes from each other. A house's fame and fortune depends on its ability to safely guide vessels through the Warp and the reputation for doing so that it maintains.

The greater the reputation, the more influence and wealth its clients possess. The Navis Imperialis, the Space Marine Chapters, Rogue Traders and other Imperial adepta seek the services of the most reliable houses.

Each house's reputation is dependent on the Warp charts it has recorded and amassed over millennia and each house protects these charts from their rivals. The various houses employ entire private armies and servitor security systems to protect the data secured deep within the bowels of a major Navigator House's headquarters.

Still, various individuals and organisations still occasionally attempt to steal from rival groups, even if few actually succeed, and many houses employ agents skilled at such subterfuge. Rival houses also employ more insidious means of undermining each other. In the loftiest spires, palaces, and courts of the higher echelons of Imperial society, whispered rumours and hints of dark secrets can bring one Navigator House to its knees and raise a rival in its place. The sullied reputation of a single Navigator can stain their entire bloodline.

Sometimes, however, when back-room dealing and silent wars are not enough, one Navigator House openly challenges another in some fashion. In certain sectors, such as the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse, this often takes the form of Navigator duels -- a contest between two massive organisations, settled by two individuals.

Though the exact origin of Navigator duels is unknown, the practice of using them to settle disputes between houses became common in the Calixis Sector during the rise of the so-called Elutrian Confederacy. During this time, Navigator Houses associated with the Elutrian Confederacy, such as House Typhon, claimed that they alone knew the true path to perfection. The champions of this movement began calling for Navigator duels to prove their supposed superiority.

When the Elutrian Confederacy was disgraced and House Typhon fell into ruin, the traditions that they had established for Navigator duels remained prevalent in the region and are still used to settle many of the disputes between the Navigator Houses of the Calixis Sector today.

First comes the formal challenge -- Navigator duels are public affairs within the secretive realm of the Calixis Navigator Houses and a family loses much face if it does not accept the challenge. This, and the fact that the loser is expected to pay a hefty fine of money, resources, and knowledge to the winner, means that duels are never issued for frivolous reasons.

After the challenge has been issued, each house then has a number of solar days to select a champion to upkeep their honour and choose a second to act as witness and potential replacement. It is considered a great honour to be chosen as a duellist and a chance for a young Navigator to increase their standing among their family and other Navigator clans. The location of the duel is remote, such as an abandoned hive city spire, the bridge of an empty starship moored in deep space, or a windswept mountaintop on a wilderness planet.

The only witnesses are the duellists' seconds. The Navigators prefer to cloak themselves with an aura of mystique, and also prefer that no one outside their secretive society witnesses the full force of their powers.

The duel takes place with careful formality. The participants bow to each other and then slowly uncover their third eye. At a prearranged signal from the seconds, the duellists unleash the full force of their powers, locked together as they gaze unflinchingly into each other's Warp eye, enduring the horror of the boiling chaos of the Empyrean. It is a duel of physical and mental strength, as each tries to subdue the other with their horrific gaze, and can last for solar seconds or hours.

The first to succumb on bent knee yields victory to their opponent. The duel is rarely to the death, for the lives of most Navigators are precious even to their bitter rivals. Even so, one or both duellists might face long solar months of recovery, their minds wracked by the strain.

When the duellists return to their respective houses, the seconds report the results of the duel and a representative of the losing house must attend a feast in the victor's honour, where they formally sign over the promised compensation. Their house suffers a loss of face and a besmirched reputation, which may have vast repercussions in the wider Imperium.

Rogue Trader Service

Even for those like Navigators so designed on a genetic level to endure the Warp's horrors, there is still a price to pay. Navigators who have served the longest may become wracked with bodily failure, incipient madness, and possible mutation, and ultimately they become virtual prisoners reliant on the life-sustaining machinery of their sanctums.

Conversely, those newly come into their calling often revel in their rank and wealth, affecting rakish mannerisms and caring little for the petty concerns or trivial realities of life in the Imperium, each knowing that such a life is for them a thing that must one day pass.

Those that embrace this wild, almost nihilistic attitude are often attracted to service aboard a Rogue Trader vessel, striking out into the darkness almost as if fleeing the inevitable fate they must one day face. Others owe their dangerous service thanks to some hidden crime or misdemeanour among their own kind or through connection to an infamous and some might say tainted bloodline.

Regardless of whatever idiosyncrasies a Navigator might bear, they are essential to the operation of a Rogue Trader vessel and given great leeway by their Rogue Trader, for should a vessel lose its Navigator beyond the fringes of known space, any such vessel, and all who serve aboard her, is surely lost.

Notable Navigators

  • Cassia Orsellio - Cassia Orsellio is a Navigator and the heiress to the novator of the Navis Nobilite's House Orsellio. She was convinced by the most recent heir to the Rogue Trader dynasty of House von Valancius to serve as the new Navigator of the von Valancius flagship after her predecessor was killed during the Warp incursion that also resulted in the death of Lord Captain Theodora von Valancius and the new Rogue Trader's unexpected inheritance of the dynasty.

Trivia

The concept of Navigators in the Warhammer 40,000 universe most likely drew inspiration from the science-fiction novels of Frank Herbert's "Dune" universe, being very similar in function and their development of physical abnormalities to the Spacing Guild Navigators.

See Also

Videos

Sources

  • Citadel Journal 18, "Navigators: The Return of the Imperial Navigator," pp. 26-33
  • Dark Heresy: Core Rulebook (RPG), pg. 255
  • Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods (RPG), pp. 172-173
  • Dark Heresy: The Inquisitor's Handbook (RPG), pg. 168
  • Imperial Armour - The Horus Heresy Betrayal - Book One, pg. 16
  • Rogue Trader: Core Rulebook (RPG), pp. 60-63, 72, 78, 81-82, 85, 156, 174-186
  • Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus (RPG), pp. 42, 45, 49-50, 71, 95
  • Rogue Trader: Edge of the Abyss (RPG), pp. 80, 111
  • Rogue Trader: Into the Storm (RPG), pg. 192
  • Rogue Trader: The Navis Primer (RPG), pp. 6-108
  • The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions, pp. 9, 38, 41, 94, 272
  • Imperial Armour Volume Nine - The Badab War, Part One, pg. 36
  • The Horus Heresy Book One: Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 16
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (1st Edition), pp. 150-151
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (6th Edition), pp. 139, 141, 146, 167-168, 171, 197, 232, 402-405
  • White Dwarf 140 (UK), "Space Fleet: Navis Nobilite," by Jervis Johnson, Andy Jones, Simon Forrest and Rick Priestley, pp. 46-75
  • Galaxy in Flames (Novel) by Ben Counter
  • Wolfblade (Novel) by William King
  • Blood Reaver (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, pg. 107
  • The Buried Dagger (Novel) by James Swallow, Interval III, The Grave Lies
  • Rites of Passage (Novel) by Mike Brooks, Chs. 5, 7, 12, 14, 21, 26, 30
  • Blackstone Fortress (Novel) by Darius Hinks, Chs. 3, 6, 11
  • Eye of Terror (Novel) by Barrington J. Bayley, Chs. 3-5, 7, 11, 14, 17, 18
  • Inquisitor (Novel) by Ian Watson, Chs, 1-18
  • Harlequin (Novel) by Ian Watson, Chs. 2-3, 5-9, 12, 14-19
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (PC Game) (Cassia Orsellio)
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