Setting:Navigator: The Masquerade

Navigator: The Masquerade is an attempt to adapt Vampire: The Masquerade into the Warhammer 40k setting. The players are Navigators, beings of immense power who guide the starships of the Imperium of Man across the unfathomable void of warp space. No one in the Imperium knows their true nature, and the Navigators intend to keep it that way.

On the Nature of Navigators

A common citizen of the Imperium likely knows of Navigators only as myth; powerful beings who guide the Emperor's ships across the void. Those with some education on the nuances of warp travel believe them to be relics of the Dark Age of Technology, created by some long forgotten means. An exceptionally rare few among the highest echelons of the Imperium "know" this to be a masquerade. That they are in "truth" mutants, and that the corrosive effects of the warp takes its toll as they age. This deception must be maintained for the good of the Imperium, which could not stand without their singular skill.

But this too, is a masquerade.

The truth is far, far worse.

All life, or at the very least, all life that feels, casts a shadow in the warp. For most, this shadow is but a particle, a single mote in the dense, swirling miasma that is the sea of souls. A rare few, the psykers, the astropaths, cast a larger shadow, akin to a fish in a sea, with which they may cast their minds into the warp for knowledge or communication, or to draw energy into themselves. But this is merely a shadow of their psyche, a reflection in a mirror; frown, and it will frown in turn.

But the Navigator's shadow, can smile back.

The truth behind the Navigators is that they possess a dual soul; their shadow in the warp has a psyche all its own. It is, after a fashion, a daemon, possessing a separate will and consumed by an overwhelming desire to feast on the warp energy of other beings. The navigators were "gifted" this condition by none less than the Lord of Change. It is by this second, daemon soul that they can perceive and comprehend the warp; and it is through their third eye that they are connected to it.

When a Navigator casts the gaze of their third eye upon a living being, they are able to pull that being's warp presence into the material plane, where it is vulnerable, and then draw it back into the warp, into the waiting maw of their daemon. Normally, this process is fatal for the victim, although when an infant is drained there is the possibility that they will survive the loss of their soul. The result being a blank, a psychic null, untouchable by the warp.

The informed elite of the Imperium believe the Navigators have a gene which is responsible for the manifestation of their abilities, and that this gene is recessive. This is false. The gift is inherited by any descendant of a Navigator parent. It is simply that a navigator infant born to a human mother will be born with a daemon so starved that it will frenzy at birth, becoming a daemonhost and consuming all it encounters until it is destroyed.