FTL Mechanics

Faster-than-light transit in the documented universe runs through exactly two lawful channels, and every certified drive ever flown has used one of them:

1. Quantum Space Harmonic Wave — wave-locked transit along pre-admissible harmonic corridors; the medium-range channel, about a light-year a day.
2. Higher-Dimensional Folding — the long-range channel: a slow, preparation-heavy higher-dimensional drift that folds distant regions into brief adjacency so a vessel can cross.

Neither channel grants immunity to causality, and neither permits an operator to bypass Concordant law or Cascade constraint. A drive is a way of crossing distance, not a way out of the rules. The two channels are independent mechanisms, not tiers of one — they share neither physics nor route map, and neither stands in for the other; what divides them in practice is range and pace, and in principle the tier of the Cosmic Cascade each is defined at: the harmonic wave is specific to the local archecluster, folding to the local formcluster.

No third method has ever been demonstrated, certified, or credibly recorded. Proposals surface every generation — inertialess drives, tachyonic signalling, "shortcuts" through boundary zones — and every one has died in review, usually at the same clause: it would require the transit to outrank the physics it travels through.

Example: A fold-capable vessel crossing between systems still arrives after its departure in every lawful reference frame. The fold compresses the distance; it does not reorder the events. Crews who find that disappointing are generally young.

See the Lore article on FTL Mechanics for full constraints, failure modes, and continuity rules.