Youkai Technology (Maelstrom)
Youkai technology is primarily founded on their own nature as strange matter life forms and the relatively common Dawn War relics in Deliverance sector. They have broadly inherited Tivlin and, to a lesser extent, other Dawn War combatants' knowledge, excelling especially in physics and superluminal travel. The human condition, including humanity's own singularity, continues to strongly influence how this technology is applied. Youkai themselves have yet to experience any personal ascensions and are conflicted in how to achieve this, since the human model would cause them to disappear.
Technologies
Gap Demon
The main FTL drive unit of the Youkai is known as the Gap Demon. Developed to excel in the distortions of Deliverance sector, this device projects a small "strange universe" or gap around the host and uses it as an intercessor in a particularly advanced form of colocation. It is universally regarded as a surpassingly powerful form of superluminal travel, combining all of the most desireable qualities, albeit with one unusual side effect.
Relative to reality, practical effects of gap are quite similar to relativistic sublight travel writ fast; very little subjective time is experienced by the travellers, but the speed of travel relative to the rest of the universe is finite (though it is quite fast by any standard). Objects enter and leave the gap through roughly eye-shaped tears in space-time. The objects or energies to be included must be defined prior to activation, which doesn't take long but does mean foreign objects attempting to intrude upon the gap face destructive exclusion.
Travel by gap cannot be described in terms of dimensional space and things within the gap are causally disconnected except through points of entry and exit. Therefore, Youkai ships are unaffected by so-called slow zones and the process of travel cannot be disrupted except (theoretically) during the formation of the gap or its openings. Jamming or suboptimal dimensional weather can decrease the speed and stealth with which gap openings form, as does the size of the object.
The gap demon's principle of operation is destructive, non-perfect teleportation, the latter quality of which is the primary drawback of the gap demon. Ordinary nuclear or degeneracy matters decay rapidly into their "strange" counterpart while within the gap, meaning gap demon equipped vessels cannot normally be used to transport regular cargo. Inanimate objects so transported would behave as ordinary strange matter, decaying in the presence of nuclear matter. Macroscopic life forms transported via gap may become youkai at the end of the trip – creatures the size and complexity of a human usually survive to achieve metastability.