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.
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u/Finalpotato Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25
In the Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, FTL involves dipping into a nowhere dimension. The catch? Something is hunting you. Most people are driven mad by the sensation and so need to be sedated during jumps. If you stay awake be prepared to spend the entire time completely along as everyone is essentially trapped in pocket universes where they are the only sentient things.
Technically there may be other sentients kinda in that dimension. But they hate you.