Navigator

"To gaze into the Warp is to look into the abyss. To understand insanity itself is to become insane. Worst of all is the knowledge that while you are gazing upon it, the Warp is looking back at you and laughing."

- Kartr Hollis, Nobilite Emissary

A Navigator (Homo navigo) is a very particular form of Imperial-sanctioned human mutant who possesses the Navigator Gene. This gives a Navigator the unique ability to navigate a faster-than-light starship accurately through Warpspace. This ability makes Navigators absolutely essential to the Imperium's continued survival and to all interstellar transportation, communication and commerce. All Navigators have a third eye, commonly called the Warp Eye, on their foreheads, which allows them to perceive the "psychic light" known as the Astronomican, enabling them to fully use their powers in guiding human starships through the currents of the Warp. Their ability to sense the tides of the Warp is considered psychic, although Navigators never possess any psychic abilities beyond the powers their Warp Eye affords them. Navigators possess natural life spans of as much as four hundred years. As they increase in age, their abilities increase in power, and their physical appearance changes: the white and iris of the eye gradually disappears, leaving only a hardened black orb. All Navigators belong to a large group of noble families based on Terra in the great district of that world-city known as the Navigator's Quarter. These dynasties are known collectively as the Great Families of the Navis Nobilite.

History
For centuries uncounted, Navigators have led Mankind between the stars. Theirs is the unique power to gaze into the Warp and guide humanity’s vessels across the vastness of the galaxy. This power affords them a special place within the Imperium of Man, and over time, has won them great prestige 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 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 altered psyker strain of humankind "designed" it seems to facilitate Warp travel. Clannish and insular, they have lived amongst humans since before the Age of Strife and during those nightmarish times dwindled to extinction. It is not known how the this unique sub-sepcies of humans first came into existence though they might have been a result of long forbidden genetic tampering. Some scholars suspect (paradoxically) the hand of the Emperor if not in their original creation, then perhaps in their recreation and certainly increase in numbers -- 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 protection in exchange for their services as steersmen for the many Imperial ships. Those extreme few that have access to the remaining archives from the Unification Wars 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 and were to be eliminated afterwards, but with the destruction of the Imperial Webway and the internment of the Emperor upon the Golden Throne after the Battle of Terra at the end of the Horus Heresy, the temporary solutions of Navigators and the Astronomican became permanent. In the 41st millenium, the Navigator Houses are still considered by the Imperium under the direct protection of the Emperor Himself in exchange for their unique brand of service.

Whatever the cause of its appearance, the "Navigator Gene," as it is now known, has endured across thousands of years and without it, much like the Astropath's gift, 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 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 Household 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 Warp to empower their gifts and to this role of seeing the Navigator is uniquely adapted. A human ship without a Navigator to guide it cannot hope to travel far without quickly being lost in the maelstrom 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 tumult, but combined with the Emperor's creation of the great 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 ships 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 powers seem to result from a Navigator’s unique affinity to 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.

An Unpleasant Necessity
One of the fundamental tensions that exists between the Navis Nobilite and the rest of the Imperium is the fact that Navigators are patently mutants in a culture that does not often suffer the mutant to live save as a brutally oppressed underclass. Many dark legends and fables of excess, witchery, and murderous power have grown up about them, and not all without cause. As a result, Navigators are often shunned and feared, and the popular dread at meeting the gaze of their three-fold eyes means that many prefer to have dealings with them only when they absolutely must. The maintenance of the valuable Navigator gene has also meant that over thousands of years most Navigator families have acquired malformations, strange afflictions, or mental abnormalities. In some Navigator families, the genetic corruption of the line has become so severe that only a few members of the clan can move amongst the rest of the Imperium. The remainder remain confined to the family's great estates or in sealed tabernacles aboard ship, their deformities hidden from sight.

These differences have often led to conflict in the past, and localised factions of the Ecclesiarchy have, on a number of occasions, burned Navigator holdings and executed Navigators as heretics. Such incidents are often brought violently to heel by the Ecclesiarchy itself, before the wrath of the High Lords of Terra is visited upon the culprits and any above them in rank that allowed such action to come to pass. After all, no one can afford to offend those who hold the key to voyaging between the stars. The Inquisition is one of the few bodies that can truly move beyond the immunity of the Navigators' charter, and its eye is ever kept on the Navigator clans. Even the Inquisition must be circumspect and certain in this task. However, in rare extreme cases, the Holy Ordos has destroyed entire clans and carried their patriarchs and matriarchs off in the Black Ships for final sanction.

Navigator Powers
Navigators possess a number of special powers which represent their respective lineage. A Navigator is a living window into the warp, a fact mercifully mitigated for his own soul's and sanity’s sake by the effects of the Navigator Gene that allows him to perceive the warp's mind-blasting truth in a unique way that allows his human mind to deal with it. Unlike psychic powers, Navigators do not need to summon the energies of the warp or use arcane psychic foci to activate their powers. Rather, their powers are a result of their innate connection to the warp and the legacy of their genes. The following presents an assortment of some of the most common Navigator Powers found in the Imperium. These are certainly not all of the powers that might be found; the Imperium is a vast and strange place:


 * A Cloud in the Warp - By understanding and perceiving the currents of the warp, the Navigator can hide his presence from those that would use the Immaterium to detect him. Whilst it does not in any way mask his presence in the real universe, it can ably hide him from detection by Psykers and confuse creatures whose essence and existence are linked to the warp, such as Daemons and other warp entities. As the Navigator grows in power, he will become harder to detect, as well as being able to mask others if they stand nearby.
 * Foreshadowing - By using his warp eye to filter small secrets from the near future, the Navigator can choose to make slight adjustments to his actions to avoid harm and manipulate the course of events. Only if the Navigator tries to dig too deep into the near future for secrets does this power become unpredictable and he may become victim of the warp’s lies.
 * Gaze into the Abyss - This power allows a Navigator to see a creature's or object's reflection in the warp and learn things hidden from the real universe. This power is most useful in unmasking both psykers and daemons, but has other applications, such as reading residual psychic taint on objects and tracking powerful psychic entities.
 * Held in my Gaze - The unflinching eye of a Navigator locks a creature in place with a gaze that pierces flesh and bone to see the immaterial essence of all things. Most commonly employed against psykers, this ability can be used to render them effectively powerless and prevent them from calling upon their abilities. It is also undeniably effective against creatures with a strong connection to the warp, such as daemons, for which it can have spectacular and devastating consequences.
 * The Course Untraveled - Time is not an arrow that flies straight and true, but rather, a tangled web of moments and possibilities. The Course Untraveled power allows a Navigator to negotiate this web, stepping fractionally from one moment to another, and in the process, altering his position in the physical world. The use of such power is extremely dangerous, however, as the Navigator is not actually physically travelling in place as such, but rather choosing an alternate future in which wish to inhabit. He risks both injury and madness in trying to step outside the flow of time in this way.
 * The Lidless Stare - If a Navigator opens his warp eye fully, anyone gazing into its depths will witness the power and mind breaking unreality of the warp. In an instant, they witness the chaos boiling beneath the skin of existence and for many, it is the last thing they ever see.
 * Tides of Time and Space - By examining the flow of the warp around him, the Navigator can anticipate near future actions and thus move outside the normal flow of events by choosing strands of reality and slipping between them. Whilst this power can be of great benefit to the Navigator, it is also very dangerous, and should he lose control, the results can be disastrous.
 * Tracks in the Stars - When a ship travels though either real space or the warp it leaves a faint trail, the lingering shadow of its warp drive. Using his third eye, the Navigator can follow this trail across the stars.
 * Void Watcher - Using this power and gazing into the void whilst aboard ship, the Navigator can learn things about space in the immediate vicinity of his vessel. This can reveal hidden dangers such as mines, void creatures, and concealed ships, as well as more mundane perils like asteroids and debris. With skill and practice, a Navigator's void sense can become amazingly precise and reach out across millions of kilometres of space.

Navigator Mutations
"They hide a darkness in their souls far more repulsive than any warping of flesh or disfigurement of limb. Would that they weren't quite so useful then we could burn the lot of them."

- Inquisitor Saffena Sengir, Ordo Hereticus

As sure as a star will dwindle and die, a Navigator will be warped by his heritage over time "The sins of blood" as the old Imperial proverb goes, "will out." As stable a mutation as the Navigator gene is, it still gives rise to countless other deformities of body and soul within its host. This, combined with long term exposure to the warp, almost always ensures that Navigators will be afflicted with some kind of physical aberration. Simply being born into a Navigator family means that an individual will be mutated in some way. A Navigator's resistance or susceptibility to mutation is almost purely down to the psychical purity of his gene-stock.

Navis Nobilite
Navigators are both a human sub-species as well as a collectively powerful political organisation of the Imperium known as the Navis Nobilite, a guild of Imperial nobles that represents all of the Navigator bloodlines or Houses of the Imperium. The members of the Navis Nobilite are exempt from many Imperial laws, and even the Imperial Inquisition tends to be careful in the handling of individual Navigators due to the political power of the Navis Nobilite. However, Navigators guilty of treason, heresy or something equally serious are hunted down without mercy. Such affairs are many times dealt with internally by the Navis Nobilite itself before the Inquisition has any reason to act and potentially blacken the name of Navigators as whole amongst an Imperial population already superstitious about them. Each Navigator family is very close and often very large, and different families are often allied by marriage, while others are rivals. Although individual Navigators are not directly controlled by the Imperium, every Warp-capable spacecraft in the Imperium has at least one Navigator who acts as the Warp pilot.

Navigators are organised into families known as "Houses" (sometimes known as "clans"), through which both the warp eye mutation and their esoteric knowledge of warp navigation has been passed down through the generations. Because of their monopolies, ancient lineages, and accorded rights, Navigator families are usually both immensely wealthy and influential, their power extending to all corners of the Imperium. In particular, their influence of matters in interstellar trade is beyond that of any other group. Perhaps most importantly, they have an Emperor-given right to conduct their own affairs as they see fit and thus are effectively outside of the laws and authority of the Imperium. This freedom is only void in particular circumstances of overt rebellion or treachery, and even then great care is taken by the Adepta in confronting and punishing such crimes. A clan's private retainers and bodyguards can number in the thousands. Largely, the clans police their own, binding themselves together in a shared culture and through lines of alliance, fealty, and marriage. However, wary of the balance of power, the high master of the Navis Nobilite, the Paternova, and his agents are often merciless when one clan or family should, by its treachery or excess, endanger the others.

Whilst ostensibly the role of the Paternova, and by extension the Novators, is to manage the power of the Houses and protect their interests from the greed of the Administratum or the ignorance of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition, they do in fact have a far more important role to play. This role is in the cultivation and protection of the Navigator gene. Vital to the survival of the Houses is the continuance of the birthing and training of skilled and potent Navigators. However, the competition between the families has also led to each tampering with and altering the evolution of some of its children, in the hopes of creating more powerful and able Navigators with which to defeat their rivals and win greater contracts. Over many centuries, this altering of the Navigator gene has created many lineages, giving rise to some strains of the Navigator gene in which certain powers, abilities, and mutations are more prevalent.

The Great Houses
Few organisations within the Imperium hold as much power as the Great Navigator Houses of the Navis Nobilite. Their position of control over nearly all Imperial shipping places them in a rare place of power, one that sits almost beyond the reach of both the Administratum and even the Inquisition itself. It is a position that the Great Houses have mercilessly exploited down the millennia and used to gather vast wealth and influence to themselves. Though across the long span of years this power has risen and fallen, it has endured longer than almost all other Imperial edifices. The only aspect of the Great Houses that matches their political endurance is their constant struggle with each other. Constantly struggling for position and favour, the Houses use all manner of means to outdo their rivals, sometimes even engaging in open warfare against one another. Only the strict control of the House Novators and the carefully maintained codes of the Navigators keep such conflicts from spiralling out of control.

The Paternova
The Paternova is the leader, and most powerful both in terms of psychic and political power, of all the Navigators of the Navis Nobilite. The Paternova lives in the Palace of the Navigators, which dominates the centre of the Navigator's Quarter on Terra. From the moment he or she is installed, the Paternova never leaves this palace. The staff, soldiery and other retainers of the Palace of the Navigators are all drawn from the Paternova's own House, and are all replaced with each new Paternova who assumes the office. The chief among a Paternova's servants is the Paternoval Envoy, who often serves as one of the High Lords of Terra, representing the interests of the Navis Nobilite on the Senatorum Imperialis. If anybody were to know the secrets of the Navigators' origins in the lost history of Mankind, it would be the noble who rises to become the Paternova.

The chief role of the Paternova is his ability to somehow amplify, the "Warp Sense" of other Navigators. This is a direct result of the extreme mutations a Paternova suffers during their ascension from one being one of the Heirs Apparent found amongst all the Novators of the more powerful Navigator Houses. For this reason, the Paternova is sometimes described as the guiding father of the Navis Nobilite whose powers transcend the Warp itself. The importance of this link is demonstrated during the rare interregnums that periodically occur between the reign of one Paternova and his or her replacement. During these times, all Navigators other than the Heirs Apparent suffer a considerable reduction in their ability to navigate the Warp. If this state of affairs were to continue for long, much of the Imperium would collapse into anarchy, as both commercial and military Imperial starships would be unable to quickly or safely traverse the Warp, with many being lost to the Empyrean completely.

The Paternova can often live for a thousand standard years. When he does die, his successor is chosen from amongst the waiting Heirs Apparent, the most powerful Navigators of the Great Families. From the moment of his death, all the existing Heirs Apparent undergo a dramatic physical metamorphosis. They grow larger and stronger, and the psychic mutations that characterise all Navigators become even more pronounced. The Heirs Apparent gain the ability to survive underwater, in poisonous environments and even in the hard vacuum of space. Their natural aggression is increased, and they are drawn into combat with each other. As each Heir Apparent is killed, those who survive change physically even more, until only one remains alive. It is this vastly changed and extremely powerful individual who becomes the new Paternova.

As soon as a new Paternova is installed within the Palace of the Navigators, all of the other Navigators find the standard strength of their own psychic abilities restored, though not all are always restored to the same degree of effectveness. Those Navigators belonging to the same House as the Paternova find their abilities greatly enhanced, as though their blood ties enables the Paternova to transmit his powers more effectively to his kin. Navigators belonging to the House of the old Paternova lose this benefit, and many Navigators suddenly find their powers greatly diminished. The reasons for this alteration in power levels remains unknown to Imperial genetic science.

The Novator
The Novator is a patriarch or matriarch that rules over a Navigator House, the figurative—and often biological—father or mother of the family. It is the role of the Novator to hold the family together and manage their fortunes, fostering contacts and contracts to the House and jealously guarding those already in its possession. Above the scores of Novators stands the Paternova, head of all the Imperium’s Navigator Houses. From his throne on ancient Terra, he guides the destiny of the Houses, ensuring their place of power within the galaxy.

Traditions & Position
Each Navis Nobilite House and have their own unique traditions and positions dependent upon their own histories. For instance, House Belisarius is led by an individual Novator referred to as the Celestarch and has its own standing military trained by the Astartes of the Space Wolves Chapter, who long ago concluded a special alliance with House Belisarius to provide its Celestarch with a small forces of Space Wolves known as the Wolf Guard to serve him or her as a personal honour guard. A nobleman or noblewoman known as a Novator serves as the matriarch or patriarch of a Navigator House. A Novator can either be the figurative parent or a biological parent of the other members of the family, but always serves as the House's legal and titular leader. A Novator is expected to manage their household's fortunes and to keep their kin united in fostering the House's political and economic agenda. These duties include fostering trade contracts for the House whilst jealously guarding those profitable enterprises the House already holds in its possession. The strict controls a Novator imposes along with the Imperium's legal Navigator codes prevents devastating economic and even outright military conflict from erupting between the Navigator Houses. Ranked above the many Novators of the different Houses in the hierarchy of the Navigators sits the powerful noble known as the Paternova, who oversees the fortunes of the Navigators as an Imperial elite.

Trade Wars
The most common conflict involving the Navis Nobilite are the conflicts between the various Navigator houses. Each Navigator family's power and wealth is based on the trade it can control, its contracts and pledges to various mercantile organisations, and the courses that its Navigators can plot. All these matters are areas of fierce competition between the different Navigator houses and often the focus of campaigns of espionage, violence, and assassination. Such conflicts can cause huge amounts of damage to the infrastructure of the Imperium, often occurring without the direct knowledge of the nobility or the Imperial authorities until it is too late. Traditionally, this damage has been controlled by the formal declaration of a "trade war" under the terms of the ancient Navigator Convention. A trade war, once declared, allows all Navigator houses involved to act against their rivals using military and covert means. According to the terms of a trade war, those outside of the Navigator houses involved should not be affected or harmed by its progress. However, in reality, subsidiaries, allies, and associates of the Navigator houses immersed in a trade war are usually dragged into the conflict whether they want to be or not. While a trade war is meant to control and contain competition between Navigator houses, many houses act outside of the constraints of a declared trade war. Such illegal actions usually involve intermediaries, assassination guilds, or armies for hire.

Navigator Lineage
In the Imperium, there are thousands Navigator Houses, each with a history that can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of years, but still the number of Navigators is a literal drop in the ocean compared to the numberless masses of humanity. All these houses are not the same however, either in strength or makeup, and over the millennia many have diverged from the first great families that are said to have exhibited the Navigator gene. Some have dwindled and died off over the years, some few turned outlaw, whilst many others have prospered in these divergent ways of life creating branches and offshoots of the Great Houses across the Imperium. Whilst it would be impossible to catalogue and critique each of the Navigator families, many can be grouped into broad categories, representing their unique strain of the gene as well as their area of influence and way of life. The four groups which are prevalent throughout the galaxy are known variously as the Magisterial Houses, the Nomadic Houses, the Renegade Houses, and the Shrouded Houses:


 * Magisterial Houses - A Magisterial House is one of the Navigator dynasties most closely related to one of the original Navigator families dating back to the time of the Unification Wars. These Houses are amongst the wealthiest and most traditional of the Navis Nobilite and will possess great holdings within the Navigator's Quarter on Terra and their influence reaches to the very edges of the light of the Astronomican. The Magisterial Houses maintain traditions and practices that have served them for millennia. They are masters of the traditional Navigator crafts and have more control over the malign mutations that afflict those with the gene. To be part of a Magisterial House is to know without question the purity of one's blood and the ancient power and nobility of one's family. Due to the long-established maintenance of their bloodlines, the Navigators of the Magisterial Houses are less susceptible to the symptomatic mutations which often affect Navigators because of their exposure to the power of the Empyrean.
 * Nomadic Houses - A Nomadic Navigator House has forsaken ties of sector and system, relinquishing their terrestrial holding. Instead, over the centuries, these Navigator Houses have taken wholly to the stars to become wanderers and gypsies, their lines preserved on vast fleets of ships constantly on the move. Due to their void-based lifestyle the members of the Nomadic Houses are perhaps the most skilled of Navigators in the Imperium due to their long exposure to both the void and the Immaterium and the inherent necessities of astronavigation. This gives them an understanding of space and warp second to none, but like all of the Voidborn, these Navigators may have a great deal of difficulty relating to the Imperium's varied planetary cultures.
 * Shrouded Houses - A Shrouded House has suffered great losses or shame within the more established dominions of the Imperium. They have opted to move their powerbase completely to the edge of known space, where they cling to the barest strands of their former status and power. Though they may be rich in skill, knowledge or lore, something in the past of Shrouded Houses has blighted them and reduced them to a state so far from their once exalted position that they are sometimes cruelly called "beggar houses" by other, more fortunate (and far less polite) counterparts. A Navigator that is a part of a Shrouded House is to be part of a fallen line that is slowly rising again to stand defiant against those that once cast them down -- or at least, so they are told by their elders. Their loss in standing has often forced such houses to flee to the margins of the Imperium and to develop a cunning and opportunistic mindset alongside a skill that is often lacked by more comfortably indolent houses. This tends to make these Navigators far more resourceful than their more well-established kin, while at the same time their Warp Eye often becomes more perceptive.
 * Renegade Houses A Renegade House represents a Great House that has completely forsaken the traditions and ancient practices of the Navigator families in their quest for power, or may have been turned on by the rest of the Navis Nobilite, harrowed, and driven into exile. Dabbling heavily in the genes of their children in order to improve their lot, their tampering often leads to hideous mutations and unconscionable monsters in their lineage, which in turn leads to rejection by the Paternova and a hunt to extinction by the Inquisition. In some cases, however, it has birthed new strains of the gene and given rise to families with unique abilities and potent powers. Navigators that are a part of a Renegade House have cast aside the sacred Navigator traditions as small minded and restrictive and instead have embraced the glory and limitless potential of their ancestry -- or so the houses believe, to comfort themselves. It is whispered that such regions as the Koronus Expanse is home to several Renegade Houses like the secretive Gazmati and the infamous Nostromo.

Appearance
Navigators are a mutant sub-species of humanity. Other than the existence of the third eye in the middle of their forehead, most Navigators are virtually indistinguishable from normal humans; others possess such extreme physical deviations that their appearance is utterly alien. Mutation or deformity is common among Navigators; although the deviations exhibited are limited to specific traits common among Navigators. Navigators tend to be tall and spindly, sometimes with pale and almost translucent skin. Other common mutant traits include scaly skin, extremely large eyes which may lack the iris, and ill-defined facial features. The hands and feet of a Navigator can be ridiculously large, and are often webbed. It is very common for Navigators to be completely hairless, either from birth or soon after adolescence when the third eye first opens. Except in the most extreme cases, a Navigator would never possess all of these mutant traits at the same time. Those born with such extreme mutations might be hidden away or even killed at birth by their House to prevent their bloodlines from being contaminated by a level of mutation that would surely draw the attention of the Ordo Hereticus -- or even worse, the interest of their rival Navigator Houses.

Warp Eye
"Gaze long into the Warp and the Warp will gaze back into you."

- Ancient Navis Nobilite Proverb

Common to all Navigators is the "warp" or "third" eye. It almost always manifests as a literal mutation they bear upon their foreheads, although in some cases trepanning and a cybernetic shutter implant made during adolescence will be needed to affect the full release of their power. This eye is what gives a Navigator his power to gaze into the warp and guide ships through its turbulent currents and storms—more than a mere additional sensory appendage, the third eye is the source of all a Navigator's power and their link to the Immaterium. Through this eye they can see directly into the warp, and when their power is honed, pierce material barriers and disguises, even delve into the souls of men. They can also use this eye to read the currents of the warp—its ebb and flow—and through this understanding subtly alter it, causing ripples that can be felt within the Materium of real space itself. In addition to these lesser powers, the gaze of a Navigator's warp eye when fully opened can kill, its baleful light sheering the very souls from those that look upon it, extinguishing them forever in a moment of blazing madness and agony. The warp eye is also the Navigators' most obvious mutation but often not their only one. It marks them out as a mutant and divergent from the greater masses of humanity, and whilst their position, wealth and bearing serve to protect them from persecution (at least most of the time), Navigators are still feared and distrusted by many for their gifts, and not without cause. For this reason, Navigators tend to cloister themselves away from other people, seek the protection of bodyguards, and use hoods and cowls to hide their warp eye when in public.

The Navigators' Warp Eye has other powers too, although these are employed far more rarely and are the subject of some mystique. These powers develop with the Navigator's experience of the Warp, so that they are most often developed by the potent navigators known as the Heirs Apparent. It is said that the third eye of a Navigator has prophetic powers and that it can literally see into the future. Navigators are very reluctant to talk about their powers, and it may well be that only the Paternova, the political leader of the Navis Nobilite, understands the full potential of a Navigator's psychic abilities. Not least of the Warp Eye's powers is its singular ability to deal death; any normal person meeting the Warp Eye's gaze can be agonizingly killed by sudden mental exposure to the Warp; mainly due to this danger, Navigators generally keep their third eye covered with a bandanna or something similar except when they are taking a starship through the Warp, causing many people to doubt that the "third eye" even exists.

Of course, the unique abilities of the Navigators has its limits. Outside the range of the guiding light of the Astronomican projected by the Emperor's presence in the Warp, the Navigators are far more limited in their ability to guide a starship through the Warp. During the Macharian Crusade, the grand Imperial conquest of the outer reaches of the galaxy almost ground to a halt as the sight of the Navigators failed, when they could sense only darkness around them. Furthermore, there are places in the galaxy the Navigators avoid at almost any cost. Navigators will shun the Eye of Terror and thousands of light years of space around it rather than risk a minor deviation in course which might take them close to or across its boundaries. Most Navigators have personal experience of close encounters with Chaos near the Eye of Terror, and many more can recall the names of others who travelled too close to the Eye in a foolish attempt to cut standard days from their journey time only to vanish forever.

Also See

 * Navigator's Quarter
 * Paternova
 * Novator
 * Navis Nobilite
 * Astronomican

Gallery
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