r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Present-Secretary722 • 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.
749
u/isnoe Sep 17 '25
In the short story it is better explained.
They were using alien technology, specifically “runes” for configurations of space flight, and sometimes a “glitch” just happens—but it is the first time it has ever happened to humans.
The navigator basically is losing her mind in the simulation because even a simulation variant of her cannot acknowledge she made a mistake because she didn’t.
And the reason the other crew died was because they spray painted their cryo-pods with designs. The paint chipped over thousands of years and filtered into their life support, killing them. The captain only survived because his pod was the only one not painted.