Warp Engine

The Warp Engine of the Ignis Aeternus

To those who serve aboard the star vessel, the warp engine is no mere machine—it is a sacred monolith of dread and power, a shrine to technology and incomprehension. Few among the crew ever lay eyes upon it, and those who do often leave marked in ways that prayers alone cannot cleanse.

The Machine Cathedral

Buried deep in the ship’s armored heart lies the Strelov-2 Pattern Warp Engine, a towering spire of plasma coils, gravitic chambers, and shrine-studded conduits. The room that houses it is vast and choked with incense smoke and electrostatic haze. Pipe-organs wheeze from the walls. Guttering lumen-lamps cast deep shadows across rusted catwalks and sigil-inscribed control stations.

The engine itself is a towering core of rotating plasma rings, sheathed in bronze-capped armor plates etched with Hexagrammic wards and Binharic Cants of Translation. The engine core pulses with a deep, subharmonic resonance that can be felt through boots and bone. Its adamantine surfaces are plated in bronze and gold-leafed aquilae, laced with thousands of purity seals and glowing with sacred runes. Plasma veins writhe like arteries along the walls, thumping to a rhythm that some crew claim mirrors the heartbeat of the ship itself.

Servo-skulls chant binary litanies as they float in slow circuits. Tech-Priests tend to the engine in constant prayer—not only maintaining, but appeasing.

The Strelov-2 Distinction

The Strelov-2 model is revered for its accelerated warp translation cycles, capable of rending the veil between realspace and the Immaterium in record time. Veterans of the void swear they can feel it before every jump—the sudden, sharp tension in the hull, the metallic taste in the air, the silence just before the ship screams into unreality.

The Comatose Psyker

Beneath the engine, behind hexagrammic grates and rites-locked hatches, lies the Veilwatcher—a sanctioned psyker wired directly into the engine’s Gellar Field induction matrix. He is no longer truly alive, nor truly dead. Suspended in a neuro-casket, he floats in a tangle of fluid-filled tubes and psi-reactive cables, his skull bristling with augmetic crowns and data-spikes.

His skin is pale, parchment-thin, tattooed with warding glyphs and darkened by years of exposure to warp energies. Thick cables pierce his spine and cranium, connecting his soul to the beating heart of the engine.

The Crew’s Perception

They do not speak of the Warp Engine aloud. Offerings are sometimes left—candles, bones, prayers—just outside the force door. Others make the sign of the aquila and hurry past, unwilling to draw the gaze of one so close to the Warp.

How it works:

Entering the Warp: Opening a Tear in Reality

  • Warp‑drives rip a tear in real‑space, creating a tunnel into the Immaterium.
  • Once the breach is made, the ship uses its engines to force itself through, leveraging powerful warp currents to cover vast distances .

Protection: The Gellar Field

  • A Gellar Field envelops the ship in a bubble of real-space, shielding it from the Immaterium’s horrors—daemons, psychic storms, and reality-warping forces.
  • This field is sustained by a comatose psyker, whose dreams maintain the bubble.
  • If the field fails, the ship and crew are typically destroyed.

Navigation: Calculated vs Piloted Jumps

  • Calculated Jumps: Sensors monitor warp currents before the jump. The ship estimates its course and hops, blindly hoping nothing shifts mid-flight. Generally safe up to ~4–5 light‑years.
  • Piloted Jumps: A Navigator mutant perceives the warp and actively steers past currents, using the Astronomican psychic beacon on Terra to guide the vessel. These jumps can span thousands of light‑years (typically ~5,000 ly)

Duration & Unpredictability

  • Time behaves erratically in the warp. A journey might take weeks, centuries, or even result in paradoxes—arriving before departure.
  • The warp can redirect ships, making safe, reliable routes crucial .

What Happens If Warp‑drive Is Cut?

  • As long as warp‑drive remains active, the vessel stays in the Immaterium.
  • If the Warp‑drive is shut off—whether intentionally or accidentally—the ship “drops out” of the warp, re‑emerging into real‑space at the location corresponding to its current position in the Immaterium. This can be far off-course and extremely hazardous.

!GM only!