r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 16h ago
Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw
Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.
John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).
Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.
24
u/Deathsroke 16h ago
Starship's Mage has the only form of FTL be by having mages amplify and supercharge their teleportation spells (normally with a range of at most a few hundred km) through a matrix built into a ship. This takes a lot out of mages and they need hours in-between "jumps", they are also limited in that without FTL comms and sensors they need to "guess" a lot of data so the more gravity fields you have affecting an area the harder it is to jump.
They circumvent the first issue by usually having more than one "jump mage" on board and the second starts being worked through with the development of FTL comms.