The two species’ philosophies are well-expressed in their philosophies toward faster-than-light travel. The Tis’An favored hyperdrive networks and their accompanying infrastructure, while the Efil preferred slower but less resource-intensive warp travel.

Hyperdrive lanes are naturally-occurring transwarp slipstream channels that naturally flow throughout space-time. By using a hyperdrive terminal, a Tis’An ship could accelerate to incredible speeds along one such lane. Simple enough, but such a trip required a large and expensive terminal at both ends; otherwise, the ship would potentially travel much further, or in a random direction. Pirates and saboteurs routinely targeted the Tis’An terminals, either for ransom or to prevent Hegemony reinforcements from arriving. As a result, costly defense fleets were required to protect the a hyperspace terminal, and even more expensive repairs were required to bring one back into service. But when all was functioning well, the Tis’An Hegemony could dispatch cargo, passengers, or reinforcements in a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks.

Warp travel, preferred by the Efil Amphictyony, did not require any such hyperspace lane infrastructure. Instead, it simply required an area sufficiently free of gravity wells and a course charted to avoid the same, after which a warp projector would bend space-time ahead of a vessel to pull it along at trans-light speeds. While the technology and navigational computing power needed were not trivial, by the time of the Amphictyony’s apex, economies of scale meant that the technology was cheap and widely available.

The drawback was the extended travel time. Warp travel took days or weeks, occasionally even years, and this led to a correspondingly slower pace for the Efil Amphictyony. There were no vulnerable choke points, and therefore less piracy, but goods and military reinforcements were slow to arrive.

These philosophies set the course for the Hegemony-Amphictyony war. The Tis’An were able to protect and supply their inner worlds but could do nothing to stop Efil raids, while the time and expense it took to erect hyperspace lanes in captured Efil territory gave the defenders time to mobilize.

It was ultimately a stalemate that would last for over a decade.

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