Starshift (Telstein)

The Starshift is the term used for the phenomenon of unknown origin that resulted in the Imperial Telstein Sector being Dimensionally Translocated from its original universe to its present reality. This occurred in 992999.M41 according to the Imperial Calendar, a time known as the Night of a Thousand Rebellions.

Following their use as the preferred terms in high level Administratum documents, consensus has generally been that the former universe should be referred to as the Universorum Imperium, or the Imperial Universe while the present universe is referred to as the Universalis Nebulae, or the Mist Universe.

Cause

Despite multiple theories about what may have caused the Starshift, all are based purely on conjecture and there is no accepted consensus.

At many points cults and groups of commoners have proposed that various alien civilisations have been responsible for the Starshift, however these are typically based on little more than knowledge of that civlisation's existence and an assumption of their responsibility. Within a short period of contacting the Great Civilisation of the C'tan some of those scholars and officials whose power and influence gave them an awareness of quite how powerful Necrontyr technology was proposed that it must have been their doing. This is something that the Great Civilisation thoroughly denies, with its foremost academics proposing that the Starshift may have been caused by the same event as their Starchange.

Due to the exponential growth in tumult in the Warp in the years preceding the Starshift, another school of thought is that it was caused by the forces of Chaos - whether intentionally or unintentionally. Due to the Imperium's long-standing policy of denying any true understanding of Chaos to its citizenry there are few who are aware enough of it to consider it a viable option. There are even fewer who have enough of an understanding of Chaos to be able to base such a theory on anything approaching evidence or awareness of its power. The significantly more tranquil state of the empyrean in the Universalis Nebulae is evidence many point to that Chaos cannot ave been responsible for this. In spite of that, the largest theory relating to warpcraft is known as Transdimensional Empyrean Exosmosis, positing that a comparative lack of Warpmatter in the Universalis Nebulae may have resulted in it being drawn through by a pressure imbalance if the veil between universes was weakened temporarily or permanently. While this does not account for the translocation of physical matter, it has not stopped the theory gaining proponents.

Effects

The effect of