Tigron Enterprises Team Profile
Team Principal:
Unknown. Tigron officials have only ever referred to him as ‘The Benefactor’ (???)
Slogan:
“Friendly Fire”
Backstory:
In a sport that has been dominated by visionaries, purist racers, intrepid scientists and engineers seeking to reach the very edges of what is physically possible with antigravity devices, few organisations stand out as poor sportsmen as Tigron Enterprises ever did, and likely will continue to be if their applications get any further than they already have with the AntiGravity Race Commission.
Very few squads can claim entirely pure reasons for wanting to go and race in the various series that have come and gone throughout the ages – ask any Auricom fan and you will get the full list. Triakis and before them Goteki simply wanted to test and sell weapons, Mirage is a businessman’s toy, eG-r and later EG-X simply want to play with human experiments and the one that gets most Americans frothing at the mouth, the idea that Qirex simply entered in order to make money from AG-Racing.
Few Russians would argue the point if forced, but their defence would take a slightly different tone. Though Qirex made sure turning a profit was an important part of their seasonal plans, they saw themselves first and foremost as a racing team, building AG-craft to take the fight to a worthy adversary in Auricom. As much as any Qirex man or woman might chuckle or deride Auricom off the track, on the track they were honourable and worthy opponents. To Tigron, one of the oldest teams in the championship was nothing more than a plaything.
At the end of the F7200 championship, with a less than perfect (though two championships were not to be sniffed at) run, Qirex’s main sponsor, the Russian Digicast corporation Overtel decided to move on from simply sponsoring the team and put in a bid to be the world broadcaster of the up-and-coming F9000 league. This put Qirex in something of a worrying position, as Overtel had been a gigantic money river and had kept the engineers in good pay. To their surprise, before they had started to begin searching for a replacement, Overtel executives announced that they had found Qirex a new main sponsor.
High-ranking figures within Qirex raised eyebrows at this – this sounded very much like their arms were being twisted into an arrangement that fitted Overtel before themselves, and few of them seemed to approve of the choice, a Greek business consortium that was run by one of the most influential criminal gangs in Moscow. The then head of the purple team was poised to reject the offer before a private meeting in an undisclosed location with members of Overtel and Tigron. When he emerged, pale-faced, he announced the immediate handover to Tigron Enterprises and the controlling hand of Arkady Ignatieff.
Arkady’s men outlined their plans along with Overtel to the factory personnel – they were going to make Qirex into a purely money-driven organisation, with a ship designed for brute force. They were going to turn the sport of AG-racing into a gladiatorial arena, with Overtel as Caesar, his thumb usually pointed upwards to Tigron. Many engineers were horrified at this proposal – Qirex had never been a stranger to using strong, high speed ships, but the combat craft that was planned… just what sort of league was this?
Tigron was sure to fire all those that resisted the plans, including a long-time loyal member of the squad by the name of Sergei Levovitch that had brought the LS ships to their consistently good performances in F7200. As a result, Tigron suffered in the early seasons of the F9000 league without a great single engineer to hold the plan together. In fact, Tigron was almost acting as a comedic villain of a corporation, ‘accidentally’ leaving obvious violent memos to be thrown away by careless, easily bribed staff that talked of their race plans. And yet they were never thrown out of the championship or the league altogether thanks to the comforting presence of Overtel looming over the ‘Fusion’ leagues, pulling the strings. The only times when Tigron suffered where when the weapons meant little on the track and it was down to a pilot’s raw skill to keep the ship on the track. Violent as the famed Omarr Khumala may have been, his abilities did not match those of Natasha Belmondo or Myima Tsarong, nor even Pascale Rouser of the rightly horrified Auricom.
While Auricom’s security down the years of the F9000 a lot more secure than the careless PR-friendly antics of Tigron, one quote has remained the test of time, one that now head of Auricom Jesse Fairbank found scrawled on the desk of her predecessor, Gideon Oldfield, hidden by an ancient textbook of Pierre Belmondo himself.
“Where are you, Qirex? We would take a fleet of your ships rather than one more race with Tigron.”
Tigron finished the F9000 leagues having won the Hyperion and Metis leagues outright with Omarr Khumala, though with a depleted grid for the Metis league after so many drop-outs. When the F9000 fell in 2170, as well as the Overtel HQ in Moscow, the Tigron buildings in the same city as well as some of the facilities in Greece were invaded by furious rioters having found out they were duped for most of their AG-watching lives by such a dirty team cheat and bully their way to the front.
The hangars and engineering facilities were left abandoned for many many years after the riots died, and the Tigron name faded from use. The only remnant of that age was to be one great billboard that still hangs in Kyoto at the site of the Metropia race circuit, dim compared to the others around it, a constant reminder of what a team could become if it puts viewer ratings before the good of the sport. It seems that memory has stuck amongst the pilots and teams, and very few if any in the paddock would suggest a rule tweak ‘just for the fans’.
If only Tigron would die quite as easily as everyone had hoped. Approximately around the time of the announcement of the FX300 league on Makana, records point to an unnamed businessmen purchasing the ancient old buildings north of the ruins of Athens that had been one of Tigron’s secondary hangars, and still held one of their ancient Bull ships. ‘The Benefactor’ as the unknown man came to be known oversaw the restoration of this craft, and the seemingly impossible task of changing the Tigron’s famous turbine design into a legal variant for FX300. Engineers from much of the former Slavic regions came tentatively to the reborn Tigron project, known as Project Dark Phoenix.
Various teams were in uproar once news of the rebirth of Tigron came to their ears, and for the one time in the history of the sport, both Qirex and Auricom agreed to veto the application that ‘The Benefactor’ put in for the new squadron, which came complete with sponsorship from BSV, Bulgaria’s main sporting channel, and the one that recorded the main events for watching in its’ home country for those that didn’t want to tune into Russian datacast channels.
While Tigron was refused entry into the FX leagues, through loopholes and early applications, a Tigron craft runs in the JX league, and they send regular application forms to the AntiGravity Racing Commission. Given that the Commission have had to take a very neutral approach to regarding teams, many of the refusals have been due to Tigron only having the one ship that is forever rebuilt, the heavy craft never being able to be destroyed.
But with the upcoming FX500, much like their fellow reserve team Van-Uber, Tigron revealed a trio of 500-spec ships in a private press announcement outside their factory to none other than BSV. Given that BSV won a contract many years back to be the secondary broadcaster for the JX Junior series, and take great care to show the crashes and weapon usage in slow motion, people in the paddock are beginning to wonder if there will be a black nose in the rear views of their ships. And for some, that’s pure nightmare fuel.
Allies: None
Rivals: Qirex, Auricom, Van-Uber, FEISAR, Piranha, EG-X, Assegai
Arch-Rivals: Harimau
Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for Subject ‘Harimau and Tigron’
1 Match Found.
Opening Selected File...
“When we made Harimau International as a team, we did so to make a team as honest and good as it could be. I shall make no bones about it – we wanted to be FEISAR with the purity of AG-Systems and the zeal of Auricom. We create our ships’ crash structures from recyclable plant material, we use prize money to help our tiger regeneration programme, we use biofuel whenever a combustible is needed.
We are familiar with the notion of the Yin and Yang, for every motion an equal and opposite reaction. The purity of AG-Systems is balanced by the viciousness of Triakis, the zeal of Auricom matched by an equal one from Qirex. It was only fitting that one should arise for us, for the most pure-hearted team on the grid a rival of incalculable evil. That rival was Tigron Enterprises.
We tried to give Tigron a chance. We organised a race on our home testing track, a one-on-one event with one of our best pilots against whatever pilot they offered. What conspired was nothing short of bullying. The victory we had after five laps was hollow after the sheer condition of the H3 ship that limped back, and even moreso of the test pilot, who needed several months of surgery. Not a mark on that bull of a craft, not a conciliatory remark from Tigron. Naught but a ‘next time’.
And a next time there was. Much as we fought to keep it out of the FX leagues, in arms with our brothers at other teams, with Mirage and FEISAR, Auricom and Van-Uber even, they came to the JX league.
Harimau Cadets has a record in these leagues second only to Van-Uber Racing, and no doubt we would have more if we did not have to rebuild every single ship after the races. The Tigron team exist only to destroy what we have created, and this dire situation is only made more bearable for me by the fact that so many of our co-competitors have done their best to hold off this menace. Quantax Dynamics, Auricom Academy and Friends in Speed have all done their bit, and for that we thank them. But these are only temporary measures, treating symptoms instead of the cause. And for that we ask only one question to the AntiGravity Race Comission.
Why is Tigron still with us?”
M. Vamatharen, Team Principal of Harimau International, Open Letter to the AG Race Commission. As of yet unanswered.
Ship Details:
One of the designs that always characterized Tigron ships was the use of a turbine as propulsion rather than the reactors many used in the older days of the league, and the ion-thrusters that is the staple of more modern teams. The principle of the turbine drive, running through the centre of the craft, is that it uses air sucked in at high speeds to drive a compressor on the same shaft as the rotor blades, forcing combusted air out the back of the ship. Literally, the speed at which the spent fuel is ejected drives the ship forward faster, in turn driving the rotor blades faster and ejecting the fuel faster. With this in mind, a Tigron with constant fuel supply could theoretically only hit a maximum speed when the ship could no longer punch through the air.
A Tigron ship holds an unofficial land speed record for an AG-league legal ship, having set a speed of nearly one and a half thousand kilometres per hour at a salt flat in the Atacama Desert, a publicity stunt using one of the old Fusion craft as resurrected by ‘The Benefactor’. It is common knowledge nowadays that a lot of the speeds presented during the F9000 league were exaggerated for viewer figures, which is proof enough if one looks at a G-Tech and tries to fathom how it could have done Mach 1. However, some ships genuinely could reach the supersonic levels on a good straight with a downhill part, and Tigron was one of them. Reports of experiments done by Tigron scientists to try and harness the sonic boom into a weapon are vague but believable to those that knew the team at the height of their corruption.
The Bull-5C ships (as they are known) for the upcoming FX500 league have brought back the old turbine designs, the main chassis hollow to house the compressor and turbine, with the fuel delivery system hung underneath the ship to adhere to the safety rules for the FX500 season. This makes the 5C a very bulky, very unstable looking ship with its’ tubular design, and stubby wings out the side of the ship – one commentator mentioned during a pre-season forum discussion that it looked like the Harimau’s obese cousin. The joke got a few laughs, but a few of the more paranoid of the grid have been comparing wing stats for the two ships to see if Tigron has been keeping tabs on the team that seem to take the most umbrage to them. Nobody has released their findings just yet, however.
One thing that the Tigron seems to have in spades despite the appalling acceleration and handling are the top speed and armouring – while this is nothing new to the grid considering Triakis, Piranha and even Auricom’s combat racing craft, the Tigron takes it to new levels, perfect for their desired ramming strategies. The common consensus is that Tigron isn’t seeking to take corners as such, but simply use the momentum gained by crashing off other ships to send them about the track.
Lead Pilot – Sofia Shadayim (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...public.svg.png)
While for the most part through the F9000 league the Tigron squad was no funny business on track, one part of their operation was forever the laughing stock of the grid. Russian pilot Sveta Kirovski’s heavy build was forever being said to have belonged to a boy named Ivan once before, and while the less-than-attractive woman was forever denying it, journalists and clue-seekers were picking up evidence towards Kirovski’s real identity while Tigron did little to protect their second pilot, choosing instead to mostly give large chunks of her salary to Omarr Khumala, the jewel in the team’s eye. Now in the new era of AG-racing, Tigron returns with an Eastern European female pilot, but this time one in the lead role, and a far cry from Kirovski as could be.
Sofia grew up in a convent on the outskirts of Prague and was forever being noted down by the Sisters that she was ‘Aggressive and reckless, cared nothing for authority and turned away from any attempts to make friends.’ Already it seemed, the orphaned girl was becoming something of a Tigron spirit. When she was sixteen, she left the convent and got a job in a restaurant in the slums of Prague, though she didn’t catch the attention of the racing scene before an argument in the restaurant between her and one of the pilots who’d just qualified last on the grid at a local illegal AG-craft race for tomorrow. The man was heavily drunk and refusing to listen to kind offers to give him a room. Sofia eventually left the kitchen and threatened him with a pair of red-hot tongs, telling him he could either man up and get out of the establishment, or find someone brave enough to fly the ship in the race. The pilot, whose name has been lost to the history books but was described by Sofia as a ‘heavyset African man, late in his years with a bullish face, upturned nose and an almost constant scowl on his face’ gave her the keys to his ship – a Venom Tigron Bull-1.
The records are still available for anyone who wants to view the race at the Prague Underground Circuit, circa March 2189 for it was viewed on several camera phones as well as a hacked video-droid as the race unfolded and the mysterious black ship at the back of the grid began a spirited charge up the field, leaving crushed and smoking remains as it pounded through the laps in the abandoned underground system of Old Prague. Shadayim got out of the craft at the end of the race with nearly broken shoulders from the effort it had taken to wrestle the heavy craft about, but as the sole survivor of the entire race, her ship still intact and her body not with any broken bones or cuts. She apparently walked straight out of her ship and back to her restaurant, handing the man back his keys and getting to work once again still with her apron over her flight suit.
After this adventure however, she did not turn up for work the next day or several days after, and her landlord lost track of her as well. Her room had been cleaned out, and she was no-where to be found. It was another year or so before she emerged once again as Tigron’s lead pilot for the junior JX-250 series and also in the FX-300 series when Tigron had to plug the gaps caused by a dropping out Mirage. The Czech woman got a reputation of being aloof, hostile and aggressive to everyone she came across whether in or out of her ship, and she made few friends on the grid. She appears to have a professional rivalry with Leona Silvaris of Piranha as another working-class woman who made it through to the great leagues of AG-racing, and her spats after races with Vincent Stephenson of Triakis mean that she is probably his least favourite racing pilot after Caluroso of AG-Systems. That said, every commentator has had to admit that the woman is immensely talented for what she had done with a thirty-year old Tigron against a modern day fleet, and had Tigron been a ‘recognised’ team rather than a privateer outfit, she would have outscored Mirage and later Triakis after their disqualification.
Any male fan would also have to be quick to admit that frightening as she may be, there is something about the skin-tight black flight suit she wears that can’t help but draw the eye….
Second Pilot – Elfstathios Karayiannis (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Cyprus.svg.png)
Any pilot needs test and development pilots, and when looking for ones in the areas of Thermodynamics, they don’t come much more highly recommended than Cypriots. Whoever ‘The Benefactor’ is, he obviously understands the need for at least one pilot who understands the turbine system well and can give feedback on it. Karayiannis is reported to have been a prime student at the Cyprian Institute for Advanced Thermodynamics (CIAT) about the time that the supposed takeover of Tigron Enterprises was re-starting, and the staff were looking for testing pilots to begin the design of the updated ships in preparation for FX500, the first season to have a large overhaul of the ship designs since from FX250 to 300.
It is without much of a doubt that the Bull-5C is mostly Karayiannis’ work along with a few of his colleagues, and perhaps other scientists that went missing about the time of Tigron has started up. However, the issue for the AG-Racing community is that with his reclusive nature, there is next to no information whatsoever on the Cyrpriot pilot. There is no knowledge of his flying capability, his personality… even his history seems to be muddy and difficult to distinguish. He has no apparent surviving relatives, though it is possible he changed his name in his life at some point, and has had no close relationships with anyone outside of Tigron, a company that in a mirror image of their careless, media-feeding previous version is being very quiet about their plans.
Third Pilot – Aristos Solano (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ezuela.svg.png)
While Shadayim is well known within the AG-Racing community albeit for mostly the wrong reasons, and Karayiannis has some information to his name, the young Venezuelan that Tigron has hired for the upcoming season has next to no data on him whatsoever. Despite the best efforts of this editor, no further-…
[The document as it stands is how the final data-transmission came across from the archiver’s logs. It appears he was interrupted in the middle of writing his information.]
-Tarvus Orcorus, AG-Race Commissioner
