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.

The third main school of thought about causes for the Starchange is that He on Earth had some role in causing it to happen. Proposed motivation for such action range from banishment as punishment for any one of a hundred sins put forward by the theory's various proponents, to having designs that the entire Sector act as a base of the Missionaria Galaxia within the Universalis Nebulae. Naturally this second theory was and still is expounded by many members of the Adeptus Ministorum who claim divine mandate to control the Sectatus and direct its every effort toward spreading the Imperial Cult.

Effects

The effects of the Starshift are myriad in nature, but are principally subordinate of two primary results.

Members of the Navis Nobilite and Adeptus Astra Telepathica have reported that there is a vast and readily noticeable difference between the state of the Warp from the Universorum Imperium and the Universalis Nebulae. The Warp is reported to be significantly calmer and less aggressive at impinging into the physical universe. This could notionally result in significantly less risk of possession or other negative effects of sanctioned witchery in addition to making navigation easier when travelling through the Warp. Conversely, long-standing and well-charted warp currents appeared to change almost overnight as that of the empyrean which was brought with Telstein mixed with that which was already within the Universalis Nebulae. The Greater Civilisation of the C'tan claims at least part of this change from one universe to the other is as a result of their stilling technologies such as proliferation of Noctilith Pylons.

The wider Imperium of Mankind does not exist within the Universalis Nebulae. This is the root cause of some of the most prominent changes in Imperial society. The lack of the Astronomicon's light had a huge effect on faster than light warp travel which was only partially mitigated by the aforementioned calming of the empyrean. Whilst the stilling effect of the Astronomicon is replicated by conditions in the Universalis Nebulae, the lack of its lighthouse-esque beam means that navigation is much more difficult. This means that vessels using Imperial technology to travel faster than light through the warp are restricted to shorter journeys than they would normally have been capable of and must travel slower than they would have done.

The knock on effects of this have been disastrous for Telsteinian society. Travel from one sub-sector to another now takes significantly longer and is significantly more dangerous than before. Where the survival of some worlds depended heavily on imports or exports from outside of their system - even to merely within their Sub-Sector - entire planets have been lost to his light. One example of this was the Hive World of Feros in the Intersectional Thesean Beta system. Due to its isolated position, it was not able to maintain sufficient food shipments without a constant stream of mass conveyor convoys from the nearby Telstein Sub-Sector. Within weeks of the starshift all food reserves were consumed, within months the planet was wracked by rebellion and within a year Imperial rule was threatened. Twelve years after the starshift, the first post-shift Administratum survey of the system occurred, resulted in the destruction of the chartered voidship by a swarm of cannibalistic Reiver pirate vessels that had formed a Corpse Grinder Cult of Planetary proportion. It would be a further fifty years before the fleets and armies summoned by the Administratum ship's astropathic distress signal managed to successfully purge the cult and liberate the isolated pockets of Imperial society left within the system.

Another effect of the lack of wider Imperial control on the Sectatus has been political in nature. Even when the Imperium was there, there were many offices who answered only to the Golden Throne or to authorities on Terra itself. Reducing the known universe to a single Sector near-enough halved the hierarchies of almost all aspects of the Imperial Bureaucracy without reaching the levels where they would intersect. This has been the cause of significant infighting across the Sector as various bodies renegotiated their professional relationships or, in some cases, cut down on superfluous competition in what they perceived to be an overly populated field of government. One example of this was the elevation of the Ky System to the status of a Sub-Sector. Prior to the Starshift it was merely a system containing a Mechanicum Forge World, but after the Starshift the Tech Priests of Mars came to recognise the might of its forges as indicative of an Omnissian Blessing. After the Fabricator General Ky was nominated as foremost of the Priesthood of Mars within the Universalis Nebulae, increased status was negotiated with the Dominus Sectatus to enrich himself and his faction at the expense of others. This process was relatively bloodless, though it was not without the veiled threat of interplanetary industrial warfare were the demands not to be met. Other such disputes were less so.