People had a name for The Warp for centuries predating its actual discovery. They called it hyperspace, nullspace, subspace, warpspace. That was fiction. In reality it is the four dimensional manifestation of instatial friction between two or more ninth dimensional vibrational matrixes. In layman's terms, it is the space between full realities, tangental to ours.
The Warp is a fluid energy environment. It is filled with eddies, currents, waves, whirls, and hollows. Our gravimetric time-space has a nominal impact upon The Warp, mostly creating hollows.
Humankind discovered warp rings, large constructs that occelated all the matter in a given area to the vibrational suboctive that synchs with The Warp. Someday warp coils will be strong enough to synch a full octive, allowing for probability, time, or dimesional travel. Using this technology to enter the warp, a star ship can travel through this fluid space, exiting to timespace at the edge of any hollow (gravity well) or whirl (hypergravity bodies). By entering The Warp, or Warping, humans achieve FTL travel without circumventing Relativity.
Human kind has charted most of the Warp in its spacial area. The Corp is creating a beacon network that allow easier and safer navigation. They are mapping flows that will allow faster travel someday. When a new fusion plasma source is discovered, humanity will be able to travel about without restriction.
That is what the scientists say. The spiritualists call The Warp, a sub-astreal plane. Most people don't really care what it is, as long as it can safely let them travel to other places far, far away.
It was with this knowledge that the colonists came to Kerren. The Kerrenese Star (Kero) generates a unique hyperwave pulse. This energy output makes navigation and synching warp rings more complicated in the immediate area. At the time of arrival, it was just an interesting astrometic oddity, as other known stars had similar properties.
Then they saw a dragon enter warp.
The first time was dismissed as a Hopper pilot drinking too much. But there were more. They saw some gliders migrate. Putting the clues together, including the ambushes of the Jumper Packs, they discovered that The Dracons (as opposed to the Saurians) have an organic ability to sensse and enter The Warp. (At Least in the Kero Solar system where the hyperwave distortion from the Star creates a lower suboctive for the local warp, making it easier to enter).
Their wing membranes are laced with electrosensitve nerve fibers. This "net" functions much like a warp ring, but is much, much smaller. It allows the Dracons to "feel" the local space for tears and weaknesses they can push through.
Dragons in the Wild, and Gliders (Dracons with 2 meter wingspans and small bodies) migrate through The Warp every 3 months or so, to the same areas they have visited before. This process is called Jumping or Warping (Warping being the more correct term the Colonists learned while learning to fly the vessel). These migrations are along Warp Flows, called Dragon Lines by the Kerrenese. Partnered Dragons are able to warp with relative ease and when ever they wish. Wild dragons have this ability, but tend not to use it. Jumpers, the land based Dracon pack predator, are uniquely able to partially enter The Warp, hugging the barrier, giving them a half existance in both places. This gives them their incredible ambush abilities. Swimmers breach the water and can enter warp while in the air, either to travel or to slip (entering The Warp and exiting a few moments later, whereever the currents their have pushed you). Some Jumpers can slip as well. Wings (mini-dragons) can only slip, though those in contact with humans have learned to Warp.
