Helm

When you HELM, you pilot a vehicle or use vehicle weapons. You might plot a jump through a dark hyperspace lane. You might dive through a canyon to escape a chasing ship. You might fire quad-lasers at hostile pirates. You might reroute power on the ship to weather fire (though RIG may be better).

GM QUESTIONS

• How do you control your vehicle? How do you know how it’ll respond?
• Where do you want to end up?
• How often have you used one of these?

When you HELM a ship or vehicle, your guidance determines where the craft goes. In open space, there’s not a lot of meaningful choice. But in dense aircar traffic on a planet, dodging asteroids while escaping pursuing Union forces, or riding solar winds in a race across the system, the ability to HELM is critical.

You can HELM any sort of vehicle (like boats!), including animals trained for riding. Rolling ATTUNE or SWAY may work better for those though.

You can also use HELM to fire vehicle weapons, such as those commonly found on starships. Most of these weapons are at least computer assisted, and require familiarity with the weapon system more than quick reflexes or keen eyes. For weapons that are simply mounted on top of a vehicle, you might consider SCRAP instead.

Spaceships are designed to enter and exit hyperspace lanes; in general, ordinary piloting does not require a roll. One does not need to chart jumps along well-established gates and cartographer-maintained lanes.

An enterprising pilot might want to enter or exit a hyperspace lane in the middle, without the benefit of the AC's buoys. Charting an unassisted and unexpected jump into and out of these lanes is usually a desperate position.

Equally unruly are the so-called dark hyperspace lanes—lanes which are uncharted and have no AC buoys for route auto-correction. Travel along them offers plenty of opportunities for HELM rolls when encountering pirates, Way creatures, and the simple dangers of unexpected gravity waves and lane shifts.