@StarJaunter, is there a ruling on if Way Travel Chancels do or do not operate on Way Shaping principles?
The chancels are intended to allow a construct of the size of 40k ship to enter and exit the Wyld/Warp in areas where the veil is thin, usually a couple weeks travel from all planets and stars in the system. This utilizes the ability to enter a Sanctum that both Dragon Kings and spirits have access to and does not require a way grace or way shaping to happen. Once in the Wyld the ship may be guided by a Dragon King Pilot via not Way shaping but via the Principle of Vision Questing. A Fairfolk guide with Way graces (or Daemons with appropriate abilities) can guide a ship much more effectively via Way shaping or charm use of the Way grace but that is something the guide/ferrymen is doing, not a principle in the ships design or engine, baring some special ship meant to work with such pilots. Navigators and Fairfolk guides who aren't trying very hard can guide a ship through the Warp/Wyld better due to their ability to observe things others cannot, and it must be said, between their Paths and artifacts, a prepared Pterok Pilot does not fall that far short of such guides.
The true benefit of an Imperial Navigator lies in the Astronomicon acting as a massive galactic spanning beacon to allow jump of dozens or hundreds of lightyears at a time without much greater risk. In games mechanic terms, all human navigators benefit from a massive galactic scale bit of Geomantic infrastructure giving them a difficulty reduction. The benefit of a Raksha or Daemon guide lies in them using either their own native (or their patrons) powers to manipulate the Wyld/Warp itself to drag the ship along, ie Way Shaping.
In between actions such as the use of Perfect Reckoning Technique or its Daemonic equivalents does not obviate the need to either guide the ship or way shape it to the destination, merely it acts as a potentially even more potent version of the Astronomicon. It does not matter if you know exactly where you are in the warp and where you are going if you lack the ability to steer the vessel from here, to there. It is the Warp/Wyld afterall. Here be monsters, indeed.
Truly allying yourselves with the force of Ruin (or say the Onyx Court) comes not from their wayfinding ability, but from their ability to smoothly steer one through the various and vast perils of the warp. For the races Fallen to Chaos the costs in lives, time, ruin, and mutation saved of course is usually lost as tribute to their patrons. As a magical race with capacity of your own talking to a relatively small court of Warp beings you can negotiate for a better deal than most get... if you are willing to deal with Fairfolk/Daemons of course.
You are not helpless even with merely your own unaided skills. Typically an area of the Warp considered safe to travel would be considered middlemarches. A week in the warp would spawn a Willpower and Essence roll at difficulty 3. You have to endure 2 to three rolls (this is something the navigator or fae guide shrinks from three to two) to make a Quest. Dragon Kings allowed on a ship would have at least Essence 3 and Willpower 5 and gain +2 extra from their nature. Thus rolling ten dice versus the all to common three the average human crew would roll without a gellar field. Thus this is almost always achievable for Dragon Kings, even if they are walking and have no talismans, ship based wardings, or divine blessings to aide them. After this time whoever is leading the Quest rolls Perception + Occult (hence why it will almost always be a Pterok). A Pterok chosen for this purpose will have at least 8 dice and be considered nigh incompetent at the task if so (a Pterok could reach 15 dice even without artifacts, aide or elder status). Here they need more of course, they must accumulate 6 successes (to get to a world in the same subsector), which may mean going another three rounds of mutation risk to reach your destination, especially if you letting someone of dubious qualifications lead you.
This of course is the joy of a vessel. A single skilled guide may move thousands of individuals and tons of cargo in one go, a feat impossible without a ship except maybe under the behest of Celestial charms.
Thus a group of dragon kings totally naked and bereft of all direction in the Wyld still have a non-zero chance of reaching something that might be called a destination, although there may be some minor mutations and one may refuse to leave at the end of the journy. They are a race of basically Demigods forged to guard the borders of reality afterall.
A crew on a ship would be equipped with +3 amulets. Would conduct rituals to bolster themselves and pray to gods to offer them protection. The ship would likely have Jade Obelisk in its core near its most sensitive bits, lowering the risk over everything within a mile to only Bordermarch level while still letting them ship move at Middlemarch speed. Thus most of the ship would be only needing to roll 2 successes on their now 13 dice. Sensitive cargo or passengers (like colonists) could be moved closer to the Obelisk or retreat into warded rooms which offer complete protection from Middlemarch and reduce Deep Marches to Bordermarch levels. Ditto if a warp storm flared up to Deep wyld when no one was expecting it, the crew can fall back as long as its only temporary. A pilot, lets presume you got a hotshot Pterok who needs his Dragon Tear Tiara to actually reach 15 dice can handle the navigation while everyone else maintains the ship, fight of Raksha invaders (who will also be subject to wards causing a negative 3 to their dice pool) or works to treat the few poor fools who get mutated. While getting 6 success on 15 dice isn't a given such a pilot would on average manage it and would rarely need more than two rolls.
Assuming you can get a Wondrous Globe of Precious Stability or a completely warded ship you may be able to risk moving in the Deep Warp where most dare not go. Your rolls would be more dangerous but with such protections they are no risk to you and you make rolls every day, a pure multiplication of speed, even aside from shortcuts which such a ship may allow. Note due to the nature of things a Navigator or Guide must be exposed to the warp on some level or they cannot actually Quest/Steer the ship to the destination. Thus you may have to design ships with parts sticking outside the protection of the Globe or the Jade Obelisk for the Navigator to live in, assuming you manage to make the whole rest of the ship super safe.
A navigator (or fairfolk) as mentioned can get by on just two mutation checks instead of three and usually is adding on to this roll with extra dice. If he can get a beacon or can somehow apply location magic through the warp he can get reduced number of successes needed.
Because this is an empire game I will certainly not roll for every dragon king on every ship that moves, that would be ridiculous although potentially give accurate results because I am sure a few gain mutations or perish on every trip. Certainly do on human vessels and they have gellar fields. Once you get big enough I will not even roll everyone once per ship for similar reasons. This is just what it would be if we cared about the exact effect on a given individual. If you try to move an important human on a ship I will probably do the rolls to see what happened. If timing is important I may do the rolls to see how quickly the ship gets there. Usually this will be simplified and grow more simplified the wider your fleet and territory grows. Percentage checks to see if something bad enough to mention happened with the tools that make things safer reducing the chances of badness and risky events like a sector wide warp storm increasing it.
TLDR
I think I completely lost track of what I was saying other than trying to emphasize that in this quest mechanically the Vision Questing mechanic is core to Way Travel, not having Way shaping powers.
😏
Okay, that was a bad attempt at humor.
