We consider the spatially inhomogeneous relativistic Landau equation in the far-from-equilibrium regime; an equation modeling gases and plasmas at very high energies and low density, outside the usual regime of hydrodynamics. The relativistic nature of the problem makes the PDE more difficult to analyze compared to the classical Landau equation, but relatively recent breakthroughs indicate that it should ultimately still behave like a degenerate nonlocal parabolic problem with some hypoellipticity. We aim to build a complete theory of local well-posedness, and as first steps in that direction we prove a priori propagation of momentum-decay and parabolic smoothing for the equation. This talk will focus on a few of the specific challenges posed by the relativistic problem, including Schauder estimates adapted to be Lorentz invariant and how to estimate the non-convolutional singular integrals that create the diffusion operator.