Notable Frame Running Courses

Frame Running is a fast-moving sport. Promotions and runners alike can make a course out of the landscape and urban environment easily - marking the route with simple beacons through hills and valleys, or building a multi-million credit magnetised circuit with grandstands and multi-storey viewscreens. The following courses are notable between the Aleph and Lorath sectors of the sport, drawing in fans and promotions alike.

Grade-Zero boasts the largest tracks in Frame Running, often spanning hundreds of kilometres, often highly designed and incredibly sophisticated, designed to push drivers and machines alike to their limits. Winning a race of any prestige here is a monumental accomplishment all Frame Runners chase after, but the path is marked with high fatalities and scores of career-ending injuries.

A Space Station built in the Acala System expressly for Frame Running and as part of a deal to solidify ties between Albion and Acala, thrusting the Aleph splinter of the sport onto the galaxy at large. Stardancer Station has a dazzling size and eye-catching construction, neon lights visible from the planet city-states of Celai and New Kashmir. Of the Grade Zero courses, Stardancer Station is the shortest in organised Frame Running, but no less eventful than the longer circuits.

The course is a long and twisting road with changes in orientation, sudden turns and dips, and many “open air” sections where the track is drawn through space indicated by lights and pylons. The difficulty lies in smoothly transitioning between the zero gravity and atmosphere environments - with frames burning their paint layers away from re-entering too quickly. There are projected nebulae and dense star-fields throughout the indoors for added aesthetics, but many racers are going too fast to notice them.

The top billing in the Lorath Frame Running scene, Velocitor begun as a dream, a course to be a course built upon the blood moon, during the early days of Frame-Running in Lor.

With the collapse of the Blood Moon into Lor, the dream was dead. Almost a decade later, the Lazarus Consortium stepped up and purchased a defunded Top-Secret Government Lab project used to simulate the conditions of the black moon and its psionic storms, thousands of miles across built from the remains of the moon that struck, the lab complex housing this and its gigantic surrounding systems almost untouched for sixty years.

The environment was frightening and ominous with white ash like sand which gleam a nearly blinding white under the simulated lighting conditions with vast land-masses and tall stalagmites reaching out of the floor, deep blood red copper colored oceans carrying the sun through them with incredible brightness, teeming with primordial life and a sky in almost perpetual early night, red sunset fading over the horizon into deep dark endless blue using a cloud of smart gasses to filter light to act as an artificial sky in a huge 2000 kilometer dome over the area – all to forge this bizarre albino landscape.

The simulation ran havoc with frames which would have been needed to be totally redesigned from the ground up. Years of work with architects and mathematicians went into designing a track that would negotiate the insane gravitational and electromagnetic conditions and thick atmosphere playing havoc with plasma propulsion systems, leading to the invention of induction slipstream technology: A plasma which voltage could be passed across to give frames more kick to fight the conditions.

The track itself was ashen gray of a condensed regolith concrete. It was soon spray-painted in lined darker gray strips of slipstream induction-field carrier foil wired to projectors. Providing the power and keeping the whole thing stabilized in three dimensions are massive twisting scaffolds of bright red bridging in angry triangular shapes looming and brilliant ultraviolet argon lights about their tips and powerful amber halogen lamps illuminating the track: hundreds and sometimes thousands of meters both above and beneath the track's construction – humming with power to constantly try and overcome the simulation itself. It took the Consortium six months to find a collection of engineers and designers who were crazy enough to try and overcome the problem instead of saying the obvious and trying to switch it off.

The track itself is a figure eight with complex turns and loops added as well as a corkscrew section, a massive twisting arch which rises twenty kilometers into the air and then fifty underground which constantly tried to throw frames off and a sheer drop with zero induction unless in direct contact with this deathslide – pilots often making mach 10 on the way down 200 kilometers beneath Lor's surface along the route individual-frames of footage which become animation to the pilots while also trying to dazzle them into making a mistake and missing the tunnel entrance, slamming at top speed into the regolith topsoil.

Obviously, the complex design was a losing battle with the simulation. When finally completed, only then was the OK to unplug the simulation finally given and suddenly the genius of the decision and its abuse of red-tape and funds made clear: Years of bleeding edge induction technology let raw: Excess energy arcing through the track like lightning, the polarization forming a blizzard and lightning storm that threatened to throw frames to velocities in which the air friction alone couldn't be overcome with common field systems: scorching the machines raw, ripping their components apart.

Constructor teams were forced to either try fortifying the machines (their own losing battle) or tweak and tune the components for output so highly that it came at the detriment of the frames themselves: To finish the race before the frame failed. The conditions and this peak performance making any frame used here function for one race and one race only: Passing the finishing line proud but damned, collapsing within moments of passing.

With high fatalities and induction power demands matching those of a capital city, the Velocitor is the fastest experimental circuit and is reserved only for the finest pilots and most advanced teams in known space¹⁾.

Noval has corkscrew open-top tunnels providing crushing G-forces before forcing pilots to dive off a sheer cliffed flat of track where plasma and gravity are disabled, to navigate the vertical drop either in free-fall or gaining induction support for plasma engines back again only by skating in contact along the 4.3 kilometer death-slide through the descent as the track beneath rolls sequenced stills of famous racing events which to drivers become living animation during the mach 3 dive. Bells along its edges are rung out only by the harsh compression shockwaves of a sonic boom and at the right speed with the right number of pilots in sequence, the Lorath national anthem can be played.

The track's major straightways twists over and over in a massive arch, forcing pilots to follow like a mobius strip: First rising up into the air then slamming down underground through tunnels in flashing checkerboard madness before moving into a free-fall jump where gravity support is disabled. Many frames try to refrain from fighting during the free-fall, as an off-kilter frame can end up collecting multiple runners on the way down.

Specially designed courses built ontop of Class-2 or deliberately into Class-3 environments (to lure big crowds) with massive custom elements of track-work. Highly regulated, often longer than Grade 2 course and featuring many iconic features and difficult obstacles to navigate.

Packing an unusual atmosphere, the density of gasses on particles on this gas-giant world create a paradoxical set of solid land-masses, creating islands which seem to float within its breathable atmosphere. The planet has intense atmospheric pressure, which is a huge concern to pilots since rapid changes in altitude can result in damage to their frames.

The course itself moves between a bridge-work of factories and artificial structures, the track itself a thin flat strip of compressed titanium carbide suspended between them, as well as many massive and long holographic portions. To make up for the intense pressure, the entire track packs an induction slipstream, feeding extra power to engines.

The result is explosive track warfare: Acceleration and top-speed unusually high but manoeuvring made so much harder, causing many teams when grappling to slam into the track walls or be thrown from the track through corners, making recoveries frequent and mandatory. Skipping between vertical inlays of track is possible but the track is built between constant intense currents that can easily sweep a frame off the track and deeper into the gas-giant: The option to play catchup or lay a sneaky ambush is there but if ahead of the pack or doing well, it simply isn't worth it due to the lost speed and huge risks involved.

This mountainside course located on Albion is shaped like an upside down T that stretches into the sky and clouds, overlooking the Golden Sector of Pendragon. It's a fight against gravity both up and down the cliffs and through the caves, with straightaway after straightaway promising intense engagements.

The course has two alternative routes that shorten the overall length by a couple dozen kilometres when used in tandem. The first route cuts away from the first of two hairpin turns after the first turn from the start, instead asking drivers to make a sharp left to get over the top of the T.

The second is at the end of the spine of the 'T', splitting off to the right to take a quicker looping route down the mountain without the extended spillway before the drop - most fans don't like this alternate route since there's less opportunity for runners to collide just before the plunge.

A tight course on the Lorath circuit, Prua is notable for its 'dog-balls' corners which shift and pitch too, forcing pilots to downshift through chains of rolling S-turns with track rising up along the edges. Pilots not paying full attention to the treacherous curves often slam into the corners shoulder to shoulder with other frames as they try to make it through.

The track's fearsome curves and hard-bitten close-quarters combat have a reputation for separating the children from the adults in Frame Running. People watching the post wreck interviews listen for whether the pilot blames the track, the other racers, or themselves to render a judgement.

Through a few recursive spell loops and a LOT of mana capacitors, the Endless Hallway takes advantage of Rococo's ample background energies to fuel a hellish straight-away where the only thing between you and the next racer is the next racer. The Endless Hallway frequently hosts endurance races where many of the Frames do not finish, but post a number of laps made before retiring or crashing out.

Spectators are urged not to look too deep into the endless hallway, and many Frame Runners are advised to focus on themselves in the distance as a visual anchoring point.

Courses which re-use existing structures and mark the way with pylons or simple scaffolding, often using natural tunnels, dirt-tracks, abandoned urban spaces and industrial settings. Usually noteworthy for a single great feature. Legally sanctioned.

Located in the Traveller colony of Bias, the Bias Freeway is one of the most dangerous airbike racing circuit courses in the sport. The race itself follows a massive expanse of open desert spanning around the planet itself. Left during terraforming due to the high concentrations of volcanic activity and a lack of resources, the Freeway is ridden with wide open sand-oceans, cavern systems, rocky valleys and in the areas used in the context of frame running, live volcanic systems spewing molten rock and vaporizing steam capable of cutting through steel with ease, further complimented by the flesh-rending sand-storms and local fauna.

While it follows many of the same track elements, speeds are now quadrupled and infighting encouraged making what were once relaxed wide tracks now painfully claustrophobic, especially within the cavern systems. Other elements now added encircle a pair of live volcanoes known as the “big sisters” (a term affectionately used due to their curved slope making the two volcanoes resemble breasts) and a sheer plunge into a secondary tunnel system further down the track known as “the maiden” before running through the wreckage of a crashed Belza ship.

Once a mass-transportation circuit for Belza supplies in the gas giant of Traveller, this hermetically sealed course is a gruelling, narrow hamster tunnel. Hit the corners too hard, and a dropout mechanism triggers which ejects runners out into the gas-storms, forcing them to waste time finding an airlock back into the tunnel. Brawlers and grapplers love the tight space, since these free-floating tunnels are very small and make using weapons unwieldy.

Situated up and down the regolith of Orbital Object: Null in a lazy oval shape that crosses over one 'corner' of the megastructure, this course's exact dimensions vary race to race due to the shifting regolith below, but the overall shape of the track remains the same as Frames take advantage of the wide oval and generous corner.

It isn't uncommon for speed records to be set on the Oval Around Null when it comes to Grade One competition, due to the long straightways that make up the body of the oval.

Sometimes called the “York Trivial” by experienced heels, this mid-length irregular tri-oval course with vertical hills, dips and gentle curves is considered a golden standard for getting the basics of professional Frame Running down. Even with its simplicity, experienced runners can make the course's dip a highlight factory and rookies can cut their teeth.

The Trioval is currently undergoing upgrades and refits to become Grade One capable, but many Grade One promotions already use the Trioval as a breather course.

Courses which use transport infrastructures, freeways, starports, factories, urban streets and common-air environments. Essentially street-racing and where the sport has its original roots. Generally Illegal. High fatalities.

While not particularly legal, a blind-eye is turned to frame-running for the gambling money it brings into this balmy coastal moon-colony of the Unity Protocol. A bustling urban centre and agricultural powerhouse, with swathes of pristine jungle and ocean around it.

Often sweltering with heat, Sargasso's landscape sports massive abandoned off-shore mining rigs, water-ways, claustrophobic streets, wide canyons and an expansive but surprisingly quiet free-way that circles the entire city serves as a dream come true for pilots looking for somewhere to refine their skills or to sharpen their teeth and their reputation in Constance.

Taking place in the western The Outer Ring of Aleph Null, this race is organised by the crime lords of the Bacchus Strip, with little safeguards and guarantees. It isn't uncommon for cheaters, backstabbing, and outright deadly force to be deployed on the circuit to get the upper hand and win that tantalising cash prize.

The race's exact dimensions vary by running as the course gets plotted through the 'rubbish heap' of Bacchus, where derelict hulks in the process of being stripped down and their treasures plundered become the stage for this race. Generally, organisers plot the route to be between 400 and 500 kilometres in length. As old ships downsize and new additions get towed in, the Outer Ring Ramble changes, always delivering thrills for the spectators.

Taking place on and around Lor Prime's lunar impact crater, this Constance traces a path through the apocalyptic wreckage left in the wake of a terrible event in Lorath history. Runners start on one side of the lunar crater at the edges of blasted nature, moving through the ruined cities and villages and down into the wreckage of society to skim the molten layer of the planet.

Many Lorath runners report feeling great unease being in the area for too long. Authorities keep a hands off approach to monitoring Frame Running here²⁾, as the risk of death and joining the accumulated wreckage of history is high, and the risks posed by radiation, runaway magical and psionic phenomena, and other hazards make recovery an ordeal in itself.

Taking place on the Acalan city-state of New Kashmir, the Acalan Catastrophe is a loosely organised rally across the outskirts of the capital city. The stratified interior of the city of New Kashmir is too claustrophobic for the speed of frame running to be shown to its full potential.

Organisers of the Acalan Catastrophe generally move the starting location and route around constantly to stay ahead of the city authorities and private security groups whose clients have a bone to pick. The course is generally pinned to run up and around the sides of buildings, leaping over the main air-traffic lanes and making hard turns at the edges of buildings.