Edge of the Empire Book

STARS HI PS AN D

VEHICLES

"She may not look like much, but

she's got it where it counts."

-Han Solo

In Star Wars, agile landspeeders choke the streets of

Imassive planet-sized cities, suspended a meter from

the surface by antigravity repulsorlift generators. Grace-

ful airspeeders patrol the skies of a thousand worlds,

their powerful ion engines propelling them to breath-

taking velocities. Starships great and small-rocket into

space from backwater starports and hurtle .through hy-

perspace, making a trip of thousands of light years with

little more effort, or fanfare, than traveling to market.

The universe presented in EDGE OF THE EMPIRE is one so

reliant on such transportation technologies as to be in-

separable from them. Vehicles take on almost talismanic

importance to their captains and crews, treated as living

things by those who love them. Some are the only home

that spacers have. Presented in this chapter are a num-

ber of the more common types of starships and vehicles

found in the galaxy, and the rules governing them.

VEHICLE CHARACTERISTICS

From the tiniest, fastest swoop bike to a massive and

• lumbering Imperial-class Star Destroyer, all ships and ve-

hicles share a number of characteristics. These charac-

teristics define such attributes as the strength of a ship's

shields or how quickly a speeder accelerates off the line.

These characteristics cover the bulk of important' me-

chanical information about starships and vehicles.

Handling: The measure of. a ship or vehicle's agility

and how well it responds to its pilot.

Speed: A ship or vehicle's raw speed and how quickly

it accelerates.

Silhouette: An abstract of the general size of a vehicle.

Defense: A ship's first line of defense against attack

and accident. Typically representative of a ship's ray

and particle shields, defense also represents any fac-

tors, technological or otherwise, that prevent damage

from reaching a vehicle's armor.

Armor: The measure of a ship or vehicle's armor,

similar to soak on the personal scale.

Hull Trauma Threshold: A reflection of the sturdi-

ness of a ship or vehicle's construction, and its ability

to sustain damage and keep operating.