Demigodess with a Conscience

My last peak into W-space left me thirsty for more. There was something alluring about W-space. So virgin, unknown and unexplored. So empty, yet could be filled with people and you just wouldn’t know. The lack of subspace beacons to announce your precence made W-space something of an adventure in itself, and I was itching to go back.

So, seeing as I had a lot of CPU to spare on the Phantasm, I tossed on a Core Launcher and went looking for wormholes. I soon found that probing one down was much harder with the Phantasm than with my Anathema. I had to actually make an effort in order to find these elusive little buggers. Not that I was overly surprised. The Anathema was bristling with electronics and had state of the art sensory systems, while the Phantasm was more focused on strong shields (that tend to wreak havoc with sensitive sensor equipment) and heavy laser banks.

I eventually came across 6 different wormholes in just under an hour, and after having looked them all through I found nothing of interest except for the one in Misaba. It had another wormhole inside, leading even further into unknown realms of space. I was tempted, I have to admit. Most wormholes I’d found in W-space inevitably lead back to K-space. Probable due to the Seyllin incident, which in some way seem to have linked W-space and K-space together in mysterious ways.

I chose to toss carefullness out the window and willed the Sansha monstrosity towards the pulsating wormhole and passed through the event horizon. In a very strange sensation very different from gate travel, everything sort of remained the same. My sensory systems registered that unknown radiation in the new system caused some rather strange things to happen to my ship, but other than that it was no different than travelling from one point in a system to another. No nasuea, no disorientation, no sensor recalibration. Just…nothing. Yet my camera drones were blinded by a massive pulsar, and a new nebula covered the “sky”. I was clearly not in the same system anymore.

I quickly got to work and launched my probes, while watching my directional scanner. Several Sleeper complexes showed up on my first scan. Not hidden by any means at all, but I also had a lot of faint signatures that I turned my attention to. It was, to say the least, very frustrating working with a vessel not designed for this kind of work. The Phantasm’s readings were blurry, inaccurate and apparently had a lot of deviation which made my job a lot harder than I was used to.

In the end though I managed to find a massive asteroid belt, dotted with asteroids the size of small moons. It was remarkable to witness, but I didn’t have time to stay for too long before the Sleepers that were roaming the belt decided I’d overstayed my welcome.

Another signature was yet more elusive and I decided to focus on that one. I was rewarded with a slight “pling” sound when the sensors, finally, identified the signature as a possible wormhole and an approximate location. I warped to the location only to find the wormhole convulsing at a rather unsettling pace. It definately didn’t look safe, and indeed, some more close range scans verified that the wormhole was in the final stages of it’s lifetime and would collapse within the hour. I wasn’t too keen on getting stuck somewhere in unknown space, and therefor set out to find another wormhole.

I have now been through five wormholes deeper into W-space and back again, and in spite of not finding anything but the eerie Sleepers to shoot, I’m quite satisfied. This is something I’m sure to be doing more often.

I’ve been having the worst of times, and best of times lately. I’ve had lots of stuff to do and never had a dull moment in the last few days, which is actually excellent.

It all started with me cloning to a nearly blank clone without implants for an upcoming roam into 0.0. I may be nuts, but I’m not crazy. There’s no way I’d take a frigate on a deep 0.0 roam with the risk of getting caught in a bubble and losing 2b when my POD pops. The inconvenience of dying is, in this case, far less than the liquid ISK lost.

In a turn of spontaneousness, we had a little talk in the corporation chat on how we should go roaming soon. It all really started with me talking about a roam that me and Tydcrims did a few days ago, just after I had blown up the Drake in W-space. Him and I jumped in to our stealth bombers in order to harass the two Caldari Navy Ravens that showed up to avenge their dead comrade. When we finally managed to get together and head into the wormhole, they were already long gone, but the idea sparked something in the corporation.

So what happened was that we got a small gang together and headed for Providence to find something to pewpew.

• Jade Blossoms – Incursus
• Tydcrims – Purifier
• Me – Purifier
• 4 LOM – Manticore
• McGowd – Malediction

With this little gang of frigates, we roamed all the way down to Paxton space, went up via 2-TEG and came back the “back route” up to R3-K7K without seeing many reds. We caught glimpse of a red that we didn’t know was a red that jumped into R3 just as we sat on the gate. He was in a Pilgrim, and we could’ve easily tackled him if we’d only known he was a red.

Slightly angered over this, we opened fire on a red Hurricane that had been chased from Mamet down to R3. He was shield tanked and with two bombers launching Mjolnirs at him, and several painters on him, his shields were down in no time, and his armor flew off in large chunks. Unfortunately, we had no webbers along with us, so it ended up with him reaching the gate just in time, and jumping back into Misaba. He didn’t make it out alive though, since half of the lower Domain citizens were sitting on that gate, but we felt slightly robbed of proof of our work. The other guys simply reaped the goodies of our hard work.

Nevertheless, we knew in our hearts that we had won. With no killmail to show for it, who cares?

So I had been scanning down some wormholes in Hoshoun and figured I’d take a look. The first one I enter, Class 3 system, has a Drake and a Buzzard in it. Kinky. I bookmark the site, the wormhole and go take a look. They are apparently cleaning the field. Nice opportunity.

I head home, switch to the Phantasm, go back and enter the site. The Drake is 35 Km away. Damnit! He’s totally going to get away. But no, he’s not. He doesn’t notice as I come screaming at 1200 m/s towards him. Point, web, lasers!

In about 10 seconds the Drake is reduced to rubble and I loot the field and leave, just as quickly as I got there. Just as I left, however, I noticed two juicy Raven class battleships on scan. Navy issue, no less. I quickly went to station and got out my trusty Armageddon and went right back.

Hey there! Right where I left you guys. This is where I learned that Devastator cruise missile volleys from two CNRs hurt a lot more than I thought. I had barely scratched the shields on one of the Ravens before I was in half structure screaming at my ship to EFFING WARP!!!

Limping home in an Armageddon venting atmosphere put a large dent in my pride. At least I got their failfit salvager Drake.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. What sick, perverted and heartless bastard would do such a devious and cowardly thing? Worst of all was probably that I knew her. Ms Vailakkel and I spent some time together in the School of Applied Knowledge, where she served for a temporary assignment. I remember her as a dutiful and extremely talented woman.

It hurt me badly to learn of her current fate. I had to see if I could get in touch with her family somehow…

Just 30 km away they were. A small gang of cruisers and an assault frigate; A Maller, two Thoraxes, a Vexor and an Enyo. They’d been flying around the entry area of Providence looking for easy kills and even found some. Apparently they heavily utilized ECM drones which allowed them to overwhelm the sensors of any target due to their numbers. One of my friends, who hides behind the amusing nickname of “Brittanic Lord”, apparently got caught by them and lost his Legion to them. A hefty loss.

I took it upon myself to locate those bastards and hopped into my trusty stealth bomber; the Dysnomia, a Purifier class Amarrian bomber. As a single pilot vessel when outfitted with a POD interface, I felt unusually alone when I was granted undocking clearance and set my course towards the Providence entry system: R3-K7K.

The pirates were last reported in a neighboring system X-R3, and I set course towards it. Just as my ship rematerialized on the other side and my sensor kicked back in I found them. They were sitting there right next to my friend’s frozen corpse. Apparently his pod didn’t make it out either. I shadowed them for several jumps, always reporting their position and heading in the intel channel, and just as I noticed they were heading back for empire space I caught word of a gatecamp building in R3. I quickly made way to get there before the pirates, a feat rather easy when you are flying a stealth vessel designed for covert ops duty.

As I released my gate cloak a Vexor had already been pointed while his friends turned and ran. I willed my targeting systems to lock his vessel and unleashed a volley of torpedoes towards the rocking Vexor. It didn’t take long before it exploded under our assault and someone caught his pod and made short work of it.

While the pirates surely made it out victorious ISK-wise, I couldn’t help but feel rather pleased with myself for exacting a small revenge.

Wow. Just wow. Yesterday I totally lost track of time playing Crysis Warhead (which, btw is quite a decent game and drop dead gorgeous!).  My girlfriend was stuck at her computer right beside me drawing a new avatar for one of her World of Warcraft friends.

Before the shitstorm: Yes, my girlfriend plays WoW. I did too about 3-4 years ago. We quit about the same time, but she recently picked it up again for about a month or so. It has its charm if you approach it in the right way. But personally, I can’t stand the thing anymore.

After having finished Warhead on Delta difficulty in the ridiculus time of…I dunno 5-6 hours, I yawned and looked at the time. It said 4:20 AM.

HOLYWTFOMG?! I haven’t lost track of time that badly since I was in high school. I nudged my girlfriend and suggested we’d go to bed and I got the “Mm, yes…in a minute, love. ” and I knew she was stuck in the creativity flow and wasn’t coming any time soon.

So I crashed into bed and got up eight hours later, with just an hour of mushing up and having breakfast before work. Beh…I’m totally off track here, and falling dead on my feet due to sleep deprivation…or…”wrong hour sleeping”.

As for Crysis…if you like action, have a good computer and like being an awesome uberagent, but only spending 5-6 hours on the game before its over: Get it! My only gripe with the game was that it was horribly short. Other than that it was awesome on all counts. Story, action, setting, graphics, audio, everything was top notch work.

Buried under a mountain of administrative datapads, messages and general bills, I was all but happy at the moment. In the past few months, there had been a growing feeling of stagnation within the corporation. In fact, ever since we all left Amarr Sisterhood of Galactic Sirens [ASGS] (which, by the way, is the most awesome corporation name ever, thank you) and merged with Solaris Operations [SOLAR], we’d been in a steady decline regarding member numbers and activity.

We’ve been through several CEOs, models of production and whatnot, but none have really managed to get a hold of the corp and bring it together. I’ll get to the reasons later. I’m not the one to blame any one person for things, unless it’s blatant misconduct, so I won’t be pointing fingers. Especially since this whole thing isn’t one individual’s fault. It’s a compound of things and a certain lack of doing something about it.

When we all joined Solaris Operations and left ASGS, we had a tight nit community of primarily industry based pilots. Most of us were hardened miners or producers and a few dabbled in invention. With Solaris being a combat based corporation, with only Soren Oboro himself doing some major industry, we got into some useless arguments with the combat pilots. We were the newcomers, but since we were, like Soren, industrials, our voices were heard more than the combat pilots. This resulted in a cleft between us and the combattants, and caused several of them to leave to form an own corporation, with which we’ve had a kind of “cold war” ever since then.

Here’s were the trouble began. With our most hardened industrials staying in ASGS and our combat pilots leaving us “carebears” behind, we were left with low numbers and low activity. Things were slowly going down the drain and we had more and more members being bored and finally leaving to find greener grass. Mind you, I’m not blaming them, for times were grim back then.

In an effort to spice things up, Bluedagger shouldered the CEO role and we moved out into Minmatar low security space. Mostly because we lost another 5-6 members to an empty promise of 0.0 space that were never fulfilled because our then diplomat majorly screwed up diplomatic relations. Well out in Weld, Molden Heath, we did quite a job in getting together and made decent ISK both mining and primarily running wormhole-ops. Our tech 3 production was on an upswing and things were looking good. We still lacked numbers and recruitment was non-existant, but at least we were producing.

Cue Rote Kapelle, a pirate alliance of mischievous pilots. For no apparent reason, [STUGH] (I have no idea how “Rote Kapelle” becomes “STUGH” but whatever) decided to move into Weld. They erected a large deathstar POS in system, jumped in several capitals and kept a minimum pilot amount of 10-15 in system every hour of the day. Our wormhole ops were busted, mining was a no go, they did frequent roams which led to several lost ships for us. The killing blow was when they managed to catch our two carriers and a jumpfreighter at our POS, outside the shield, and killed all three of them. With only 5-6 active pilots, it was clear we weren’t going to be able to put up much of a fight.

With this devastating blow to our economy and the grim reality staring us dead in the face, many more members either became inactive or simply chose to leave the corporation. A desicion was made to move back to our roots. A place where we were at least functioning properly and were growing.  In order to get rid of the stain of “outsiders” left on us by joining Solaris, we created a new corporation and incorporated both Solaris and The Confederate Navy (as the new corp was called) into an alliance of pilots, called Forever Unbound.

With King Klown taking the reins as CEO of [C.N.F] we moved back to Domain low security space, to once again live under the watchful eye of Curatores Veritatis Alliance [CVA]. In Domain, we started licking our wounds and looking to find a purpose. Our original purpose industry and mining long left behind us, with new goals popping up all the time, we needed a new one. This purpose became primarily combat, with industrials left in Solaris to fend for themselves. But with no pilots mining, our mineral flow was close to zero, and industrials had nothing to build with except for what they bought with their own ISK.

Our wormhole ops steadily declined as well and many of our pilots chose to stay in high security for research and/or mission running. Scattered, divided and wounded we soon realized that this was going nowhere. After months of low activity and people dropping out  we faced facts that we needed to do something serious to survive.

Our corp needed a premier purpose. Something to work together for. It was suggested that I’d takeover as CEO, seeing as I was one of the most experienced pilots we had but I said I had no wish to lead. Instantly getting faceslapped with “the best leaders are the ones not seeking power, but they who have it thrust upon them”, I reluctantly agreed and starting thinking through what really went wrong.

I came to the conclusion that the original fault was joining with Solaris. It started a separation and division amongst our pilots that have been going on ever since then. This is no fault of Solaris per se, mind you. It was simply a fact of people wanting to do different things, and joining Solaris didn’t really cater to that.

I realized that in order to get through this and survive we needed to get back together. A corporation cannot survive when 90% of its members spend all time in high security space while a few fanatics stick around our home station. So, as I was officially appointed CEO just this morning, I now have a lot of work ahead of me.

So there I was: Half asleep in the Zoar & Sons station in Mamet, droning through market orders and listening to the chatter on the intel channels. Suddenly, I hear a lot of requests for a fleet in Ziriert, and I’m thinking…you really need that many people to hunt 10-15 reds? Because just a few minutes earlier a pirate gang consisted mostly of HACs and battlecruisers flew straight through Mamet towards Ziriert. Then Isaac told me some moron had ran a mission in a CARRIER and got himself tackled by a red fleet that was growing fast.

Mkay. That’s dumb. And I’m not referring to the tackled part.

Anyways, we jumped into combat ships and headed over to save the hapless pilot screaming for help, but apparently, they did not want our help, since we had to wait over 10 minutes to get a fleet invite, and when we finally got there, it was a fight of rather large proportions. There were around 20-40 reds (I didn’t count them to be honest) and god knows how many on our side. We had at least 4 carriers though, including the tackled one. The reds stayed away from our optimals and held at about 100-120 km away, but we managed to get a few of them that wandered into range.

Personally, I got shots off at an Ares, a Drake and a Huginn before they died, but pretty much everything else ran off when we managed to get a warp-in spot on their fleet. All in all, it was a pretty nice fight and we did manage to save the carrier, which is always a plus.