FTL Systems

FTL (Faster Than Light) systems are any mechanism that allows vessels to reach destinations faster than traditional methods would allow. They exist in several forms, listed below in the order of when they were first discovered by humanity.

Unique among the races of the galaxy, Humans possess the ability to use almost every form of Faster than Light travel known in the galaxy. Most of the galaxy's inhabitants opted to refine and perfect one system rather than devote time to developing alternatives, likely as a consequence of existing as a monolithic government. Mrrmasharrya of the neyanta and authiik on Mabatsar and the extragalactic fleets follow this example, using Quantum Slip drive and Warp technology respectively.

The bomure's Oluvouusso and humanity's various colonies have access to multiple technologies, with bomure using short range Jump Drive technology and long range Blink Drive technology with Warp Dries used where reliability is required.

## Warp Travel

### Use by Humans

The warp drive, formally known as the Alcubierre drive, was the first mathematically sound method for achieving travel at speeds exceeding that of light devised by humankind. It functions using exotic matter to bend space itself, expanding space behind the vessel and contracting it in front. Vessels of this kind were first tested in the early 22nd century, but the energy requirements were found to be too great, and the exotic matter too rare. It was replaced in the mid 24th century by the Jumpdrive V2.

One of the last human vessels with a primary drive utilizing warp technology was Liveship HCV *Traveler*, the vessel that carried over 750 thousand humans on a 32 year journey to Kyandor, departing in the year 2353. This was done for the system's consistent and reliable operation.

### Use by Authiik

As the Authiik were native to a region of space more rich with sources of exotic matter required than humanity was, the drive was more viable for long-term use. The drive rings are housed in the same space as their massive tokamak-styled reactors, giving Authiik starships a distinctive shape. While not the fastest means of transport they ever created, it was by far the most reliable, with many vessels running continuously for many centuries, refueling via massive stores and front-mounted ramjets taking in interstellar hydrogen.

Some of the most well known vessels in the Authiik navy include *Yatana* and *Kaleshu* classes, two of only three classes of vessel to brave the millennia long extragalactic excursion to the Milky Way's satellites and return in working order.

## Jump Travel

### Use by Humans

Invented in the mid 22nd century, the Jump Drive V1, known officially as the "Coordinate Overlay Transit System", or "C.O.T.S.", often pronounced "Cots", functions simply by superimposing the current state of the universe in the immediate vicinity of the vessel into another via wormholes. The target location is specified by distance from the vessel in all three spatial axes relative to the vessel's orientation. Its function could be described as teleportation. The system's only immediately obvious flaw was its energy requirement. It needed exponentially more time to charge with distance. At the time, the solar system was all anyone would reasonably be visiting, and Mars could be reached with only three days of wait time from Earth at closest approach.

This variant was shelved after its first military application, during which a fleet of vessels ran their drives in tandem, thus they all experienced the same error and as a result the fleet found itself embedded inside of Deimos. All vessels experienced immediate and catastrophic failures. This caused the destruction of the moon. Half of its mass was launched into Mars, destroying a large city and beginning a cascade of ecological disasters that required a second terraformation to repair. The other half of the moon and all of the vessels were never seen again.

The Jump Drive V2 replaced it at the end of the 24th century, now called "Coordinate Reversal Transit System (C.R.T.S.)", or "Kurz", leading to further nicknames such as "Short Drive". This variant swapped the two states instead of superimposing the subject onto the target. This increased charge time drastically, for example Mars could be reached in eleven days as opposed to three, but this was seen as a reasonable tradeoff for the safety of the vessel's passengers and cargo. As reactor technology improved, so did the charge time.

### Use by Bomure

The Bomure were known to use the tech at some point in the distant past, though much of their ancient prehistory was lost due to a war with the Neyanta more than twenty-nine thousand years ago. It seems as though many of their ancient starships were left in their home system intact enough to reverse engineer and put back into production, later with some more creative applications.

## Wormhole Travel

Gate travel functions by creating wormholes, wrinkling space and shortening the distance between one gate and another point in space, whether that be another gate in the case of human gatelink transit systems, or aleri wormhole bases.

### Use by Humans

The Gate had a rough start to its application. For one, it could only be used with two installations active. They could not be mounted to vessels. Second, the installations themselves were very costly to build, requiring synthetic materials whose formulas were known only to one company, those who created the technology in the first place. The first station was put in the orbit of Revant, the second was carried by a warp-enabled vessel for many years before being installed near an important mining colony. The first pair of major colonies linked by gates were Revant and Monile, with the gates being deployed in 3127.

The time-to-delivery on materials decreased drastically, the toll for passage paid for the gates in due time, and entangled communicators eliminated the communications delay, proving they were worth paying for. Every system affiliated with theOrion Confederation and many others have at least one.

The Gate is the most widely used method of civilian transportation, each is often surrounded by clouds of small vessels waiting their turn in the queue.

### Use by Aleri

Probe data sent following the discovery of early aleri radio signals revealed a large theocracy that utilized stations that function in a similar way to Gate Links built by humans, folding space to reduce the overall distance between two stations. An advancement aleri stations have is that they are capable of one-way transit, creating shallower wormholes that lead to systems that do not have such stations. The range of such usage is relatively short however, restricted to systems within a few dozen lightyears of the source station.

This civilization is to be avoided at all costs as they have a record of several primitive species that they have incorporated into their empire, who are treated as lower-class citizens as they cannot hold positions of power, and their first contact protocol is to enslave any and all primitive populations they encounter, and to avoid or dominate those that have stellar dominions.

## Blink Travel

### Use by Humans

Blink travel was discovered in 3606 following an accident involving a Bomure colony vessel crashing into Clesti in the Rangel 3 system. It is a further evolution of the Jump Drive, utilizing multiple cores running in tandem to make several short jumps a minute, each charging in sequence. This circumvents the exponential increase in charging time, but drastically increases the cost of vessels.

### Use by Bomure

Bomure invented the drive system in an attempt to cut communication times due to their territories becoming larger and harder to manage. It didn't seem to work, as dozens of colonies rebelled and became independent in spite of the matriarch's attempts.

## Slip Travel

### Use by Demetians and Elania

The theory arose among the scientific community of Demet that time dilation and the universal constant were results of a sort of friction between the three spatial dimensions and that of time. Reducing this friction through the application of exotic matter and energy produced the Slip drive. Their successes revealed the fact that the universe was not in fluid motion, instead taking place in intervals of Planck Time. With the correct application of the technology, some of these frames may be skipped, allowing faster travel than would otherwise be possible.

The first vessel class ever to use the drive was built in 3863 CE, or 32.07: of their calendar. The ship was christened USV *Sekira*, capable of reaching 0.25% of lightspeed under the power of its own engines. The second class, the USV *Brina*, was created only fifteen years later and was capable of reaching speeds ten times higher, at 2.5% of lightspeed.

The drive was improved rapidly until after a few decades, their vessels were capable of far exceeding lightspeed. One of their earliest expeditions to other stars brought them into conflict with a human colony, making first contact in 3908 CE. The humans quickly disabled the vessels and took the crew captive. Technology recovered from the vessels caused the drive technology to leak into humanity's technological base.

### Use by Humans

Humans recovered the drive from the defeated unem scouting team. It quickly spread across human space, as it was far easier to fuel now that humanity had access to exotic matter. In human hands, the drive far exceeded its capabilities in unem hands, with the fastest modern vessels such as the *Amazon* class stealth destroyer capable of reaching speeds of up to 150 thousand times that of light.

## Subspace Travel

### Use by Humans

Humanity has not made contact with any extant species that has discovered this method of circumventing the speed of light. It involves passing into another universe, one smaller and younger than ours, to take advantage of the size difference. This makes the vessel's relative position in our universe change at much higher speeds. In the most extreme of cases, such as the drive specifications found in both the *Amazon* and *Dauntless* class vessels, can reach speeds slightly exceeding one billion times the speed of light.

Limitations exist in the form of fuel use and heat buildup. While these high-output drive technologies could theoretically reach the Andromeda galaxy in a little more than 22 hours, the drive is limited to use on military vessels, and only for use in bursts of less than a second. The purpose is to respond to overt threats at a literal moment's notice, no matter the distance.

### Use by Brak

It has been hypothesized that the brak, the species that nearly drove the neyanta to extinction near 18000 BCE, utilized unstabilized subspace drives to convert asteroids into tachyon beams that destroyed neyanta planets and spaceborne megastructures.

## Vintage Table for Reference

 Jump Drive
 Quantum Slip Drive
 Gate
 Subspace Drive
 Blink Drive