Adeptus Astra Telepathica

"Our voices sing out as one to the cosmos."

- Mistress Oghanna, Mind-Speaker of the Bansidhe

The Adeptus Astra Telepathica is an Adepta of the Adeptus Terra responsible for the recruitment and training of psykers in the service of the Imperium of Man. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica trains the majority of Imperial psykers, who become known as Sanctioned Psykers.

Founding
Before expanding the Great Crusade to the stars beyond the Sol Sector in the late 30th Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind first ordered the construction of the Astronomican on Terra. The purpose of this colossal endeavour was that the entire device was to serve as a focus through which the Emperor could direct his fathomless psychic energies to generate a partly self-sustaining navigational beacon for the commerical and military starships of the Imperium. The psychic navigational beam generated by the Astronomican was able to cut through the Warp across the galaxy and those attuned to its frequencies and modulations, the sanctioned human mutants known as Navigators, were able to use it as a beacon and pole star when plotting journeys through the Immaterium.

In addition to this invaluable beacon among the stars, the forging of the Imperium during the Great Crusade would not have been possible without the creation and skills of the Astra Telepathica. This special corps of inter-stellar telepathic communicators was created by the Emperor during the final months of the Unification Wars, as the Emperor had foreseen the absolute future need for a means to communicate across the depths of space if a new interstellar human empire was to be created. As a psyker Himself, the Emperor favoured the use of psychic talents in others, and was well aware of the dangers inherent in any contact with the Warp. The Age of Strife on Old Earth had been afflicted by many "witch-kings" and daemon-possessed psykers whose existence embodied those dangers, some of whom the Emperor had personally slain. However, He was able to identify those psykers strong enough to resist the temptations of the Warp. These men and women were then employed in a variety of special roles in the newborn Imperium. Amongst these so-called "Sanctioned pSykers" were the Astropaths, "astro-telepaths," capable of telepathically communicating with others of their kind over vast inter-stellar distances through phantasmal visions, empathic transmission and oenological vision allegory rather than words. This was an essential talent for the success of the Imperium due to the vast distances that seprated its inhabited worlds. The only practical means for the Imperium to maintain any semblance of unity across interstellar distances was to make use of Astropaths, but such communication could prove as temperamental as the Warp itself.

City of Sight
The headquarters of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica during the Great Crusade and the early days of the Horus Heresy, known as the City of Sight, was built within a section of the Emperor's own Imperial Palace in the Himalazian Mountains. There was no trace that anyone lived in that forsaken part of the palace. Potential Sanctioned Psykers spent many years within its bleak towers, learning how to harness their abilities for the betterment of Mankind. Where other regions of the palace were celebrations of the Unity wrought by the extension of the Emperor's rule over all of Terra, the builders of the City of Sight seemed to have gone out of their way to craft something calculated to weigh on the soul. Beyond the domain of the astro-telepaths, the architecture of the palace was raised up in glorification of Mankind’s achievements, its statuary fashioned to remind the grateful populace of Terra of all that had been rebuilt in the wake of the terrible, world-spanning wars that had almost dragged the species down into extinction. But none of this could be found in the City of Sight.

Beyond the threshhold of the main entrance to the city that was known as the Obsidian Arch was a forest of iron towers, lightless garrets and silent thorough-fares. The streets of the main portions of the palace beyond the glossy black archway were alive with the heaving, vibrant mass of humanity, but only solitary ghosts in hooded green robes populated these streets. The students and Adepts of the Astra Telepathica mostly travelled by means of a network of tunnels and crossways cut into the rock beneath the city. Very few came above ground if they could help it, for the feeling of sunlight on their skin was just another reminder of what they had lost. The city walls and the rock below were also threaded with psi-disruptive crystals, which made it quieter as well. Travelling above ground was noisy for an Astropath. They were inundated with the noise of undisciplined thoughts, random chatter and wild emotions. Though they were taught to tune this psychic cacophony of thought out, it was always in the background of their minds. It was easier for the telepaths to travel where they did not have to hear it.

Within the City of Sight, its gloomy precincts had few statues raised there. Though many of the pale, columned buildings within were grandly shaped and heroically proportioned, they were brooding, monolithic structures that pressed down on the skin of the mountains, absorbing all the available light and warmth of the day. A notable building within the City of Sight was the Gallery of Mirrors, a vast, cathedral-like building through which successful Initiates passed on their way to the awe-inspiring caverns beneath the city. Far beneath the palace, they would kneel before the Emperor and undergo the painful Soul-Binding ritual, to have the impossibly complex neural pathways of their mind agonisingly reshaped to better resist the dangers of the Warp. It is speculated that the mirrors were there to give the Aspirants a last look at their faces before their eyes were seared from their sockets by a force so potent it was beyond imagining.

Another notable structure was the Whispering Tower. It shone with a warm lattice of silver light, though it was a light that existed beyond the sight of most mortals. Yet for all its brightness, its glow was eclipsed utterly by the burning lance of light of the Astronomican that speared from the hollow mountain and into space, like an interstellar beacon for those Imperial starships that traveled the myriad currents of the Immaterium. The vast chamber at the heart of the Whispering Tower was fashioned in the form of a great ampitheatre, shaped by the ancient cognoscynths who had first raised the City of Sight many thousands of standard years earlier. Their unrivalled knowledge of psychically-attuned architecture had been hard-won in a long-forgotten age of devastating psi-wars, but their arts were long dead, and the skill of crafting such resonant structures had died with them. Amid the blackened mindhalls of the City of Sight, the Whispering Tower was able to reach the farthest into the gulfs of space between the stars, utilising thousands of high-ranking Astropaths seated in ever-ascending tiers to sharpen the focus of their gestalt-consciousness.

Rising through the central spine of the Whispering Tower was a long spiral staircase that led to the upper wing that housed the Oneirocritica Alchera Mundi, the great dream library of the City of Sight. Towering shelves, rearing hundreds of metres into the air, filled the sections of the Oneirocritica Alchera Mundi. Groaning stacks radiated from the central hub filled with interpretive texts, dream diaries, vision logs and the many books of common astropathic imagery. Every vision received and sent from the City of Sight was stored within, a complete record of communication that passed between Terra and the wider galaxy. Scores of hunched Astropaths drifted through the stacks like green ghosts, seeking clarification for a vision, while elder telepaths added freshly approved symbols to the ever-growing library.

The lowest level of the Whispering Tower was the Novitiates' level. This chamber had been hacked from the bedrock of the mountains and faced with ceramic tiles of bottle green. It had the feel of a medicae chamber, and a number of locked doors led deeper into the guts of the tower. Some led to the novice libraries, where new additions to the tower learned astropathic shorthand, common symbols and the basic mantras of the nuncio. Others led to the novices’ cells, some to communal facilities for eating and ablutions, and the remainder ended in hermetically-sealed isolation chambers. Not everyone who navigated these passages was blind, and bare lumen globes hung from the brickwork ceiling on linked loops of brass cabling. Along the long passageway that led to the Novices' cells were reinforced doors that punctuated its length, each one marked with a number and a name. Each marked cell was where an Initiate of the Scholastica Psykana slumbered, meditated and prayed. The interior of these cells were bare and devoid of anything that might have indicated who had lived there before. This was sensible, for any lingering sense of a previous occupant would influence an Initiate's dreaming. A cot bed usually lay along one wall, with a simple footlocker at its base. A small writing desk and chair sat opposite the bed, and a black notebook lay on a blotting pad, next to an inkhorn and pen. Empty shelves lined the wall above the desk, ready to be filled with an Astropath’s steadily growing oneirocritica collection. The shelves were short, for a novice would take time to build a comprehensive library of imagery, symbolism and dream recordings.

Within the depths of the Whispering Tower was a domed chamber known as the Cryptaesthesian that continuously echoed with the myriad voices of an Astropathic Choir. At the dome's apex was a crytalline lattice pulsing with internal illumination that cascaded from its multi-angled facets in a waterhall of shimmering light. Within this chamber, Astropaths trained in the art of the Cryptaesthesian could interpret meaning from the psychic waste of every communiqué that passed through the City of Sight. To sift through the vast quantity of psychic debris that was left in its wake was a task few relished.

Following the treachery of the Warmaster Horus and the start of the civil conflict known as the Horus Heresy, the Astropathic Choirs operated beyond capacity to satisfy the demands of waging a distant war against Horus Lupercal's rebellion. Aetheric space was continuously awash with telepathic communication, and messages were hurled into the void that screamed for help or simply blared hatred. The trap chambers beneath the iron towers of the City of Sight were filled with psychic residue from the thousands of messages, and the cryptaesthesians could barely keep up with the brutal pace. In the face of treason, every message sent to Terra had to be carefully scrutinised, no matter how mundane it might appear. The bleed of psychic waste within the Cryptaesthesian was scoured for signs of encryption that might be a communication intended for embedded agents of Horus within the Imperial Palace itself.

Black Sentinels
Following the great conclave on Nikaea, new strictures were laid down by the Emperor in regards to the use of psykers within the Imperium. It was decreed that the astropaths within the Whispering Tower would remain under constant vigil and scrutiny of the Black Sentinels, a specially trained force of psyker killers, gaolers and executioners all in one. Each of these stalwart warriors were encased in beetle-black armour with contoured breastplates of burnished obsidian, their faces concealed by a reflective tapered helm, not unlike an early make of Legiones Astartes armour. Their helmets were specially lined with psi-shielding to protect them from the latent pressure from the innate powers of the psykers within the City of Sight. Each Black Sentinel was armed with long, black-bladed lances, their hafts topped with sparkling crystalline spearheads. But they were also trained in the use of the extensive arsenal of weapons possessed by the Imperium's armouries. The Black Sentinels were also responsible for protecting the physical aspects of the city.

Reign of Blood
During the Age of Apostasy, a second period of civil war in the Imperium of Man that occurred during the early 36th Millennium when the Imperium's government was essentially seized by the corrupt High Lord Goge Vandire, he ruled the Imperium according to his own wishes instead of in accord with the Emperor's will. This lamentable period of history is known in Imperial annals as the Reign of Blood. During this time, Vandire had considerable trouble bringing the Adeptus Astra Telepathic under his control. Lord Phaedrus, the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, was a potent psyker and as such was not swayed by Vandire's charisma of charm. Phaedrus saw through Vandire's veil of lies and deceits revealing the corrupt High Lord's true intentions. Vandire realised that Phaedrus was using his considerable psychic abilities to stay one step ahead of him, and simply killing Phaedrus would never do, for he would just be replaced by a powerful psyker of equal potency. To remove Phaedrus required a much more cunning plan to remove him.

Luring the Master of the Telepathica into a trap, Vandire utilised the innate anti-psyker abilities of a Culexus Temple Assassin to nullify Phaedrus' psychic abilities. The helpless Phaedrus was then strapped into a specially prepared life-support machine, where the Culexus Assassin permanently severed Phaedrus' ability to tap into the Warp, making him incapable of using psychic powers. Such an operation would have normally killed the powerful psyker, but with the life-support system and a bribed Magos Biologis, Vandire was able to keep Phaedrus alive. Robbed of his psychic powers Phaedrus was utterly distraught, which resulted in in resulted in his multiple attempts to take his own life. But Vandire was always there to thwart him, removing the blade from his hand or to loosen the noose around his neck. In the end, Phaedrus was broken and Vandire achieved his aim: control over the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. If Phaedrus did his bidding, Vandire promised that he wouldn't disclose the loss of his psychic capabilities. With his powerful position put in jeopardy, Phaedrus had little choice in the matter.

Organization
The Adeptus Astra Telepathica is divided into a recruitment body (the League of Blackships) and a training body (the Scholastia Psykana). These two bodies are united under the leadership of the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and his advisory council of several hundred senior officials drawn from its two divisions.

League of Blackships
During the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era, the Adeptus Astra Telepathica possessed a militant arm which was referred to internally within the records of the Adeptus Terra as the Departmento Investigates. But they were known throughout the galaxy as the Sisters of Silence, also known as the Silent Sisterhood and the Witchseeker, this was an all-female Imperial order of Witch Hunters. their primary base of operations was the Somnus Citadel on Luna, the moon of Terra. Their purpose was to hunt and kill rogue human psykers whose activities presented a terrible danger to the people of the newborn Imperium of Man. The Sisters of Silence were well-trained warriors, and with the added benefit of their anti-psyker abilities they were dangerous opponents for any of the enemies of Mankind. Unlike other living beings, these women sworn to silence possessed no presence in the Warp and were therefore unaffected by psychic powers. There were many names for them in the multitude of human cultures to be found across the galaxy: Untouchables, Pariahs, Blanks. All of the members of their order were non-psychic, for they bore the Pariah Gene which made them immune to all forms of psychic assault and their minds unreadable by telepathy.

The Sisters operated the Adeptus Astra Telepathica’s infamous Black Ships, which ranged the galaxy following behind the Great Crusade's Expeditionary Fleets in search of rogue psykers to capture or expunge, seeking to collect and carry them back to Terra where they would be tested and their eventual fate decided. Though few in number, the Sisters of Silence commanded great respect within the Imperium and most servants of the Emperor regarded them with some awe. Few would willingly stand in their way or interfere with their activities and few indeed were those who were comfortable in their presence. The ultimate fate of the Sisters of Silence is not found in Imperial records, and no references to their continued existence in the era of the 41st Millennium exists. It is believed that they were either destroyed long ago or were ultimately folded into the organisation of the Imperial Inquisition.

In the modern millennium, the League of Black Ships forms the recruiting division of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, consisting of a substantial fleet of Imperial starships charged with collecting and transporting psykers taken from worlds across Imperial space to Terra. The Black Ships are feared transports filled with mournful psykers held in cavernous, psi-shielded holds to be taken back to Terra to feed the voracious psychic appetite of the Emperor to maintain the Astronomicon. Only those psykers with the strength of mind to withstand the constant soul-numbing despair that permeates the Black Ship may crew it, so mentally traumatic is such duty.

The Black Ship fleet travels constantly throughout the Imperium. Each Imperial world is visited every hundred years or so by a Black Ship. When a Black Ship nears a planet, its Planetary Governor is instructed to prepare the customary levy - a tithe of psykers. Once the levy has been collected, the Black Ships' captains make an initial evaluation of their cargo before proceeding to the next world in their circuit. When the ships are full they return to Terra and the psykers are transferred to the Scholastia Psykana before the ship leaves again to continue in their eternal search for new psykers. It is common for Inquisitors or the Ordo Malleus or Ordo Hereticus to travel aboard the Black Ships, as this gives them a good opportunity to investigate a planet's potential for psychically-based corruption.

Scholastia Psykana
The Scholastia Psykana, the training division of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, is a vast teaching institution devoted to the training of young psykers, who are taught how to develop and control their powers to serve the Imperium. Most of the psyker recruits are drawn from the levy collected by the Black Ships, others are handed over by the Inquisition, the Adeptus Arbites or through other Imperial channels. The future of each psyker depends on his abilities and character. Initial evaluation divides the levy into several groups depending on their innate psychic power, individual character and willingness to learn. The youngest psykers are preferred by the Scholastia Psykana, as these psykers are easiest to train and indoctrinate. These psykers are soul-bound to the Emperor, a psychic ritual that hardens their minds and souls against possession by the daemonic entities of the Warp. It is invariably those psykers recruited as children who are given further training to fill important positions in the Imperium as sanctioned psykers (one well known example is the Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor).

Those psykers of a levy who are deemed weak in character or psychic power, too dangerous to train or too old to have their bad habits changed, are instead sacrificed to the Emperor, their souls leeched from their bodies to sustain the Father of Mankind and the Astronomicon beacon that aids all interstellar travel. The first ranking of pskyers (referred to as primary psykers) are those whose powers and strength of character are sufficient to resist possession and daemonic corruption under normal circumstances, and they are chosen to serve the Imperium in the highest capacities. After receiving five years of basic training at the Scholastia, they are sent for further training and service in another Imperial organization depending on where their abilities are judged best suited. The very young may be indoctrinated into the Space Marines as Chapter Librarians; some may enter the Imperial Guard to begin their training as Primaris battle-psykers; the most talented may become Inquisitors or even Grey Knights.

The majority of the discovered psykers in a given levy form the second rank of psykers. They are trained for service as Astropaths (i.e. astro-telepaths). Astropaths are psykers specialised in interstellar communication, being able to send and receive telepathic messages instantaneously over vast distances. The Astropaths perform one of the vital tasks in the Imperium; psychic communications is the only practical means of instant interstellar communications in the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man. Some primary and secondary psykers are given over to the Adeptus Astronomica, a smaller Imperial organization in which the psychic recruits continue their training to serve and maintain the Astronomicon.