I can change to bottles as well, does not matter for the story from my point of view.
1 Like
Understandable. I just really wanted to have them removing bottle caps with pretty much no effort. Itâs just one more little thing that makes them unusual.
(Dialogue-less again, more or less an car update.)
Team Slow
Still part 5, Not more going on right now.
With the bodged together hatchback mechanically fixed besides the torque converter. That can wait anyway until a fatal transmission failure, the mounts from an Icarus thanks to Team Hillbilly Rollers, to avoid the engine thinking it can fly, other than the failed attempt at obtaining a torque converter. Nobody had them.
John started to stare down at the Zorya team, one of which was looking at their phone.
The rest of the team was busy minding their own business. Eventually looking at auto reviews on a phone, waiting until the race is open.
1 Like
1 week after the race beginningâŚ
As Martha emerged from her tent after a long, cold night of restless, damp sleep she was practically blinded by the bright sunlight glancing off the slick tarmac and puddles of water. She stretched, and went over to the car, Bugsy, who was also covered in rainwater. Unlocking the boot, she grabbed a can of store-brand baked beans and lit the small camping stove she had brought out from the tent. Pouring the beans into a pot with, she set them down to cook whilst she started to bring her stuff out of the tent and place it back on the carâs roof rack. It had been raining heavily for the past week, forcing the teams to seek shelter in their tents or cars.
Around half an hour later Mikel emerged from the tent, squinting in the harsh sunlight that had been absent. Martha of course, being British, was used to this. He sat in the tent opening, eating the beans Martha had made from a cold, stainless steel bowl. He chewed, thoughtfully, observing the other teams beginning to emerge from their tents or shelters. He wondered if the race would commence today. He presumed so. Previous FAR races had started in much worse conditions than some slightly damp roads. He ate thoughtfully as Martha started to disassemble the tent, complaining that he wasnât helping at all whilst she struggled to pack the âdamn bloody canvas wankerâ back into itâs bag. He was instead watching Team Milkvan curiously. During the past week he hadnât seen them leave their van at all, let alone put up a tent or anything of the sort. He presumed that there were beds or sleeping bags in the back of the van, however there always seemed to be movement inside, no matter the time.
Nonetheless, when Martha hit him round the head with a tent pole to get his attention, he paid no mind to Team Milkvanâs activities, including them hauling the receptionist into the back of the van, and a faint gunshot sounding shortly after. Instead he helped Martha pack the tent and get the car moving. It was around noon when a loudspeaker asked all teams to report to a carpark nearby where the camp ground was for their briefing. With a clutter and roar the mighty 1.2 litre 4 cylinder engine of Bugsy came to life, and along with Team Shift Happens and Team Ecowareness Mikel and Martha set off. The little convoy travelled quickly over the wet, slippery roads of Marena. With Martha behind the wheel, Bugsy roared ahead of the Mara and the Bricksly, with over 100 horsepower he could far outstrip both cars. However, the slippy, scrabbly nature of the car paired with high profile chunky tires led to quite an uncontrollable couple of minutes. However, both Bugsy and the Bricksly arrived mostly in one piece, with the Mara arriving a minute later due to having to stop and pick up some things that they had found on the side of the road.
âCome on Martha, itâll be fun!â said Mikel, nudging her from her book. âDonât you think we should get to know these people?â
Martha gave a sort of grunt in response, and continued to read. Mikel sighed and closed the door of the City, walking over to where Team Ecowareness were telling Team Shift Happens all about the dangerous effects that oil could have to the Fruinian landscape. Kaylie appeared to be relatively interested, and was writing down notes whilst listening. The rest seemed bored. Mikel walked up to them and introduced himself, only to be flattened by Spots who appeared to have taken a liking to Mikel. Probably the beans, he told himself, hoping that Spots wasnât just seeing which part of him would be best to eat first. As he stood up, he heard Bugsyâs engine start up, and turned to see a line of cars behind it, waiting impatiently for it to move. As the other teams filed into the parking lot he took notice of a large white stage sat on one side of the car park. As he was about to tell the other teams the loudspeaker sounded again, and this time a man came out onto the stage, speaking into a microphone.
âHello and welcome to the 36th annual Fruinia to Archana Rally! (the first was held in 1974) As you may see we have a relatively small turnout this time, but with all the tensions between countries at the moment that is to be expected. But, as weâve always said, why should that stop us? Well, ladies, gentlemen and extraterrestrials, it shanât! Take your place on the starting line and wait for my signal- remember, itâs just you out there, so try not to break down. Alright⌠3, 2, 1⌠Go!â
And with that they were off. The drone of engines was deafening, as the weird and wonderful assortment of cars roared away. At first it was smooth sailing, with all the teams travelling in a convoy to get out of Marena. The roads were potholed and rough, the smell of burning oil and petrol filled the air, but by god was it exciting.
It was when the teams started to seperate when things went wrong. Martha and Mikelâs (referred to as M&M by most of the other teams) route was intended to take the scenic route though Fruinia, passing through all of the most beautiful places in the country. However, they had counted on most of the roads being dirt or tarmac, but due to the heavy rainfall most were just mud. Bugsy groaned and protested, wheels spinning hopelessly in the sticky, waterlogged mud. Eventually however, Turbolag made it out of the trail, and back on the main road to Vontro (a small village with very rich history that Martha wanted to visit.)
(yes, this means that the race is now open. Apologies for any delay.)
4 Likes
SoâŚany numbers to go by that tells us what is actually happening in the race for us other participants on the way?
3 Likes
So it seems that, in addition to kidnapping 2 people, my teamâs shot a 3rd. Oh dear.
Also,
my entire team upon hearing this:
2 Likes
Sign me up that itâs open!!
I apologise for the half assed message. I was rushing before a wreckfest race started.
Team Shift Happens
Team Information and Story Start
Pre-Race Prologue: Hotel Hackery, Armed and Dangerous / Checking In, A Little Recon, Making a Big Deal for some Beer, Trade Relations, A Fine Trade for the Good Stuff, Fire, Steel, and Beer.
The last week had been brutal, chucking it down with rain just about every minute of the day. Rukari was, perhaps, the only one in Team Shift Happens who didnât mind this, as the rain made the weather just a touch cooler, though still far hotter than the frigid arctic conditions the Valraadi was used to back home. Kaylie and Kayden much preferred it when it wasnât raining, despite actually liking water, because the heat and the humidity was unpleasant. Malavera was miserable and very much disliked the rain as it drenched the teamsâ tents, made any work on the car miserable, and barely managed to drop the temperature despite the outright soaking the world was taking.
It was then that the team woke to a sunrise, harsh light gleaming off of the remains of last nightâs torrential downpour, and crawled out of their tents to make some breakfast. Malavera hauled one of the propane cylinders out of the back of the Bricksley, connected the gas line to the old trunk-mounted Karbonizer two-burner gas grill, and set about making sausages, bacon, and even a bit of toast for sandwiches. Kaylie and Kayden handled packing away the tents, while Rukari settled off to one side, smoking his pipe and meditating until breakfast was ready.
Luckily, theyâd had enough time to go get the gas bottles refilled for their welding cart, and Kayden had helped Rukari put the cart back up onto the roof. Likewise, the team had refilled two propane cylinders after helping cook for the camp for the last week. In that time, it had been Rukari who surprised everyone in Team Shift Happens, and likely a few other teams, when he managed to take several mundane items and make some actually quite decent meals out of them. Rukari had said, âIn the Grundzahiri, we all must do our share. Someone in camp must cook, others fix armor, others sharpen blades, it is all a warriorâs duty. In the Vyrzadoburi, I learned to do this for myself.â
Today, however, breakfast was different. It was as if something had changed in the air, like an electric current humming beneath everyoneâs feet. Today, people were getting excited. Rumors had been flying for the last week about when the actual race would start, there had been speculation about the reasons why there was a delay, and even a rumor about a betting pool on whether or not theyâd hear an official excuse from the people hosting the event.
When the call came through a screeching loud old speaker, asking everyone to report to a car park, however, that electric hum snapped into frenetic, wild energy. Like a LeMans start, teams scrambled for their cars, engines rasped, wheezed, and rattled into life, tires screeched and chirped to varying degrees, gearboxes crunched into gears as drivers, both well-experienced and complete novices alike, tried to be the first to the car park.
Kaylie got to the car first, remembering at the last possible second to open the door with her right hand so she wouldnât rip the door off of the hinges, settling into the rear driverâs side seat. Kayden shoved Spots up into the middle of the rear bench before hurrying to get in as well, slamming the rear passenger side door just as Malavera got into the front passenger seat. Another door slammed as Malavera grabbed the handle and pulled, forgetting his strength for a moment as the Bricksleyâs door crashed shut with more noise than a bank vault. Rukari emptied out and put away his pipe, blew smoke into the air, and then sprinted for the car, swinging the door open and leaping into the seat, making the suspension wobble ominously. Rukari had his door closed, key in the ignition, and was busy trying to get the Bricksley to start, and when it did, his lack of mechanical sympathy cried out through the exhaust system as the red, white, blue, and plastic American sedan went straight to the rev limiter.
First gear was selected, the clutch was dumped, and with the rear diff unlocked, the Bricksley did a mighty one-wheel-peel across the campground. On the way out of the campground, Rukari redlined first gear, roughly double-clutched into second, and only after winding that gear out to the moon and back, selected third. They were part of a little convoy with Team Turbolag and Team Ecowareness close by, and the other teams not that far behind to the driverâs meeting. While Team Turbolagâs car was, perhaps, faster on dry pavement, Rukariâs skill behind the wheel let him keep pace despite the terrible road conditions. Tires wailed, engines screamed, the smell of hot engines and partially-unburned fuel filled the air.
âRukari, whatâs the engine temperature?â Kaylie asked.
âTwo-two-five degrees,â Rukari replied.
âThereâs a fourth gear, use it!â Malavera snapped.
Rukari chose fourth gear as team Ecowareness pulled off to the side of the road to pick up a big pile of trash. Malavera looked at the pile and shook his heads. âDonât know whether that was there to start with, or whether one of these teams decided to toss that,â he said, grumbling the whole time.
Not long after, everyone screeched into the car park for the driverâs meeting. Engines were shut down, the clinks and pings and clanks of thermal expansion and contraction started to ring out at random, and the teams clustered up for one last potential round of chatter.
It was there that Laura of team Ecowareness decided to show Kayden, Kaylie, Malavera, and Rukari her latest blog post. Kayden was bored in seconds, Rukari kept looking back to the Bricksley as if hoping someone would give him a reason to leave, and Malavera was just plain uncomfortable in public. Kaylie, on the other hand, took to Laura like the social butterfly she was, flipped open a cover on the inside of her mechanical left arm, and pulled out a somewhat chunky tube. She pulled a tab on it and a screen unfurled from inside, and she checked the same blog post, just re-formatted for her native writing style (Left to right, but from bottom to top).
âYeah, I can see thatâs quite bad. This is why you people need to really focus on nuclear fusion,â Kaylie said. âClean, powerful, efficient, relatively safe. That, plus high-capacity super-capacitors, and you could replace all of these fuel-burning cars with electric cars that arenât terrible for the environment. As for what we can do nowâŚâ Kaylie added, before grabbing Malaveraâs left hand and pulling him front-and-center, âMalavera here is, well, heâs a hacker.â
Malavera groaned, rolled both sets of eyes, and said, âYou do know, Kaylie, not everyone appreciates that talent. Plus, sure, I could possibly shut down their facility with some clever code, but we donât need that kind of trouble right now. But, if it makes you feel any better, fine, Iâll do something.â He hefted his 20 pound, camouflage-painted military laptop, balanced it on his left arm as if it were a 2 pound sub-notebook, checked out the Polyfuel company briefly, and within seconds, gave a malicious grin. âNow, thatâs really quite stupid,â Malavera said. âThey have their pipeline pump control computers on their network, not air-gapped. And some idiot has âadmin1234â as their password, written on a sticky note in full view of a security camera. How much justice, Laura, do you want?â (@AndiD )
When Mikel approached them a few minutes later, however, Spots was the first to notice, pouncing and knocking Mikel to the ground and licking his face quite enthusiastically. Rukari grabbed Spotsâ collar and pulled the 170 pound leopard off of the man, then with the same lack of effort, pulled Mikel to his feet. Before Rukari could say anything, however, Martha had to move team Turbolagâs car out of the way to let more cars in as it was parked awkwardly close to the entrance.
Then the announcer spoke up, mentioned the relatively small number of contestants, the tensions between countries, and told them all to get ready. People got back into their cars, engines roared to life again, and this time, shit happened to team Shift Happens as Malavera got into the wrong seat of the Bricksley.
âAw, fuck!â Malavera swore, realizing he was in the driverâs seat and Rukari, adapting to the plan, sat in the passenger seat instead. âGreat. How the fuck am I supposed to drive this shit-box?â Malavera said, looking over to Rukari.
âClutch to floor, turn key until engine starts. Foot on brake, release stop stick,â Rukari said, pointing to the parking brake handle, âshift-stick toward you ahd forward, use side of foot to push loud pedal, release clutch ahd brake, car goes. Might stall time or two, but nekasi, just start engine again.â
Malavera scowled, started the engine, placed a heavy foot on the brake pedal which creaked ominously, dropped the parking brake handle, selected first gear, revved the ever-loving piss out of the turbocharged and carbureted inline four, and dumped both the brakes and the clutch at about the same time. The Bricksley scampered forward like a kicked puppy, wailing one rear tire as if in pain the whole way across the parking lot while the engine bellowed as if it were twice as big and four times as powerful as it actually was.
On the way out of the parking lot, Malavera clicked the switch on the PA system and plugged the microphone input into their stereo output. Soon, AC/DCâs âShoot to Thrillâ started blaring out of the roof-mounted loudspeaker, drowning out the screaming Bricksley 1.2 liter engine, at least inside the cabin of the sedan.
(OOC: Translations first. Ahd literally is just âAndâ in Valraad. Nekasi literally translates to âno workâ and is used, most often, like we use âNo Problemâ, but it can also be used, like in this situation, to say ânot a problem.â Grundzahiri is a literal translation to Ground-warriors, or equivalent to the Army. Vyrzadoburi literally translates to either âViolent Walkers of Deathâ in plural form, or âViolent Death Walkingâ in the singular form. (To make a word plural in Valraad, add an âiâ to the end. Some words will have one âiâ already, so they end up with two. However, the suffix âriâ is equivalent to âingâ in English while the suffix ârâ is âto be or to doâ Easiest to understand with a different word. Kasi means âworkâ and so a kasir is a worker, while kasiri means âworking.â Yes, I have quite a bit of their language created. A bit more and I could, in theory, hold conversations in it.)
As for the tag, @AndiD , I figured that itâs something Malavera would offer if Kaylieâs being obnoxious and âvolunteeringâ his services. Malaveraâs somewhat like the typical Hollywood movie hacker, heâs lucky and manages to do a lot in very little time (mostly because I couldnât hack my way out of a wet paper bag, so I donât have any knowledge to back the subject up). As for why heâs so good, well⌠Heâs by our standards, not just old, but ancient.
Malavera is comfortable with computers, and as Laura seems to be the one most interested in saving the planet, heâd give her the uncomfortable choice: Say yes, and sheâs (indirectly) responsible for an oil company creating pollution on a massive scale having a major security flaw exploited and an expensive shutdown. Say no, and she keeps her hands clean, but loses out on getting justice for Mother Earth.
Also, apologies for the insane length. This got away from me in a hurry.
2 Likes
So was there supposed to be a condition roll for our cars then?
2 Likes
So, what are the rules, whenâs the deadline, what should we be doing?
Why not make a new thread for every new chapter/round?
The deadline for this challenge was 3 weeks ago⌠did you post in the wrong thread by chance?
3 Likes
No, I just donât get why it was made continuous, in one thread.
Itâs much easier when thereâs a new thread for each chapter/round.
This challenge doesnât have more than one chapter/round, I donât think. Itâs a single, self-contained challenge, so splitting it up into different threads would be clunky and hard to follow.
(are you sure you didnât mean to post this in, like, AGC, or CSC or something? It sounds like youâre talking about that formatâŚ)
3 Likes
this is a singular round. The winner of this round will be given permission to host the next, so on and so forth.
iâm slightly confused by this. if you mean condition calculations and everything, those are being done as we speak.
2 Likes
Yes, condition calculations, and what is happening in the race, troubles encountered by the teams, how long they have been driving, fuel levels, yeah, such stuff. But OK, you are doing them at the moment, just got a little confused by the race start all of a sudden, hehe 
1 Like
no
Isnât it split into checkpoints/rounds?
And you can join in any?
Maybe I got it wrong.
Team Slow
The games begin!
We wake up, we prepare the car of its fluids and, make some food before setting off, While using the grill on top of the car. Then we rush into the car, start it, The 1.2L engine farts to life as it is mated to an 3-speed Automatic gearbox, Sluggish at first then the car roars out, just catching wind of the Bricksley driven by Team Shift happens. As the Schnell catches up, our team starts to hear AC/DC blaring on the roof of the car, like a concert (@Madrias)
Whilst the seat rails break off the passenger side, John uses some bricks to support the seat from the backseat of the car to avoid the seat being a projectile. (Team roles as of right now. Matt (Driver) Jess (Mechanic, Navigator) John (Also mechanic).
As we go past Ecowareness, the fumes coming out of our car go past them, they are not happy. They eventually write a blog post about the carbon fumes coming out of cars and the dangers of them to the environment as they forget to document about Cryptocurrency mining, which also does hurt the environment for digital coins you cannot touch @AndiD
As the car goes into its third gear, it still starts screaming and releasing its 65 horsepower. Aerodynamics may not be the Schnellâs thing with this roof rack, but with upwards pressure, Only if upwards pressure happened on this car. Not even 1 tonne of upwards pressure. As the blinding sun makes it near impossible to drive, the sunvisors that are falling is used. Nothing that string canât fix!
2 Likes
what? no, itâs not. itâs one continuous post, there are no checkpoints (apart from a few things i intend to do later), itâs basically just one big lore post.
3 Likes