Travelling faster than light requires two components, firstly a Stardrive, also sometimes called a warp drive. Secondly, Stardrives only work in areas of space where the nature of that space is much less "dense" than normal. Such areas exist as corridors between particular stars and are known as "Stellar Conduits". In theory, Stardrives could operate in normal space, if they were provided with an inconceivable amount of power, but this has so far proved impossible or at least deeply impractical for any known civilization past or present.

Stellar Conduits are (as far as anyone can tell) naturally occurring corridors of space that connect from one very large gravitational body to another, typically stars, and are comprised of "thinned" or less dense spatial characteristics. The connection or corridor is relatively flat and is relatively wide where it connects to a star, then narrows and maintains a fairly consistent width between it's two connection points. These connection points are typically just beyond the heliosphere of a star.

No one fully understands the mechanics of why Stellar Conduits form, why some are slowly deforming, and many other aspects of their nature.

The Galactic Commons is the general phrase for describing the majority of Stellar Conduits that form a connected network covering roughly 10-15% of the Galaxy's spatial area. Specifically, the Galactic Commons covers portions of the Orion, Perseus, and Sagittarius spiral arms, with more stars being connected to each other the closer one travels toward the epicenter of the network. The epicenter of the Galactic Commons lies in the middle gap between the Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms, east of the Orion arm (East of Sol's position and Terra if using Sol as North on a compass).

Whilst the Galactic Commons is spread over a large area of the galaxy, the actual number of stars connected within is far, far less than the total number of stars within that area. Mapping Stellar Conduits is a difficult and time consuming task and thus far only about 2000 star systems have been mapped within the Commons itself.

Any system beyond the general borders of the major galactic empires and thus, beyond the more-often explored regions of the Galactic Commons are referred to as the "Outskirts". These systems are still connected to the network, but as they exist on the edges, the distance between one star and the next via Stellar Conduit tends to increase and the number of stars connected decreases... thus travelling to these regions is time consuming, slowing the ease for exploration and exploitation.

Backwaters is a general term for systems that are not technically connected via Stellar Conduits, but are so close to a existing conduit between two other star systems, that the they are still accessible using a partial journey by Stardrive and then an extended duration using sub-light drives. Such systems are rarely invested in by major powers due to their inconvenience, but often pirates, private interests, and rogue colony ships prefer these locales as they offer obscurity. Some Backwaters take a few weeks via sub-light drive to reach, others... several cycles.

For a little over 10,000 cycles the Second Epoch's history was dominated by only two interstellar civilizations, the Ukaros Dynasties and the Regime of Tothk, who were embroiled in a bitter never-ending war to dominate the space between them. The only aspect of this era more important than this conflict, indeed the defining element that allowed for such a long-lived conflict to even exist, was the absence of faster than light travel.

Without FTL capabilities, both civilizations were forced to rely upon sub-light drives for interstellar travel, and utilize a host of technologies such as cryogenic suspension, to make such journeys. Thus while their warfare was technically "constant" there would be lulls where a whole century may pass and neither side engage in a battle.

Into such an environment came the innovative and determined Aquilarans, whose technological development was proceeding far faster than either the Tothk or the Ukaros. The Aquilarans, finding themselves largely surrounded by these two combatants, focused their energies on developing faster than light travel so that they could "leapfrog" the belligerent empires, and begin creating an empire of their own.

The Aquilarans soon discovered the Stellar Conduits and rapidly began to design "warp drives", that would bend space to allow for faster than light travel if used to exploit the conduit phenomena. Soon, the Aquilaran ships were able to bypass Tothk and Ukaros territories and establish new colonies, make contact with other races, and begin sharing some of their technology for much needed resources. The Ukaros and Tothk, realizing what had happened, began to attack Aquilaran holdings whenever possible and the so-called "Triadic War" began.

It wasn't until the Fulgar, cleverly stole Stardrive technology and began selling it to anyone they encountered, that the Aquilaran's monopoly was curtailed and the Triadic War brought to a rather climatic end.

Since then, Stardrive advancement proceeded rather slowly until the Terrans made a scientific breakthrough and radically increased the efficiency of the drive technology. A similar historical cycle of short-term monopoly followed by dissemination and conflict repeated itself in the Monroe Wars thereafter.

Today, Stardrive technology is widely available, though the quality and speed available to any given civilization can vary greatly, and even minor improvements in drive systems are considered top priority by government's throughout the galaxy.

Until the invention of the basic Stardrive by the Aquilarans the only method of interstellar travel was to use "standard" or "sub-light" drives, which could not achieve faster than light speeds, but could achieve near-light speeds. Such engines were typically very advanced models of Ion Drives and are still used in the present day for in-system travel.

Relying on such drives for interstellar travel meant that most civilizations couldn't practically expect to expand into the greater galaxy, as it would take many cycles to even reach the nearest solar systems, and potentially decades to reach a solar system that had potential benefits to colonization. Indeed, the early centuries of galactic history of the Second Epoch are largely defined by the difficulties of establishing a foothold in space whilst relying on such slow transit systems; only the most determined species made the attempt.

In an effort to cope with this intolerable "slowness" many other technologies were developed, including cryogenic suspension, protein synthesis, artificial gravity, and environmental recycling to name but a few.

Interstellar travel... is... difficult. Most stories involving it really just ignore huge glaring issues with it, and I don't mean technical issues, but rather, issues of scale. For instance, some of my favorite science fiction universes have incredible capability to travel the stars... but then... the universe they explore is so... "small". Small in a number of ways, the number of planets explored, the number of races encountered, the size of the interstellar empire's population, etc. etc. It's not really a bad thing mind you, the smaller scale involved allows for an easier to grasp and easier to produce universe. The fact of the matter is, that most likely, the reader isn't going to be able to relate or easily comprehend an actually vast galaxy filled with a vast number of people, places, and things. Even those that do explore this, do so by simply staying vague and saying things like "the Galactic Empire was vast".

For me this simply wouldn't do. I neither want to be vague, nor do I want to create a universe SO vast and chuck-full of things that places and empires lose their meaning and become mere plot devices for some sort of episodic trek amongst the stars (hehe).

So what I've tried to do (emphasis on "try"), is create a detailed enough system of interstellar travel that we can:

• Explain the relative speed and geography of known space in some detail.
• Maintain a relatively small scale of hundreds instead of billions of worlds.
• Ensure that ships could adventure and escape from a star system on their own power.
• Remain open enough for some creative storytelling and gaming!

I think the key element, was deciding that there were Starways, A.K.A. "Starlanes" from many classic space-games, but that these were decidedly NOT universal (unlike most of those classic space-games). There is even a fun and very meaningful mystery about why the Starways are not ubiquitous and the answer is not written within these pages!