Navigator - Origins: 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.