+++Navis Nobilite+++

The Navis Nobilite - also known as the Navigator Houses - is an institution which predates the Imperium by many thousands of years. It is the most ancient of all human organisations. It was founded sometime in the Dark Age of Technology and survived through the Age of Strife to the present day.

Over this period of approximately 30,000 years, the fortunes of the Navis Nobilite have constantly waxed and waned, but its power has never been broken. Today it thrives as a vital part of the Imperium.

The Navis Nobilite is divided into many individual Houses or Great Families. Each House is a large related family, but it is also a literal house, a fortified mansion where the House leader - or Novator - lives together with his immediate kin and retainers. This mansion is regarded as the seat of the entire Great Family, even though it is only the hereditary ruling family that lives there.

The Great Families of the Navis Nobilite are uniquely composed of a particular form of human mutant called a Navigator The mutation is not a spontaneous or natural one, but rather the result of genetic engineering conducted in the distant past during the earliest history of the Navigator Houses. This engineering created the Navigator Gene that distinguishes Navigators from ordinary humans.

The gene itself can only be preserved by intermarriage, as it is lost when a Navigator breeds with an ordinary human. This factor has led to the development of the closely-related Navigator families.

NAVIGATORS

The genetic creation of Navigators has a single purpose: to endow a human with the ability to steer a spacecraft through warpspace. Only Navigators can do this - no other human or machine has the ability to navigate warpspace in this way. It is this ability that allows human spacecraft to travel so quickly compared to alien craft.

Without Navigators to steer its ships, the Imperium would quickly fragment into thousands of separate stellar empires, each only a few dozen light years across, whose spacecraft would be obliged to use tiny and dangerous blind jumps to cover interstellar space.

The physique of Navigators is unusual. The feature which distinguishes all Navigators is the Third or Warp Eye situated in the centre of their forehead. Nearly all young Navigators traditionally work in space as pilots. Over the years they gradually increase their familiarity with the warp and their powers become stronger.

This mental maturation may take as many as fifty or a hundred years of space flight, but as Navigators can live for three or four hundred years this is not a great proportion of their lives. As they grow more experienced they also change physically. The white and iris of the Third Eye gradually vanished leaving a single black pupil. The eye itself hardens, and the eyelids shrink leaving a single staring orb.

Often the Navigator continues to grow more massive as he ages and his ribs enlarge, becoming prominent as internal gills develop in the chest cavity.

THE HEIR APPARENT

The most powerful Navigators in each of the Great Families are called Heirs Apparent This signifies that they may one-day contend for the position of Paterriova, the ruler of all the Navis Nobilite. The Paternova may come from any of the Great Families and from any social level within thern.

The Heirs Apparent are usually the oldest Navigators, although not all develop in this way and some Navigators live out their entire lives without undergoing the physical changes described.

The Heirs Apparent are often bitter rivals who will even go as far as to try and eliminate each other if they get the chance. This sometirnes leads to protracted personal vendettas or even family feuds between two Navigator Houses. The Adeptus Terra is fairly tolerant of minor skirmishing of this kind, although open hostilities between Houses are discouraged as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this keen rivalry sometimes draws Heirs Apparent into marginally unlawful or even outright illegal practices. Their personal ambition makes them vulnerable to all sorts of dangerous influence, from collaboration with aliens to dealings with the daemonic. These deviants are a minority - most Heirs Apparent conduct their rivalries without courting such dangers.

THE PATERNOVA

The Paternova is the leader of all Navigators and the most powerful of all his kind. The Paternova may live for up to a thousand years. When he dies all the existing Heirs Apparent begin to change - they begin to grow even larger and stronger. Their gill structure becomes fully functional allowing them to survive in hard vacuum as well us underwater or in normally poisonous environments. Most important, they start to fight

They are drawn to combat with each other, building up a pitch of aggression that eventually overrides all other considerations. As Heirs Apparent are killed those who survive change even more until finally only one remains alive. It is this vastly changed and extremely powerful individual who becomes the new Paterova.

The Patemova lives in the Palace of the Navigators which lies on Earth in the centre of the zone held by the Navis Nobilite. Following his accession, the Paternova never leaves the palace. The existing staff, soldiery and other retainers of the palace are replaced by those drawn from the Patemova's own House. The chief amongst his servants is the Paternoval Envoy who becomes a High Lord of Terra and sits on the Senatorum Imperialis.

The role of the Paternova is an obscure part of Navigator biology although no-one doubts its importance. The Paternova is described as the guiding father whose powers transcend the warp itself.

THE NAVIGATOR'S WARP EYE

The unusual feature shared by all Navigators is the Third Eye or Warp Eye. Navigators normally keep this eye covered with a bandanna or covering which is itself often decorated with an eye. This has led many humans to doubt the existence of this Third Eye.

In fact the Third Eye is the focus of the Navigator's power. The eye enables the Navigator to see the shifting currents of warpspace and so to guide his spacecraft within the warp.

It is said that a Navigator can always see the warp even when he is in the material universe, and that it is this constant exposure to the unnamed horrors of Chaos that leads to their strange physical changes. It has been known for Navigators to react suddenly and violently to invisible things in the warp, and to collapse, lose their sanity or even die as a result.

The eye has other powers too, although these are employed far more rarely and are the subject of some mystique. These powers develop with the Navigator's experience of the warp, 50 that they are most developed of all in the Heirs Apparent. The uncovered stare of a Navigator can kill a man, and that of an Heir Apparent is said to ward off even the daemonic creatures of the warp.