Podrace The Deep Core Dash | Podracing: Space Edition

[Somtaw Raan]

(For Firefox Users)
​

WELCOME TO THE DEEP CORE DASH!​

Spoiler: The Route

​

Spoiler: The Rules

Spoiler: The Events Table

Contestants:

Contestants	Leg 1	Leg 2	Leg 3	Leg 4	Total:
Tris	7 (Sab. Jorus Q. Merrill )	15			22 = 7 + 15
Dani Stellaris	14 (Event: ???)				14
Jax Thio
Okkeus Dainlei
Liam Sedaire	6 (Event: 7 Piracy Pays)	20 (Event: Otherspace)			26 = 6 + 20
Slider
Jorus Q. Merrill	17	14 = 15 - 1 (sab.) | (Event: 5 Otherspace)	18		49 = 17 + 14 + 18
Koda Fett	9	8 (Event: 10 Wormhole)			9
Starlin Rand	9				9
Aculia Voland	15	1			----

(note: since we can only use 20-sided Dice, ignore the first digit of the roll for the event table. Both 20s and 10s count as the same result, 11s and 1s as the same result, 14s and 4s, etc.)

• Tris , supported by Agathon Kell
• Dani Stellaris , supported by Kaul "Joker" Emos
• Jax Thio
• Okkeus Dainlei , supported by Coren Starchaser
• Liam Sedaire
• Slider
• Jorus Q. Merrill , supported by Cotan Sar'andor
• Koda Fett , supported by Amun
• Starlin Rand
• Aculia Voland

Original

Engines were running hot while racers finished up their final diagnostics, ate the final bite of their hutta burger, or turned the lights back on after they appropriately faded out. Meanwhile, the crowds cheered in their seats at the public viewing stations. The crowd for a full-day race like the Deep Core Dash wasn't the largest, but by Jabba's bellyfat was it passionate. The commentators swore the racers could even hear those chants out there in the vacuum of space (literally, because they received broadcasts and live updates from a station in the same venue)!

The race, a four-leg flag race through hyper- and realspace through the Deep Core, would be an adventurous one. The Deep Core was notorious for the difficulties and dangers it posed to anyone attempting to navigate it, and the Deep Core Dash made certain that each leg took racers off the charted hyperspace lanes and along newly discovered, slower paths along which each flag buoy, necessary for the completion of the race, had been deposited beforehand. Whoever came in first with all four flags, or came in at all, would take first place would not only get the Nexu's share of credits but also bragging rights for having won the first Deep Core Dash in history!

And as the time of the race's start drew near, the crowd grew more silent, in anticipation of the countdown.

"3."

All six lights remained red.

"2."

They held.

"1."

They switched to yellow.

...

"TAKE OFF!"

With a roar and a cheer, the lights went green. The racers' first objective would be to make it through to the first rest stop at Had Abbadon. This route was the most straightforward of them all, deviating the least from the established hyperspace highway, but dangerous nonetheless!

The Deep Core Dash had begun! Good luck to all the racers!​

 

[Aculia Voland]

Aculia grinned as she slammed the pedal down hard on her Argus one of the Elysium Empire’s fastest new ships, complete with a full sensor suite so that she could track her opponents. It would be the new ship type’s maiden voyage after testing, and she had been able to justify it to her superiors by saying it never hurt to test it out under true, uncontrolled field conditions. The little scout boat blasted off from the start line towards Had Abbadon with the most advanced engines Mandal-Elysium Arms could produce, and she hoped to secure a comfortable enough early lead so that she could coast to victory.

Either way, it’s a boon to me.

 

[Starlin Rand]

Wait... this wasn't a podracing tournament. It was a space race!

"Feth!" Starlin swore upon finding himself in the cockpit of his starfighter, the Steward of Zeffo. "Should've read the fine print!" The lights were changing, and the race was about to begin. "Ah well. Who wants to live forever?"

He pushed the throttle forward.

 

[Dani Stellaris]

She was a racer, didn't matter if it was a pod, a swoop, or a starfighter. Now though? Well, she was a pilot, and a Corellian. A fighter was her main method of transport, and in her youth? Her main way to race and get some credits. Now she could do it for a bit of a living… a rough living, certainly, but a living. The Slice Hound was ready to go and all prepped. She even let Kaul "Joker" Emos look at it, after much whining from her side. After a few run ins the outside of the ship wasn't looking too clean but for this race?

She had it painted forest and orange. Her two colors, really. One mostly because she had a leaning towards the Way of the Solar from the Matukai. Forest, well, that was Corellia.

Checking the instruments, checking her music, she was waiting and watching.

The countdown started.

3…

2…

1…

She pushed her engines to full, not a complete slam, but a constant and certain pressure forward. Her course was laid in, Had Abbadon

 

[Koda Fett]

He was no racer, more akin to that of a murderer above all else; his chosen career had those that believed it a brutal, cruel, and evil trade. It was a needed one, Fett considered, for there was a lawful side to all the lawless acts. He balanced himself on that line often, but this was not the time for all of that. It was behind the controls of the Spear III that he sat, the reward for the winner too much to set aside. It had other benefits, of course, the chance to see known racers in action - bounties on them still as valid as ever.

"Tell me more about these racers and their crafts once this is over," his voice travelled across the shared comms to his Kyuzo team mate. For this race and several other bounties, too. "I'll see them in action for now."

But it all started soon after, the countdown concluded and his vessel rushed off in the direction of Had Abbadon.

Amun

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

LEG 1 (TSOSS BEACON TO HAD ABBADON): 17


Just getting here had been a serious pain in the butt. Tsoss Beacon, a comm relay on a lonely asteroid, would have been hard to find in normal space. But this was the Deep Core: hard radiation, gravitic shear, brilliant inescapable tight-packed starscape.

As the race kicked off, Jorus quintuple-checked the rad shielding and threw full power to the drives. The City of Nar Shaddaa surged forward. At a hundred and sixty meters without cargo pods, the old space train was among the largest race craft. Very fast for its size, it still fell behind easily at sublight.

Not so much at FTL.

The class-0.25 drive hummed to life and catapulted the old train into hyperspace, going far, far faster than it should have been able to go.

 

[Liam Sedaire]

Perhaps the shabbiest thing next to Jorus Q. Merrill 's ship, Liam sat in the pilots seat trying to fix a loose connector to the throttle vector control so the fething thing would START.

With a spark and sputter in the singular cockpit, his ship surged forward at an insane speed, roaring out, and he tossed out his cigarra and bottle of lum, hoping no one or nothing got him by the potentially flammable combination as the hyperdrive kick in and the shabby YX-Wing took off like a mynock from a launch tube of a torpedo.

 

[Tris]

Leg 1 - SABATOGE!

And they were off. It had been a while since his last race in a fighter. The dual seater didn't get off to a solid start but with his engineer in tow he knew that the day would be fine. He did manage to get close enough to Jorus Q. Merrill to activate a sly device that passed on an ionic charge. Somehow, he knew that racer was one to watch out for. Unfortunately, the charge lowered the output to his engine and the rest of the racers sped on by.

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

LEG 2 - HAD ABBADON TO DREMULAE
TOTAL: 17+14=31
EVENT ROLL: OTHERSPACE (NEXT ROLL INVERTED)

No matter how Jorus tried to unclamp his hands from the controls, he remained in a state of intense white-knuckle. The first leg had been deep Deep Core, maybe the hardest part, though that final jaunt to Ebaq looked intimidating too. The second leg brought the racers out of mysterious-landmark territory to the resort world of Dremulae. Jorus associated Dremulae's Sea of Translucency with Alna in a yellow bikini, back when the galaxy was young.

Pleasant thoughts proved inconvenient. The modified hyperdrive whined, and a nearby S-thread stabilizer beacon shrieked in answer. The homelike blue-and-white of hyperspace vanished, replaced by a flat white universe dotted with dark stars.

Now that brought back memories decidedly less pleasant than the yellow bikini. The rift on Caeliar, for one, and the expedition to Jen'asha Station, and rescuing Rave when she was young: all thirty years in the past or farther. Jorus avoided Otherspace whenever possible.

He turned off the malfunctioning drive and started scanning furiously in all directions, at maximum range, to figure out whether the Charon were anywhere near. The xenocidal hexapod centaurs and their undead ships could ruin far more than just the race.

Not that any of the above mattered to Tris , Dani Stellaris , Jax Thio , Okkeus Dainlei , Liam Sedaire , Slider , Koda Fett , Starlin Rand , or Aculia Voland , all of whom were in realspace or hyperspace and thus quite safe from the Charon hordes.

 

[Somtaw Raan]

LEG 1, Overview

And the racers were off!

Each of the vessels shot away from the start line, leaving only the shine of their engines for the crowd to see. On the first leg, the hellish road to Had Abbadon, many obstacles would await them, but anyone who'd managed to make it this far into the Deep Core would easily be able to brave, or gamble, their way through to the first destination of the race.

As time passed, some vessels began to take the lead, though this early it remained anyone's game.

The City of Nar Shaddaa, piloted by Jorus Q. Merrill , managed to put good distance between itself and the other racers during hyperspace transit, though Aculia Voland 's Argus came in as a close second, barely edging out Dani Stellaris ' Slice Hound.

Closer to the middle of the pack came Koda Fett 's Spear III and Starlin Rand 's Steward of Zeffo, who raced head-to-head at fourth place. Behind them, forming the tail-end of the racers, Tris made steady progress just barely ahead of Liam Sedaire and his Flying Coffin.

As the contestants entered into the Second Leg of the race, three of the competitors, Jax Thio ; Okkeus Dainlei ; and Slider , had disappeared from the radar entirely, though this was far from uncommon in Deep Space!

Nonetheless, the racing association took the opportunity to remind its viewers and any relatives, business associates, or legal entities watching that the Deep Space Dash and its associates cannot be held liable for malfunctions that occur during the race!

Happy racing!

 

[Aculia Voland]

(Leg 2 Roll, let's see how it goes and then I'll edit)

 

[Dani Stellaris]

--post for event table cuz i'm forgetful

 

[Koda Fett]

The Mandalorian soured beneath this T-visor, unenthused as a result of his failure thus far. He failed to match the lead at first and needed to settle for the middle, but to fall even further behind was a wound he refused to suffer. It was with the twist of a switch that his comms fizzled to life, his voice carried to the Kyuzo aboard his own craft.

"See what you can do with that engine." He commanded to Amun .

(Next leg roll twice.)

 

[Liam Sedaire]

The Coffin wasn't exactly a dependable beast, and the song blaring from the speakers over broadwave comms probably didn't help... But it was fast when it fired right. Flipping switches, Liam cursed and tried a toggle to the right under the throttle to purge the fuel chamber and restart. Might be a bad batch of juice he supposed. Suddenly, red and orange lights on the intake lit up green across the board, and he surged forward with a rattling bang and cough in the engines. White-knuckled on the yoke, he focused on keeping it straight and aiming the craft between any obstacles.

Within the cockpit he whooped and cackled, his luck finally on flight it seemed.

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

OOC/ Previous Otherspace roll inverts the 3 to an 18, triggering events table. 9 = Floating Astromech. Banking the reroll.

IC/

LEG 3: DREMULAE TO THOADEYE
17+14+18=49

The City of Nar Shaddaa screamed down into realspace trailing Charon bodies and crimson smoke. The crew compartment was hard vacuum and zero gravity. Jorus clung to the controls in a full space suit. Green blood and sparking blaster components drifted around in dangerous ways. Jorus took a hard look at the local sensors — Thoadeye wasn't a world he knew — and engaged the comms.

"Race control, this is Merrill. Just checking in. Still on course."

He tried very hard to sound confident and relaxed. The space suit smelled like pee.


Somtaw Raan

 

[Tris]

Spoiler: Leg 2 Roll = 15

Total Leg 2: 7 + 15 = 22



The vessel flew through hyperspace, dropping out over the Had Abbadon. The atmosphere and storm patterns of the world were laid bare to him, their clouds illuminated by the system's sole star. From up here the clouds looked pink almost. He didn't have time to enjoy the sights of the ancient Deep Core world though. He was in second to last place. He sped off towards the next hyperspace point. When his computer had finished calculating the jumps he pulled the lever and watched the stars stretch into lines.

 

[Cotan Sar'andor]

OOC/ Previous Otherspace roll inverts the 3 to an 18, triggering events table. 9 = Floating Astromech. Banking the reroll.

IC/

LEG 3: DREMULAE TO THOADEYE
17+14+18=49

The City of Nar Shaddaa screamed down into realspace trailing Charon bodies and crimson smoke. The crew compartment was hard vacuum and zero gravity. Jorus clung to the controls in a full space suit. Green blood and sparking blaster components drifted around in dangerous ways. Jorus took a hard look at the local sensors — Thoadeye wasn't a world he knew — and engaged the comms.

"Race control, this is Merrill. Just checking in. Still on course."

He tried very hard to sound confident and relaxed. The space suit smelled like pee.


Somtaw Raan

For his part, Cotan floated around trying to repair the breaches in the hull as quickly as he could. The astromech that they'd found floating around after exiting otherspace was fairly helpful with that, after he'd managed to pump enough power into it to get its power cells jumpstarted. "Just let me know if you need me to give the engines or the hyperdrive a boost," he said over helmet-comm to Jorus. "We're lucky our full relativistic shielding is still intact, though."

Partial failure, jump forward a couple hundred years, minimum. Full failure, and they just disintegrate into the background radiation of the universe's higher-dimensional spaces.

Not fun.