Starspeed Raceway

Summary

A super-construct spanning countless light-eons in length (using years on Karrots), permanently auto-built by drones, that spans beyond the charted universe. The SSRW is primarily used for highway, grand touring and racing purposes as well as a major indicator of where one is relative to space. It is built along the Universal Equator, with off-ramps in numerous directions leading to major galaxies and their starports. It was commissioned by Sop and Buddy between the First Great Hop Expansion and The Endless War for The Eternal Throne. Hop's ascent to leader of the hops led to speeding up the construction of it rapidly during the Hop Civil War.

History

It is a joint construct of the most powerful fluff factions in the universe, the Hoppists and the K'Ursan Federation. Together they built it as a horizontal bridge, starport and super city between their worlds along the equator. However, ships did not possess the technology to store star maps of the known universe onto them fully. To remedy this, a "star speed way" had to be contracted by the two nations. To serve this function and aid in navigation, rest stops are dotted with terminals containing the next 100,000 parsecs (using parallax of Unis) on a map detailed enough to list named, star systems and their planets, but wide enough to encompass galaxies.

Several galaxies are used to make reusable materials not found in ships, weapons, armor or tools to construct the road. Each galaxy absorbed by the drones into material is designated "resource galaxy N-_" or "resource galaxy S-_" with a numerical designation for each galaxy along the terminal rest stops. Buddy was the first to propose each terminal not only contain maps, but also list the terminal's designation, and the nearest major named galactic clusters of neighboring terminals. Lost travelers can use this to determine how near or far the are from Unis, Karrots, K'Ursa and other major areas of space.

Scale & Issues

The Curve Issue

The current size of the structure is unknown, with millions of terminals going in both directions, likely to curve away from each other due to minor error in drone scaling. This may cause the road to never be straight unless zoomed out in a massive scale. This was discovered by a K'Ursan researcher that noticed the angle of K'Ursa itself went slightly upward despite his measurement being exactly on the new year. His conclusion was that the road was slowly bent out of shape, either due to gravity, weakening material or more likely, error in drone production. It took him from the start of the Hop Civil War until the end to travel back home with this news, however it was in vain, as the Hoppist minds responsible for voting were far off in space without hope of fixing that.

Instead of re-construction of the SSRW, it is proposed to build new, equal sized roads in other directions once a logical mapping system has been revised. The revision was in progress by the greatest Hoppist minds prior to the endless conflict of the wars upon the universe, which has been on indefinite hold due to the Alliance Treaty in place by Sop and Buddy long ago, that prohibit one-sided research. Therefore, the road stretches onward forever in two directions, likely to never be replaced due to the ubiquitous nature of current maps and designations, likely never to be more complex or corrected.

Racing Issues

Since its inception, the entire structure has been subject to vandalism, naturally caused phenomena and since the end of The Endless War for The Eternal Throne, racing. Painted vandalism is petty, and not punished, as long as the activity has no occurred during traffic. Racing however, is banned, but forbidden events are held between distant terminals for sport. Often vehicles would pass through planets in the way of the SSRW, such as the planet Lu-byo which, due to its composition, is left in place, acting as a funnel and hub to prevent traffic from becoming congested. Due to the wide open nature of the world, ships can get lost at sea and disappear from authorities.

Hop once was caught racing an experimental vehicle against newly promoted Knight, Arritz. Due to his title, Hop pardoned themselves and gave a reward to all who cleaned the crash of the race.