Not your typical subsector

yah we should have those too ;D

The 'ork empire' is a concept for the area around the Castellan subsector. We do not want to over-use an idea.

Kage

Thank god... I hated the fact that the system had generated four black holes...

Kage

I love this idea! (I do believe you mean subsector, though ) I'm not sure if it's best for the 'Cursed' subsector or 'Other' subsector. In addition to the five Imperial subsectors (Anargo, Meksum, Dorvastor, Proteus and Castellan), there is the Cursed subsector, and the Other subsector.
The Cursed subsector is a spooky place, once an Imperial subsector, laid to waste following the Vandire Heresy.
The Other subsector is a subsector that has not yet been colonised, but which contains several potentially valuable worlds, probably ancient human worlds or alien worlds, among other things.

Hmmm... what do other members think?


Well, the current idea (IIRC) is that the cursed subsector is this very spooky place with a lot of ghost worlds, and patrolled by mysterious Imperial ships. I'm not sure a Gorkamorka-like planet would fit right smack in the middle of that.
Why not put interesting worlds like that outside the subsectors, deep in uncontrolled space? Redtoof Cluster or something

What was Gorkamorka like btw?


I have no idea if this is physically possible, but I must say I'm rather skeptic about this idea..

All right, here is the basic informatin about the creation of the gas torus described in the Integral Trees and the Smoke ring.

Excerpt from N-Space by Larry Niven

Astronomers have long known that Titan has a cloudy atmosphere. They can also demonstrate that Titan isn't massive enough to hold an atmosphere. What's it doing there?

They call it the gas torus effect, and it works like this. Titan isn't massive enough, so molecules of atmosphere leak away. But the gas molecules are still bound by a strong gravitational field: Saturn's. They remain in orbit around Saturn. The gas torus is of low density, and is shaped like an overinflated inner tube-or a smoke ring, if a smoke ring were spinning, with the inner part going somewhat faster than the outer. Some of the trapped gas escapes anyway. Most of it will end up back in Titan's atmosphere, and leak away again, and return...

We'll put a Mars-size moon in orbit about a Jupiter-size body , and move it to halfway between Mars and Earth.

The Jovian primary will radiate some heat. If we want Earthlike temperature we must put the system farther from the sun than Earth is. It'll still be warmer than Saturn's moon Titan, so the warmer gasses will escape faster unless we make the body more massive than Titan. Almost certainly it will be tidally locked, with one face turned toward the Jovian at all times; so days will be long. With all of that in mind . . . we now have a world with an Earthlike atmosphere and four-tenths of Earth's gravity.But I became fascinated by an extreme case. Forget the dinky little Jovian. Let's put a neutron star at the center! That gives us a ferocious gravity gradient. We'll put a gas giant in close orbit around it . . . not neccessarily something as big as Jupiter, but a world more like Neptune. The planet won't be habitable. But the gas torus itself should have enough pressure to support life. If we give it enough time, if we let life develop, and green plants . . .

We'll get a breathable Earthlike atmosphere in a doughnut-shape larger than a world, where everything is in free-fall except for tidal effects; where gravity is found only at the ends of what I then called "spoke trees," that look like a tree with two tops and no bottom; where everything that lives can fly except men.

Time must pass, not only for green life to produce raw oxygen, but for the neutron star to spin down. Remember, that's the ashes of a supernova explosion. It carried the magnetic field of a mudered star into itself when it collapsed. A star like that, spinning within a nebula-cloud that used to be the outer layer of that same murdered star, generates a signal powerful enough to shower Sol system with x-rays from hundreds of light years away, That's why it's called a pulsar. We're describing enough radiation to fry any human.

So give it time to spin down. A billion years may be enough.

I had not realized that the winds at the endpoints of the trees would be even more powerful than the tide! And so my spoke trees- pointing through the neutron star, like spokes in a wagon wheel- were shaped by the wind into long S-shapes, integral signs, integral trees, and gained a good deal more detail. (N-Space, pg 593-596)

This link provides a good theoretical model of the developement of a gas torus.

members.optushome.com.au/guests/TermPaper.html

This link is to an article that discusses the astronomical proof of gas toruses surrounding stars with high magnetic fields.

spaceflightnow.com/news/n0107/16hstweave/

I think I also have a way for the atmosphere to exist in this place without the need for the trees. Several years ago, I began working on a project to define a race of sentient plants as a possible army in the 40k Universe.

These plants existed of two sperate strains, the Kudzu and the Bregma. Both species were creat by the Old Ones as a way to repair the damage done to the ecosystems of the galaxy after the great war against the Necrontyr.

After this war, many worlds had been laid waste or were reduced to nothing more than bare rock. The Kudzu and Bregma would reseed these worlds and remake them into gardens (paradises).

The Kudzu who quickly (like weeds) sprouted first upon a world. Their job was to purify the soil and to remove contaminants from the water and atmosphere. Once the world had been purified, the Bregma would spawn to reseed the world and make it green (or purple, or blue) again.

I won't go into more detail about the Kudzu and Bregma at this time, because there is too much, suffice it to say, their manner of travel between worlds is based off of that used by the Old Ones themselves. It involes a geometric folding of space to move from one place in the galaxy to another.

Programed by the Old Ones, their "Star Map" is way out of date. the Old Ones did not expect to withdrawal when the first created the Kudzu and Bregma. Left to their own devices, the Kudzu and Bregma must rely on the information that they had.

In this case, they had no way of knowing that the star they were traveling to had gone nova. Instead of a planet, they found an inertube shaped gas torus circling the remains of a neuton star in a bianry star system. they went about their job purifying the atmosphere, but then went dormant. Why you ask, because there was no longer a planet to reseed.

The Bregma had no place to take root and with their job finished, the Kudzu became dormant. They still process the impurities that occur in the enviroment, but mostly they act as homes for the local ecosystem that has begun to form.

Sorry about the long post

I'd be glad to be the coordinator of the sub-sector. Thank you for the comments. The smoke ring for the most part was just the beginning of a brain storming process, to try and give reasons why this are of space might be becalmed and to populate it with unusual environments.

I just provided the links to show that mathmatically such a place could exist. There could be several other reasons for this unusual occurance.

1. An Alien Artifact (but isn't it always)

Perhaps an unknow alien race or an ancient device of the Old Ones. It creates a dampening field that disrupts the natural flow of warp space.

2. Natural Event - Black Hole, Super Nova, Other

Some natural event that has a massive electro magnetic field. It could exist either in real space or perhaps the disturbance occured in warp space. The effect is strong enough to change the surrounding warp currents so that they flow in an eliptical pattern around the event.

3. Fracture in the Web Way

This is one explanation that I find most interesting. What would happen if one of the webway tunnels actually ruptured into either real space or warp space?
Would the stability of the web way spill out into the surrounding space causing a becalming effect on the warp around it?

The question arises, what would be strong enough to rupture a web way corridor? Could it be an external effect such as a massive star going nova. There has been nothing written about the effects of stellar events on the warp. There must be some kind of crossover.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how resilient the web way corridors are? Could it perhpas have be something inside the coridor that caused the rupture? Maybe the death or explosion of a craftworld caused the rupture. This could also give you more lost souls to populate the Cursed Sub-Sector.

Perhaps time also flows differently in this sub-sector. It has been documented that there are places in the webway where time flows almost at a standstill and sometimes backwards.

This may help to explain why some explores who have entered the cluster are never heard from again. Outside hundred of year may have past, but inside only a few weeks have gone by. time dialation is also consistant with large electro magnetic fields (like the event horizon of a black hole).

Done and welcome.

<contented sigh remembering the Throne of Solomon discusions...>

With regards to the 'warp becalming' it could, quite literally, just be a calm area! There is no need to invent a reason when it could be quite literally just a calm area...

Of course, if we ever get around to getting some decent maps of the sector I would be very keen on beginning to hack at the 'warp map' (thinking of the 'maps' that I posted in the Art board). Creating some from of 'topographical' tidal pool would be really quite interesting...


I would say not and, unfortunately, this is the one idea that I like the least...


There is and it is an interesting question insofar as it relates to the description of the 'warp map'. But I'd like to avoid this concept at the moment... I really don't want to buy into the "decaying Webway" image too much, more so because I don't agree with it.


They are described as being immune to Chaos. Kind of puts it in perspective, for me.