Editing Navigator (section)

===The Imperium===
When the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] set about uniting [[Terra]] and preparing to go to the stars, he was presented with a bit of a dilemma: Part of the [[Imperial Truth]] that he was spouting maintained that "Humans" ''(ie: not mutants)'' were destined to rule the stars, unfortunately he was still centuries away from getting the [[Webway]] project up and running. Simply put, the Emperor needed the Navigators, even if he was fully aware of how "age before beauty" was a horrible lie to the Navigators.

Deciding "fuck it, we need space travel", the Big.E. went to the '''Paternova''' (the leader of the Navis Nobilite) and made an agreement: "Keep to yourselves in your part of Terra and your mutant Elders out of sight, and we'll pay you to fly our starships and protect you from some of the more zealous anti-mutant groups". The Paternova agreed, and thus humans can fly through the Warp, using the [[Astronomican]] to navigate.

It is strongly hinted that the Emperor detested the unofficial and disproportionate power Navigators had over the Imperium and planned to do away with the Navigators following the completion of the [[Webway]] [[Golden Throne|project]]. While some Navigators were involved in the development of the technologies that the Emperor would later use (i.e. genuinely loyal Navigators or just ones who were trustworthy once bought off), the greater knowledge of the plan was kept from the Navis Nobilite for fear of how they would react with the loss of their monopoly on space travel and potential obsolescence. Indeed, during the [[Horus Heresy]] the Navigators considered the ''mere prototypes'' of the Webway project to be such a threat that they were prepared to sacrifice [[White Scars|a loyalist legion]] in order to destroy the technology. In hindsight, all of the problems come from the Emperor trying to cash-in on the Webway instead of building on the Navigator gene for like, navigator servitors or navigator Machine Spirits or something. Or just building more Navigator houses since he probably invented the bastards anyway and just tell them that he'll make sure there are enough Navigators to match the number of ships and if ship-building is outpacing their breeding he'll make more Navigators to take up the slack and the increased (and taxable) economy will bring increased wealth to the ancient Navigator Houses. Heck, even with the navigator servitors/machine spirits idea he could have bound all official Imperial government ships to be guided by Navigators and leaving the alternatives to civilians and military only (making said official ships faster, while individuals could still hire their services).

In the 41st millennium, the Navigators are part of the [[High Lords of Terra]], represented by the '''Paternoval Envoy'''. A lot of people in the [[Administratum]], the [[Ecclesiarchy]], and the [[Inquisition]] aren't too thrilled with this but they can't really do anything to the Navigators without irreparably crippling the Imperium. The more extreme ones ''still'' try to do something about it. Imperial dogma is frequently contradictory. Pointing this out is <s>[[Paranoia|treason]]</s> [[heresy]]. Kadak Mir serve as the current envoy by order of Guilliman, replacing Uila Lamma, it is suspected she was removed for advocating for too much reform to the Imperium's laws, which went against Guilliman's more cautious measures.

That said, it's important to remember that their power is balanced by the fact it'd be impossible for the Navigators to launch some sort of rebellion or purposefully cripple the Imperium, as they'd still rely on astropaths to communicate and they (usually) wouldn't exactly be helping with that. There are exceptions, but the rule remains true. There's also the fact that while Warp travel without a Navigator is much more difficult and time-consuming, it ''is'' possible and many large interstellar empires of humans have been made before the Great Crusade reached them despite lacking Navigators. Yes these only had a few dozen to a few hundred star systems, but they had dramatically smaller populations than the Sol System and so would have had very little interest in expanding with any speed (and unlike the Emperor, weren't aware of the ticking doomsday clocks of Chaos forming a coherent threat before he could force a stalemate through enough manpower, [[Necron]]s waking or [[Ork]]s hitting critical mass and rebuilding to Krork before anyone could stop them). The Navigators are no doubt keenly aware of this. They might not be replaceable, but they are not strictly necessary either. All it would take from the Imperium is sponsoring increased ship building (perhaps offering many Writs of Trade as incentives) so that numbers of vessels traveling makes up for the slower travel time and the Navigators become irrelevant. To say nothing of the numerous other psykers and even psychically attuned technology the Imperium has that could theoretically replace Navigators.