Heighliner
The colossal Spacing Guild vessels that carry travelers and cargo between star systems.
Guild Navigators fold space and steer these ships across distances no conventional engine could cross. They are awash in melange and gifted with the prescience it grants. A single Heighliner is large enough to swallow entire fleets of smaller vessels in one voyage: frigates, cargo holds, and thousands of passengers. Moving people, goods, or armies between star systems means booking passage on one, full stop. That dependency hands the Spacing Guild leverage over every House, Emperor, and organization with cargo to move. The ships themselves touch no planet's surface. Lighters and shuttles handle the last leg, ferrying passengers and freight down from orbit. Guild Navigation has refined this system since the years after the Butlerian Jihad. It now sits so deep in the bones of Imperial civilization that cutting a House or world off from Heighliner access amounts to sealing it away from the rest of known space.
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