Force-drive

The Force-drive was a type of hyperdrive that powered warships using the wells of Force energy existing within sentient slave species as fuel. Force-drives were installed aboard the Rakatan ships, where entire rooms were dedicated to the storage of slave fuel in vast containment racks. Each rack contained a number of "tomblike shells," cells wherein the slaves were restrained face-down and hooked to a set of electrodes. Turned into living batteries, they were subjected to intense pain for extended periods of time, with the resultant dark-side energy extracted and channeled to the Force-drive.

While this system did work, the Force-drive's reliance on the Force as its primarily power source gave it certain limitations, the most important of which was its inability to travel between any two arbitrary points in realspace. The Force-drive was only capable of targeting worlds with strong Force signatures, a fact which resulted in an empire that spanned the breadth of the galaxy but which only incorporated more than five hundred worlds. In addition, a powerful prisoner with a strong will could overcome the destructive effects of the mechanisms and break out of their cell.

Many years before 36,453 BBY, the Kwa uplifted the Rakata civilization of Lehon, who were taught the power of the Force and were given advanced technology. Following the devastating conflict with the Kwa, the Rakata promptly developed the first known hyperdrive, discovering that they could use the energy of Force-sensitive slaves among the populations they conquered to fuel their warships. Thus the Infinite Empire was born, which expanded with each new conquest and discovery of another planet rich in the Force.

Although the Rakata did not reveal the secret of their technologies to the slaves, over time, they did discover the secret of the hyperdrive and many other technologies. The Gossams and Devaronians created a tumble hyperdrive even before the fall of the Infinite Empire, while Coruscanti traveled without a hyperdrive at all, sending colonial sleeper ships across the Core Worlds. In turn, Corellians and Duros independently reverse-engineered hyperspace cannons from the Rakatan hyperdrive, but it was the development of the modern hyperdrive by Corellian scientists around 25,000 BBY that opened up the galaxy to interstellar trade and led to the formation of the Galactic Republic. The latter, representing an amalgamation of various emerging civilizations, also combined developments based on Rakata technologies.

Dr. Insmot Bowen, a specialist in pre-Republic history at the Obroan Institute for Archaeology, gave a debriefing in 1 BBY to General Arhul Kurumenga of the Imperial Department of Military Research, Admiral Conan Antonio Motti of the Imperial Navy, and Master of Imperial Projects Bevel Lemelisk relating to the history of the Rakata and their technologies, including the Rakatan hyperdrive.

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