Foldgates
The galaxies are too far apart to make hyperspace jumps practical. The empires of the Five Galaxies abandoned the use of “Generation” ships that traveled for thousands of years to reach distant star fields early on. There simply wasn’t the political will to pour vast resources into a project that no one would live to see accomplished. For those empires that did launch Generation ships, war, civil strife and pandemics aboard the vessels killed far more of the passengers than the statisticians had projected, resulting in the loss of a majority of the generation ships well before reaching their objective.
Scientists eventually found a way around this by developing a device that could fold space. Unfortunately, it required a device aptly named a Foldgate at the start and end points. However, some Estra scientists postulated that there would be other scientific communities in other galaxies developing similar technologies, since they had already come into contact with a variety of other spacefaring races. This team used a focused Foldgate transmission to target distant stars in the Five Galaxies. After nearly a century of searching, the Extragalactic Foldgate Project announced that a team of scientists in the Wearsan Empire had successfully targeted and sent a scout ship to a system in the Deltar Galaxy.
After the discovery of the first alien foldgate, empires throughout Estra redoubled their targeting efforts. The discovery of additional alien foldgates created links to all of the Five Galaxies. Foldgates became highways of commerce between the galaxies and empires controlling them became immensely powerful.
Most of the Estra foldgates were destroyed in an abortive attempt to prevent cybernetic incursions into the rest of the Five Galaxies. However, the unfortunate incident at the Phantatwain foldgate in the Qidak starsystem in 3987 resulted in cybernetic infiltration beyond the Estra galaxy. The cybernetic war now rages on all across the Five Galaxies. There are rumors however that some foldgates remain in Estra guarded by the surviving elements of long dead empires.
What does this mean for players?
It means that in Takamo Universe, players will be able to discover foldgates and be able to chart locations very, very far away from home. Will they be able to find allies? Maybe. Will they instead find enemies? Perhaps. That all depends on the players. Oh, and there may be cybers…or Phantatwains…or maybe some Naplians, who knows what you’ll find!? Good luck!
“The Samite Empire’s first contact with the Phantatwains was not well received.”