Warhammer 40k Tabletop Thread XLIV - "Take a Shot of Paint Water"

[Wraith]

On the one hand, Lexicanum references Rogue Trader as being the original source of backwards-in-time warp jumps, and from what I remember it's the same vague sort of sentence that has been repeated in newer editions but I don't know if it's still present. Unless it's in the 10th edition rulebook right now, I tend to dismiss it as being something cool that ultimately never happened on a notable scale like Enslavers, or Hrud, or Aeronautica Imperialis.

Maybe don't go so far as to ret-con it entirely, but to me, time-travel happens in the same way that Marneus Calgar eats breakfast. He probably does it quite often, but unless he one day consumes an entire Vauxhall with a spoon, it's not big enough news to register. When someone wants to write about 3 companies of Primaris Ultramarines turning up at Istvaan, then it'll be worth reading about - until then, it's isolated incidents about people who don't matter, or don't have enough influence to do anything about it.

On the other hand, time-travel breaks just about ANY setting where logic gets applied to it. Some of the more clever ways of dealing with it are fixed points in time (from Dr Who - some events converge in all timelines and just can't be changed) to branching timelines a la Back To The Future. Maybe time travel DOES happen constantly, but we, the viewer, only see the most grimdark version of events, such is the nature of 40k.

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For another reference, Ollanius Person goes back in time through what is essentially a continent-spanning warp rift, leaving himself clues as to how to get around the Imperial Palace and meet up with the Dark King in End & The Death Part II.
This version implies a closed-loop to avoid paradox; Persson travels back in time in order to inform himself of how and why to travel back in time, kind of thing. Maybe there WERE 3 Companies of Primaris Ultramarines at Istvaan - sucks to be them, as historically all of the Loyalists got virus bombed. ALL of them. Who'd notice 300 more bodies in a pile of tens of thousands?

Argul Tal's visit to the Imperial Laboratory suggests a similar sort of thing, also involving a warp rift (which, when all is said and done, the Eye of Terror is). He wouldn't have gotten there without Lorgar, and there wouldn't be a Lorgar without Argul Tal.

That kind of seems to be 40k's take on time travel? No one truly has free will, everyone is tied to inescapable destinies and even skilled prognosticators like Eldrad Ulthuan can only change the future with logical cause-and-effect. There isn't a future where Sanguinious doesn't die at Horus' hand, he can only choose when and where it happens - if you time travel in 40k, it's because you have already done it and your own actions to change it are precisely what brought it about.