Stardust and Starship Fuel (Patreon)

Note : Apologies for the gap, some things happened.

You'll be happy to learn I finally got to see my dentist, and while the day after the treatment was hell, things seem to be getting better, even if only somewhat.

I've also started working on The Fallen World again. Chapter 294 has been written.

Stardust is an arcane substance that seems to occur near stars linked by ley lines. It is currently unknown if Stardust is produced within the star and ejected during coronal mass ejections and solar storms, or if it is appearing around stars and steadily falling into the upper layers.

Either way, stardust may only be gathered by spacecrafts flying extremely close to the star and it's corona. Specialized vessels even dive into the corona proper to harvest higher concentrations, and there are several star lifter projects within the Imperial core worlds harvesting stardust at an immense scale by processing the photosphere of the star itself.

Stardust is a key component in a variety of devices, chief among them the Stardrive. It is also an extremely potent arcane and alchemical catalyst, making it a valuable substance, when properly refined and processed, for a great deal many devices and substances, from mage stims to prism rifles.

It's most famous use however is for starship fuel, also called enriched manafuel. Indeed, while liquid mana is devoured by starship power cores and drives, it is not sufficient to enable an interstellar jump or even power some of the more advanced military momentum drives. When enriched with stardust in a starfuel refinery, it becomes able to power stardrives, as well as becoming far more mass effective. While more expensive compared to the energy released, enriched fuel is the preferred fuel for warships, if they are able to use it.

Most trader vessels are equipped with an onboard fuel refinery. While ships only have to refuel periodically, there can be large stretches of uninhabited, undeveloped or otherwise hostile space between trade ports, and it is considered standard. However, the necessity of heading to the system's star and undergoing potentially hazardous gathering operations makes it an uneconomical option is systems where such fuel is available, even at extortionate rates.

It should be noted that enriched fuel is complicated and expensive to store. As such, most freighters and civilian vessels plying the starlanes only carry enough for a single jump, while free traders and patrol vessels typically have enough for three jumps. Warships are more complicated, those that still make use of normal manafuel typically carry enough for five jumps, for the sake for strategic mobility. Those that run entirely on enriched fuel depend heavily on their main power plants. Imperial battleships, who use mundane fusion reactors for their energy needs and only have enriched manafuel power cores as emergency backups, only carry enough fuel for six jumps. Fleet escorts like light cruisers and frigates however can be entirely magically powered, and thus have as much as ten jumps stored, though each jump beyond five would deplete their power plant's reserve and thus be only done sparingly.