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Rules > Starships
Starfinder Core Rulebook p.290
No one knows which Pact World first achieved spaceflight, but by the beginning of the modern era, nearly every world had some form of interplanetary travel. For some, this was purely magical: powerful spells or artifacts, or quick jaunts through other planes of existence allowed travelers access to their intended world. Yet for others, the airless void of space was just another sea to be crossed, which they did in a variety of craft, from magical to mechanical and from biological to divine.
As technology improved, travel time between worlds dropped from months
and years to days, and the optimal routes between planets became crowded
with spacecraft. Yet even in this new age of space flight, voyages beyond
the solar system remained rare; traveling to even the nearest star at conventional
speeds would take generations. While a few starships had drives capable
of circumventing this obstacle, all relied on extremely expensive magical
technology, often controlled by churches or other organizations. From Asmodean
Helldrives to Kuthite shadow engines to the prayer-fueled cores of Iomedaean
cathedralships, most of these technologies not only took the ship through
other planes but also operated with direct divine assistance, and thus always
came with a hefty price. While other drives had been theorized—drives that
could fold space, create stable wormholes, or otherwise bend the rules of
physics— the Pact Worlds had never managed to build them.
Then, 3 years
after the end of the Gap, the Signal went out. Some worlds received it as
a broadcast. It came to others in the dreams of inventors or lunatics, or
etched into floors by malfunctioning assembly robots. Still others dug it
from the innards of crashed space probes, found it carved on monoliths in
city centers, or heard it blared from the sky by entities within wheels
of flame. Regardless of the mechanism, at the same instant, thousands of
cultures across the Material Plane received the same information: blueprints
for a new type of starship drive— one capable of cheaply and efficiently
shortening the distance between stars.
Though some scholars argue that
every mortal culture received this information, many recipients were never
aware of it or able to capitalize on it. In some cases, cultures weren’t
technologically advanced enough to interpret the information— explorers
have even uncovered these designs painted on cave walls by an uncomprehending
paleolithic culture. In other cases, the information was lost due to simple
accident, as when an inventor blessed with the information fell out a window
before he could share it.
Immediately following the Signal, the new god
Triune revealed itself
to the Pact Worlds, claiming to have granted the knowledge as a blessing
to its new mortal children. Formerly three minor gods of machines and robotics,
now networked together into a single entity, the divine collective claimed
to have peered through the substrata of reality and discovered a previously
unknown plane of existence. Called the Drift, this plane could be reached
only via technology—not magic— and would allow mortals to cheaply and easily
travel between points anywhere in the galaxy. In granting this discovery
to the world, Triune became one of the most powerful entities in the multiverse
overnight: the new god of interstellar travel.
Like earlier interstellar
drives, Drift engines operate by jumping to another plane of existence and
then back to a different point on the Material Plane, thus never actually
running up against the hard limit presented by the speed of light. In the
past, that had meant using powerful magic and traveling to places like Heaven,
Hell, the Maelstrom, or the First World—places inhabited by creatures and
gods with sometimes inconvenient attitudes and appetites. The Drift, on
the other hand, is a different type of dimension: a void of swirling color
without substance, a mostly empty place of mutable laws, thought by some
to be the quantum foam underlying all creation. While magic still functions
inside the Drift, only technology can pierce the membrane between it and
the rest of reality, which, combined with Triune’s role as gatekeeper, keeps
any other deities or organizations from monopolizing the place.
While
even most skeptics and members of other religions are forced to admit that
Triune has appeared to make good on its egalitarian offer to maintain cheap
and easy interstellar travel for everyone, use of the Drift does come with
a catch. Every time a Drift engine is used, a tiny portion of a random plane
is torn from its home and added to the Drift, set to float there for eternity.
The farther the jump, the larger the chunk of material, which sometimes
appears near the jumping ship, adding an element of risk: you never know
when a long jump might tear away a chunk of Hell and leave you flying through
a cloud of furious devils. Even those making safely measured jumps might
encounter strange beasts trapped there by previous travels. Why the technology
involves this side effect is unknown, though some conspiracy theorists believe
that the ever-increasing size of the Drift—and the corresponding shrinking
of the other planes of existence—is part of an inscrutable power play by
Triune itself.
Whether they’re patrol craft or battlecruisers, all starships are propelled through space by thrusters. The exact workings of these engines vary from starship to starship—some are technological, while others are a blend of magic and machine. See the navigate task of the Piloting skill (page 145) for information about using that skill to plot a correct course. Determine the approximate distance you wish to travel and roll using the travel times below to see how long it takes you to reach your destination, but note that the Game Master is the final arbiter of travel times and may shorten or lengthen them as she desires for the needs of the campaign.
Using Drift technology differs from ordinary astrogation in that the
distances between worlds are less important than the difficulty of correctly
targeting the jump. Within a given solar system, jumps are relatively quick
and easy, though this method is only moderately faster than flying between
worlds using conventional thrusters. Outside of a given system, Drift tech
divides the galaxy into two sectors: Near Space and the Vast. While Near
Space worlds tend to be closer to the galactic center (and, incidentally,
to the Pact Worlds) and the systems of the Vast tend to be farther out,
the true difference between the regions lies in the density of so-called
“Drift beacons.” These mysterious objects, sometimes spontaneously generated
and sometimes placed by priests of Triune, help navigation systems orient
ships in the Drift. While placing a single Drift beacon on a world isn’t
enough to convert a Vast world to Near Space status, placing many in that
general region of space can cause the shift, and thus it’s possible to find
pockets of Near Space worlds all the way out to the galactic rim, as well
as uncharted zones considered part of the Vast near the galaxy’s core.
When traveling to a world through the Drift, determine whether the destination
is in the same system, Near Space, or the Vast. The distance between the
start and end of your journey doesn’t matter, nor which category of space
you’re starting from: traveling from the Vast to a Near Space world is no
more difficult than between two Near Space worlds. Roll using the travel
times below, then divide the result by your starship’s Drift engine rating
to determine how long it takes you to reach your destination. For example,
a starship with a Drift engine rating of 2 traveling to a world in the Vast
would roll 5d6 and divide the result by 2. If you rolled 15, then the trip
would take 7-1/2 days. Note that you never round down with Drift travel
rolls, since these partial days can be extremely important when multiple
spacecraft are racing each other to a destination. Additionally, since the
Drift is a plane that you’re traveling through, it is possible to pause
midjump, and even to land on one of the floating chunks of terrain or engage
in starship combat. Time spent stopped in this manner does not bring you
closer to your destination, and thus does not count toward your required
travel time. Days spent in the Drift are no different for the crew than
days spent in normal space, and thus they can craft items, heal, and take
other actions as normal.
The one exception to the rules above is Absalom
Station: for unknown reasons, the Starstone at its core acts as an extremely
powerful Drift beacon, allowing ships from anywhere in the galaxy to jump
to Absalom Station in 1d6 days.
While traveling through the Drift, a
starship uses its conventional thrusters. For a starship to engage its Drift
engines to either enter or exit the Drift, its conventional thrusters must
be turned off for 1 minute.
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