There are two commonly used ways to travel faster than the speed of light.

The first can only be called FTL by a technicality- in that one can cross two
points in space normally seperated by lightyears in an instant. Large networks of
relic portals connect planets throughout space. Due to the massive amounts of power
needed to power these often- damaged monuments, they are often limited to use for
commercial transport for key industries or high-urgency transport (citizens are
again urged that portal closure have been scheduled in advance, and high volumes of
traffic are always to be expected). These relic portals are notoriously difficult
to operate even with centuries of research, with the vast majority of portals being
limited to one or two, very rarely three destinations.

These portals sometimes lead to unknown regions of space, leading Republic explorer
amd research teams to go through newly-discovered portals to examine these unknown
planets and systems often habitable or ripe with exploitable resources.

The second, much more common way of Faster-Than-Light transportation is the vacuum
drive. It consists of one or more particles kept in a Stable Storage Unit, which
makes up the vast majority of the vacuum drive. A SSU is largely proportionate to
the size of the vessel, with sizes ranging to the size of a single bed to
kilometer-wide compounds housing multiple particles. The miniaturisation of SSUs to
make multiparticle drives has thus far only been achieved in a few Republic
prototype vessels, having been salvaged technology from destroyed CAA battleships.

In lieu of this, most Republic ships make use of containment fields to keep a ship
together during FTL transport, a process considerably slower, costlier and more
intensive than the simple feedback loop a multiparticle drive produces.

A vacuum drive works by a limited release of the particle. The exact period and
angle of release determines where the particle will end up and is the bulk of
calculations made by the ship navigation engine. Commercial and domestic craft
rarely use onboard navigation engines, instead relying on system jump points
transmitting drive calculations to other jump points. The particle arrives at the
destination near-instantly, regardless of actual physical distance and triggers a
chain reaction, pulling the vessel to it's location relative to the particle's
fixed location (inside the SSU).

As this is a "frictionless" method of FTL, jumping into a physical object at your

destination simply causes the vessel to bounce off said object at rapid, but
nonlethal velocities. The magic involved in a vacuum drive also make use of the
unimaginably high speeds the vessel travels at to power simple emergency runes,
making the ship intangible to anything it might pass through during transit.