A Brief guide to the Warp and ‘Soul’ in WH40K

The warp in WH40k and everything linked to it is by its very nature confusing. As stated many times it is almost impossible to try and ‘accurately’ define the characteristics of a dimension which by its very nature is pure chaos. Like most 40k lore there are many different interpretations of how the warp manifests amongst different authors, however I have tried to sort the most common ideas into a reasonably coherent explanation in my own words.

The dimension known as the ‘warp’ is in its most basic form a parallel dimension of infinite and ever shifting pure energy, often likened to a great ‘sea’ with its own currents and storms (though not of water but pure ‘warp stuff’). Concepts such as time and space, though not totally meaningless within the warp, are extremely malleable, sometimes to the extent of having little baring on the concepts of the material universe. It is this property however that makes breaching and traveling through the warp exploitable for methods of FTL travel. Most commonly however (though by no means universally) time appears to pass more quickly for those inside the warp/exposed to warp energy for long periods when compared to those in realspace. There however is no set conversion of time spent in the warp compared to time outside it, as this varies greatly from person to person. The most well-known example of extreme time dilation caused by warp energy is those traitor legionaries who retreated to the eye of terror after the horus heresy. For many of them only a few centuries of time appeared to have elapsed, whereas over 10k years has passed in most of the rest of the galaxy. The warp however is usually stable enough in its time warping effects to allow for interstellar travel over many lightyears within the time frame of several weeks or months.

However the warp is linked directly to the physical universe by interface of sentient beings and their ‘souls’. Every sentient being (with only a very few extremely rare exceptions) has a ‘soul’. These souls are carved from the very stuff of the warp itself, so new souls can always be generated with the expansion of a species. Non sentient beings may have souls as well but are not ‘powerful’ enough to be worth considering in terms of warp effects. Though the soul is inextricably linked to its ‘owner’, the actual soul itself exists within the warp as a ‘reflection’ of its material body in the material universe. Upon the death of an individual the ‘tether’ that binds the warp residing soul to its material body is ‘cut’ and the soul is released ‘free floating’ into the warp. One of four things will occur to a soul after mortal death, depending largely on the ‘power’ of the soul and any warp related contracts made during life. Firstly and most commonly, weaker souls (including most humans and all tau) are not powerful enough to remain ‘cohesive’ within the tides of the warp and will therefore simply dissolve back into its fabric as pure warp energy, with the ‘soul’ itself being completely unconscious of the process.
Secondly some souls (especially the more ‘powerful’ ones) will simply be consumed by one of the innumerable creatures within the warp (including potentially a chaos god) and as such the power and life experience of this soul will simply be added to that of the consumer. If a soul is ‘powerful’ enough to remain somewhat self-aware after mortal death this process is understandably extremely distressing.
Thirdly some souls (again mostly more powerful ones) will be ‘claimed’ by a specific warp entity. This is most commonly thought of being done by the four main chaos gods and Gork and Mork for Orks but is likely to occur sometimes by other ‘unaligned’ warp entities, as well as potentially by the Emperor (though this is not known) and Cegorach in the case of harlequin solitaires. Whether a soul is ‘claimed’ by a warp power depends largely on any contracts an individual made during mortal life. For example an individual who dedicated themselves to the worship and service of a particular deity is likely to be ‘claimed’ by that deity after mortal death with their soul being manipulated in whatever manner its patron sees fit. For some this may be eternal torture, for others a chance to serve and receive the blessing of their patron for eternity. Some however (especially the weaker souls) may simply just be consumed by their patron to add to their power. All ork souls who make their way to Gork and Mork (which by their very nature is almost all Orks) however are almost immediately vomited back into a new body. All Eldar souls not captured by a soul stone are always claimed by slaanesh.
Lastly and by far most rarely some extremely special souls are able to remain cohesive enough yet at the same time discrete enough to be re-inserted into a new infant body of their parent race and in doing so retain the memories of all their previous lives. These individuals are known as ‘perpetuals’, of which the Emperor is one. This process is noted to be far more common/easier at times when the warp is ‘calmer’ and with less powerful deities desiring to ‘claim’ powerful souls, such as the time at the height of the Eldar empire and primitive humanity on earth where all eldar as well as warp sensitive humans could re-incarnate without issue.

What determines the ‘power’ of a soul however? This is entirely related to genetics and the physical body, with parent race playing a greater part in deciding the power of a soul. For example on average a human usually has a moderately powerful soul, whereas all tau have very weak souls and all eldar have very strong souls. There are of course outliers amongst these, with those possessing more powerful souls than average more likely to manifest psychic powers. Some few individuals have souls so weak as to be non-existent (blanks) and as such can nullify warp phenomena.
Races with more powerful souls are much more likely to produce more and more powerful psykers; individuals whose more powerful than average souls are able to draw in warp energy to the physical body via their soul’s link to the warp and manipulate it to create effects in the material universe (though in doing so risking drawing the attention of predatory warp entities to their soul). All Eldar have powerful enough souls to develop psychic powers with training, though only some comparatively rare humans and orks (wierdboyz) are able to do this. More powerful souls are more likely to remain at least somewhat ‘aware’ and ‘conscious’ after mortal death within the warp and not simply ‘dissolve’ into warp energy. This helps explain why all Eldar are terrified of death without a soul stone.

Each mortal soul exerts a subtle influence on the natural energy of the warp, in essence creating ‘ripples’ in the fabric of warp space. The more powerful the soul, the more pronounced this effect is. Individually the ‘ripples’ exerted on the warp by a single soul are negligible, however the influence of an entire race can create pronounced and long lasting effects on the fabric of the warp. It is the emotions of the mortal races themselves transmitted through the soul which cause these ‘ripples’ within warp space. If enough members of a race continuously experience the same powerful emotions, the ‘ripples’ caused by these can combine and coalesce, creating violent warp phenomena such as unbound daemons, powerful storms and unpredictable warp currents. Some of these confluences of emotion however can become so powerful that they take on a will all of their own and by their power seek to exert influence not only over the warp but breach into real space as well. Such is how the various ‘gods’ of the warp came to be formed.
These gods indeed are so powerful they can shape entire areas of the warp to their liking and will often carve off tiny amounts of their energy to create independently thinking agents; more commonly known as aligned daemons. Each represents the ideals of the very emotions which came to form them and as such are usually antithetical toward eachother and will constantly war for dominance, creating ever more warp turbulence. As the warp is ultimately malleable and ever changing, such conflicts tend to result in little change. As a result each god in the warp will want to exert influence on the material universe as effects there can be permanent in a much more literal way.
Though the four main chaos gods are largely regarded as negative influences, this is only due to the fact that the majority of the emotions which formed them were themselves regarded as negative to ordered mortal society. Each of the chaos gods are also formed from large amounts of ‘positive’ emotions, however these concepts ultimately tend to be twisted or overshadowed by negative emotions which on the whole tend to be more prevalent within the material universe. The main four chaos gods embody the and are strengthened by the following emotions/concepts and those associated with them:
-Khorne- Anger, bloodshed, war, honour, martial brotherhood
-Nurgle- Disease, new life from death, decay, stagnation, boredom, stability, finality, entropy, familial/friendly love, joviality
-Tzeench- Ambition, progress, innovation, revolution, schemes and plans, trickery, magic, intellect, change, madness
-Slaanesh- Excess in all things but most notably all forms of physical/emotional pleasure and pain
If all such emotions could be stopped, so to would the chaos gods which feed on them would also cease to be. This however would require the complete extermination of all sentient life in the galaxy. However even merely reducing the amounts of these emotions expressed within mortal races would severely weaken the influence of the chaos gods. This is believed to have been the Emperor’s ultimate plan for the galaxy by encouraging secular thought and seeking to completely remove humanities need for any interface with the warp at all; both weakening the chaos gods from a lack of emotion and reduced amount of mortal followers.
While all emotions indirectly feed the powers of chaos, it also appears that ‘belief’ in a higher deity somehow enhances this effect. Offering up emotions and souls directly to a named deity rather than doing so unknowingly appears to ‘focus’ the emotions/souls much more directly toward their intended deity and thus strengthen the deity more overall when compared to unknowing expression of emotion. It was this ‘belief’ in higher powers of any source that the emperor was trying to wipe out. While he could not stop humans experiencing emotions without wiping them out completely and thus feeding the powers of chaos, he could weaken the effect by stamping out all forms of metaphysical belief.

The current tempestuous, daemon ridden state of the warp began in an era known as the war in heaven and ever continued to increase in severity with the eventual rise of the Eldar and Humanity. Many millions of years ago before sentient life had evolved in the galaxy the warp was a relatively calm dimension of pure energy, though still subject to occasional currents and eddies. The first sentient race to evolve in the galaxy (the old ones) made usage of this relatively calm warp to build a series of sub-dimensional ‘tunnels’ within the warp (known as the web way) to travel the galaxy without having to worry about warp currents and storms unpredictably affecting journey times and in so doing spread life to many worlds.
The old ones however also possessed extremely powerful souls, even more so than their later creations of Orks and Eldar and as such could exert huge influence upon the dimension via their emotions. Their eventual war with the C’tan and Necrons forced them to utilize almost every warp technology and technique they knew to combat their foes (whose main weakness was warp energy) and in so doing unwittingly start to stir up (in combination with the psychic influence of their also highly psychically active servant races) the warp with their emotions. This is what likely led to the initial formation of the first three chaos gods, as well as gork, mork and the eldar pantheon, though the exact specifics of these deities formations (an indeed those of the chaos gods, save for slaanesh) are unclear. This also caused the genesis and mass plague of primordial daemons known as ‘enslavers’ breaching entry into the physical universe and feeding upon every sentient race (causing the final defeat of the old ones and stasis of the necrons). After the enslaver plague had at last eaten itself to starvation the younger races which survived were left to claim the galaxy and in so doing, strengthen the power of the warp gods with their emotions and make the warp more turbulent in general.
This also co-insides with the destruction of the galactic necron pylon network (most recently deliberately accelerated by Abaddon the despoiler) over the long millennia since the beginning of the necron’s great sleep. The Necron and C’tan weakness to the Old Ones and their vassal races warp abilities spurred the construction of a great series of blackstone pylons in key locations across the galaxy which, in a similar fashion to a psychic blank, exerted a calming effect on ‘nearby’ warpspace and aided in the nullification of psychic weaponry and phenomena.

Main Races Warp Interactions
Humanity
In general most humans are described as having ‘average’ strength souls and therefore can only impart a direct influence on the warp with a great many people experiencing the same emotions. Like most races though humans exist on a ‘spectrum’ of warp sensitivity, with some few becoming psykers of different power levels and even fewer able to manifest as psychic nulls.
While humans have always had some minimal interaction with the warp throughout its entire history (with evidence very infrequent chaos worship and psychic activity all the way back to pre-history) humanity only really began to interface strongly with the beings within the warp during the age of strife (about M25-M30). This was due to party to humanity having evolved slightly (both naturally and through the usage of genetic engineering) to be able to manifest noticeable psychic phenomena more easily, however this period was when the old eldar empire was at the very height of their perversion with their immense psychic presence causing galaxy wide warp activity. This increase in warp activity as well as causing chaos in the human empire due to heavy disturbances in warp travel allowed many warp sensitive humans to manifest psychic powers more easily and thus act as a conduit for daemonic possession. Exact details from this time about the exact nature of these daemons is unclear, though by the time of the great crusade and the subsequent calming of the warp after the birth of slaanesh such instances of human psychic activity and daemonic interaction in general seemed far rarer than they had done before. Along with the calming of the warp after the birth of slaanesh this may have also potentially come about due simply to a huge amount of humans having died during the age of strife and thus there being fewer of them to either directly or indirectly feed the chaos powers through emotion and worship. Nevertheless the four main powers of chaos only started to take a ‘direct’ hand in the fate of humanity after the four deities comprehended what the Emperor’s grand plan for the galaxy could mean for their overall influence and power. The first recorded instances of confirmed daemon summoning or worship of the main four chaos powers (by name) occurred in this time due to the chaos powers focussing their attentions on disrupting the emperor’s plans by corrupting his most powerful servants and leading to the Horus Heresy, causing the violent state of the galaxy as it has existed for 10k years since. The great re-expansion of humanity across the galaxy from the great crusade, combined with a constant state of galactic wide strife and a strong re-awakening in the human desire to believe and follow a higher power has created the perfect environment for the continual strengthening of the chaos gods by human emotion. Due to this there are a great many humans able or willing to be corrupted and serve them in the physical universe, feeding them souls and emotions much more directly and ever perpetuating the eternal strife.
The nature of the Emperor as a warp divinity are…….unclear. While it was true that he was likely not a god but rather just an immensely powerful psyker while he walked amongst humanity, such cannot be said now. The widespread adoption of the emperor as the official deity of the imperium is likely to feed him a great deal of power by the way of direct ‘belief’ as mentioned before, though it is unknown if any particular emotions feed his power in the same way as the chaos powers. Though widely believed to be the case by imperial citizens it is also unknown whether the emperor is able to ‘claim’ souls devoted to him in the same manner as the chaos gods. Some small evidence exists that the emperor possesses his own ‘daemons’ like the other warp powers in the form of living saints and the legion of the damned, though these may just be individuals infused with the emperor’s psychic might in the same way a chaos champion would be with the power of his patron deity.
This is further confused by the fact that the emperor is technically not ‘dead’ and his soul is still linked to his physical body by the golden throne. It is therefore completely unknown what would occur if the emperor were to actually ‘die’ completely, though one of three possibilities could occur:
1. The Emperors soul is lost to the warp and/or consumed by chaos causing the eventual extinction of humanity from the loss of the astrinomicon and mass daemonic incursion across the imperium from the loss of the emperor’s psychic protection. Ironically this would also lead to the great weakening of chaos from the deaths of most of humanity feeding them emotions and souls. This was the cabal and alpha legion’s plan during the Horus heresy; allow horus to kill the emperor leading to the mass culling of humanity, thus weakening the chaos gods and allowing the other races of the galaxy to continue with less direct threat from chaos.
2. The Emperor is somehow able to re-incarnate in a new body and return to lead humanity directly in a new great crusade.
3. The emperor’s soul combines with all of those of his loyal servants and immense power of belief from 10k years of worship causing the birth of an entirely new warp deity, not one of chaos but of order, sometimes called the ‘starchild’ who will battle directly the other powers of chaos.
Whatever the case no one is yet willing (save for perhaps cypher the fallen angel or the grey knights if the imperium’s final defeat appears inevitable) to gamble the fate of humanity by switching off the golden throne to find out…

Eldar
Eldar are the race with the ‘strongest’ souls in 40k (having been engineered that way by the old ones to fight the C’tan), with psykers of all stripes being extremely common in their race but psychic blanks are not known to exist amongst them. It was their combined emotions of immense hedonism at the height of their post scarcity empire which led to the formation and eventual violent birth of slaanesh, wiping out the majority of the eldar race and existing eldar pantheon in one cataclysmic event. Every eldar soul has been ‘claimed’ by slaanesh since this event, meaning most eldar prefer to avoid death via the use of soul stones. Recent events regarding the formation of the new eldar god Ynnead may however change this ultimate fate of eldar souls in time. For obvious reasons therefore, almost no eldar are known to actively worship chaos in any way (unlike humanity). In the current era the eldar race as a whole have much less overall influence on the warp compared to humanity or their ancient civilization due entirely to there being so few of them left.
The exact providence of the original eldar pantheon before their destruction at the hands of slaanesh is unclear. It is unknown whether they were ‘created’ in the same manner as the chaos gods (via a slow accumulation of emotion and souls into a singular sentience), explicit weapons initially created by the old ones to fight the c’tan, immensely powerful old ones that ascended to god like levels of power or some combination of some/all of these.

Orks
Also created by the old ones to fight the c’tan, the orks also have moderately powerful souls for the same reasons. Just how powerful when compared to human or eldar souls is unclear, nevertheless there are always so many orks in the galaxy that their emotions/souls will always exert a large influence on the warp. Like humans they produce psykers (wierdboyz) at a relatively uncommon rate but are not known to produce psychic blanks. Unlike all other races however these emotions do not feed the chaos gods and in fact sustain two gods of their own, Gork and Mork who rather than ‘keeping’ souls of deceased orks in the warp immediately vomit them back into a new body with no memories. Details of these ‘twin’ gods compared to the four main chaos gods are extremely scant and seem to interact with the other powers of the warp and the material universe infrequently and have no daemons associated with them (preferring just to make ever more orks instead). Due to the immense amount of orks and their relative psychic strength however Gork and Mork are inferred to be extremely powerful, alleged to by the Orks to be able to fight and see off Khorne and his legions (the most powerful chaos god of bloodshed and war) without much difficulty.
Due to the immense implied power of Gork and Mork and the ‘unique’ psychology of the Ork race making their worship near universal (if extremely informal), it is extremely rare for Orks to willingly worship the gods of chaos or become corrupted by them. Some few Orks are known to actively venerate Khorne due to his warlike nature complimenting the Orks closely but seem not to be commonly psychologically or physically effected by this worship like a human perhaps would. Like the eldar pantheon, gork and mork’s exact providence is unknown, but it is more than likely they came into being in the same manner as the main chaos gods.
The orks seem to manifest their inherit psychic strength in a manner very different to humans or eldar, with each individual unconsciously feeding their psychic strength from their individual souls into a combined ‘gestalt’ which grows in power the more orks are in closer physical proximity. It is this ‘gestalt’ that the ork wierdboys tap into, rather than drawing raw power from the warp in the same way as humans or eldar, also increasing the power of their psychic abilities the more orks that are in close physical proximity to him. This ‘gestalt’ is also what is known to contribute to some of the ork’s immense feats of physical toughness and otherwise ‘impossible’ ramshackle engineering. It is commonly known that if enough orks in close proximity simply ‘believe’ that a concept is true that it will indeed be so (to a certain extent). Eg if orks believe a severed arm can be re-attached with staples and duct tape it WILL work afterwards. A red vehicle WILL go just a bit faster than other ones because orks believe it will.

Tau
Tau souls are generally considered so weak that they have very little emotional impact on the warp (though are not totally ‘soulless’ like a psychic blank) and as a result psykers are totally unknown in their race. This (combined with a concerted repression of information by the ethereals) ensures that no known tau has ever actively fallen to the worship of chaos. Tau CAN be corrupted by chaos or possessed by daemons however due to the above reasons this is also extremely rare.

Tyranids
An individual Tyranid does not possess a soul, but instead every member of a single hive fleet ‘shares’ the same single immense soul within the warp. This ‘soul’ is known as the hive mind and directs every individual tyranid under a single unified will. Some larger tyranids hold a stronger connection to the hive mind than others (synapse creatures) and are responsible with ‘enforcing’ this directed will to the lesser creatures around it. The death of a synapse creature in essence cuts of the connection of the lesser organisms to the hive mind, making them revert to simple instinct driven animals until another synapse creature can re-assert control. Though not altogether common, a hive fleet can create organisms that utilize psychic powers if needed, though these like any other tyranid only act as a tiny part of a greater whole.
A hive fleet is known to experience only one emotion; immense primordial hunger. This emotion does not feed any of the gods of chaos. Likewise a hive fleet’s hive mind is totally capable of protecting the organisms it directs from mental or physical corruption by chaos. The presence of a hive fleet’s hive mind in the warp is in fact so vast that it completely overshadows all other ‘local warp’ phenomena, driving psykers to madness and disrupting all forms of warp communication or travel. This is commonly known as the ‘shadow in the warp’. In this way therefore tyranids can be described as extremely psychically strong, though not in the same manner as any of the other races would understand it.

Necrons
Necrons as a race are commonly described as ‘souless’. Though this may largely be true in the emotional sense it is not completely true in the warp sense. Before their conversion into the necrons by the c’tan, the necrontyr were probably quite similar in most respects in ‘soul strength’ to humanity, though no records of them ever having psykers exist. The c’tan sought to consume the souls of the necrontyr but still have an emotionless and completely loyal army to serve them at the same time. The ‘compromise’ that the c’tan came up with was the process of bio transference whereby the greater part of a necrontyr’s soul would be consumed by the c’tan and the tiny, flickering ember of it that remained was forcefully plucked from the warp and inserted into cold metal body to drive an emotionless, unthinking slave soldier. This fate was repeated for every member of the necrontyr race, though those higher up the necrontyr social ladder were allowed by the c’tan to retain more of their souls within their metal bodies in order to act as intelligent commanders for the mindless lower ranks, with those close to the top retaining almost all of their former emotions, intelligence and personalities. While this decision allowed the c’tan to prosecute a much more successful conflict against the old ones it ultimately led to their eventual downfall at the hands of those necrons who still retained the mental and emotional faculties to hate what the c’tan had done to their race.
As a necron’s soul (or what little of it remains) is tied to their cold metal shell in the physical universe, rather than residing within the warp connected to the physical body by a ‘tether’ like all other races, no necron is able to manifest psychic powers or exert any emotional influence at all upon the warp to feed the gods of chaos. They are as such totally incorruptible and acted as the perfect weapons for the c’tan to use against the psychically active old ones.
They are also the only race with a confirmed large scale artifice capable of ‘calming’ the warp and thus weakening the influence of the chaos gods and their servants. How this is achieved other than it requiring the construction of many blackstone pylon networks in key galactic locations is unknown. This has also caused the necrons to in some cases take an interest in those few humans who are psychic nulls, to essentially capture them and somehow make them into new anti-psychic necrons, similar to how the imperium weaponizes these individuals as sisters of silence or culexus assassins.