Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Loopstorm: A temporal eddy, caused in areas that have seen especially high useage of FTL drives, resulting from the fabric of spacetime being worn thin. When a vessel travels through such a region using an FTL drive, there is a chance that it will cause a loopstorm, locking random patches of spacetime into loops that repeat endlessly until the effect dissipates.

These loops cause a severe time dilation effect, either slowing down or speeding up the passage of time relative to normal space. As such, they can cause starship hulls to rapidly age and weather away, or they can trap sensor, systems, or even crew in a loop that can last hours, days, weeks, or even years.

As spacetime damage from unregulated FTL use becomes more pronounced, loopstorms have become more common, more violent, and longer-lasting.

“Hotship required,” read Slaus. “What’s that?”

“Ah, probably an infernian. Yeah, okay. They need a Form 227-B and they need to be put on a ship with an H at the end of its prefix. You can put them on something with PH as well, but only if you have to. H for Hotship, PH for Partial Hotship.”

“…okay?”

“Infernians need a temperature of 117 degrees centigrade, even in hibernation,” Owteon explained. “A hotship keeps that temperature at all times, so that if the hibernation cell fails they will simply wake up intead of dying and then exploding.”