Astropaths - The "Soul-Bound": The great sweep of the Imperium of Man far outstrips the reach of normal communications in size and breadth. Astropaths are capable of broadcasting and receiving messages across the vastness of space, although a message may be delayed, mangled or even lost by the turbulence of Warpspace. By their powers, the Astropaths can do what no others can; reach beyond the limits of time and space to allow humanity to continue communicating between its scattered domains in the vastness of interstellar space.At times the availability of an Astropath has determined whether entire worlds have lived or died, and whether millions have survived in the glorious light of the Emperor, or fallen to the darkness of humanity's enemies. In the nightmare depths of the Empyrean, the Astropaths listen to the missives of Mankind, and occasionally, those of a viler cast, braving terrible and constant danger to their sanity and souls in order to allow the Imperium to function as a coherent entity. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica oversees the arduous task of recruiting and training Astropaths in service to the Imperium, and regulating their number in operations.Astropaths themselves are born with the psyker's gift; taken by the Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and selected -- owing to the nature of their gifts and other arcane criteria -- to become Astropaths, by undergoing years of training and extensive indoctrination culminating in a techno-arcane ritual initiation called "Soul Binding", in which the body and soul are scoured clean of the taint of the Warp by the searing purity of the Emperor of Mankind's beneficence. In truth, the Emperor uses His own psychic strength to reshape the neural architecture of the psyker so that he or she will possess the willpower to better resist the temptations of Chaos. This process is what makes an Astropath what he is, and without it there would be no Astropaths.The benefits of the Soul Binding are that it allows the Astropaths some safety while opening their minds to the Warp's currents in communications from afar, and sifting the truth from the psychic static and perilous lies whispered beyond, and projecting their own messages into that void to be heard by others of their own kind. The Soul Binding is not without its price however, and despite the quality of candidates selected and their extensive preparation, not all survive or retain their sanity.Those that do are almost all permanently blinded by the ordeal for the Emperor's power can damage some of the more delicate neutral structures in the body, such as the optic nerves. However, in most cases the Astropath's abilities more than make up for this deficiency, and others might never know, but for their disturbing whited-out eyes or in some cases, empty, shrunken eye sockets. So intense is the ritual that the supplicants' sensory organs are almost totally overloaded -- leaving them blinded by the experience -- with many suffering further nerve damage, incurring loss of smell, touch, or hearing. What the Soul Binding does on a fundamental level is combine the psyker's own abilities with the merest fraction of those of the Emperor which transforms him and protects him in a way that makes the Astropath unique among human psykers.Being soul-bonded with the Emperor is necessary, however, as it greatly heightens an Astropath's already formidable psychic powers and gives them the ability for which they were chosen -- to send telepathic messages through space instantaneously across large interstellar distances, thereby becoming the main network of interstellar communications in the Imperium. Most Imperial starships have an Astropath on board and most Imperial planetary governments have access to Astropaths. Without the Astropaths' unique ability, long-distance communication in the Imperium would be impossible. However, their powers are still susceptible to the local conditions of the Warp (such as Warp Storms) and as such, their messages can be greatly delayed or lost. Due to the strenuous nature of their job and the result of their soul-bonding with the Emperor, many Astropaths are physically frail and can die quite young through mental exhaustion or overexposure to the energies of the Warp.