I shot the Myrm, but I did not kill the Dominix

As my last remaining reader may recall, I live in WH space, staging with NOMEX out of a C2.  And while fleet fights are awesome fun with our solid FCs, occasionally I get “wanderlust”, drift away with my two characters and deliberately go down chains with EOL holes.  When the last known connection expired, when the bookmarks become stale and old, I really get the old feeling of being totally isolated and alone.  Whether I engage hostiles or not, whether I live or die, win or lose is now all up to me, no excuses, no regrets.

And so I drifted from Wormhole to Wormhole over the weekend with my Legion and my Stratios, sniffing around dozens of holes, checking out citadels for activity, keeping a mental log of how many anomalies or gas sites should be there but are not (indicating recent PVE), checking if the POCOs are allied with the citadel owners, checking the citadel owner’s killboard and so on.  Much has changed (for the worse) in WH intel since POSes are gone but I just try to get a feel for each hole I travel to and get a mental image of the people who live there.

I bumble into a C1 with a static Low Sec connection.  Its a very large system (which is good, so I can make excellent safe spots to log off in) and I tend to like C1s.  In general, they are inhabited by PvE guys who seek riches from PI, hacking, mining (the anomalies are nearly worthless) and of course as manufacturing base.  I look around and see an Astrahus and 2 (!) Athanors pulling in rocks.  All owned by a 7 man corp (i.e. 1 guy with 3 accounts and 2 Jita trade toons).  A single POCO is being reinforced, comes out in 24 hours or so.  I shall sleep here tonight.

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Merry Christmas, New Eden

Drackarn over at his blog layed out how the various races celebrate Christmas and I am sure my fellow Gallente were getting ready for their special evening when it was Christmas morning in my C4.  I was taking my Proteus for a spin around the neighborhood.  I didn’t expect to find anything but maybe there is a bleary-eyed miner or PI runner with substantial hangover that needs a warm embrace.  As usual, my Falcon pilot hangs back 1 hole, keeping an eye on my route back but ready to jump into combat when (not “if”) I screw up.

Well, I found a whole load of nothing.  Our C3a had a static low sec that opened god-knows-where and a K162 from a C6, something to be handled with care.  The low sec in turn has a C2 and here the chain really starts with multiple exits to empire space (through which my corpmates haul fuel and ships a couple of hours later) and at the end of the chain a C1 with a floating corpse, ironically the first sign of life on my sojurn.  Likely some high sec dwellers found the entrance and were playing “gate camp in WH space”.  But by then, it had turned day on Planet Earth and my scouting was over.

I didn’t really mind the lack of content, ’twas a quiet morning and excitement would have broken the spell of a quiet Christmas in New Eden.

Well, as it turns out, the Christmas Spirit went through the Universe this season – yesterday, we trapped a scout in our home with me in an Onyx, Bishop in his cloaky Legion being the our scout on the other side and various members of our motley crew in whatever ship they woke up in.  So far so good, but the trapped scout is from the rather well-known WH Alliance “Upholders” and we expect cavalry to come any minute in order to bust our little camp open.  And it does, emanating out of their hole into the connecting C3 and unfortunately decloaking Bishop’s ship in the process.  His Legion dies within seconds, they brought battleships, command ships and whatnot – we are no match for them.  We switch into cloaked ships and wait for this to blow over.

An Armageddon jumps to us and ejects a can with Bischop’s mods.

Aw.  I love the Christmas spirit, thank you, gentlemen from Upholders and the many folks in New Eden who honor their words, play hard but fair and defy EVE’s reputation as a playground for sociopaths.

Bad Luck, Legion

Sometimes, things just come down to dumb luck.  A few days ago, I log into our home C4 Wormhole, just to get ready for an alliance roam.  Gerandor is already online, reporting a scouting and scanning Legion next door.  We decide to bait him and I warp my cloaky Proteus to the hole when Oreamnos (1) pipes up – within 1 minute our little fleet has grown from 1 to 3 and with our alts, we have plenty of backup.  Our hole has gone mass reduced which may deter an inexperienced Legion pilot so we need to bring the fight next door and it is my dubious honor to be the “hunter killer” – thats a nicer term that “dumb bait”.  I align my Proteus and click” jump” when I hear the characteristic sound of a Wormhole transit.  A little early?  Then my jump is initiated and hear the sound again.  Ah.  We have inbound traffic, likely the Legion found our hole and decided to check us out at the exact same time when I jump to him.

Playing with the Neighbor – Part 1

Our C2 Wormhole corporation was originally designed as a quick training camp for mission runners and other carebears who wanted to try out WH space – if they liked it, they would move to one of the “higher” level holes and boost their ranks.  This has worked reasonably well and is still the goal but we have more and more great pilots staying with us for a simple reason – PvP is more frequent in the “lower” holes.

Anatomy of a Whoopin

Our little C2 WH academy currently has a house guest, a gentleman with a short army of alts, an impressive killboard record and the patience and skill to make pretty much all operation hazardous at best, suicidal at worst. His strategy is to hang out in an active wormhole – of which there are very few and ours is one of them – and basically camp it until he is bored, the locals shut down operations or some token ransom is paid.