We Will Not Budge

I placed my cigar, it’s smoke swirling up, in an ash tray on my desk and had my Communications Officer open up fleet wide comms; instantly every vid screen on every ship under my command went live with my visage. The burn on my face was not hidden in the shadows as it usually was and behind me you could easily see the flags of Wildly Inappropriate and Goonswarm Federation hanging on either side of a Guristas flag.

“Brothers and Sisters,” I spoke, “the last forty-eight hours have been rather difficult. I had made the decision to move us out to lowsec and to begin operating as an independent in an ongoing battle against the DRF horde, but after jumping all of us out of null, I changed my mind. You see, we’ve been out here nearly a year and we’ve all made some very good friends and to leave them now would be wrong. The plan when I came out here… when WE came out here was to build up a reserve of Isk, assets and allies to fight a war against the Caldari State for the people that could not rise up, but over the last several months a new threat has risen. One far worse than the State or even the Gallente Federation; a unified force from the Drone Regions has toppled the regime of the Northern Coalition and currently occupies the home of our former allies.

The DRF brought it’s own allies, pets if you like, that hold their own agenda and now seek to ‘cleanse’ Fade and Pure Blind of the remnants of the Northern Coalition and are not being met with much resistance. Our allies in the South are currently engaged in their own conflict and within days, the space between us and them will fall into the hands of our enemies… we can not afford to abandon our friends and allies now, not when every ship counts. Not when every pilot and crew member counts. We must stay and fight, we must defend the way of life that we left Empire for and we must not falter. It will be a difficult road we travel, but we must not budge. Our enemies, the dogs that they are, are barking at our front door and we must not let them in.

What I ask of you now would be considered madness to most people and it should as the odds are not in our favor. I will not lie, our numbers are less than that of our enemies. To any of you that do not wish to travel this path, I understand and will make sure that transit is arranged to a station of your choosing and to those of you that wish to stay, you will not go unnoticed and your efforts will be appreciated as this war continues. For freedom and for profit, we will prevail,” the comms closed and the vid screens went dark.

I looked over at my comms officer, “Rebroadcast that on all public channels and make sure they know where it came from.”

She nodded, “Shall I forward to Winter as well to make sure it’s played through highsec?”

“Thank you, but that wont be needed. All of our highsec contacts were included on the broadcast and she’ll already be rebroadcasting.”

“Understood, Sir, I’ll forward it out immediately” and with a quick salute, she left my office.

Late Night Planning

I woke to the notification from my comms terminal, “incoming encrypted message.” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and walked over to the terminal as it repeated it’s message again, “incoming encrypted message.” A moment later I keyed in my password to accept the inbound transmission, “Good morning, Winter,” I spoke before the screen had even finished loading her image.

“I got your message, sorry I couldn’t get back to you right away,” she paused, “what can I do for you?”

“Remember that fallback plan we talked about a few months back?”

“Of course.”

“Good, I’m going to forward a list of systems and stations that I need scouted out ASAP. Things are changing quickly out here and if we need to rely on this plan, I want everything in order quickly. I don’t want to be scouting systems ten minutes before I jump, understood?”

“Understood, Sir. Might I ask what’s going on out there?”

“I can’t go into details, even on a secure line, but I want to make sure everything is order if the shit hits the fan.”

“Don’t blame you, Sir. Anything else?”

“No, that’ll do for now.”

“Roger, Winter out” and the screen blinked back to standby mode. As I made my way back to my rack, I thought to myself that everything would work out, but if it didn’t, other plans were in order for a regroup.

Changes

When EVEPress died, it took my blog with it, which left me more than a little shocked because I no longer had a place to post my thoughts on my adventures in New Eden. After realizing that EVEPress wasn’t coming back up, I moved back over here and let people know this was going to be my new home. With a new home comes some changes… for starters, a new banner and a new menu system on top of the new layout since I couldn’t bring my EVEPress layout with me. I’ve since posted all my former EVEPress posts, at least I think it’s all of them and will be posting a bit more since the North continues to burn, leaving plenty of material to write about.

Anyway, if you’re new to the site, browse away and enjoy. If you’re someone that’s followed me over from EVEPress, thanks!

Nullsec Adventures

It’s been roughly a year since I first moved into nullsec and it’s been one hell of an adventure. The first two attempts at living out here ended in failure, but were great learning experiences. First, in TGA, we took a system in Geminate and ended up losing it to newly formed Russian based alliance and second, in DEFY, our space was given to the Goons by TCF. Most people, I imagine, would have given up on the idea entirely, but myself and a few others opted not to. Sure, we had been in nullsec for a grand total of maybe a month between the two prior experiences, but we liked it and wanted more.

We left DEFY and ended up in Wildly Inappropriate, Secret Squirrel Readiness Group to be exact and we headed to Fade. Fade has been my own home for the last 10 months now, minus deployments to other regions. My second home has been Cloud Ring, a region that I helped take for the Deklein Coalition. My alliance has been a member in both the Northern and Deklein Coalitions for the last several months, until recently. If you haven’t heard by now, the Northern Coalition (NC) has died and most of it’s members have become no more than a burned out shell of their once glorious selves. As you read this, Tribute, Venal, Tenal and Branch continue to burn; their residents still struggling to get their assets evacuated and trying to figure out their next move. Many of the former NC members have either been reset or have reset their former allies, leaving many targets floating around in nullsec and lowsec.

Myself, I may have moved to SSRG and WIDot for the structure and power that was the NC, but I’m actually happy to see it fall. Of course, I didn’t want the entire North taken over by the Drone Russian Federation (DRF), but the NC didn’t have the numbers logging in to hold it’s space and so we are left with Deklein Coalition (DC) holding the Western portion of the North and all of us wondering if the DRF will continue their push. With WIDot based in Fade and having Cloud Ring to fall back to, I’m not worried, but I am curious as to what’s next. The NC was formed to counter Band Of Brothers, if I recall correctly and became a Super Power to be dealt with, but with all empires, they must die in order for something new to begin. With the DRF holding a large portion of the North and having the largest Super Capital fleet in game at their command, it may be a long time before they fall from power or perhaps they will return to their ways of infighting once they’ve taken the North and removed their former threat. For now, I sit in Fade and watch what’s left of the NC burn and crumble from afar.

Let’s Try This Again

I had been hosting my blog on EVEPress, an EVE Online “themed” blog site that ran a version of the WordPress software. Sometime around the end of May, the site vanished and all of us that were posting there were forced to find new homes for our posts. I had created this site in November of last year when it seemed EVEPress was going to go under at that point, so I had a backup plan. Of course, with the site going dark, there are a lot of posts that I’ll either have to dig out of my documents and repost or just not repost.

In any case, here I am.
–Vric

Late Night SSRG Fun

Popped in around 0:30 this morning with the goal of hunting and found Welsh already down in Placid, figured I’d head down and join him. Drax logged in about ten minutes later and ten minutes after that we had a fairly proper fleet ready to go. Welsh flew up to L-C and shortly after that, we departed with the following fleet:

Cane
Cane
Cane
Huginn
Falcon

All three Canes were fit with medium neuts and 425mm AC, CC could jam anything that wasn’t Gallente and Welsh was set with a web / point instead of a double web. Fleet comp was about as close to perfect that I think we could get.

We got down into Placid and couldn’t find anything to kill until we were just about to Syndicate and that’s when our Hero Scout / Huginn pilot pointed and webbed Badger that was running PI / POS fuel through the system. He held him there for a fair amount of time while hopped through to two systems to get there and once in, Welsh bugged out and Steel popped the hauler. He jumped the gun, but it’s cool.

From there we chased another hauler that got away and then entered Syndicate. We made it a few jumps in when Welsh got bubbled by a Sabre and then had a Falcon and a pair of Machs jump in at range. I had already given the order to jump in and engage the Falcon when he reported the Machs on grid, there was no turning back. We jumped in and the Falcon bugged out. We burned out of the bubble and watched the Sabre and Machs jump off grid. Yes, if we could have reached them, we’d have murdered at least one of them, but they were too scared to take us on. The rest of Syndicate was uneventful and we headed out back into Placid.

Back in Placid our Hero Scout had a Vaga jump into him while we sat on the other side of the gate. The Vaga was a nice shade “low sec status” red and Welsh engaged. It didn’t take long for the Vaga to return fire and keep himself from jumping out. I gave the order to jump in and engage… we did and shredded the T2 Cruiser in seconds, grabbed loot and moved on.

After the Vaga kill we headed up towards the highsec-lowsec border and hung out on the gate with our brothers in blue from Space Monkeys for a couple minutes. At this point it’s getting late and I give the order to head home, but CC says there’s a Noctis on the highsec side of the gate and we opt to stay for a moment and instead of the Noctis jumping through, in came a Drake. We locked him up with the SMA guys and tore into it. The decent multispec tank held for a bit, but we chewed him up and bugged out.The trip home was pretty dead. We found a pair of Vagas that called us losers in local and warped away from us and a Navy Omen that we saw, but couldn’t snag.

Even with only three kills, it was a great roam. Got five SSRG out on a roam with a great fleet comp, got some kills and took no losses. Thanks to those that joined up tonight and hope to see you guys in fleet again soon.

What Happens When Canes Go Hunting?

Shit explodes!

After Drax made his way back to L-C3O7 and grabbed some ammo and drones for his freshly built Cane, we departed for lowsec for a little fun. We stumbled on a few targets that eluded us, but it wasn’t long before we found something that didn’t flee in time, a Caracal doing Faction War missions. I warped to the acceleration gate and jumped in and sure enough, he was just sitting there shooting NPCs and only about 10k away. I told Drax to head in, but we both knew this cruiser would melt before he got there.

I locked him up, hit the warp disruptor and opened up on him with my T2 425mm AC. As soon the guns were powered up, the pair of medium neuts were eating his cap as well. Within seconds, this Caracal was no more and it’s location was occupied with a wreck and a pod, which got away. Looking over the loot and killmail, it seemed he was fit for anti Frigate work. The poor bastard never had a chance.

I dropped off the loot, which really wasn’t much and we moved on. We came across an Ishtar, but he got away from his and we continued on our way until we hit Oulley. We were going to pass through the two highsec systems and make our way back towards nullsec, but opted to sit tight and see what came through the gate, since it’s a highsec-lowsec border. A few things passed through, but most were small and to fast for our locks. Our patience was soon rewarded when a Myrm jumped into us.

Knowing that a Myrm is a capable drone ship (could be fit with AC, Rails or Blasters,) I called for us to engage. We were both in range of the target in short time and he was locked, pointed and neuted before he had any chance of escape. We made short work of his shields and our AC tasted armor. Drax noticed more in local, but the Myrm was half way through armor at this point and we kept at it. I saw Drax’s drones engage and figured that we’d be hit by this pilot’s friends at any moment, but none of the new pilots in local were friendly to him and it seemed two of them were engaged on the other gate. The Myrm exploded, I bookmarked the wreck and bailed out just to be safe. Drax popped the pod and snagged the corpse… I’m guessing he kept it warm all night long.

We hung out in the system for a while and was hoping to get one of new neutrals to engage us, since he was in an Onyx and my isk was on a pair of Canes eating him as long as we could keep his cap drained, but he never moved on us. We had some other ships pop in, a Tengu and a pair of Drakes at one point and had the Tengu been solo or it been one Drake, that would have made our kills look better for the night.

The last kill of the night was weak in comparison to the Myrm and the Caracal, but still fun. We had inbound gate fire that was blue. A Rapier had jumped in and following him was a friendly Fenrir and a couple other blues, but they were nice enough to inform us that a Wreathe was landing on gate behind them. Sure enough, as soon as they warped off gate, the Wreathe came through and we lit him up two volleys from me and one from Drax. After look at the kill mail, the Wreathe had a Probe, a Cyno-Gen and 4000 units of lilo in his hold. Sure, it was a T1 Indy and a T1 Frigate, but that was a clearly a Cyno-ship in a box that we popped… one less hot drop for the evening. Shortly after that we headed out, after leaving the loot in a highsec system, and made our way home. Flew all the way back to L-C without issue or targets.

The Pain And The Memory

After a while you grow used to the pain, it’s there and you run with it. I woke up this morning to find the burn on my face, though long healed, just as sore as ever. It’s a reminder of the days from before I had my implants, back from when I wasn’t considered a god… back when I was just a mortal on a ship. You’d think that the cloning process would remove the signs of being human at some point, but no, it clones you exactly as you were the first time the system scanned you. The burn on the face, bones that never healed entirely correct and other scars on the body, it’s all there.

It would be easy to remove the damage to the body, it’s not like the ability to do so doesn’t exist, but then it wouldn’t help really. The wounds that I still feel just reinforce the memories that keep me up at night. Of course, there really is nothing worse than waking up from a nightmare and finding the pain still there, but I deserve the punishment. I’ve lost a lot of people under my command through the years, the pain I deal with on a daily basis is how I atone for the bad decisions I made and the lives that were lost because of them. Some days the only way to manage is to pop some pain meds and follow it with half a bottle of whiskey, other days nothing helps.

The Unforgotten

Alarms rang out through the ship as the shields peeled away. Life support had failed in several sections and though the shields held in some areas, others had given out entirely and the ship was venting atmosphere into space, but we did not yield. New alarms echoed through the dying ship though, letting the crew know that several systems were being overloaded as a last ditch effort to take something down with us.

The First Officer, a man whom had been with the pilot for years now, knew that it was time to give the order, “All hands, abandon ship,” he yelled into the ship’s internal communications system, “I repeat, abandon ship!”

The crew made their way to the escape pods and safely made it out to await a rescue from anyone that picked up their emergency beacon, most likely a Sisters of Eve ship. Several members of the crew were not lucky enough though, the order to evacuate had come later than usual this time and portions of the crew were sealed off and unable to reach the escape pods.

As the pods ejected into space, the Drake exploded behind them and the pilot’s pod ejected and warped off. Most of the surviving crew will rejoin the pilot at some point to complete their tour with him, others will vanish into space and start new lives. None of the ones that didn’t make it will be forgotten.

Squirrels on patrol!

Took a corp roam out tonight with the only ship requirement being either T1 or T2 Frigate or Destroyer, anything larger would be rejected and you’d reship or stay behind. As you know, I’m a big fan of small ships and small gangs since both are fun on their own, but are a lot more fun when combined. After taking all of five minutes to form up at our home station, we departed shortly after 00:00 with ten members in fleet on a roam that would take us, well, when we undocked our destination was still in the air. After checking with fleet members for suggestions, we opted for Outer Ring. Having chose a location to go hunting in, we had a scout get a jump ahead of us and one of the other fleet members was designated as the backup FC, since I tend to explode a lot.

We made it several jumps with little to no contact and anything we did see in local was either docked, POS’d up or cloaked, so we just kept moving along. We eventually made it to LGUZ-1 and got our only kill of the night. We jumped in and while waiting on the scout to give the all clear on next system, a lone Badger jumped in behind us and held his cloak. Upon decloaking, he was quickly dispatched by a hail of Frigate sized weapons. Around this same time, don’t recall if it was before or after the Badger kill, but we encountered a bomber that did enough damage to one of our pilots that we had to head out to get some repairs. Looking at a map, I opted for a system that was a few jumps, but was in the corner of the region (more or less) and figured it would be safe, I was wrong.

As we moved on, our scout had to break off for a moment or two, so I scouted ahead for our Wolf Pack and quickly found myself sitting in a bubble and several more ships waiting to send me home. I held cloak as long as I could, but saw I was on the edge of the bubble and attempted to make a run for it. I didn’t make it. My Jaguar vanished in little time and since I was already in a bubble, my pod went as well. Thankfully, the fleet had a backup FC (because I tend to explode when I lead roams) and the evac of the area was nice and quick for the remaining members. I could have advised the gang to jump in and start calling targets, but we had only been out for an hour and figured if anyone’s night was going to end early, it might as well only be me. The transition from me to our backup FC was nice and smooth and after reshipping, I was able to catch back up and take the back seat for the rest of the night.