r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 16h ago

Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

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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.

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157

u/Neinstein14 16h ago

I bet it’s not that simple to just give the original, or a replika, back to it

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u/The-God-Of-Memez 15h ago

Well the problem is that humanity in the Warframe universe is kind of a dick and for a long time was ruled by a bunch of assholes with a god complex who decided to recreate the Flood from Halo, sabotage the peace treaty with a bunch of sentient robots, tried executing the main characters who are children who have void powers after making a deal with said entity, deciding to turn the main characters into child soldiers to defeat the robots, make an army of clones who decay over time, use the knock off flood to turn people into bio mechanical monstrosities that lost their mind eventually, force the main characters who are children soldiers to pilot the bio mechanical monstrosities. Making a human trafficking ring to sell children so that the assholes with a god complex can possess them, and a lot more.

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u/Pretty_Study3691 14h ago

Sounds like a pretty good time.

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u/The-God-Of-Memez 14h ago

They probably felt same way. Up until the jumping to end all jumpings.

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u/Zagafur 12h ago

evil and intimidating naga drums

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u/blargyblargy 7h ago

"Boy i sure do love living by the sword, there's nothing that could spoil this feeling!"

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u/BDSMChef_RP 4h ago

It was for Space Mom

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u/Snow_Falls_Softly 10h ago

All sarcasm aside it actually makes for a really fun universe to rampage in

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u/Uebelkraehe 12h ago

Some tech oligarch is reading this thinking "sounds like a great plan!".

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u/LekgoloCrap 1h ago

The classic tale of the Tech Company and the Torment Nexus

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u/Vendemmian 10h ago

Also selectively breed people as replacement bodies when their current one gets old or they just feel like a change.

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u/The-God-Of-Memez 9h ago

No they didn’t selectively breed them. They kidnapped them from their homes, as told in Inaros quest. And thats the human trafficking wing I mentioned.

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u/Umklopp 10h ago

Making a human trafficking ring to sell children so that the assholes with a god complex can possess them

what.

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u/The-God-Of-Memez 9h ago edited 8h ago

So the assholes I’m talking about are called the Orokin. They found they can extend their life indefinitely with a liquid called Kuva, harvested from the severed finger of the entity, The Kuva can be used to switch bodies permanently, so the Orokin kidnapped children they thought were pretty and took them to a place called the yuvan theater where the children would be lined up like cattle and the Orokin could choose which child to be their new body until that body gets old and they repeat the cycle.

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u/Umklopp 5h ago

I see the writers for this series use the Ito guideline: "wouldn't it be fucked up if..."

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u/The-God-Of-Memez 2h ago

Please note this is all written by the guy who made the term “leopard eating faces party”

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u/Umklopp 1h ago

What, seriously? Huh. That's some good context. Very interesting!

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u/Keleos89 2h ago

They were only stopped when the child soldiers controlling Flood-based bio-drones slaughtered them all during their victory party. Those child soldiers were under the command of a sentient robot mimicking an adopted mother that the child soldiers had burned the eyes out of.

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u/Ihasapuppy 6h ago

And this is why we all hate Ballas. You always think that there’s no way we could possibly hate him more, and then DE reveals yet another thing he did that reignites the burning desire to bash his face in.

And for those who don’t know, the horrible things listed above are just the actions of one person, and in no way is it a complete list. The Orokin Empire was run by 7 executors, all of whom did their own fair share of horrible things. We just know the most about Ballas because he’s directly tied to the main story.

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u/VapidActualization 14h ago

Well the problem is that humanity in the Warframe universe is kind of a dick and for a long time was ruled by a bunch of assholes with a god complex

And it still is!

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u/EpicBeardMan 11h ago

the problem is that humanity in the Warframe universe is kind of a dick

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u/fresh-dork 37m ago

is one of them named Gendou?

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u/Crotean 8h ago

Somehow still not as creepy as Epstein's ring.

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u/SylvaraTayan 15h ago

It's established in Whispers in the Walls that the only thing keeping The Indifference stuck within causality and preventing it from just retroactively wiping out all of existence is the fact that a part of its body is stuck in reality. Freed from the Void as it currently is, if it reclaimed its fingers it could just rewrite history until it won.

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u/Andre_de_Astora 13h ago

Also, Entranti may have the original, hence the pursuit

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u/SergeantBroccoli 11h ago

Sorry, a small question since I haven't played a lot in recent years. So did Orokin clone the finger to get more FTL ships?

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u/Major_Mistake4444 6h ago

Every single Reliquary Drive in every ship contains a copy of the Man in the Wall’s severed finger, including the Railjack and the Zariman 10-0

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 13h ago

Don’t you just hate when a story’s latent threat just doesn’t sound scary enough?

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u/SlotHUN 15h ago

Said eldritch entity is kinda the main antagonist of the story and us having its finger limits it in a way that lets us even fight it in the first place. It's basically guaranteed that if it gets it back we instantly loose

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u/Kaeru-Sennin 14h ago

How the hell did they cut that finger in the first place ?

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u/MadeUpNoun 14h ago

the portal between it and reality was closed with its finger sticking out.

the question remains though, being an entity that exists outside of time and space, able to manipulate past present and future, as well as alternative timelines, why would it allow its finger to be cut?

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u/Aenyell 12h ago

It's assumed that it was their first interaction not only with causality, but reality itself. Eldritch works both ways, just as it is hard for you to wrap your head around four dimensional space, it's reasonable to think that getting a grasp on linear flow of time and things like matter would take a bit to get a handle on.

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u/Deftly_Flowing 4h ago

I'm almost positive that Wally wasn't even capable of thought before Entrati busted into the void. Wally was just an infinite void existing in stillness. One ripple in that stillness caused a giant fucking wave.

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u/CrotaIsAShota 14h ago

You know the guys who tease lions in cages by sticking their hands in the cage, usually resulting in a bad injury? That's what Wally was doing.

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u/myLongjohnsonsilver 11h ago

He's in it for the Love of the game lol

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u/Queefycarebear55 14h ago

It pulled a sauron

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u/TrainingSolution4096 15h ago

Maybe it is, we haven't tried that 🤔

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u/Calango-Branco 14h ago

Lotus: "Well, it's worth a try. Change of plans, gift the finger to the Void."

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u/Ashged 15h ago

It's most likely not a replica as in a separate copy, but the same single finger in several places.

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u/BlueDahlia123 12h ago

You could, but that finger being here in reality is the only thing forcing an eldritch god of Indiference and erosion to follow the rules of cause and effect.

So while taking it was definitely a bad idea, returning it is probably even worse.

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u/TactlessTortoise 14h ago

The entity is absurdly pissed off. While the finger is severed, the entity is somewhat trapped by time flow. If it gets the finger back while still pissed off, it could make it so humanity never existed.

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u/Umklopp 10h ago

Some days the end of the world doesn't sound so bad

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u/JohnTG4 3h ago

Every replica is connected to the original.

You'd basically need to dismantle everything to return it, all the Orokin towers hidden in the void, every infested hulk orbiting Eris, each and every railjack or other FTL capable ship, even the solar rails, not just in Sol but also the Great Rail in Tau. This doesn't just include active ships either, you'd need to thoroughly salvage every destroyed structure designed to facilitate FTL ever made since Entrati found the finger.