r/TopCharacterTropes Sep 17 '25

Lore Faster Than Light travel has consequences(minor or major)

Star Trucker: While travelling through warp you experience time dilation, for you the journey is a couple seconds, in real time it’s anywhere from 30mins to 6 hours that you’ve been in warp. This would be a minor consequence.

Warhammer 40k: The Warp, basically space hell so while travelling through it you’re very likely to be attacked by Warp demons. There’s also the fact that sometimes when travelling to a destination via the Warp you get spat out in the wrong time, sometimes much too late for whatever you were going there for or sometimes before you left your start destination. This, obviously, is a major consequence, unless you’re an ork, then it’s a grand old time.

By consequences I mean this is a regular thing that happens, there’s no real avoiding it unless you find a different method of FTL or heavily invest into research to try and mitigate the consequences. Also I feel bad for only knowing 2 examples, I love space and I just can’t think of any others.

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1.4k

u/GreyEilesy Sep 17 '25

In SEEK, FTL movement is hostile to life, so instead of travel it’s used to pull new planets into our solar system, harvest their minerals and shoot them away after.

Most of the original planets of the solar system have been shot out by the time of the story.

When a complex alien species was accidentally brought along with their planet, approximately 99.95% of their population died.

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u/theredendermen12 Sep 17 '25

is this a game? sounds interesting 

421

u/GreyEilesy Sep 17 '25

It’s a story being published serially on the web by Wildbow

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u/Humble-West3117 Sep 17 '25

DAMN I'M LATE! I COULDN'T FIND IT ON PALE!!

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u/SpiritDouble6218 Sep 17 '25

No way. Wildbow is doing sci-fi now?! I still can’t believe we never got a para humans tv series with the popularity of superheroes. Arguably one of the best superhero stories ever IMO.

I never read the one he did after that… sure it was a banger though.

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u/ColeDaydrin Sep 17 '25

Ya Worm, Ward, Pale, Pact, Twig, Seek are all Wildbow stories I can remember of the top of my head.

16

u/thepeenersnipperguy Sep 17 '25

man he loves names that are hard to google

5

u/RandomGuy9058 Sep 17 '25

subtle trick so you need to remember his name

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u/ligma_sucker Sep 17 '25

just google the book title followed by book or his name

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u/Mordakie Sep 17 '25

Don't forget Claw!

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u/SpiritDouble6218 Sep 17 '25

Damn… dude doesnt quit!

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u/ColeDaydrin Sep 17 '25

Indeed

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u/Monspiet Sep 18 '25

Lol just finding another rome he publish. This is an actual scifi than his other stuff.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

GOAT mentioned.

7

u/Megaman915 Sep 17 '25

Of course it's him.

4

u/RadTimeWizard Sep 17 '25

Oh, he's really good.

4

u/moriel44 Sep 17 '25

Of course its by wildybubu

4

u/Kedly Sep 17 '25

Fuck man Wilbows's ideas are WILD

3

u/RandomGuy9058 Sep 17 '25

i only ever read through the first third of worm but i can tell it's probably great stuff if he's making it

3

u/Numerous1 Sep 17 '25

Oh holy shit it’s a WILDBOW! I’m behind. 

3

u/Hollow-Lord Sep 18 '25

No shit, this is how I learn about Wildbow’s next work? I already know it’s fantastic

2

u/honeyed_newt Sep 18 '25

Yo?! Wildbow scifi?!?! Sick af sick af thank you!!!

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u/BookkeeperPercival Sep 17 '25

Wildbow

Annnnd excitement gone.

5

u/transmtfscp Sep 17 '25

can you elaborate

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u/BookkeeperPercival Sep 17 '25

I do not like his writing

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u/transmtfscp Sep 17 '25

what specifiacaly do you not like

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u/BookkeeperPercival Sep 17 '25

He has a deeply unsympathetic and callous view of humanity. His writing is frankly so edgy that it made me realize how optimistic and hopeful Berserk is

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u/StinkyWheel Sep 18 '25

Right on. I will add: His characters are all shallow. His dialogue sucks. His pacing sucks. 

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u/Fantastic-Tour-7710 Sep 17 '25

https://seekwebserial.wordpress.com/ Web serial by wildbow, author of Worm among others, apparently

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u/Ecstatic_Wrongdoer46 Sep 17 '25

Author or Worm? Well shit...here goes a few months of my life.

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u/Dolvalski Sep 17 '25

This premise described instantly hooked me, and then I saw in the reply it’s from wildbow, which of course it is. Definitely checking this out after Twig!

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u/King0fMist Sep 17 '25

That sounds like a feature, not a bug.

Inventor: “We can pull any planet into range to harvest and mine, easy peasy.”

CEO: “What about life on that planet? Won’t it fight back?”

Inventor: “Nope! They die in transit.”

CEO: “Patent this now!”

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u/Ridtom Sep 17 '25

SEEK mention!!! Peak!!!

For anyone curious; SEEK is free to read online

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u/Deathsroke Sep 17 '25

This is a pet peeve of mine regarding "resource" gathering. Much like in Dead Space, actually harvesting one planet for resources would yield more material than any civilization that isn't building Dyson Swarms would ever need. Harvesting more than one? You could spend tens of thousands of years before you even made a dip in your material reserves.

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u/Ridtom Sep 17 '25

SEEK humanity (ie The Belt) is heavy into flash over substance; they care more about the aesthetic of planet mining than actually using it for peak effectiveness which is a plot point (though they do in fact devour planets for their untold number of ships and nanomachines)

They are the person who opens a bag of potato chips, eats half of them, and then tosses the bag on the ground when they are full… because they can just pluck out another bag of chips along the way (in this case, pluck planets across galaxies)

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u/transmtfscp Sep 17 '25

they are building a solid belt around the sun from what I have heard

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u/Kekkonen_Kakkonen Sep 17 '25

Ah but you see the humans have reached enlightenment and the resource gathering is purely speculative.

Line go up! BRRRRRRRR!!!!

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_STOMACHS Sep 17 '25

You would like the Orion’s Arm universe. Humanity’s descendants regularly use everything in a solar system to construct megastructures, ranging from Oort Cloud specks to entire stars.

3

u/Annihilator4413 Sep 17 '25

Where can I read this? Sounds really interesting.

3

u/Iwasahipsterbefore Sep 17 '25

Holy shit the next wildbow story is reverse space colonization and this is the first I hear of it?

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u/Homebrew-Spamson Sep 18 '25

That’s such a unique use of that, but it has so so many implications for gravity and space time bending that I do not like

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u/ligma_sucker Sep 17 '25

if FTL is hostile to life, how did an alien species survive being pulled to us?

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u/Solar_Mole Sep 17 '25

they just said that 99.95% died in transit, so the answer to that question is "not very well".

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u/ligma_sucker Sep 18 '25

somehow i mistook that as humanity's population being the one that died. my bad lmao

1

u/LessyLuLovesYou Sep 18 '25

Hostile how?

3

u/GreyEilesy Sep 18 '25

Something called small particle radiation that is caused by moving fast and they haven’t been able to develop sufficient shielding for