h1. Void Church bq. Know that you are living in a cursed world. Nothing here will ever match to your expectations, others will fail you, the Void will fail you, and you will fail yourself and eventually die. The best you can hope for is to improve it a bit in order for your brain to release the proper chemicals. Abandon your hope and prepare for an endless struggle. -- Speech at a Void Church initiation meeting, a clandestine recording. The Void Church (VC) is a religious organization originating somewhere during early FTL travel period. It started from a group of frustrated corporate engineers working on warp drives and failing to fully understand and improve their work. These adopted paradoxical system of beliefs and methods that relied on insights and experimentation guided by insanity. Eventually Void Church members invented the breach drives and managed to extract that knowledge, as well as stolen equipment, from their workplaces to a secret orbital hideout, from which they started to build their trade empire. The breach technology, allowing quick and cheap FTL travel, allowed them to become a interstellar power of their own. Void Church equipment can be only understood by sufficiently ranked church members, and attempts to reverse engineer it by secular powers have failed so far. Thus, Void Church effectively maintains monopoly on FTL travel. Independently functioning breach engines can be bought and used, but bulk shipments are only feasible with coordinated assistance by the church members, and even the automated engines require sacred maintenance. Luckily, Void Church is rather indifferent to anything except direct interference with their operations and will provide their services and equipment to the highest bidder. They organize shipments of goods, providing guarantee of delivery for most types, substituting their own stock in case of failure, provide banking services and sell equipment as well as maintenance services, and, for trusted clients, dedicated church members to provide onsite maintenance and breach assistance.