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Description
Faster-than-Light Travel (or FTL) is a commonplace event throughout the universe, but by no means a simple one. The inability to move faster than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s) along with the dialation of time as one approaches lightspeed remains in effect even in the modern age. Ways have been discovered to bypass both problems, to a degree.

While no vessel can actually move at FTL speeds, it is possible to alter the space-time continuum to simulate FTL speeds. FTL-capable ships can compress the space in front of them, while expanding it behind them. In doing so they move no faster, but the distance to their destination shrinks while the distance behind them grows. The net effect is that the ship moves through space at speeds that are otherwise not possible.

How and when this particular technique was discovered was lost long ago, but it is a common technology now. FTL systems utilize not only specialized technology, but a specific form of psychic power that allows the compression and expansion of the spacetime continuum to occur. In ancient times, there were guilds of psychics that held near monopolies on FTL travel. Carefully planned eugenics programs ensured that control over these psychic powers remained with the guilds. Unfortunately, these same programs weakened the bloodlines through incest, and the number of viable psychics dwindled. There was a time when the universe feared that FTL travel would eventually die with the dwindling power of the psychics.

Rescue from the catastrophie came in the form of biological computers that could replicate the needed psychic abilities. This development ruined the psychic guilds once and for all. Their bloodlines remain to this day, but are so diluted and weak that they play almost no role in galactic events. Individuals throughout the universe still possess such power, but no significant importance is attached to it anymore.

Achieving FTL travel merely requires a ship to activate its psychic FTL field, and use its existing Slower-than-Light Travel (STL) engines to continue moving forward. When the field is active, the amount of compression/expansion its capable of determines how quickly the ship moves through the universe. Ships moving at FTL speeds can maneuver freely in transit, but tend to stick to set routes between locations. Ships are highly unlikely to ever collide, but most destinations don't like ships appearing in their territory either unannounced or from unexpected directions (it makes them nervous, and they tend to open fire without asking questions).

For the populated portions of the universe, a STL speed limit exists. This is due to safety concerns and simple logistics. The actual speed limit varies from location to location, but some generalizations can be made. For civilian craft, a maximum speed of 20% lightspeed (59,958,492 m/s) is typical and creates only a 2% time dialation effect for those aboard the ship (which is managable). Military craft operating within their own territory tend to have a maximum speed of 50% of lightspeed (149,896,229 m/s), creating a more problematic 15% time dialation aboard the ship.

The reason for the restriction is simple: even as 0.2c, that translates into moving at almost 60,000 kilometers per SECOND. Even a small and lightweight civilian vessel moving that at that speed will do horrendous damage to anything it hits. A collision would be deadly to everyone involved, and would create an expanding cloud of deadly sharpnel moving at nearly the same speed. As such, strict control on who moves where and how fast is of paramount concern to everyone. Resricting speeds to 0.2c still allows functional STL travel, but also grants defensive long-range systems more time to react to a potential problem or threat.

There are complications from the nature of FTL travel that STL travel does not have to deal with. The first problem is preparing the FTL field itself. Because FTL travel is based on psychic powers, the FTL field around a ship is sensitive to psychic forces. The FTL field must not only be attuned to the psychic field that creates it, but also to the passive psychic field of everyone on board the ship. If not adjusted properly, the FTL field will collapse before it can even be used. This takes time to adjust, and must be done prior to each FTL flight. This takes longer as the number of people involved increases. For a small ship with a handful of crew, it will take a few minutes. For massive ships with a crew of thousands, such adjustments can take hours.

The second problem is that the ship's passengers are not the only source of passive psychic fields. Entire worlds have their own passive psychic fields, known as a Warp Shadow. A ship that comes into contact with a world's Warp Shadow will see its FTL field collaspe immediately, and the shock can severely damage the psychic computer (or even destroy it). For this reason, FTL vessels must drop out of FTL speeds before reaching the Warp Shadow of a world (whether they want to or not).

The size of a world's Warp Shadow depends on the number of sentient beings on that world. Roughly speaking, a single sentient being creates a Warp Shadow of 9 cubic meters, with a radius of 1.9 meters. As the number of sentient beings doubles, the size of the Warp Shadow increases by slightly more than double. For small space stations or orbital facilities, this isn't a major issue. But for worlds with populations numbered in billions, it becomes a huge space hazard.

For example, a planet the size of Earth, with a population approaching 8 billion, has a Warp Shadow of 11.3 cubic Astronomical Units, with a radius of 1.39 Astronomical Units. This is large enough to encompass not only the Earth, but reliably encompass the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

Another example might be a large space station with a population of 200 million. Its Warp Shadow is nowhere near as impressive as Earth's, but still noteworthy in terms of interstellar navigation. Its Warp Shadow is a mere 0.13 cubic Astronomical Units, with a radius of 0.31 Astronomical units.

Bodor is no different in this regard. It boasts a staggering population of over 132 billion, contained in massive and cramped cities all across the planet (in addition to orbital facilities and its Moon). Its Warp Shadow is similarly massive, stretching 3.74 Astronomical units in every direction. This shadow is large enough to safely contain both asteroid belts.

Because of the enormous buffer zone between Bodor and the outer edge of its Warp Shadow, it is relatively secure in terms of advance warning. A trip from the outer edge of its Warp Shadow to Bodor takes roughly 2 hours and 38 minutes (2 hours and 34 minutes for those aboard ship) at 20% lightspeed, and about 1 hour and 3 minutes (53 minutes for those aboard ship) at 50% lightspeed. Either way, the defensive fleets of Bodor have considerable time to respond to any hostiles entering their star system.

Because of this phenomenon, most civilizations prefer to build and create their colonies and conduct operations within the safety of their home world's Warp Shadow. A hostile fleet entering the system is forced to drop out of Warp and resume travel at STL speeds. Though colonies and operations at the edge of the Warp Shadow will have limited time to react, those closer to the inner portion of the shadow (specifically the host world) will have time to prepare a response.

As a result of this defensive policy, most homeworlds in any star system tend have massive populations (to maximize the size of their Warp Shadow). Those worlds that cannot spread their population outward tend to do so upward. Citizens are encouraged to remain on the homeworld, rather than settle on other exoplanets or spacebound facilities. Most star systems enforce the 20% lightspeed speed limit, and tend to shoot at anything moving faster than that without asking questions.

Most stellar systems keep the lion's share of their defensive military forces stationed near the host world. The rest of the defense fleet patrols areas of importance inside the Warp Shadow.

There are three modes of travel used by space-faring vessels, each one intended for a different scale of travel.

INTRA-STELLAR TRAVEL (STL)
There are a variety of STL-based travel systems in use today, depending on cost, the availability of materials, and the function required. Chemical Rockets and High-Energy Density Material drives are still in use in some places to achieve orbit. Nuclear Thermal Rockets and Ion Drives are also still in use, though only in deep space because of their inherent limitations. The most common STL drive in use is the Fusion Torch. Hydrogen is heated into plasma inside a magnetic bottle and released in a specific direction to produce thrust. The more reaction mass burned, the faster the ship's acceleration. Naturally, the plasma wash of a Fusion Torch is extremely dangerous and extra care is needed to ensure no one is near the takeoff or landing zone.

Even at maximum burn, a Fusion Torch can't generate the kind of acceleration needed to make intra-stellar travel fast enough to be common. As such, gravitational-generators known as Mass-Vector-Projectors (responsible for creating artificial gravity) are also used to magnify acceleration into the thousands of Gs. They also counter those same forces inside the cabin to prevent any passengers and crew from being turned into paste by such rapid acceleration. This system also allows the ship to "fool" gravity into thinking it weighs less than it actually does. In doing so, it allows the ship's STL drive to function more efficiently, attaining greater acceleration while using less energy to do it.

It's important to note that trying to be stealthy with a Fusion Torch drive is next to impossible. The amount of waste heat generated makes the ship stand out against the relatively uniform temperature of space like a beacon. Even if the drive is turned off once the ship reaches cruising speed, the residual heat is still blindingly obvious for hours afterwards.

For most spaceships, Hydrogen is the fuel of choice. It is abundant, relatively cheap, and suitable not only as a source of energy but as reaction mass for Fusion Torch drives.

Hydrogen gas is compressed using Mass-Vector-Projectors until it reaches fusion temperatures, and starts producing energy like the Sun. This is of course dangerous, but less than one might expect. The actual density of the fusion reaction is quite low for the amount of power it generates. Any breach or failure in the system causes the gravity field to fail, and the hydrogen expands back into a gas. The sudden release of heat from such an event will fry anyone in the immediate vicinity and turn the reactor room into hot slag, but the ship itself will probably survive.

Ships with Fusion Torch drives routinely include an electromagnetic ramscoop to capture interstellar hydrogen molecules to use as fuel. Moving quickly enough through intertellar space (about 3,000 meters/second) can enable a ship to restore its hydrogen fuel as fast as it burns it.

Because of the potential for extreme efficiency, Fusion Torch drives are common throughout the universe.

SHORT INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL (FTL)
Once clear of a star system's Warp Shadow, true FTL flight can be used. By compressing space-time in front of the vessel, and expanding space-time behind it, a Warp Drive allows movement faster than lightspeed without violating the laws of physics. At maximum speed, a Warp Drive allows a ship to move between 1 to 3 parsecs per hour (depending on the quality of the Warp Drive). Because the vessel is technically moving only at the speed when it initiated Warp, additional time dialation does not occur when at Warp speed.

Becuase of the potential risk posed by such fast-moving objects, all flight plans must be logged and every ship is assigned to a specific navigation beacon. A ship must remain on its navigation beacon at all times. Any deviation from the beacon is cause for suspicion, and many star systems will open fire on ships that deviate from it's assigned beacon.

LONG INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL (FTL)
Even at Warp Speed, travel from one side of the galaxy (let alone the universe) to the other would take centuries - if not eons. To travel extremely long distances, a third technology is used - the Jump Drive. Jump Drives operate like Warp Drives in that they compress space to shorten distances. The difference is that Jump Drives can compress space to an even greater degree, to the point where even the greatest distances can be reduced to 0. One could theoretically Jump from one end of the universe to the other, save for some very important complications.

First, the location one intends to Jump to must be known precisely, and since everything in the universe in constantly moving this is harder to manage than it sounds. Gravitational fields can bend space, and not taking these into account can cause a ship to Jump somewhere other than the intended destination. This can be a deadly mistake, depending on where a ship Jumps to. Jumping into the middle of a star will destroy any ship with ease. Because of these risks, careful calcuation of all known gravitational fields between the ship and its destination must be done to ensure an accurate Jump. Even with modern computers, calcuations for short Jumps can take several minutes to complete. Longer Jumps can take hours to work out.

Second, the more interstellar mass between the ship and its destination, the more power required to compress space enough to make the Jump. Despite its appearance, interstellar space is not empty. The longer the Jump, the more mass is involved and power requirements increase. The power required for even a single Jump is enormous, and Jump-capable ships have massive reactors and capacitors to store the needed power until its relased at once into the Jump Drive.

The advantage of a Jump Drive is that once a calculation is made and the required power is generated, the Jump itself is instantaneous. The ship simply vanishes from its starting point and appears at its destination.

Because the amount of mass inside the galaxy is greater, Jumping requires a combination method to be used efficiently. The ship first uses its Warp Drive to get "above" or "below" the galactic edge, where there is less intra-galatic mass. Once in open space, the vessel calculates a Jump to a point above the destination. Once the Jump is made, and the vessel arrives at its initial destination. The vessel then uses Warp Drive again to the inner portions of the galaxy and cruise to its final destination.

Description
Faster-than-Light Travel (or FTL) is a commonplace event throughout the universe, but by no means a simple one. The inability to move faster than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s) along with the dialation of time as one approaches lightspeed remains in effect even in the modern age. Ways have been discovered to bypass both problems, to a degree.

While no vessel can actually move at FTL speeds, it is possible to alter the space-time continuum to simulate FTL speeds. FTL-capable ships can compress the space in front of them, while expanding it behind them. In doing so they move no faster, but the distance to their destination shrinks while the distance behind them grows. The net effect is that the ship moves through space at speeds that are otherwise not possible.

How and when this particular technique was discovered was lost long ago, but it is a common technology now. FTL systems utilize not only specialized technology, but a specific form of psychic power that allows the compression and expansion of the spacetime continuum to occur. In ancient times, there were guilds of psychics that held near monopolies on FTL travel. Carefully planned eugenics programs ensured that control over these psychic powers remained with the guilds. Unfortunately, these same programs weakened the bloodlines through incest, and the number of viable psychics dwindled. There was a time when the universe feared that FTL travel would eventually die with the dwindling power of the psychics.

Rescue from the catastrophie came in the form of biological computers that could replicate the needed psychic abilities. This development ruined the psychic guilds once and for all. Their bloodlines remain to this day, but are so diluted and weak that they play almost no role in galactic events. Individuals throughout the universe still possess such power, but no significant importance is attached to it anymore.

Achieving FTL travel merely requires a ship to activate its psychic FTL field, and use its existing Slower-than-Light Travel (STL) engines to continue moving forward. When the field is active, the amount of compression/expansion its capable of determines how quickly the ship moves through the universe. Ships moving at FTL speeds can maneuver freely in transit, but tend to stick to set routes between locations. Ships are highly unlikely to ever collide, but most destinations don't like ships appearing in their territory either unannounced or from unexpected directions (it makes them nervous, and they tend to open fire without asking questions).

For the populated portions of the universe, a STL speed limit exists. This is due to safety concerns and simple logistics. The actual speed limit varies from location to location, but some generalizations can be made. For civilian craft, a maximum speed of 20% lightspeed (59,958,492 m/s) is typical and creates only a 2% time dialation effect for those aboard the ship (which is managable). Military craft operating within their own territory tend to have a maximum speed of 50% of lightspeed (149,896,229 m/s), creating a more problematic 15% time dialation aboard the ship.

The reason for the restriction is simple: even as 0.2c, that translates into moving at almost 60,000 kilometers per SECOND. Even a small and lightweight civilian vessel moving that at that speed will do horrendous damage to anything it hits. A collision would be deadly to everyone involved, and would create an expanding cloud of deadly sharpnel moving at nearly the same speed. As such, strict control on who moves where and how fast is of paramount concern to everyone. Resricting speeds to 0.2c still allows functional STL travel, but also grants defensive long-range systems more time to react to a potential problem or threat.

There are complications from the nature of FTL travel that STL travel does not have to deal with. The first problem is preparing the FTL field itself. Because FTL travel is based on psychic powers, the FTL field around a ship is sensitive to psychic forces. The FTL field must not only be attuned to the psychic field that creates it, but also to the passive psychic field of everyone on board the ship. If not adjusted properly, the FTL field will collapse before it can even be used. This takes time to adjust, and must be done prior to each FTL flight. This takes longer as the number of people involved increases. For a small ship with a handful of crew, it will take a few minutes. For massive ships with a crew of thousands, such adjustments can take hours.

The second problem is that the ship's passengers are not the only source of passive psychic fields. Entire worlds have their own passive psychic fields, known as a Warp Shadow. A ship that comes into contact with a world's Warp Shadow will see its FTL field collaspe immediately, and the shock can severely damage the psychic computer (or even destroy it). For this reason, FTL vessels must drop out of FTL speeds before reaching the Warp Shadow of a world (whether they want to or not).

The size of a world's Warp Shadow depends on the number of sentient beings on that world. Roughly speaking, a single sentient being creates a Warp Shadow of 9 cubic meters, with a radius of 1.9 meters. As the number of sentient beings doubles, the size of the Warp Shadow increases by slightly more than double. For small space stations or orbital facilities, this isn't a major issue. But for worlds with populations numbered in billions, it becomes a huge space hazard.

For example, a planet the size of Earth, with a population approaching 8 billion, has a Warp Shadow of 11.3 cubic Astronomical Units, with a radius of 1.39 Astronomical Units. This is large enough to encompass not only the Earth, but reliably encompass the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

Another example might be a large space station with a population of 200 million. Its Warp Shadow is nowhere near as impressive as Earth's, but still noteworthy in terms of interstellar navigation. Its Warp Shadow is a mere 0.13 cubic Astronomical Units, with a radius of 0.31 Astronomical units.

Bodor is no different in this regard. It boasts a staggering population of over 132 billion, contained in massive and cramped cities all across the planet (in addition to orbital facilities and its Moon). Its Warp Shadow is similarly massive, stretching 3.74 Astronomical units in every direction. This shadow is large enough to safely contain both asteroid belts.

Because of the enormous buffer zone between Bodor and the outer edge of its Warp Shadow, it is relatively secure in terms of advance warning. A trip from the outer edge of its Warp Shadow to Bodor takes roughly 2 hours and 38 minutes (2 hours and 34 minutes for those aboard ship) at 20% lightspeed, and about 1 hour and 3 minutes (53 minutes for those aboard ship) at 50% lightspeed. Either way, the defensive fleets of Bodor have considerable time to respond to any hostiles entering their star system.

Because of this phenomenon, most civilizations prefer to build and create their colonies and conduct operations within the safety of their home world's Warp Shadow. A hostile fleet entering the system is forced to drop out of Warp and resume travel at STL speeds. Though colonies and operations at the edge of the Warp Shadow will have limited time to react, those closer to the inner portion of the shadow (specifically the host world) will have time to prepare a response.

As a result of this defensive policy, most homeworlds in any star system tend have massive populations (to maximize the size of their Warp Shadow). Those worlds that cannot spread their population outward tend to do so upward. Citizens are encouraged to remain on the homeworld, rather than settle on other exoplanets or spacebound facilities. Most star systems enforce the 20% lightspeed speed limit, and tend to shoot at anything moving faster than that without asking questions.

Most stellar systems keep the lion's share of their defensive military forces stationed near the host world. The rest of the defense fleet patrols areas of importance inside the Warp Shadow.

There are three modes of travel used by space-faring vessels, each one intended for a different scale of travel.

INTRA-STELLAR TRAVEL (STL)
There are a variety of STL-based travel systems in use today, depending on cost, the availability of materials, and the function required. Chemical Rockets and High-Energy Density Material drives are still in use in some places to achieve orbit. Nuclear Thermal Rockets and Ion Drives are also still in use, though only in deep space because of their inherent limitations. The most common STL drive in use is the Fusion Torch. Hydrogen is heated into plasma inside a magnetic bottle and released in a specific direction to produce thrust. The more reaction mass burned, the faster the ship's acceleration. Naturally, the plasma wash of a Fusion Torch is extremely dangerous and extra care is needed to ensure no one is near the takeoff or landing zone.

Even at maximum burn, a Fusion Torch can't generate the kind of acceleration needed to make intra-stellar travel fast enough to be common. As such, gravitational-generators known as Mass-Vector-Projectors (responsible for creating artificial gravity) are also used to magnify acceleration into the thousands of Gs. They also counter those same forces inside the cabin to prevent any passengers and crew from being turned into paste by such rapid acceleration. This system also allows the ship to "fool" gravity into thinking it weighs less than it actually does. In doing so, it allows the ship's STL drive to function more efficiently, attaining greater acceleration while using less energy to do it.

It's important to note that trying to be stealthy with a Fusion Torch drive is next to impossible. The amount of waste heat generated makes the ship stand out against the relatively uniform temperature of space like a beacon. Even if the drive is turned off once the ship reaches cruising speed, the residual heat is still blindingly obvious for hours afterwards.

For most spaceships, Hydrogen is the fuel of choice. It is abundant, relatively cheap, and suitable not only as a source of energy but as reaction mass for Fusion Torch drives.

Hydrogen gas is compressed using Mass-Vector-Projectors until it reaches fusion temperatures, and starts producing energy like the Sun. This is of course dangerous, but less than one might expect. The actual density of the fusion reaction is quite low for the amount of power it generates. Any breach or failure in the system causes the gravity field to fail, and the hydrogen expands back into a gas. The sudden release of heat from such an event will fry anyone in the immediate vicinity and turn the reactor room into hot slag, but the ship itself will probably survive.

Ships with Fusion Torch drives routinely include an electromagnetic ramscoop to capture interstellar hydrogen molecules to use as fuel. Moving quickly enough through intertellar space (about 3,000 meters/second) can enable a ship to restore its hydrogen fuel as fast as it burns it.

Because of the potential for extreme efficiency, Fusion Torch drives are common throughout the universe.

SHORT INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL (FTL)
Once clear of a star system's Warp Shadow, true FTL flight can be used. By compressing space-time in front of the vessel, and expanding space-time behind it, a Warp Drive allows movement faster than lightspeed without violating the laws of physics. At maximum speed, a Warp Drive allows a ship to move between 1 to 3 parsecs per hour (depending on the quality of the Warp Drive). Because the vessel is technically moving only at the speed when it initiated Warp, additional time dialation does not occur when at Warp speed.

Becuase of the potential risk posed by such fast-moving objects, all flight plans must be logged and every ship is assigned to a specific navigation beacon. A ship must remain on its navigation beacon at all times. Any deviation from the beacon is cause for suspicion, and many star systems will open fire on ships that deviate from it's assigned beacon.

LONG INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL (FTL)
Even at Warp Speed, travel from one side of the galaxy (let alone the universe) to the other would take centuries - if not eons. To travel extremely long distances, a third technology is used - the Jump Drive. Jump Drives operate like Warp Drives in that they compress space to shorten distances. The difference is that Jump Drives can compress space to an even greater degree, to the point where even the greatest distances can be reduced to 0. One could theoretically Jump from one end of the universe to the other, save for some very important complications.

First, the location one intends to Jump to must be known precisely, and since everything in the universe in constantly moving this is harder to manage than it sounds. Gravitational fields can bend space, and not taking these into account can cause a ship to Jump somewhere other than the intended destination. This can be a deadly mistake, depending on where a ship Jumps to. Jumping into the middle of a star will destroy any ship with ease. Because of these risks, careful calcuation of all known gravitational fields between the ship and its destination must be done to ensure an accurate Jump. Even with modern computers, calcuations for short Jumps can take several minutes to complete. Longer Jumps can take hours to work out.

Second, the more interstellar mass between the ship and its destination, the more power required to compress space enough to make the Jump. Despite its appearance, interstellar space is not empty. The longer the Jump, the more mass is involved and power requirements increase. The power required for even a single Jump is enormous, and Jump-capable ships have massive reactors and capacitors to store the needed power until its relased at once into the Jump Drive.

The advantage of a Jump Drive is that once a calculation is made and the required power is generated, the Jump itself is instantaneous. The ship simply vanishes from its starting point and appears at its destination.

Because the amount of mass inside the galaxy is greater, Jumping requires a combination method to be used efficiently. The ship first uses its Warp Drive to get "above" or "below" the galactic edge, where there is less intra-galatic mass. Once in open space, the vessel calculates a Jump to a point above the destination. Once the Jump is made, and the vessel arrives at its initial destination. The vessel then uses Warp Drive again to the inner portions of the galaxy and cruise to its final destination.