Force-drive

The Force-drive, also known as Force-based hyperdrive or Rakatan hyperdrive, was a type of hyperspace drive used in the skipships of the Rakatan Infinite Empire. As its name suggested, the Force-drive was powered by the Force energies of sentient species and was only capable of transit to worlds with strong Force signatures.
==Description==
The Force-drive was a type of hyperdrive that powered warships using the wells of Force energy existing within sentient slave species as fuel.The Essential Guide to Warfare Force-drives were installed aboard the Rakatan ships, where entire rooms were dedicated to the storage of slave fuel in vast containment racks. Each rack contained a number of "tomblike shells," cells wherein the slaves were restrained face-down and hooked to a set of electrodes. Turned into living batteries, they were subjected to intense pain for extended periods of time, with the resultant dark-side energy extracted and channeled to the Force-drive.
While this system did work, the Force-drive's reliance on the Force as its primarily power source gave it certain limitations, the most important of which was its inability to travel between any two arbitrary points in realspace. The Force-drive was only capable of targeting worlds with strong Force signatures, a fact which resulted in an empire that spanned the breadth of the galaxy but which only incorporated more than five hundred worlds. In addition, a powerful prisoner with a strong will could overcome the destructive effects of the mechanisms and break out of their cell.Dawn of the Jedi: Force War 4
==History==
===Infinite Empire===
Many years before 36,453 BBY, the Kwa uplifted the Rakata civilization of Lehon, who were taught the power of the Force and were given advanced technology. Following the devastating conflict with the Kwa, the Rakata promptly developed the first known hyperdrive, discovering that they could use the energy of Force-sensitive slaves among the populations they conquered to fuel their warships. Thus the Infinite Empire was born, which expanded with each new conquest and discovery of another planet rich in the Force.
When a plague stripped the Rakata of their Force-sensitivity, they lost their ability to wield their Force-based technology. The Infinite Empire collapsed and the remaining survivors fled to an isolated region in the Unknown Regions known as the Rakatan Archipelago. While most of tribes in the Archipelago reverted to primitivism, some tribes recovered the technology of their ancestors. Buried skipships exhumed on Makatak and Tulpaa turned the Rakata into spacefarers once more. The Rakata's Force-blindness meant they could only operate the ship's machinery at a fraction of its functionality. The ship's Force-drives zeroed in on life-rich planets across the Rakatan Archipelago, but the Rakata had no control over this process. The Makatak and Tulpaa Rakata's Force-drives brought them to the same unspoiled planets, leading to resource wars between them.
===Legacy===
Although the Rakata did not reveal the secret of their technologies to the slaves, over time, they did discover the secret of the hyperdrive and many other technologies. The Gossams and Devaronians created a tumble hyperdrive even before the fall of the Infinite Empire, while Coruscanti traveled without a hyperdrive at all, sending colonial sleeper ships across the Core Worlds. In turn, Corellians and Duros independently reverse-engineered hyperspace cannons from the Rakatan hyperdrive, but it was the development of the modern hyperdrive by Corellian scientists around 25,000 BBY that opened up the galaxy to interstellar trade and led to the formation of the Galactic Republic. The latter, representing an amalgamation of various emerging civilizations, also combined developments based on Rakata technologies.
Dr. Insmot Bowen, a specialist in pre-Republic history at the Obroan Institute for Archaeology, gave a debriefing in 1 BBY to General Arhul Kurumenga of the Imperial Department of Military Research, Admiral Conan Antonio Motti of the Imperial Navy, and Master of Imperial Projects Bevel Lemelisk relating to the history of the Rakata and their technologies, including the Rakatan hyperdrive.
==Appearances==
*Dawn of the Jedi: Force Storm 5 
*Dawn of the Jedi: The Prisoner of Bogan 1 
*Dawn of the Jedi: The Prisoner of Bogan 4 
*Dawn of the Jedi: Force War 2
*Dawn of the Jedi: Force War 3
*Dawn of the Jedi: Force War 4
*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 
*Star Wars: The Old Republic 
==Sources==
*The New Essential Chronology 
*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
*The Essential Atlas 
*The Unknown Regions 
*Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi 0 
*The Essential Guide to Warfare
*
*Enter the Unknown
==Notes and references==
==External links==
*
Category:Hyperspace technology
Category:Rakata culture