Ruins 2 Old Spaceman's Almanac

Basic Concepts

Glossary

• Jump Point: The Byron-Hughes Field Point, the area of space in a system where FTL travel is possible.
• Primary Point: The Jump Point that emerges naturally in the mass shadow of large Jovian gas giants; in Lagrangian terms, the L2 point of the starzones's largest gas giant.
• Minor Point: Any other Jump Point in a given starzone. Most are located in the mass shadows of large or heavy planets, and are more difficult to calculate jumps off of than the Primary.
• Darkspace Point: Rare Jump Points located in the Oort Cloud of a starzone, which only permit travel to other Darkspace Points, often leading the would-be explorer down chains of uncharted systems.
• Spooling Up: (Colloquial) Performing Byron-Hughes Field calculations to successfully perform an FTL transit.
• Blue System: Charted starzones, with well understood Jump Points and few surprises. Spooling up travel to and from a Blue System takes half as long, one quarter if the jump is between two Blue Systems.
• Yellow System: Typical Verge starzones, subject to typical travel times.
• Red System: Frontier systems that are mostly uncharted. Safely conducting a Jump to or from a Red System takes twice as long, four times for travel between two Red Systems.
• Circular: Interstellar trade routes serviced by enormous jumpships that run continuous circuits through the Inner Systems and Verge, hence the name. They are traditionally named after animals and mythological creatures, i.e.: Horse, Deer, Rabbit, Rooster, etc. Multiple ships can run the same circular.
• Junction: Systems where Circulars are known to converge, named after mythological hybrids of the connected routes. i.e.: Gryphon Junction connects the Lion and Eagle Circulars, Manticore connects the Man, Scorpion and Lion Circulars, etc.