Introduction

The ship is how the crew touches everything else. It is how they cross distances that would otherwise end careers. It is where they sleep, argue, owe money, and make plans. It is the one asset that can solve almost any problem and, if they lose it, the one problem that can end almost any plan.

Every starship in Void Drifters has a maker, a model, a service history, a debt trail, and a stack of engineering compromises hidden behind every access panel. A freighter determines which jobs are possible. A weak Navigation Suite can waste a fast engine. A restricted reactor can turn a routine customs stop into a campaign problem. A salvaged military Fire Control system can save the crew one week and implicate them the next.

The Vehicles Manual is the complete vehicle authority for Void Drifters. It covers every ship, small craft, hovercraft, and ground vehicle with full rules, stat blocks, and the procedures for putting them to work in play.

What This Book Is

This book is not a catalog of ships. It is a rules book that happens to contain catalogs.

The Vehicles Manual owns the mechanical procedures behind every vehicle-scale moment: how ships work, how systems fail, how builders matter, how to buy and modify a hull, how to run a fight between spacecraft, how to repair damage in a collapsing cargo bay, and how to decide what the ship's AI can actually do under pressure.

Use this book when:

• The crew needs to choose, buy, or inherit a ship.
• A character is taking an action at a crew station during a ship encounter.
• The engineer is managing Heat, Power Load, or system damage mid-fight.
• The table needs to know what happens when a hull takes a critical hit.
• The crew wants to modify, salvage, or integrate components across builders.
• The ship is running fuel, supplies, or maintenance close to the edge.
• The pilot is threading a seam exit under pursuit, docking in hostile space, or trying to shake an intercept.
• Hovercraft, planetary vehicles, or localized anti-gravity technology matters to the scene.

What You Can Do With This Book

Build characters around ship roles. The six crew stations in Chapter 14 each have a distinct action list. A Gunner's options in a ship fight are different from an Engineer's. Understanding your station is understanding your character's contribution to the scenes that matter most in Void Drifters.

Understand your vessel's capabilities. Every stat on a ship sheet means something. Hull Points and System Points represent different kinds of damage. Power Capacity determines which systems can run at the same time. Heat Threshold determines how long the ship can sustain combat output before thermal pressure starts generating consequences. Chapter 3 explains all of it.

Run vehicle-scale encounters. Ship combat, chases, boarding actions, and atmospheric approaches use procedures distinct from personal-scale conflicts. Chapter 15 is the combat reference. Chapter 14 is the crew-actions reference. Together they cover the full shape of a ship scene.

Buy and modify ships. Chapter 10 covers component upgrades, cross-builder integration, and the complications that come with salvaged or restricted systems. Chapter 11 covers repairs, maintenance, and salvage. The catalogs in Chapters 14 through 16 contain the stat blocks.

Outfit ground and hover transport. Starships are the primary concern of this book, but the crew eventually lands somewhere. Chapter 9 covers hovercraft, Funtari anti-gravity vehicles, and ground vehicles with their own rules and catalog.

The Scope of This Book

Starships are primary. The ship is the crew's home, livelihood, and single most important asset. The game's economy, travel system, and combat framework all run through it. The bulk of this book exists to make starships work at the table.

Small craft are secondary. Fighters, shuttles, cutters, and boarding pods have their own procedures and catalog entries. They share the starship rules framework with simplified or compressed stats appropriate to their size and role.

Ground and hover vehicles are tertiary. They matter when the crew is on a planet, inside a station, or working a job that requires them. They do not share the full ship rules complexity: they use the same core vehicle framework with smaller stat blocks and shorter action lists.

What This Book Is Not

This book does not replace the GM Guide for campaign-level pressure around ships. Faction warrants, imperial patrols, inspection procedures, ship seizure, and the political economy of who owns what in a disputed system belong there.

This book does not replace the Equipment Guide for personal gear and small arms. Weapons, armor, survival suits, and character-scale equipment live in the Equipment Guide. Where vehicle systems interact with personal equipment (boarding gear, gravity suits, portable AI), this book describes the interaction; the Equipment Guide describes the gear.

This book does not replace the Sector Atlas for where ships operate. Route records, system maps, relay status, hazards, and port directories belong in the Sector Atlas. This book provides the navigation and sensor procedures; the Atlas provides the specific geography those procedures navigate.

Companion Books

Player's Guide. Contains player-facing crew roles, the public overview of ship classes and builders, and the common ships available at character creation. The Vehicles Manual provides the complete rules and stats underneath those summaries.

GM Guide. Contains hidden faction fleet pressure, ship seizure and impound procedures, warrants, inspection protocols, and the political consequences of ship ownership. The Vehicles Manual covers the vehicle rules; the GM Guide covers how powers use those vehicles as leverage.

Sector Atlas. Contains published route records, moving seam arcs, corridor stability data, relay status, port directories, and the navigational geography of the Meridian Verge. The Vehicles Manual covers navigation procedures; the Atlas provides the specific routes and systems those procedures navigate.

Starter Adventure. Contains the free first-job adventure with pregenerated crew, starter ships, and excerpted rules for onboarding. The Vehicles Manual is the full reference; the Starter Adventure is the on-ramp.

Equipment Guide. Contains personal gear, armor, small arms, services, cargo values, legality tables, and black-market availability. The Vehicles Manual covers vehicle systems; the Equipment Guide covers everything a character carries off the ship.

Ships and the People Who Fly Them

In Void Drifters, no single power controls all of settled space. Borders are disputed. Laws vary by system. The fringe exists precisely because no government can maintain full coverage across every lane and junction. In that space, a ship is not a convenience. It is the only reason a small crew can matter at all.

A crew's ship is their home, their livelihood, and their most important asset. Without it, they are stranded. With it, they can cross borders, carry cargo, run jobs, evade patrols, salvage wreckage, deliver people who need to disappear, and occasionally do something that actually changes the shape of a problem larger than themselves.

This book exists to make all of that work at the table, round by round and decision by decision.