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[Kot]

Really the only question is life support. The Ork ecosystem is so circular it can survive indefinitely. But it needs oxygen to work. So if they had an oxygen source that could last 56 million years in whatever piece of crap floating through space it's installed in, Orks could make the trip.

Assuming one doesn't kill them all through Orky experimentation.

Well, It being orks and such I could see them attaching engines on one side of a small planet.

They would end up with not enough sunlight for plants thus oxygen running out soon.

[DJ]

What if they really believe they don't need no stinking sunlight?

[Teneb]

Considering Orks can survive on daemon worlds, they can probably survive the trip to the next galaxy assuming the whatever maintains the atmosphere is not broken in some fight or other.

On the warp and other galaxies: it may be possible that the warp exists outside the milky way, just not in the surrounding galaxies (which have been depopulated by the 'nids), resulting in this section of the warp being cut off. Naturally, this is all speculation... and since GW will probably never detail what is outside the milky way, we'll never know.

Really the only question is life support. The Ork ecosystem is so circular it can survive indefinitely. But it needs oxygen to work. So if they had an oxygen source that could last 56 million years in whatever piece of crap floating through space it's installed in, Orks could make the trip.

Assuming one doesn't kill them all through Orky experimentation.

Well, It being orks and such I could see them attaching engines on one side of a small planet.

They would end up with not enough sunlight for plants thus oxygen running out soon.

All they need is for a mek to make an oxygen machine from scrap and an unfortunate snotling.

[Tack]

I thought The Beast sent a bunch of orc ships out of the galaxy. Or 'Red' or something. Wow my ork lore needs some touching up.

[Kot]

The Beast is the noodle incident of 40k. He nearly wiped out Imperium, put Ork Deathstar above Terra and in general did a lot of noticeable stuff but we actually know nearly no details. It just happened.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My headcannon is that the Beast is that one in a quadrillion ork who actually grew correctly and had all the designs of the Old Ones for orkids. Hence the lack of cockney and the intellect.

[Kot]

It was just Ghazkull doing time travel again.

[Rolepgeek]

What would Chaos/Imperium do if Gork and Mork popped up and started Orking about in the Warp on a permanent basis by way of Thraka, by the way? Would the Eldar rather have this happen, or avoid it, considering their feelings about Orks, Chaos, and mon'keigh? What do you guys think would occur? I mean, other than Weirdboyz getting real weird, real fast.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Orks seem to be essentially immune to Chaos corruption, 2e Khornate Orks notwithstanding, so it certainly would be objected to by any of the factions that hate Chaos. Or maybe not, since Chaos is also essentially reactive in nature and this would cause a whole lot of reaction.

[Digital Hellhound]

The Beast is the noodle incident of 40k. He nearly wiped out Imperium, put Ork Deathstar above Terra and in general did a lot of noticeable stuff but we actually know nearly no details. It just happened.

We'll know a lot more soon with the whole Beast series they're writing. I'm not really convinced you can make an Ork threat that interesting, but I should probs pick up the next book and find out.

[nenjin]

The Beast is the noodle incident of 40k. He nearly wiped out Imperium, put Ork Deathstar above Terra and in general did a lot of noticeable stuff but we actually know nearly no details. It just happened.

We'll know a lot more soon with the whole Beast series they're writing. I'm not really convinced you can make an Ork threat that interesting, but I should probs pick up the next book and find out.

I can say I was genuinely interested in the handling of the Ork threat in I Am Slaughter. There's a lot of build up to it. One might almost be disappointed that the reveal is "Orks!" but how Abnett got there in the first book was cool. Mostly because Abnett understands how to weave several events into a larger narrative so the expected still feels somewhat surprising. Most 40k authors don't know how to do interesting subplots that aren't character focused, and so just stampede toward the main theme (violence) in a way that is now so well-trodden it's beyond a cliche. Abnett is really good with distracting you with the left hand of his stories until the right hand crosses and punches you in the face.

Not sure how I feel about the rest of the series being penned by different authors. It works for the Horus Heresy but I really hope BL isn't going to make a habit of this. I think the best 40k stories arise from ownership of the story. The HH was honestly too big for one guy to handle but I think the vastly different tone and skill of each writer made for a less cohesive story overall.

--

Anyways, question for the class.

How do you think human Space Pirates in 40k deal with Warp Transit?

Two different kinds of pirates, first off:

-Scum who only hang out in their local star system using nothing but real-space travel.
-Scum who are warp travel-capable and plague several star systems, and probably keep a base somewhere nearby in the sub-sector.

I'm interested in the second group. Now, while there's any number of plausible explanations for how any one pirate ship navigates, I'm looking to define how your average space pirate gets around.

Some ideas:
-There's several rogue Houses of Navigators who sell their service to the highest bidders. Unlike Imperial Navigators they're a more mercenary breed.
-Imperial Navigators who do a small side-business in dealing with Imperial Renegades. Still it seems beneath your average legitimate Navigator House to agree to work with small time pirates.
-Rent a Chaos Sorcerer to negotiate your way through the Warp. (Seems a little extreme for your average Pirate scum.)
-A group or groups that cultivate the Navigator gene without organizing into Houses like regular Navigators do. These would essentially be high-priced mutants for sale. Maybe the mutants are enslaved or maybe they're autonomous individuals.
-Kidnapped Imperial Navigators? Not all Navigators serve on even Frigate-sized vessels, so it's not inconceivable a well-organized pirate crew could capture a freighter or cargo ship and its Navigator too.

Again, I'm just concerned with human pirates. All the other races with pirate factions in them have their own warp travel solutions. It's just human renegades who have the unique problem of still needing Navigators while not being able to utilize Imperial ones.

[Xantalos]

Maybe they don't use navigators at all, hence why they only plague a few systems?

[Grim Portent]

Most small scale warp travel is done using maps that detail the safe warp routes. When navigators pass through an area they map out the warp currents, and the stable currents get used for transit by any warp capable vessel that cannot afford a navigator of their own. If the currents change, which happens every few centuries or millenia, then navigators need to return to map out new routes. In general every system has a few points that can be warped to and from without any significant danger, which are usually used as ambush points by pirates since they function as stable shipping lanes for most normal cargo ships.

[nenjin]

You can't jump very far doing that. Like, a day or two in the warp at most, and that's just blindly pointing your vessel into the Warp. There's not much value to Warp Route charts to non-navigators, the information they contain doesn't mean anything to regular humans other than that point A should connect to point B. The Rogue Trader core book states that traveling a day or two in the Warp without a Navigator of some kind is an option of last resort, and that's the maximal limit on safety. Deviation in the Warp can be catastrophic, so just going into the Warp with no frame or reference for Navigation is super perilous even if it's short.

So it implies most ships have a Navigator of some sort.

[Grim Portent]

You can't jump very far doing that. Like, a day or two in the warp at most, and that's just blindly pointing your vessel into the Warp. There's not much value to Warp Route charts to non-navigators, the information they contain doesn't mean anything to regular humans other than that point A should connect to point B. The Rogue Trader core book states that traveling a day or two in the Warp without a Navigator of some kind is an option of last resort, and that's the maximal limit on safety. Deviation in the Warp can be catastrophic, so just going into the Warp with no frame or reference for Navigation is super perilous even if it's short.

So it implies most ships have a Navigator of some sort.

Navigator-less ships appear in the fluff from time to time. They basically do the Tau thing and travel in short bursts before stopping to make emergency repairs. The vast bulk of small time merchantmen fall under this category of inter-system traders. One features in one of the Grey Knights books. One of the old ones about Justicar Alaric. It's a dinky little vessel with no navigator or enginseer. They navigated using known warp routes, stopping often, and repaired their ship using precise instructions written for them.