Nadir
Death from Below
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand the reach of Nadir and create a new hyperlane for the underworld and criminals to use in trafficking their illegal goods across the galaxy.
Image Credit: Chaos map
Canon: /
Links: Beyond the Black, Nadir, Point Nadir, Cabal, GUIDE
Hyperlane Name: Shadowrun
Hexes Crossed: 53
Start Coordinate: AF, 23
End Coordinate: V, 54/55
Route Points:
Kalee
Bastion
Tion
Point Nadir
The Wheel
Iego
Kessel
Kwenn Station
Nar Shaddaa
Dressel
Zenith Prime
Shiffrin
Rothana
Hollowend
HYPERLANE CHARACTERISTICS
Speed: Low
Accessibility: The knowledge of the hyperlane’s existence is restricted to underworld types, and even then it’s not available to just anyone. The information is usually given out to proven business partners of Point Nadir in order to facilitate faster and more efficient transport of goods. Criminal organisations with ties to Nadir or the Cabal get preferential treatment as far as traffic and usage are concerned.
Route Hazards: Depending on who you are, the hyperlane can either be smooth sailing or the rockiest ride of your life. Raiders, pirates, smugglers, and everything in between are a feature rather than a bug. Running out of juice or dropping out of hyperspace on this route is likely the worst thing that can happen – with the exception of its main ports, the Shadowrun runs almost exclusively through deep space. Simply put: if you revert for whatever reason, you’re stranded and shet out of luck.
Intentional chokepoints are formed along the route with S-thread boosters, whose role is manifold:
they prevent anything larger than a decent-sized freighter from getting through; the same goes for fleets attempting coordinated jumps. Trying to brute-force travel along the Shadowrun past one of these chokepoints will result in reversion at best, and destruction of the ship at worst;
they serve as natural traps for any would-be pursuers, and can be utilized to set up an ambush by those who possess extensive knowledge of the route.
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Rest Stops: Safe ports are few and far in between. There are specific locations along the Shadowrun that serve as self-contained deep space stations, but these are by and large reserved for Nadir merchant ships – only a handful of others know their exact coordinates along the route, and the chances of finding them by accident are astronomically low. Certain larger stations also possess gravity well projectors that can likewise pull undesirables out of hyperspace and, according to ingrained custom, kill and steal everything on board. At its tail, the Shadowrun peters out in the vicinity of Hollowend. This provides a spring board for the traveling scoundrel to return to a path well-traveled – the Crusader’s Way weaves onward through the galactic south and south-west, towards more populated regions.
DESCRIPTION
As the importance of the shadowlane as a trading hub in the galactic underworld grew, so did their traffic, and grew to the point of becoming unmanageable. The old trading routes were neither optimized nor exclusive, causing delays in delivery of goods and thus costing Nadir many a lucrative deal.
To make matters worse, the infamy of the station brought it negative attention as well. Intrepid law enforcement and private businesses with enough funds (or indignity) would often send their forces in pursuit of the absconded Nadir pirates. Impudent, unaffiliated criminal elements would raid their shipments, costing them time, money, and people.
And thus, the Shadowrun was born.
The purpose of the hyperlane was identical to all other hyperlanes ever charted into existence – to facilitate expedient travel across unfathomable distances. Point Nadir, however, had many additional concerns to consider in the conception, and, indeed, execution of the idea.
The first challenge was of course determining its path and crucial stops along the way. The hyperlane needed to be at once discreet, yet also not so far removed from galactic commerce hubs as to be rendered obsolete. A project of such proportions required an expert hand, and so Nadir reached out to the best in astrogation to secure for them unerring, reliable spatial coordinates around which to build the hyperlane. Yet the D’Lessio Merrill scion was but the first step. In order to ensure not only functional integrity, but also the security and obscurity of the hyperlane, other methods were compounded with her findings. The alterations were primarily made by Nadir’s own Mafir Therek, PhD, who accompanied the astrogator on her initial trip, and afterwards worked with the additional data obtained through separate research.
Independently of their journey through deep space, certain pirate groups under Nadir’s control were tasked with raiding multiple caches of exploration data held by various data across the galaxy. The last among them, though certainly not the least, was the GUIDE – once a pioneering idea that had somewhat stalled due to lack of funding and dedicated personnel. One of Point Nadir’s business partners had once been a smaller investor, and obliquely mentioned the project in passing; several months later, the GUIDE was sliced by the most competent infochants in their employ, who endeavored to leave as little traces as possible of their surreptitious intrusion.
In the interest of maintaining Shadowrun as secret as possible, Merrill’s findings were spliced with the nav-info stolen from GUIDE and the Corsairs’ other raids. Therek, a consummate master of astrogational computation both by vocation and birth – being a givin, that is, and, once, a professor in the field – was well-suited to extrapolating a route from the raw data provided by these multiple sources.
The first few pilots sent to test run the new hyperlane never returned. The next batch fared moderately better – in the sense that they managed to provide crucial information about what went wrong before they died, rather than forcing Nadir to sift the endless void for their debris.
Even after the first frigate successfully made it all the way through, their work was far from done. What followed were arduous months of deep space construction, as Point Nadir built space stations and fuel stops for more efficient traversal of the route. In some places, this process is indeed still in progress, and is likely to continue indefinitely as the needs of illegal traffic make themselves known through years of use.
For now, however, the Shadowrun more than fulfills its role as a galactic hyperlane uniquely tailored to the needs of its ambitious underbelly.
