40K Lore, The Mystery of the Dreaded Black Ships Explained!

greetings and sanitations friends and welcome back to more warhammer 40k lore today we will be talking about the black ships often considered a mere myth by many within the imperium uh tall tale with which to scare disobedient children the black ships are nevertheless very real and despite their somber pitch black exterior devoid even of basic running lights or any windows or portholes through which an air and ray of illumination might escape these dreaded starships that ply the void in search of fresh human fuel for the empress pyre are in reality ships of salvation without them the imperium would not function and many a world would fall prey to the sadistic powers of uncontrollable warp psyches and so as with all things in the 41st millennium even the darkest corners of this blighted galaxy contains a spark of vindication but before we get into the lore a bit of an unusual aside because today's video has a sponsor the one the only raid shadow legends yes indeed this famous 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receive all of these bonuses on the screen right now by simply getting into the game and going up to the top right corner and clicking on the chest icon and along with all these rewards you will also gain the epic dark elf champion hex weaver and finally the names of those who sign up may also be featured in the next week's lore video in a special raid recap and now that the raid is done with let's move on to the 40k lore video the first and most obvious question that needs to be answered is what precisely are the black ships and why are they so feared and why is that fear actually the imperium salvation well the black ships are part of a massive armada the positions of which their bases their disposition and their numbers are all kept a closely guarded secret known only to the highest ranking masters of the adapter's astra telepathica but whispered rumors suggest that were the black ships ever to be properly countered their numbers would put them solely in the position of the second largest fleet in the galaxy let that sink in for a second we are talking about thousands upon thousands upon thousands of vessels all kilometers long all requiring decades if not centuries to produce and millions of surfs and engineers what could possibly require a fleet of such size and complexity as to rival the imperial navy and the answer is the very continuation of the god emperor's life and suddenly the expense doesn't seem quite so insane doesn't it because without the god emperor on his golden throne the imperium would simply just cease to function not because he is overly involved in the day-to-day runnings of his empire anymore of course on account of him being for most intents and purposes dead basically but without the god emperor there is no astronomicon as it is his near immortal soul an unfathomable psychic potential that creates the beacon with which the starships of the imperium navigate the vast expanses of the void through the mysterious warp to massively oversimplify the immaterial math involved the astronomicon acts as a lighthouse beacon in the imaterium the realms of the chaos gods through which all imperial spaceship travel and without this beacon this mode of transportation would be literally unusable the continued existence of a strong and stable astronomicon is not merely vital it is the condition upon which space travel exists you can no more have a human without oxygen then you can have continued large-scale travel within the imperium without an astronomicon and this is because of the very nature of the warp itself this realm bends time and space it is why it can make travel so much quicker than doing it through the cold deep dark void but it is also a realm that is entirely separate from our reality there is no such thing as constant landmarks within the void and also no way to have a quick little peek back into reality leaving a space-faring vessel blind deaf and completely lost with the only option being to simply dump unceremoniously and uncontrollably back into reality which could easily leave the ship occupying the same space as a neutron star and whilst the void is most assuredly vast there are also a fair bit of dangers lurking within it meteors suns black holes asteroid fields etc and appearing merged within any of these dangers will lead to the destruction of the ship and the death of everyone on board and so within this realm of inconsistencies of ever-changing landmarks and formations the only constant is the beacon of the astronomicon appearing like a golden light in the ever roiling darkness of the immaterium and it is by this light that navigators ply their trade across the stars due to the ever constant presence of the astronomicon and its illumination the navigators can at any point in time presuming there's not a warp storm nearby look upon its radiant glory and determine with as much precision as is ever truly possible within the warp there's a reason why spaceships usually appear several weeks travel away from a planet for example where they are within real space and allows them to reappear at a safe distance from any interfering stellar bodies but hold up a minute arch i hear you say what have the black ships got to do with the emperor and the astronomicon are they perhaps some kind of relay stations boosting the signal essentially of the astronomicon out to the furthest flung reaches of the imperium or are they perhaps some part of a ritualistic network staffed by members of the adapter's astra telepathica to continue to keep the void lanes clear well and many other universes it might be something like this but in the 41st millennium the black ships as the name implies have a far gloomier task for you see the beacon of the astronomicon is like a fire and like all flames it needs nourishment it requires fuel and what pray tell could possibly feed a psychic fire powerful enough to be seen from the very edges of the galaxy what fuel indeed this was actually one of the first things that really got me hooked into the 41st millennium and it's massive dark universe because at the very heart of the imperium of man there burns a funeral pyre upon which essentially the continued life of every human in the galaxy depends and to keep it burning it needs the sacrifice of a thousand human psyches every single day and this is no easy euthanasia either it isn't a bullet to the back of the neck it is a psychic death sentence in which the very soul of the psyche is slowly chipped away at and burned away by the flames of the god emperor every single solitary day a thousand psyches die in unimaginable agony to keep the imperium alive [Music] that is grimdark and of course the procurement of a thousand cycles per day 365 000 cycles a year that doesn't happen by accident that is the job of the black ships and the massive fleet commanded by the masters of the adapters astra telepathica they scour the galaxy of man for all the psyches discovered within the populace imprison them and transport them back to holy terror where they will be analyzed they will be tested and they will be judged those who are considered more fit and stable amongst them might be introduced into the deeper secrets of psychic lore they might be turned in to psyches in the service of the imperium operating throughout its many branches of government and military they are the lucky ones the ones that are considered either too unstable to serve in any other capacity or those who are considered simply too dangerous to be trained they are all fed into the furnace like so much kindling but long before we even arrive at that part of the process complicated enough in and of itself first the psyches must be discovered the psychic gift is a one in a billion mutation and furthermore out of that one in a billion only a small fraction again have the potential to become psyches powerful enough to become noticed by the black ships by local planetary governors and to be worthy of the astro telepathica's consideration and of course you can only find that one in a billion human mutation on planets that contains humans which means planets livable planets a relative rarity in the galaxy which tend to have quite large distances in between them this is why there needs to be thousands of black ships and why new ones are continuously being produced both to make up for the occasional loss of a vessel and also to keep growing the fleet if it takes a black ship six months to reach a planet and then picks up two or three or four psyches and then another six months to reach another three or four or five psyches it's gonna take quite the while to reach the required one thousand many black ships can travel for months upon months and years upon years picking up psyches across the galaxy before finally returning back to terror and unloading their charges into the custody of the scholastia psychana and since the imperium would rather not have to live day to day when it comes to the very continued existence of space travel within the imperium they would prefer to build up quite a bank of psyches ready for sacrifice and this means that not only does that have to be a lot of black ships they also need to work damned hard to get a hold of the psyches and bring them back to terror but of course the black ships are not able to search an entire planet for its psychic population that is the job of local planetary governors and various officials on the world once the psyche has been detected via various means dependent upon the world in question the more overt cycles of course become known to the administration quite naturally by themselves if a person has the ability to heal wounds mystically or send objects flying across a room that's the kind of that does not escape the public's attention for all that long in these cases the psyche is then rounded up usually by local police forces or in a handful of extreme examples by imperial specialists since of course there is a lot of variety in psyches and in their powers most cycles that are offered up to the god emperor are the low level ones the ones with the ability to utilize their psychic powers at some very basic level perhaps they might be able to occasionally see what they view as a ghost and whose real existence might be something slightly more disturbing all telekinetic gifts capable of lifting um empty glass a couple centimeters off a kitchen table such individuals of course will pose little problem and less danger even to local law enforcement but those who are a bit more powerful many of which might eventually be utilized within the ranks of the imperial god or other arms of the administration could be dangerous depending upon their powers shooting lightning out of their hands being able to see a minute or two into the future and many many many other gifts and in some cases more dangerous curses because every so often a truly powerful natural psyche is created if a psyche is one in a billion then one of these dangerous individuals might be one in a billion on top of that again or one in a trillion on top of that again in the case of certain alpha-level psyches these individuals could range from natural disasters the equivalent of a typhoon or an earthquake all the way up to system level threats capable of taking control over or eradicating the population of entire planets and solar systems but at that point we are moving beyond the jurisdiction of the black ships and into the area of responsibility of the silent sisterhood the grey knights and the adeptus astartes but a psyche does not have to be one of these dangerous few to pose a threat to the imperium in fact ironically taking into consideration their numbers it is the least powerful and therefore the most undetectable of the psyches that in many cases can pose the largest threat because any psyche regardless of his or hers individual powers could at virtually any moment be turned into a window or a doorway through which the demons of the immaterium could flow into the real world psychic powers you see is literally the channeling of the immaterial energies of the warp into the real world as in the example with the empty glass that is the psyche limiting or in some cases even outright cancelling the rules of reality by suffusing it with just the tiniest portion of the warps own inscrutable power and this bears with it almost no risk 0.0000 something percentage of something going horribly wrong but no matter how small the odds are the potential consequences of a mishap could be apocalyptic if even a single demonic entity notices this usage of war power and therefore the psyche as well worst case scenario the demon might be able to turn the psyche into an unstable portal into the warp through which not only the demonic entity itself but its brethren too can flow out from an into reality this is the kind of stuff that destroys entire worlds in orgies of bloodletting as a demonic invasion is at that point a de facto reality in a less dire and immediately dangerous scenario the entity may simply possess the psyche now you have a demon an incalculably ancient and pure evil entity wandering happily and unnoticeably through the streets of a human world best case scenario it simply turns into a maddened serial killer claiming the lives of dozens before having its host shot to death by local law enforcement worst case scenario it plays the long game it infiltrates that society it builds cults it gains influence it begins to shape and twist the world until finally the populace will welcome their demonic liberators from ready-made gates crafted from the twisted bones and carcasses of their once fellow humans with this in mind it should come as a small surprise indeed that most imperial planetary governors would like to have the psychics removed from their custody as quickly as possible and also for all available means to be used in rooting them out and securing them for transportation again most of the time this is done via the natural ebb and flow of things very rarely do planets have truly organized and dedicated organizations for hunting down psyches or the latent psychics amongst their population simply because it is very very difficult to detect many of these individuals instead it is usually an integral part of local law enforcement while some planets and in particular larger hive cities might also have their own arms of that law enforcement specifically dedicated to this and in certain extreme circumstances there might even be inquisitorial representatives usually adepts or members in training that take care of a lot of the hunting of these unsanctioned psyches once they are detected they are then incarcerated on the planet themselves usually in highly specialized environments which are well i was about to say hell on earth but in comparison to what they are about to suffer through aboard the black ships most of these psyches will probably have fond memories of their containment cells on their planets of birth because as i mentioned one psyche is dangerous two or three psyches is double and triple that danger and in the case of the more powerful ones maybe quadruple than many many times that again but when you have a planet's worth of psyches usually only two or three or maybe as much as a dozen in extreme circumstances that's still not all that big of a problem aboard a black ship there could be hundreds if not thousands of these psyches that requires some rather extreme precautions to be taken now back in the day during the great crusade and the reign of the god emperor the ships were manned by a special militarized arm of the astra telepathica known as the departmento investigations or to give them their more famous name the sisters of silence their job was to scour the galaxy for psyches to detect them to detain them and to bring them back to terror where many were trained and those who were not were still fed into the astronomicon as even back then it still did require some fuel but as the demands of the astronomicon grew exponentially with the internment of the god emperor the sisters of silence were no longer numerous enough to carry out their duties and so in the modern day imperium with thousands upon thousands of black ships the responsibility has switched over to other forces first and foremost each and every one of the black ships is a special made construct produced almost exclusively by the forges of mars itself though on occasion ships have been produced in other areas most the overwhelming majority of the black ships do bear the mark of the martian shipwrights this is primarily due to the exacting specifications of the black ships and the need for secrecy to surround them first and foremost of course there are all of the internal security measures back during the era of the silent sisterhood the sisters themselves provided most of the security by being blanks and untouchables they could create a security cordon covering virtually the entire ship and via special meditation chants and trances each one of the sun sisters were able to extend their areas of psychic null influence into huge spheres around them capable of neutralizing dozens or even hundreds of psyches simultaneously but now that these more esoterical means are no longer available on the scale that the imperium requires the black ships have had to develop other means of keeping control over their somewhat challenging cargo a key invention is the occluding sphere this is a mystical device that allows several special trained adepts to focus their psychic powers into it and through it extend a vast area of mind-numbing distortion and disturbances that seeps into the minds of all unshielded psychism making even the simplest act of concentration or conscious control over their mind a near insurmountable challenge to further add to the confusion and to weaken the psychics willpower their specially constructed cells are also fitted with multiple powerful voxcasters constantly broadcasting loud distorted and disturbing sounds into their cells making it impossible for them to rest sleep or organize their thoughts in any real way furthermore the occupants of these brightly lit noisy cells are also transported throughout the black ships frequently they might only stay in a given cell for a few days or possibly even hours before being moved to a completely different section of the ship all of whom are designed to look smell feel and appear slightly different this is again to make it impossible for the psyche to ever relax or become comfortable with his surroundings everything is in that way done to keep the psyches out of balance in pain to keep them disturbed unconcentrated and reduced in many ways to little more than simple braying half maddened animals it is frankly no less than a miracle that any of them survive the journey with enough of their mind intact to ever be worthwhile servants to the imperium and speaking of that the ships of course do not run themselves they require a crew that needs to live and operate in conditions only mildly less hellish than those of the psychists that they transport the crews are mostly made up of specially trained personnel from the astra telepathica along with small contingents of inquisitorial adepts menials and others that are training to enter into that most holy of orders in addition to again all of their specialized training they are also given various side dampening equipment helmets armors and small generators that can keep their minds relatively safe from the intrusive presence of so many psyches but even then they will have to spend most of their time in specially protected upper deck quarters which are still non-too pleasant to occupy nightmares are not merely a daily disturbance for the occupants of these vessels sleep in and off itself is in many cases as much of a myth to the crew as it is to the poor psyches down in the halls as a slight silver lining however most of the crew don't remember over much of any of it since they are regularly mind wiped so as to ensure that any lingering corruption or presence is continuously eroded away and destroyed only the highest ranking captains and inquisitorial officials are exempt from the constant mind wipes and i suspect a fair few of them will choose to undergo one regardless after being on board a black ship for a fair few months i imagine they all have a memory or two they'd rather forget and as a final safety mechanism aboard every black ship is a small burst terrifying container of vicious green liquid containing within it the life eater virus if the captain of the ship ever deems that he has lost control of the vessel or that it is at risk of being taken over by a particularly powerful psychic individual aboard this vial will be shattered and the virus released first it will begin to feed on the very oxygen surrounding it then it will billow out and grow exponentially to fill the entire room before beginning to gnaw its way through even hardened steel the bulkheads of a spaceship are designed to be tough indeed due to the dangers of traveling with hundreds of psyches and obviously as well to protect against the dangers of the void and enemy weapons fire but it is only a question of time until the life eta virus will have eaten its way through even these toughened obstacles and the virus will not stop until all life aboard the vessel has been reduced to little more than sludge eventually leaving a dead and empty vessel cored out from the inside with only the outer most heavily armored bulkheads remaining safe from the virus and even if by some miracle a psyche managed to survive this or perhaps was powerful enough to erect a shield that can protect him from the life eater virus the vessel would then be dead and empty without a crew to run it without constant maintenance and supervision life support systems will soon begin to fail and the cold dead husk will truly become a cold husk as the galaxy saps all the remaining warmth out of the vessel a slow drawn out protracted death that not even the most powerful kind shield could possibly protect a cycle against and of course that slow death is only going to happen if the massive plasma reactors don't go berserk first and vaporize the entire vessel but internal security measures are of course not enough in and of themselves each and every black ship is also equipped armed and armored to the level that you would normally see from front line capital vessels of the imperial navy they are grossly overarmed and armored for their tonnage and only specially fitted and optimized engines and power generators could ever hope to run such a vessel but why if this is basically just a very large prison bus surely it doesn't need guns and armor right well replace the prisoners with piles of gold bullions and you might be starting to see why the extra armament is so needed there are many many many forces within the galaxy that would be very happy indeed to get their hands on a shipment of hundreds possibly thousands of psyches ready for training into weaponry the forces of chaos being but one amongst them and the dark eldar oh my to them this would be like a dessert tray heaped heavy with the finest delicacies in the galaxy and they would stop at very little to get their twisted little claws into it of course the black ship's primary defense is secrecy back in the day during the times of the sisters of silence the vessels usually traveled with heavy escorts but due to the sheer quantity of psyches required by the imperium now that is no longer possible if the imperium was in a position to provide plentiful escorts to thousands upon thousands of vessels well it might not be in as much as it currently is thusling the black ships trust to the simple fact that the galaxy is an immeasurably large space and you need to get very lucky indeed to happen upon the black ship within it and even if you do happen across it it's got more than enough firepower to take on a small fleet that is not to say however the black ships are invulnerable far from it because whilst the imperium affords the black ships the tightest veil of secrecy it possibly can we are still talking about an organization that runs thousands upon thousands of ships here which in turn means millions upon millions of flappy little tongues in mouths all too ready to open wide to spill their secrets once presented with the correct incentives be it a sharp flaying knife or simply a significant stack of money and with the recent events splitting the galaxy in half for example the duty of the black ships have been made even more complicated these days it is all they can do shown off from half of the imperium to meet the needs of the astronomicon whereas before there was at least some leeway these days it is getting slimmer and slimmer which places the entirety of the imperium and its void travel at risk and potentially equally as bad and a far more immediate threat as well is felt by the planets on the other side of the divide those who no longer have the ability to dump their psyches off onto the black ships and have them transported off to terror for culling or training they now have to take care of an ever increasing number of psyches one two or three is not a problem a dozen two dozen three dozen now things are starting to get complicated especially since one cycle that is akin to a tiny flickering light in the hurricane of the imaterium difficult to notice therefore the 0.000 something chance of a demon discovering and possessing the psyche 10 20 30 little flickering lights all in the same position well now we're starting to look at something closer to a 0.0 one something chance uncomfortably high odds when the fate of entire planets are at stake and with that i will wrap up this lore video on the black ships the massive avoid faring prison centers that also double as concentration camps and torture vessels not surprising that they have grown to be figures of dread and fear on most imperial worlds whilst also of course as mentioned being one of the key lifelines actually keeping the imperium alive i have been arched thank you all very much watching if you like the video please do consider liking it and sharing the video around as it really does help out quite a lot until next time have a good [Music] day [Music] you

Channel: Arch

Views: 217,153

Keywords: arch, warhammer, 40k, black ships, mysterie, horror, terror, future, history, psyker, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40000, 40k lore, warhammer 40k lore, 40k explained, warhammer lore, the emperor of man, imperium, lore, mankind, heresy, humanity, warp, immaterium, imperium of mankind, astronomicon, imperium of man, tabletop, the imperium of man, gaming, heretic, inquisition, silent sisters, guide, emperor of man, nightmare

Id: ISt-eW2jS9o

Length: 40min 57sec (2457 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020