The Slowboat is a type of starship that travels interstellar distances at speeds below that of light. In Enlightened regions these are rarely, if ever, used because of the tremendous travel times, costs and technological complications involved. However, in unenlightened regions, slowboats are the only method of reaching other stars. The derilict, decaying hulks of slowboats from ages past are occasionally spotted drifting through inhabited space, with their builders so long gone and their appplication so limited they are rarely of interest to anyone but xenoarcheologists or collectors. Slowboats wrecks are popular targets for clarketech hunters.

There were plans to send out slowboats from Sol before the Enlightenment, though it is unknown how many such designs left the drawing board to completion and subsequent launch, or what their destinations may have been, as many pre-Enlightenment records have been lost to conflict and time. It should be noted that no colonies within the core claim to be founded by slowboaters, although again the records from the early First Diaspora are somewhat unreliable.