Faster-Than-Light Travel

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Faster-than-light (FTL) travel is required for citizens of the Coreworlds to leave their local region.

Following the discovery of the chemical compound Astrum-36, scientists believed that, with the correct focusing apparatus, it could be used as a highly efficient fuel source for FTL travel. This theory was proven true with the development of the AIM Drive, which debuted in Veldt Star Industries’ Pantheon Collection, the first ever range of FTL-capable starships. Veldt's later Eidolon Collection also included FTL systems as standard.

The successful application of the ability to travel faster than light opened up new frontiers, and marked a paradigm shift in the way in which the Coreworlds Conglomerate inhabits the galaxy. This change included the opening of cruise routes operated by Intrepid Tours, and encounters with neighbouring galactic civilisations such as the Empire of the Queil and the Ele Dominion.

It was hoped that FTL travel would enable Coreworlds citizens to witness first-hand the discoveries reported by Project Centennial. However, analysts believed that citizens were growing disillusioned with the potential of the technology, after a number of attacks by predators on resort worlds in the Conglomerate Exploration Zone.

Travelling faster than light causes the space outside a starship to take on a strange fractal appearance which is disconcerting to some onlookers.

Most bounty hunters pursuing targets which travel faster than light ascribe to the view that such pursuits are either work of utmost precision and calculation or a series of educated guesses. These difficulties are largely rendered moot when one has the tracking data of the target's vessel, however, as Tren Krellos found when pursuing former Aglostarros University Museum Curator Endelle Stroth's starship, the *Looking Glass*.

Some, such as the ARK Mandate agent Umi, believe that if a starship travelling faster than light were to collide with another object, it would instantly destroy the starship. This was proven to not always be the case when a limpet, launched by the Galactic Liberation of Wonder, successfully attached itself to the ARK starship *Venture* while the vessel was travelling faster than light.

However, when the unscheduled activation of the ViCorp orbital mining rig *Lodestone*’s AIM Drive propelled the station at faster-than-light speed into the surface of the planet Harthoe, the resulting impact broke apart the planet’s already volatile crust and caused it to disintegrate entirely within hours.

One notable counterpoint to the Coreworlds’ commercialisation of FTL travel by means of the AIM Drive is the Weru civilisation of the Genn Archipelago. The Weru were already experienced interstellar travellers before Project Centennial’s discovery of Astrum-36, as evidenced by their publication of the Weru Star Almanacs.

In the year 2270, the FTL League aimed to reestablish the sport of interstellar racing to accommodate the ubiquity of FTL travel, which had previously rendered the sport all but obsolete.