Dark Matter Engine

Engine Class

Dark Matter engines are the hearts of starships. Most ships also have other engines, called impulse engines, to travel outside of void jumps, but a Dark Matter engine is required to embark on any planet-hopping adventure.

If a spellcaster directly powers the engine using their magic, they can cause a Dark Matter engine to jump two more times on a given day. However, progressively more powerful engines require more arcane magic. A Class 1 engine can be powered by a 1st level spell slot, but a Class 2 engine requires a 2nd level spell slot, and so on.

Engines with the lowest classes are ostensibly system- hoppers, allowing a small starship to jump around a single system, or to go on longer journeys between nearby systems. Often, these types of ships will need to be carried within higher class starships to cross longer distances.

Class 10 engines are strictly theoretical or legendary, depending on who you ask. Such an engine could cross the galaxy in a single day, requiring no spellcasters of any sort, and would have to be the direct creation of the gods, or some ancient, mystical alien race.

Void Crystals

Dark Matter engines are constructed with void crystals at their cores. Rare, fragile, and extracted from the Void at the event horizons of black holes, these crystals are among the most valuable and volatile materials in the 'verse. If a void crystal is damaged in the slightest, it risks not only becoming inoperable, but also collapsing into a sphere of annihilation, destroying the rest of the engine and the entire ship. Thus, most of the stabilizing equipment surrounding the core of a Dark Matter engine serves only to insulate and protect the crystal within.

Running a Dark Matter Engine

To many, it seems that Dark Matter engines are temperamental and perplexing without end, behaving like living things unto themselves. No single race's designs and no particular model accurately represents the variety of these engines; even engines of the same model act differently when fed different types of magical energy.

When a ship has long had a warlock working as an engineer, the Dark Matter engine may start to belch clouds of sulfur and brimstone, and charge faster when those aboard the ship are miserable. Wizards, on the other hand, keep rather tidy, if meticulously modified, engines, which are likely to pulse with rhythmic bursts of force when engaged in a jump. The variations are endless: engines run by illusionists chromatically aberrate the air around them, druid-kept engines sprout twigs and grass in their crevices, and some dwarven engines produce a small amount of beer as exhaust.