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Lore Builder: Four: Sataball. Spectrum Dispatch - Comm-Link
Hello and welcome back to LORE BUILDER, where we develop the lore of the Star Citizen universe with you, the community. If you are new to this feature, please check out the caveats and background reading in the first issue to bring you up to speed.
This week, we are going to continue discussing the sport of the future:
SATABALL
A couple larger points to discuss before getting into the heart of the post:
Zero-G
This is strictly a personal call. While the zero-gravity approach certainly makes sense and AidusDescends made an excellent point as it being a way to compensate for the various gravities on the different planets, my worry is that it’s too much of an obvious choice for a futuristic sport. There should definitely be some zero-g sports, but this one felt ground-based to me.
Although 
Zan had an interesting idea about having an iteration of SataBall be played in Zero-g, along with ground-based Pro and Semi Pro leagues.
Other Sports
This was probably an error on my part, but I didn’t mean to imply that Sataball is the only game around. The original inspiration behind Sataball was Pyramid in BSG, which felt like an interesting addition to help flesh out the reality of the universe. I feel like some of the sports that exist today would still exist along with some other sports.
For example, Kieran had a great write-up for a sport based out of Tevarin culture, which could be an interesting candidate to explore as its own sport.
The variety of rule systems and fields you came up with were fascinating to read. They were so good (and detailed; I’m still reading the posts by SP3CTREnyc ) that I think we’re going to have to discuss each section on its own to keep the size of the posts down. I imagine that the post presenting and discussing the rules and stadium shapes is going to be a beast. So for this week, we’re going to start off with the origin of Sataball, the name for the Bowl/Cup and some potential team names.
ORIGIN
Here are some of the histories that really caught our eye:
Yco
Sataball originated on Earth before the first long distance jump was ever made by a starship. It evolved out of the diverse cultural melting pot that was southern Africa – where communities tended to favour either rugby or soccer (also called football), but never both. Sometimes friendly competition between communities erupted into outright brawls about which was the superior game. At one of these brawls, a young man named Muto Zini attempted to disrupt a rugby game by standing mid-field and blocking the ball with a dustbin lid. Luckily, the team and onlookers thought that was fun – and the game of sataball was born.
Sam Corwin
Created during the later years of colonization efforts by Humanity (close to the Messer era), colonist children found themselves with little to do while schools and the like were being constructed. As a prank, they began playing with the settings on the prefab colony building’s bug-stopper forcefields, the most common model being the SATA-IM, an acronym standing for Static Advanced Termination Arrester – Insect Model. The tweaked the SATA fields to be strong enough to knock cups and books out of people’s hands as they passed through. One day a ball was accidentally kicked towards a door, and the modified SATA field bounced the ball back to the child.
In short order, a few buildings were found with missing SATA fields. The parents found the children playing a new game out in an empty lot, and as it kept them out of trouble, quickly ordered more of the inexpensive SATA fields for the kids to modify and make more playing fields with.
It didn’t take long for adults to realize how fun the game could be, and visitors to the colonies brought back video’s on their Glas of an exciting new sport being born.
Atticus
The story of the creation of Sataball is one of Human devastation and triumph. After the great tsunami of 2108 where most of the Australian east coast was devastated by monstrous tidal waves, relief forces from all around Earth flocked in to provide aid. These aid forces were quick to set up refugee camps to help shelter and feed the people of the devastated continent.
Within these refugee camps children and adults alike played the local form of football as a distraction from the horrors most of them had faced. Aid workers from around the world found that this sport borrowed from many of the games they were already familiar with and quickly picked up the rules and started organizing their own teams to take part. The biggest of these tournaments took place in the South Australian Tsunami Aid (SATA) camp and with the international players not wanting to call it Australian rules, it became SATAball.
Joxer
It was created during the Ivan Messer era. A think tank was put together to study sports and their ability to distract the population from other issues, like Messer taking control of the empire. Sataball was the end result, taking the most enjoyable parts from Earth’s most popular sports and putting them all together in one fast-paced action-packed event.
Arconon
SataBall, or s474b411 as some people prefer to call it, developed in crowded slums and urban areas with narrow alleys. Kids trying to play ball had to cope with all kinds of obstacles: people blocking their way, laundry lines, boxes, dogs chasing the ball, rival gangs trying to steal the ball and/or deflate it.
Players had to be quick to dodge obstacles or jump over/slide under them.
Dodging obstacles was easier without the ball of course, so usually players would pass the ball first:
- kicking the ball under laundry lines or
- throwing the ball over walls or when dogs attacked
Some people believe that the sport originated from pickpocket gangs. When they trained the kids in the tricks of the trade, they disguised the techniques (stealing and passing objects and then quickly disappearing) by passing balls instead of wallets.
THE BOWL/CUP
Again, there were a great variety of names to choose from, so this will come down to a vote:
Calvin Bowl ( Gol_Stoan)
Originally presented as Calvinball which (as a Calvin & Hobbes fan) I blame myself for not thinking of sooner, so here’s my alternative.
Galactic Series (Joxer )
Teams participate in a double-elimination first round with the top two teams in each group seeded into a bracket system where they participate in best-of-three matches. The winners advance through the brackets to the final series, which is a best of seven.
Kraine Cup (Baragoon )
The Kraine Cup (The ISL Galactic Cup). Named after the one who brought the sport to the universe. Held on Earth every year at Sydney Stadium (aka the Dragon’s Lair).
SataDay (Kazee )
I had to put this in.
TEAMS
DarkRen420 posted a great list of teams. I swapped the names of the divisions and pulled some names from other posts for the teams, but this can at least get the ball rolling:
Sataball Professional League (SBPL)
Imperial League: (IL)
Earth(Sol) Gladiators
Croshaw Jumpers
Vega Harlequins
Stanton Knights
Ferron Lancers
Centauri Centurions
Rhetor Raiders
Idris Air Hawks
Elysium Elementals
Davien Novas
Territorial League: (TL)
Terra Gryphons
Kilian Killers
Ellis Racers
Magnus Dominators
Goss Bucs
Nemo Crashers
Fora Flames
Cathcart Gangsters
Kiel Guardians
Baker Custlers
So please vote and comment below. Next week, we will tackle the big fish, how the game works. As I mentioned earlier, this will probably be a very intensive discussion so we will start broad and then get specific.
Until then …