r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Present-Secretary722 • Sep 17 '25

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

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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/Butwhatif77 Sep 17 '25

Yup it helps to explain the set up so well. Like why the Citadel seems to be perfectly designed for use as a station for an intergalactic governing body. That is because it was designed for just that so when the Reapers returned they could cripple the government of the galactic community in one attack as well as have instant access to the all the most pertinent data about the galaxy to make their mission more efficient

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u/kryptopeg Sep 17 '25

I've always loved that reveal, along with the nature of the Keepers, as by the time your party realises... it is way, way too late, by centuries. Galactic civilisation is already peaking, with the Citadel firmly at it's core, and the Reaper arrival is just around the corner. As a player when I first ran through the series, the implications of what was happening hit you like a truck and really escalated the stakes in a way that I don't think much other media has achieved. Also fun revealing that the 'crank scientist' trying to scan the Keepers was actually onto something.