The Mrs. and I got moved into a new place on the 1st of the year; talk about new starts! Things are coming together and we’re loving the new place. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of junk and have a very nice library/office set up in a spare room where less is definitely more.

Well, just wanted to post the obligatory “I’m still alive” blog post, so that’s enough ramble for this. Hope all is well with everybody.

Fly safe!

I’ve also gotten the writing bug back (could you tell?) and the recognition I’ve received on this blog, both by admission into the blog pack and by comments from friends and fans in-game, has inspired me to get on the stick and get going.  I’ve put it off for too long and it’s time to get going before it’s too late.

Anyway, I’m rambling, I didn’t plan this post out at all, I’m just spilling my guts.  It was hard to let EVE go, not for the game itself but for the surprising side-effect of making friends in the process of playing the game.  I’m a bit of a recluse, and if it’s not four-legged and covered in fur I’m usually not going to get along with them, so it was a shock to find that I enjoyed the company of the folks I found myself aligned with and that I miss it now that I’ve been away for a while.

Before I go, some thanks that are well-deserved:

CCP:  For making a great game and keeping it alive with great progressive updates and fostering a wonderful community.  I’ve tested the water in a lot of MMO’s and this community is definitely special and unique.

Podlogs:  Who knew it was this easy to publish online (I used to code in HTML back in the day!).

CrazyKinux:  For putting (misplaced) faith in me, that I would update my blog often with interesting content, and stick around for a while.  I apologize for not following through, but I’m sure that you understand.

The blog pack:  to all those who commented or simply posted a “welcome to the new members”, thank you for making me feel welcome to the EVE blogging community; and for the original pack members: thank you for inspiring me to do this blog in the first place!

Barr Heavy Industries:  This is an awesome corporation, and if you’re an industrialist in Caldari space i highly reccomend them.  You would be hard-pressed to find a group of more fun-loving, welcoming, helpful, cheerful, and FUNNY people.  Cogitosis for his tounge-in-cheek slyness and charitable goodwill, Gillan for his big-brother advice, Xeradeph for always having something positive to say, Vivika for being the anchor that kept all the boys in line, Jeremaiah for always trying to share a laugh, CMDR LYON for scaring the shit out of the newbies (shards of glass and vasoline)…….I really can go on and I apologize to anybody that I didn’t mention, but I’m burning midnight oil as it is here.  Needless to say everybody is helpful and friendly, and most of them are really interesting characters.

David Barr:  Founder of the feast, so to speak.  He’s a natural born leader and takes good care of his people.  He’s soft spoken, kind, and fair.  I learned one thing in my RL management career that really sticks with me, and that’s the fact that you can tell a good manager when things run smoothly when they are NOT there.  David isn’t online ALL the time, but everything always runs very well.  Good job, mate!

And to all of my readers….thank you for following my twisting little adventure, and i personally apologize to all of you that it has ended abruptly.  Maybe I’ll carry on with a blog about ME instead of Abaddor and his gang, we’ll see.  I’ll let you know if that’s the case! 

Thank you all.  Fly safe and take care of each other.

This charming chap is not from an ambulation preview.  This is Abaddor Swiftblade.  I decided that I’d give Dungeons and Dragons Online a spin now that it is free to play, and I’ve been loving it as well.  My RPG affairs go all the way back to sitting around the table with pencils, paper, and books, so this is a bit of a return to my roots, so to speak, since I haven’t played a D&D game since Neverwinter Nights 2. 

Well, I’m mostly posting just to make sure that nobody thinks that I fell off the planet or gave up on the game.  Just taking a few days to unwind and take a break from internet spaceships.   If anybody who is reading might be curious, go try out D&D Online.  It’s a really good game so far.  It’s a good mid-point between EVE and something like World of Warcraft.  The progression is a bit slower but the breadth and depth of character options far outshine what is available with WOW. 

Some news on the EVE front, however, is that both of the war declarations against BHI were invalidated and ended this-weekend, so it will be back to business as usual on Monday!

On the mining front, things are going extremely well. I can’t say too much, both for war security and to protect my claim, but right now I’m mining ore that has almost no sellers in the area and buyers paying 15-20% above market value. Needless to say, the ISK is flowing well. Much of it, however, has gone to rigging for Davios’ hauler, but that has been a plan of ours for a while.

I’m probably going to stay where I am now for a while, depending on how things go with the war.  If it ends this week, I’ll stay out here for an extra week just until the wallet gets a little fatter. If the war goes on, however, I should have plenty of time to save up some funds. We’ll have to see how the market goes as well. There’s enough buyers to support me for a while, but if others get wise the market could be saturated with ore overnight and I’ll have no reason to stay after the war is over.

On a side note, I spent some of the funds to help an upstart trader get his career going. He’s a pretty slick Achira named Li Draconis. He seems to know what he’s doing and has already increased his net worth, although it’s not liquid yet. He’s slipper, though, so I’m not sure just how far I trust him.

I’ve been doing some solo mining with Abaddor away, and without him to contract to the corp, I’m having to haul it out to trade systems for better prices.  I’ve gotten Abaddor to loan me some ISK to get set up with some rigging on my Badger MK II, the Big Mothertrucker, to expand the cargo hold.  I’m still not hauling as much in a trip as I would like, but it’s better than before. 

The vacation for the war is going well.  So far no problems, just the occassional nuissance pirate in an asteroid belt.  No war targets tracking me down, though.  I don’t want to give away too much for security reasons, but let’s just say that I’m raking it in at the moment!

War journal of Marko Greggos

The Outcast Insurrection

Day 1 (9/18, YC 111)

That didn’t take long.  Received another comm from CONCORD yesterday at 1930 hours stating that the New Eden Outcasts had declared war on the Hactenus Project, and by way of that Barr Heavy Industries.  This appears to be another little up-and-unbecoming mercenary and or pirate corporations just like the last one.  I don’t think we’ll have any problems.  They have a couple of capsuleers who have been commanding warships for a while, but it’s a small force, and one thing that we have is numbers.

I was out of town, so to speak, so I gathered up my travel gear and sailed my Drake (still have to find a name for the damn thing, maybe this war will give me some inspiration) back to Raussinen.  I missed Abaddor, he scooted for calmer skies, but he left me access to everything in his quarters.  Hargatay, who has turned out to be pretty useful in a pinch, let me know that he was nearby and, in his words, “tuned into the ether”, whatever the hell that means.  I’ll never figure that guy out.

Tried to use some of the waiting time gathering intelligence, but there wasn’t much on the networks about these guys.  They used to belong to an alliance called The Ronin Brotherhood, up until recently in-fact, but as of now they seem to be going it alone.  Looks like a couple of them have been through their fair share of scraps, HybridOnslaught coming out the winner more often than not and the other way around for Proteus Maximus.  Their founder, Odvian, has been off the radar for nearly a year, so I don’t know much about him.  Interestingly enough, he’s not the CEO; instead a woman who calls herself Yellow Pearl is, and she’s nowhere to be found except some rumors about black market trading.

Olleyk, one of our security cheifs, organized a fleet to meet the agressors head on as soon as the CONCORD waiting period was over, so as soon as I was able I mobilized in my Blackbird to see how I could help out.  The Drake would have to say in the hanger, for now, because it was just too valuable to risk with the gang’s current cash situation.

On the way to join the fleet in Amarr space, I received another communication stating that the Brotherhood of Wolves had declared war on us as well, but that would be a problem for tommorow.

So after a bit of a trip I joined the fleet in Ashab on the gate to Amarr, the home system of the Outcasts.  All was quite other than the usuall commerical traffic coming and going.  We waited around for a while but there was no other activity, so the fleet started to move in tactical jumps back towards Raussinen.  While we were on the way, one of the corp members that was still back in local space called out a spotting on one of our targets one jump out from Raussinen.  Once we all got into Uemisaisen, we sent tacklers through then the rest of the fleet followed when they started to get locks.  Unfortunately he sliped away, and we followed his tragectory.   Again, he jumped from this gate before we could pounce, so we split the fleet to every gate in the system.  He was, however, nowhere to be found.  The fleet formed back up, but I had some maintenance issues so I docked and ended up out of the action for a couple hours.

 Looks like while I was out of the action the fleet took down a Drake and a Rupture and lost a Merlin.  All in all that’s a good engagement.  When I got back into the action there was a shortage of frigates for the fleet so I undocked my Rifter (the Irresponsible) and joined the fleet on the other side of the gate to Rauss.  There was a target in Rauss that we had trapped.

Hargatay tried to track the target down but was unable to as he kept moving around.  Meanwhile, another contact was made in Sotrentaira who eventually warped in close to the fleet.  He was at a distance of 50km, too far for me to close with safely, so I jumped back through to the Rauss side of the gate.  Within moments the other target, HybridOnslaught, warped to the gate.  I called out a warning to the fleet that he was jumping through and quickly followed him. 

I jumped in less than ten kilometers from the target, who was flying an Ishtar, and quickly hit the afterburner and gave the order to close with his ship.  The webifier, scrambler, and NOS all were activated and the target was efectively pinned down as I began a tight orbit and engaged the autocannons.  He was hitting me, however, with some Scourge Missiles, and once my sheilds failed my armor began to peel off like the skin on an onion.  I was down to no armor and aligned to a nearby planet.  My crew managed to get the warp drive activated by the time we hit 30% structure and I shouted into the comms, “Target not scrambled, pulling out, we’re on fire.”  I was able to dock at a nearby station for repairs, feeling shamed that I couldn’t keep the target locked down and that he might get away, but it seemed that the efforts of the Irresponsible kept the target tied down just long enough because the Ishtar exploded before it could warp.  The other ship, a Rook, warped out just after the Ishtar popped.

There were some scattered reports of some other minor losses, among them a mining vessel commanded by a very brave, or very confused, soul who is now no longer with the company.

Found an exploratin fit online that was tuned for losec (cloak, plate, etc).  I decided to tone it down a little for highsec and add another tractor and some cargo space.  Hopefully i’ll find enough stuff to fill the cargo.  If not I’ll swap it for tank.   If anybody has insight on this in relation to highsec exploration (will I need cargo space?) please feel free to comment!

Marko was probably one of the most dissapointed. Back to mercenary work for him now. He just got into his first battlecruiser a few hours after the war officially ended, so that was a bit of a blow. He did manage to get some quick work raiding a Gallente camp, however, so all was not lost. He tells me to thank Gillen for helping him design the loadout on the Drake, as well.

I got the Golden II out for a short trip mining yesterday, but didn’t stay out long, mostly because my access to the Corp hanger was needed to secure some modules for Marko’s Drake. He’s tapped out on funds so he’s going to send some extra equipment over for me to put into the hanger and I dumped a small load of ore and minerals in as well.

I’m hoping to get back on the stick today and get some serious mining done, especially since I bankrolled the Drake. Davios is going to lay out the containers I had to pull in for the war so that next time they’ll still have CONCORD protection since he is not a member of the Corp. If he gets that set up and brings his Retriever, the PlanB, out with me and the Golden II, we should be able to get about half the cost of the Drake and equipment back in a couple hours. Of course, this means Marko has to hand his pilot’s license back over to Davios, and I know Markos is itching to get some more time in that bartlecruiser. As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men…

It’s actually been a little bit of a vacation for Davios and I all-around. Marko has, of course, been busy with the war and his training took priority over Davios. I think that they agreed that Davios will get the skill pass back for about ten hours this week to finish qualifying for the Badger MkII, then he will defer that to Markos for the foreseeable future. As far as my pass goes, Hargatay is pretty much up to speed on scanning and is working on some basic engineering and navigation. He has yet to qualify for the Analyzer or Codebreaker modules, but that’s a pretty long road, so I think I’m going to ask him to hold off until I finish training for the Hulk, which should be about six weeks from now. After that he can finish up those goals, and he mentioned something about a Myrmidon. I guess that’s some Gallente drone-lover boat he wants to do his exploration in. Whatever he wants. Once I’m in a Hulk he can get that set up, I won’t be in a hurry to do anything else. It better not be too long, though, because I want to refine my refining skills (pun intended).

Well, back to the old grindstone, anyways. The ISK must flow!

War journal of Marko Greggos

 The Protei Incident

 Day 2 (9/14, YC 111)

Received this communication from CONCORD at 2252 hours today:

2009.09.14 22:52
The war between The Protei and Hactenus Project is coming to an end. The Protei has retracted the war against Hactenus Project. The war will be declared as being over after approximately 24 hours.

It appears that they did not have the stomach for the kind of fight we were bringing.  They obviously expected a bunch of defenseless industrialists to go sucking at the teat of mamma station and poke their heads out at the call of ISK in the asteroid belts, only to be summarily executed.  Instead, they found themselves up against a well organized, well prepared, disciplined fighting force.

Tears fall like raindrops

Darkness envelopes us all

I am home at last

The Protei Incident

Day 1 (9/13, YC 111)

Today saw the war declaration from The Protei take effect at 1700 hours.  At approximately 1745 hours I logged into the corporate comms channel and asked quite bluntly, “How are we doing?”  Ryssa replied that several of the enemy were in Uemiasaisen, but that they seemed unwilling to jump through the bottleneck into Sotrentaira due to the fact that we had a gate camp on our side of the gate.  Excellent, I thought, even if we weren’t trading blows yet we had a strategic upper hand.   I asked the fleet commander, Olleyk, whether he wanted Ewar or Tackle, and he replied “Tackle, but bring whatever you want.”  Tackle it was, by two votes, so I hopped in a Rifter and un-docked.

So I joined the camp on the gate.  It was quite the turnout.  The fleet, at it’s top end, was twenty two ships.  Most of the time we were at twenty one.  We had a few scouts in Uemiasaisen and a couple members patrolling or whatnot, but the actual camp was sixteen ships.  There wasn’t much going on as the two targets were docked up in a Home Guard station.  We got a message that there was a target a few jumps out and we were about to go when that target, Schmalgauzen, jumped into Uemiasaisen.  He docked up with the others and we continued to sit tight for a while.  A couple of times shuttles came through the gate and sat amongst us, one time going through scanning everybody.  We made sure our auto-targeting systems were disabled as this non-target was probably in the employ of the enemy and trying to illicit a non-legal response to the targeting from our drones, which would have resulted in CONCORD intervention.  The attempt was pretty much futile and I did some close and fast fly-by’s in the Rifter to show what I thought of the dishonorable tactic.

About an hour had gone by since I first un-docked and joined the fleet, and nothing else of note had happened.  Suddenly Ryssa, one of our scouts, reported that Schmalgauzen, in a Maller cruiser, had un-docked and warped to a belt.  Apparently he had gotten bored, and stupid, and decided to do some pirate hunting.

Ryssa was given the go-ahead to try to tackle Schmalgauzen and we all moved close to the gate.  Soon the comm channel lit up with the go-code and we all jumped through the gate and warped to Ryssa’s location.  After that it was pretty much fast and furious.  I hit the afterburner and tore a hot path through space towards the Maller, locking him on the approach.  Once I was within two kilometers I moved into a 1.5km orbit – still in afterburn – and hit the webifier, warp disrupter, and the trio of 200mm autocannons.  After my cap was nice and drained I hit the Nos and started sucking juice from his capacitor, keeping my energy situation stable with everything on the ship running. 

Meanwhile, he was tackled down by a few others, including Ryssa’s interceptor, and the barrage of missiles started pouring in.  We had several Blackbirds in the fleet as well, so the Maller’s targeting systems were completely jammed and he was pretty much waiting to die at this point.

There was some sort of backlash as the ship blew, probably a result of so many E-war devices in the same place or just the sheer destructive force thrown at the ship, but we were unable to target his pod when it ejected from the exploding cruiser.  This was allright, though, because we had definitely made our point:  if you play with Barr Heavy Industries, get ready to play rough!

The official report of this incident can be found here. 

 Thanks to other members of BHI for photography of the day’s events used in this report.

Amendment:  Hum showed up in Rauss.  He must have been spoiling for a fight and got careless, which suits his MO perfectly.  We watched him come and go and loiter for a bit, and unfortunately he got a kill on an interceptor that got to close to the station and got hung up in the stations defense field.  After some hounding and tracking with scouts, he started to move at sub-warp speeds away from the station.  Once he was about 150km out, we managed to get him tackled in his Maller and took him out.  This time I took out a Blackbird and kept his targeting jammed while throwing some heavy missiles at him.  Congrats to Ryssa again for a successful grab on this one.  Official report can be found here.