Difference between revisions of "Asteroid Racing"

Revision as of 23:07, 23 November 2008

Even the BNF Asteroid Racers themselves are not sure who the first racer was. This mysterious figure is said to appear in the middle of races, never at the start nor the finish. It is said that the Phantom Racer is a quirk of Handwavium - that some adventurous soul handwaviumized a high-performance car and together they race through the asteroid belt for all eternity.

That said, it was appearances of the Phantom Racer that led to the start of competitive asteroid racing as we know it today. Aside from the Phantom Racer, two of the first were Benjamin Rhodes and KJ. As they raced together, they began to catch the attention of other skilled pilots who joined them in their races.

At first, it started as informal gatherings where an unspoken set of rules bound them in trust. The vehicles were varied, but ran along a certain theme: a small and highly maneuverable fen-spacecraft with an AI running the avionics and navigation systems.

Word began to spread and others began to show up, most of them with no friggin' clue of what they were doing - they became the first casualties and led to the drafting of the Charter of the Asteroid Racers, hence why all Asteroid Racers proclaim their laws to be written in blood.

More people began to join in on the fun and developing traditions of Asteroid Racing, and so the sport began to grow more and more organized. It was not long until corporations, both in orbit and dirtside, began to hear about the craze and sought to stake their claim on the sport.

And thus, Asteroid Racing exploded into the sports scene on Earth and there was no turning back.

Danes and Fen alike began to get into the craze that quickly rivaled NASCAR and Formula One. As corporations funneled more money into the races, the Fen were able to further organize the sport so that entire courses in the Asteroid Belt could be set aside and made into special hazard zones for the racers to navigate. These zones could be altered almost at will by using asteroids that had handwaviumized maneuvering systems permanently installed.

Furthermore, whole new venues were opened. Desiring to stake their own claim to racing fame, the City of Kandor organized the Armstrong Day Classic - a gruelling series of runs through Luna's most treacherous moonscapes culminating in 5,000 kilometers of rough terrain. Not to be outdone, the Warsies organized a series of Asteroid Races in the rings of Saturn, where the top speeds are nowhere nearly as fast, but the maneuvering is on epic x-game levels of hair-raising. Most interesting of all is the Trekkies' man-made hazard course on ships:Starbase 1 where the obstacles not only move around of their own accord during the race, but also, depending on the class of racers, open fire on you!

Over the years, Asteroid Racing has moved with Fen-kind out into other systems and while sports such as NASCAR and Formula One still have cult followings, most people know where the real action in racing is to be found.