## The Practice of Bladeatheon

### The Art of Bladeatheon, by Dr. Karl Jabavu

Known by many names – “Iceblade”, “Slider”, and in some Tasidan circles is translated as “Hop-Knife” – the sport of Bladeatheon is one of the foremost semi-combat sports practiced in settled space. With its origins in early Solarian universities as a common game played amongst its fencing teams during their off-season, Bladeatheon has since become a staple of collegiate athletics and a favorite among both technically-oriented statisticians and common-denominator spectators.

Bladeatheon, on the surface, combines several aspects of various old-Earth sports, with its most prominent ancestors being ice hockey, field hockey and fencing. The arena consists of a large rectangular ice rink divided into four equal-sized rectangular quadrants, with rounded corners and four small circles in the center of each quadrant. A rink is approximately eighty meters by 40 meters in dimensions. Two goals of approximately three meters by two meters in size are placed facing one another at each end of the rink.

Each team consists of eighteen total players, of whom eight will be on the ice as standard players and one of whom will perform as a goalkeeper. Of the eight standard players, their positions are usually distributed as follows: five offensive members and three defensive members. Some teams have seen significant success with other patterns of distribution – for example, the FS 467 Galactic Bladeatheon Collegiate Association Blademastery championship game saw the Blackmire Sabers achieve victory with a team consisting entirely of offensive members solely on the back of their legendary goalkeeper, IS-VARIABLE.

Equipment used by an individual player is far more elaborate than most contemporary sports. Each player is outfitted with a team-colored suit made of various aramid-weave materials and steel mesh, with flexible rubber internals. Since its inception, the standard uniform has seen various modifications, including a rigid plastic helmet to prevent concussive damage and the occasional change in material makeup as novel construction materials are developed. Each player is also fitted with a pair of specialized ice skates, with various design formations in order to maintain compatibility with varying plantar anatomies among participating species. The skates are designed for optimum speed and turning capacity, in order to facilitate athletically-competitive play.

Bladeatheon also sees the use of a variety of implements for players to use in standard practice. The most common items consist of a short, curved rod called a fimbo in Solarian speech (though often referred to simply as a stick in Galactic Common) and an electrically-charged fencing sword similar to that of an épée. The fimbo is usually approximately 120 centimeters in length, often constructed of wood or fiberglass depending on player preference. Meanwhile, the fencing sword, originally called a pedang, has a total length of approximately 100 centimeters, with the blade being 75 centimeters. Affixed to the handle is a compact battery-pack used to electrically charge the blade, which is tipped with a small circular apparatus designed to form the primary nexus of said electrical charge. Other, more niche variants of Bladeatheon see the use of other types of weapons, including designs mimicking that of handaxes, daggers and, most popularly, polearms such as spears or halberds.

The objective of the game is fairly simple – using their fimbos, each team attempts to get the ball, a fist-sized rubber sphere wrapped in wire, into the opposing team’s goal. Should they succeed, they score a point. Whichever team obtains the most points wins the game. The ‘catch’, so to speak, is the pedangs – should a player manage to hit another player either with the tip of their sword or with the ball, the portion of their body impacted is momentarily paralyzed by the sudden stiffening of the suits in response to electrical exposure. The regions of the body are split into arms, legs, the head, the torso and, depending on species, the tail or wings. Should a player suffer a torso hit, their entire suit locks up momentarily. Depending on the force of impact, paralysis may range from a single second to several. While the suits do manage to ward off most significant injury, particularly strong impacts caused by being unable to steer are not uncommon. Generally, players are expected to only attack other players using their swords, with grappling or attacking with their sticks being penalized.

A typical match is split into two halves of thirty-five minutes each, with a ten-minute break in-between. Each team is given three timeouts per half, which may be used after a point is scored or after game halt due to a referee call. Timeouts are typically approximately five minutes, and it is rare that a team use all three timeouts in a given half – doing so has come to indicate that a team feels severely outmatched by the other, and is scrambling to strategize, such that “three-timer” has entered common parlance in Bladeatheon circles as a term synonymous with “rookie” or “someone in over their own head”.

Over time, collegiate institutions have made significant investment into their Bladeatheon programs. Many schools, such as Mekabak University in the Pan-Gezenan Federation and the Technical Institute of Nanotrasen of the Maestro system, offer large scholarships to particularly talented athletes for their Bladeatheon teams, while others spend large sums of money on modernized arenas for play. Today, over three hundred colleges, universities and post-secondary institutions have Bladeatheon teams, having grown from a mere four participants in the original GBCA Blademastery championship. While the sport has yet to take off outside of the realm of post-secondary education, some student athletes have secured significant sponsorships as a result of their talents, with highly-successful individuals earning hundreds of thousands of Stellarum a year from product advertisements and other financial deals. Most famously, many of the foremost members of the Student Union of Natural Sciences, a highly-influential educational institution originating from Sol, are former Bladeatheon athletes.

In sum, Bladeatheon is a unique, yet highly popular sport, suited to all manner of athletes and specialists. While it may seem chaotic and brutish, it truly is one of the great cultural achievements of our time.