RAMP

The RAMPs, or Rail-Assisted Mass Projection Systems, are the primary means of FTL and interstellar travel in the Greatcloud. Somewhere in each populated star system of the Final Accord of Humanity lies an enormous orbital armature shaped like a tuning fork, the base of which serves as a space station and control center for the RAMP attached to it. While intrasystem travel is achieved via sublight engines and fossil fuels, when a ship wishes to travel to another star within the Greatcloud, docking at this base station is required.
The ship is then loaded into a bay between the arms of the fork (the "rails"), which charge and accelerate the vessel to faster-than-light speeds, flinging it into the void of space toward its intended destination with precisely caculated manipulations of Orange Chrono in a similar manner to railgun projection. The subtle art of making these calculations in accordance with orbital mechanics, an intimate knowledge of the RAMP Network, and constant communication between RAMPs to avoid crossfire is the domain of the Voidborn, whose duty it is to crew the RAMPs much as the Lightbringers customarily crew Black Ships. (Notably, many Black Ships possess independent FTL capabilities due to their advanced technology, affording them freedom of movement throughout the galaxy unfettered by the RAMP Network.)
The Accord identifies and selects new systems for colonization based not only on habitability, but the likelihood that a given system can support a RAMP in its orbit without severely impacting the existing gravitational equilibrium, as many systems unlinked from the Network can take decades or even centuries to travel between at sublight speeds. To this end, RAMPs are wholly modular in construction, and often the first vessel launched into a new system carries the necessary modules to construct a new RAMP on-site and link the system into the Network.
Some RAMPs are restricted to government use only, and one such clandestine installation is rumored to exist on the very fringe of the Greatcloud itself, pointing outward to other galaxies...
Category:Greatcloud
Category:No Spoilers
Category:Spacecraft