FTL Travel

FTL travel: faster than light travel. Something which shouldn't be possible, but is, by using magic or exploiting universal loopholes. FTL travel is what allows the vast interstellar civilizations of the Space creatures to survive and is the foundation upon which society is built. Without it, every colony would be isolated, hopelessly alone in the vastness of space.

## Methods of FTL Travel

There are two main types of FTL travel: magical and mechanical. Magic, of course, bends and breaks the laws of physics. Mechanical methods of FTL travel are more interesting, because they exploit universal loopholes to *achieve* FTL travel while technically going way below the speed of light.

### Teleportation

A magical method of FTL travel. Teleportation is very inefficient since it can only transport the magician who cast the spell, a few others, and their clothes (thankfully). Teleportation, then, can't be used for interstellar trade because you can't send more than maybe three or four small crates of stuff at a time. Additionally, teleportation is very *energy* inefficient because of the large amount of magic energy it requires and the complexity of the spell.

### Fold-Driving

Fold-drives are a mechanical method of FTL travel. Fold-drives use extremely strong gravity manipulators to bend space and time. They create a bubble of folded space. The fold-drive then causes the bubble to *move*. Thus, the *bubble* moves faster than light, while the spaceship inside does not. This goes around the problem that nothing can exceed the speed of light: *space itself* can, and thus the fold-drives simply makes space move while the actual spaceship doesn't move at all. However, fold-drives take immense amounts of energy and it is impossible to detect anything inside the bubble (if you are outside), or detect anything outside the bubble (if you are inside). So, while fold-drives do work, they're not very practical since once you activate it you have no idea if you've reached your destination yet. Also, the fold-drive doesn't allow for instantaneous travel: just FTL travel. It still takes hundreds of years to cross a single galaxy.

### Translocation

A mechanical method of FTL travel, and the most commonly used one in the universe. Translocator drives create wormholes at their spaceship's location. The spaceship is sucked down the wormhole, which is immediately closed by the translocator. The wormhole then dumps the spaceship at the target location. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like the spaceship simply ceased to exist in one area of the universe and immediately re-appeared in another part of the universe. From an insider's perspective, it seems like everything around the spaceship ceased to exist and was replaced by other things. The transition is literally instantaneous: thus, translocation is *the* fastest method of FTL travel. It is literally instant, not just faster than light.

However, translocators are not perfect. They require immense amounts of energy to create a wormhole. They also require massive amounts of *data*: the translocator needs to know the *precise* location of the spaceship so that it can create a wormhole at that location, it needs to know the *precise* location of the spaceship's destination so it can create a wormhole there and also make sure the spaceship doesn't crash into anything, and it needs to know the exact time so that the destination wormhole doesn't spit out the spaceship in the future or in the past. (Since it is possible to do time travel with translocators, all spaceships with weapons are ordered to destroy any spaceship with a too-different time signature. This way the time traveling ship won't cause any time paradoxes.) Additionally, translocators can only work in very precise conditions: too much gravity or too close to an electromagnetic field and the translocator simply won't work. Also, translocators require long periods of warm-up time to prepare themselves for wormhole creation, and the translocator produces extreme heat when it is used, so it requires a long cool-down period as well.