"...if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Karen spilled out of the clone bay in 1DQ, vomited and lay shivering on the floor. She was crying. She had been travelling to Cabeki to look at the location as a source of isogen for corporation projects. The plan was to try and find a good space to operate from that was not too far from 1DQ but afforded some freedom for high sec partners to join the team. A corporate associate had friends there. Hence the scouting mission. She had wanted Uldizo to do the run but he was setting up a cyno for Ekloke’s jump freighter. Abby was working on some science projects. And Mori was on a strategic op with Mist.
She had been careful, making sure she did not warp directly to gates. Taking time to scan them wherever possible in advance. Nothing could have prepared her for a cloaked Rokh sitting on the Goudiyah gate out of Baratar. The usual cheap ganker, to be expected really. For many this kind of death is pretty routine in New Eden. Gankers like to sit in the hope of catching
For Karen pod death was never a good experience. Something was wrong, very wrong. Every time she had been pod killed something happened to her in the spaces in between.
It always started with the darkness. Floating in darkness, suspended in the black, caught between New Eden and somewhere else. The first time she died it just seemed unusual that there was a delay before she woke. The next time she felt something grasping at her ankles and legs. A hand or tentacles slowly reaching around her ankles. The next time it was a full blown attack, she felt cloying slime, a tightening grip around her body, holding her from rebirth. Each time she died it took longer for her to wake up.
This time was worse, much worse. She saw herself surrounded by crushing tentacles, grasping, holding her, and tearing her limb from limb. A voice deep and dark inside her head.
Then, a sudden whiteness fading, she woke up rolled onto her side on the floor. A new clone. It was some time before she moved from her cold, shuddering poise. The memory. The horror, the claustrophobic, cloying, grasping crush was still there. It was, of course, technically impossible to have a ‘memory’ from ‘in between’ and yet there it was. The tightness gripping her, tearing her limb from limb.
Worse still, she had to go back.
Her new clone felt strange, alien, almost roomy. Worse, in fact, it was voluptuous, long wavy hair, almost Gallente.
“Ugh, for the love of …..what is wrong?” Karen got up slowly, looked around, caught sight of a strange looking woman in the mirror and awkwardly went to the shower. The clone remould would have to wait. She had promised to scout the pocket for the corporation. A few hours later she was back down the pipe towards the system beyond Baratar making note of stations and the location of allies. She compiled her report for Dan and returned home.
She returned to 1DQ and started to research the next manifest for the corporation builds but couldn’t focus. The flashbacks kept coming, much, much worse this time. She turned to her neocom and started to browse Pod Technology. Something was very wrong.
The history of the capsule and it’s link to the clone proved interesting reading, there was history of things going wrong. Sure this was a long time ago and reports of problems with the current technology were few and far between. But there are risks associated with cloning and it certainly is possible that something is malfunctioning with her tech. If something can go wrong with technology, as it did in the Peralles incident then perhaps clone technology was equally problematic? Karen took some more time browsing the information on pod technology and decided that she needed to go speak to someone at the Ishukone Corporation. This would mean a trip to high sec.
This is what he had been waiting for, a large scale battle with capital ships, a structure to kill and some glory fighting in New Eden. He had chosen the Onathura for this fight. A sleek Oneiros with a Serpentis coating, it had already served him and his crew well in the early skirmishes for this deployment.
Mori was in the Onathura tingling with anticipation. This was his first major deployment since the FI.RE coalition days where they fought a mostly out numbered, rear-guard guerrilla campaign against his new Allies the Goonswarm Federation. It’s funny how allegiances shift in New Eden. Cosmos felt the betrayal of FI.RE by Pandemic Horde particularily hard. It was time for some payback.
The Onathura.
Karen’s passivism was rubbing off on him. He was not so keen to be shooting things and had started to appreciate the kind of work that support does in a fleet. He enjoyed keeping people alive for longer, making a fleet hard to break, driving the opposition to despair. Logistics had grown on him over the past few months. Especially in the Onathura, there was no need for cap chains, no need for any extra support. She had borne the brunt of more than a few scrapes so far. The fit was a standard GSF fit with no frills.
The previous days had seen Goons pushing to break the cyno jammer in x47, but they had failed to do this. Mori had felt the tension behind this moment, from the day Pandemic Horde had backstabbed FI.RE, finally he had a chance to fight back. The extraction from Immensea had been weary and challenging. Taking weeks along with Ekloke, Karen and Abby. Harassed all the way by Pandemic Horde and neutrals, they had lost a lot of stuff, but they had made it, finally arriving in 1DQ exhausted and anxious. Since then, life had settled down. Goonswarm had turned out to be a completely different place to live. Everyone was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and warmth of their welcome. Karen and Abby immediately threw themselves into corporation projects, building Mackinaws and Occators for Ekloke to move and sell. Ekloke started trading in and out of 1DQ. Mori had been running in the Strategic fleets, getting used to a different pace, getting to know new friends.
He snapped out of his reverie, would Goonswarm attack a Keepstar with no ability to Cyno in Cap support? If they did, surely they would be driven off? Whatever the case, he was going to be there. The ping went out for the Tempest Fleet Issue doctrine.
“Yes!” Mori rushed to find the fleet and applied to join. The time had come. The Onathura was primed and ready.
Fleet chat was full of excitement, we were really going to do this. It took some time before everything was ready and the command to undock arrived. The Journey to X47 was already planned by the Fleet Commanders and so went very smoothly. The closer they got to the destination the more blue fleets along with a few red scouts could be seen in local and in the immediate vicinity.
“Check your stations, everyone is coming to this party.” Mori issued the command.
The crew also anticipating that something big was about to happen, stood in awe as the fleets around them grew and grew. Mori checked the Onathura’s systems, rechecked them, twitching in his pod with nervous anticipation. One system out and other fleets were already here. Like giant shoals of fish, spinning and weaving through space.
“Check yours systems folks. Emergency evac drill in ten.” Mori had been with this crew for a few years now, he did not like losing people, especially since this team were good at what they did. His consciousness extended out through the ship, listening, looking for signs of weakness. Nothing. They were steady, ripe with anticipation.
“System check complete.” The ship captain responded from the bridge.” Mori smiled inside. Efficient as always.
Mori triggered the emergency signal. The crew immediately left their positions, got to their escape pods and hit buttons to open their respective doors. All but one.
“Midshipman Vanir Alrekmur report to your escape pod.” Mori scanned the ship for the Minmatar citizen locating him moving quickly along a corridor well away from his escape pod.
“Apologies Captain, I was looking for my……..”
“It doesn’t matter what it was because you would be dead now.” Mori’s voice was tense.
Outside the Onathura space seethed with Tempest Fleet issues, Oneiros’, an assortment of ‘boosting’ ships and various small tackle. Boosting ships were known as such because they had the ability to release ‘nanites’ that could spread throughout the fleet enhancing various attributes of those fleet members in range, for example, enhancing reload speeds or improving armour resists. Fleet commanders would frequently give commands to have boosts “up” or “down”. “Up” usually meant a fight was anticipated, “down” meant either the fleet was about to jump into a fight, or the fight was over and the fleet was running for cover. Boosts were known because they would set a timer for the ship and pilot such that gates would lock them out because such an act was considered an act of aggression. Right now the boosts were down.
“Midshipman Alrekmur if we survive the fight I want you to report to the bridge.” Captain Veroga Gikar spoke through comms to Vanir.
“I am sorry Captain, it won’t happen again.” Alrekmur was at his station looking embarrassed.
“Do you mind me asking what exactly it was you had lost?” Gikar was looking at Alrekmur through a digital image. The slight figure motioned to a bag at his feet.
“I had forgotten to bring by toolkit Sir. I am sorry Sir. I have it now.”
“Alrekmur you do realise you are responsible for keeping the remote armour repair systems working?” The Onathura had three Large Solace Scoped repairers and a Medium Ancillary Remote Armor repairer. These systems were mission critical for the coming fight and if they went down many lives could be lost. This did not inspire much confidence in Gikar.
“Sir, yes. I know I am sorry Sir.” He remained motionless at his station. Truth be told, if a black hole could have opened up for him he would have been delighted. The Seibestor hated being the focus of attention. But he was usually so competent.
Gikar switched to private comms. “Are you OK Vanir?”
“Maam yes. Maam. I am just nervous.”
“We all are Vanir, but we have to be on point. Lives depend on us.” The Captain knew it was important to support her crew at times like this. There was little to be gained from further humiliation.
“I know Maam. I won’t let you or Mori down. I promise.” Vanir started to run a systems check on the remote armour repairers she could see from the data passing through her console that he was working very very fast indeed. With a loud thud and swoosh the ship jumped into X47. The sight on the other side had the whole of the Onathura awestruck.
Fleet clusters sitting cross bubbles in X47. Source: Courtesy of CCP Aperture.
The sight in X47 was dumbfounding to someone who had never seen anything on this scale before. Hundreds of warp disruption bubbles clouded the sky. Fleets appeared as small clusters of ships in the distance, there was at least twenty of them. Boosts could be seen spiralling out and around each fleet as they moved through space. At times the numbers of capsule pilots and their crew in and around the keep star numbered upwards on four to five thousand. All being moved around on a very large chess board.
On entering the system the fleet warped to a ‘perch’ sitting high above the gate where everyone waited for further instructions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is going to be our job to keep pressure on that Keep star, that means we are in the Vanguard. We will lose many of you but your job is to return to DO6, reship and come back. We must not fail.” Apple Pear’s voice was calm.
Apple Pear
Mori felt a strong burst of adrenalin as the command to align to the keep star appeared in fleet comms. In unison two hundred and fifty ships swung towards the keep star.
“This is it folks. Focus, we are hear to keep people alive.”
“Karen you don’t have to breathe you are in a pod.”
Karen was twisting and turning in her pod. The ships crew stood and watched helplessly as the ships instruments went crazy.
“She needs to catch herself before we are all killed.” The flying officer remarked as he watched the instrument panel.
“Karen you can do this.” Abby’s voice was calm and steady.
They were running the gauntlet into 1DQ from Efa. This involved, as always a scout, in this instance Abby running ahead in a shuttle. It required timing. The shuttle jumps through each system staying within one jump of the Deep Space Transport. Abby had done this many times for Ekloke whose precision and timing was flawless. But unfortunately Ekloke was not around and they needed to move the low security space ore to the production line in PS-94K. Karen was fine in a blockade runner, the risk was minimal, but ever since the ‘incident’ in Alakgur with Gay Pride Booooom she had not been right. She had only lost four pods in her career but each time she had come back she was more reserved, more introverted.
“Just take your time. It is easy when you do it, hit align, then cloak and microwarpdrive then as the microwarpdrive cycle ends uncloak and hit warp. Align, Cloak, MWD, Cloak and Warp.” Abby was on the out gate in Efa waiting to jump into 3-FKCZ. Anyone could come through the gate at any moment, the pause stretched out into the void. Then a crackle.
“I am warping, I did it! I did it!”
Abby jumped through to 3-FKCZ and checked local. “It’s clear, I am warping to the out gate jump in when you arrive.” She hit warp, the shuttle aligned and was gone. Meanwhile Karen and her crew where heading to the 3-FKCZ gate in Efa. Karen was shaking, the adrenalin rush making her extremely agitated. She watched the distance close as the Gommorra shuddered its way through warp. It landed on the gate she took a deep breath as it jumped into Null. Abby meanwhile jumped through the Ansiplex into 8BO-IH. Local was clear.
“OK Karen come to me. Align, Cloak, MWD, Cloak and Warp.”
Silence.
More silence.
“Kar….”
“On my way.”
Abby breathed a sigh of relief and hit warp. Time to get rolling. The jumps started to take on a rhythm of their own, Abby running ahead carefully checking local and Karen getting into warp, starting to ease into the Journey. It was when Abby hit YQX that everything changed.
“I don’t, I don’t Abby what am I going to do? I can’t do this I caaaa…..”
“Shut up Karen and listen. Look around you. Do you see the outgate?”
“Yes.” Karen responded quietly.
“OK there is a station nearby isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Dock up. I will keep eyes on these guys. You get safe.”
Adam Yule > MKD-O8 PsyBlade Mailly Gaterau > 1M4-FK G Munkee Mailly Gaterau > Stiletto Deresh Dovid Elkhavar > L-6BE1 PsyBlade Abby Talia > YQX-7U CN hanxs M2018M retribution flycatcher and interdiction probe Mailly Gaterau > 1M4-FK clr Deresh Dovid Elkhavar > L-6BE1 G Munkee PsyBlade stiletto loki Zeri Hamu > Anyone know the status of Ashmarir from Arzanni? Deresh Dovid Elkhavar > L-6BE1 clr Adam Yule > MKD-O8 G Munkee PsyBlade Kooter Farmer > G Munkee GOP-GE Eddie Achasse > GOP-GE G Munkee stargank > Martin Conrad K7D-II Abby Talia > YQX-7U CN hanxs M2018M Retri, Flycatcher Olakin Rethman > Martin Conrad normally flys a kiki Abby Talia > YQX-7U CN hanxs M2018M looks like they moved to a gate – be careful Abby Talia > YQX-7U clr
“Okay Karen, Undock and get into YQX before these asshats come back.”
Silence. Abby warped to 8-YNBE. “Karen…….”
“I am in warp, fuuuck Abby how could I have forgotten the nullifier? I am so sorrrry.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t.
“I am approaching the gate.”
“YQX is clear jump in.” Abby jumped through into 8-Y. It was clear.
“Karen you are good to go.” Come through.
They completed the next five jumps to PS-9 and delivered the isogen, nocxium, tritanium, pyerite and cadmium for the next corporation project. After a short break Abby persuaded Karen to take the three jumps to 1DQ to get that nullifier. Once it was fitted they flew back to Efa in a very uneventful journey. Karen’s confidence had improved to the point where not even a neutral in local stopped her warping to the station. The plan was to resume mining once more to secure the remaining Isogen and nocxium. But Mr Gillis wasn’t moving.
Clearly a scout. Never left the starter corporations for pod pilots. Karen looked up zkill to see what, if anything he had been involved. What she saw worried her.
Even more worrying was that his MO was big kills against Brave Collective. Brave had recently evacuated the north after years of pressure from PANFAM the biggest coalition in the game. PANFAM had wanted more space to rent, or so it seemed. Whatever the case there would be no mining this evening. Karen, Abby, and little Uldizo would be hanging out here for the time being, just to keep an eye on Mr Gillis.
It was several hours before local expanded. Many of these characters with red tickers. Einherjar Khamsi Eutectic Reaction Floki Khamsi Handsome Jacob John Vaille katalysator Tadaruwa Miko Li Obi-Twan Kenobi Peter Gillis Siliun Vaille Twan to Undercovernuke
All working for various corporations in Solyaris Chtonium hunting the simple minded with bling to take.
Karen had no idea where the Netherlands was nor had she heard of the ‘Dutch Legions’ before, they looked dangerous enough. Certainly capable of parting a pod pilot from their expensive modules. She showed Abby her findings, boarded her DST and Undocked. The plan was to sit on the undock and see if she could catch a DSCAN of the ships in local. Before long she was rewarded with this:
She pinged this to Abby who opened up the Querious intel channel.
Abby Talia > Efa https://dscan.info/v/fd9aac47870c Einherjar Khamsi Floki Khamsi Handsome Jacob John Vaille ++ Valkhir > Badivefi Twan II Neechi HollanderDanny Hans-Gustav Mayerling > K-YI1L Keraka <- Heron
Adirim > A-ELE2 +7 Lucuis Castus > Atraxy KEJY-U* Lucuis Castus > Hidden Rorshach KEJY-U* Yalla-Habibi > Atraxy , Hidden Rorshach (Gnosis) – KEJY-U Yalla-Habibi > srry, not gnosis, Drake Navy Yalla-Habibi > KEJY-U ESS linked Ray Stelar > Efa that fleet is blops probably Abby Talia > yeah be warned Yalla-Habibi > Atraxy bifrost Karen Sokarad > Efa Arthe Babaganoush III Einherjar Khamsi Floki Khamsi Handsome Jacob John Vaille +6 Valkhir > Badivefi Twan II Neechi HollanderDanny two more blobs Karen Sokarad > +2 more in Bav Karen Sokarad > Yeah Valkhir > Peter Gillis was their dropper have not seen him yet though Eutectic Reaction > Peter Gillis is in Efa Eutectic Reaction > will likely be a buzzard^ Karen Sokarad > Peter Gillis yes spotted him earlier he is still in Efa Abby Talia > Efa https://dscan.info/v/fd9aac47870c Blops fleet still here Blavish > 14 neuts in Efa , droppers with cyno Peter Gillis Alexandru Groner > H-4R6Z Peter Gillis Eutectic Reaction > Peter Gillis left efa Eutectic Reaction > Efa clear Jackson Tokila > 3-FKCZ clr Karen Sokarad > Peter Gillis on zkill : https://zkillboard.com/character/2120923742/ Kremner > Yea they dropped me 😦 Karen Sokarad > Efa clr Lady Siftt > H-4R6Z +20 blops/T3C Lady Siftt > Obi-Twan Kenobi Saints Sasen > YF-6L1 ecarus
There was not much more they could do. Uldizo was keen to go out again but they just could not persuade Karen to leave the station. She clone jumped out to join the Corp operation that evening. Efa was quiet once more. Later Abby was browsing Peter Gillis zkillboard feed and realised that they had already had their kill:
Karen and Abby were on a bit of downtime between Corporation builds . They had just heard word from Ekloke that the final Mackinaw had sold in 1DQ for a whopping 400million. That was grounds for a celebration! Later they would go to 1DQ to have a good night out.
For now the plans were already in motion for the next Corporation Project.
“More Macks!”
Just to finish were a few more Occators for the second build. They might also start a few personal projects on the side too. There was a few components short much to Karen’s exaporation. It always happened. You need a few chiral structures here and a few loads of enriched uranium there. But this time the build had been especially frustrating, just running out of items that needed a frantic call to Ekloke to fetch stuff from 1DQ. Not a lot, but enough to be frustrated. But the build was on its final legs when they got the good news from Ekloke.
Abby had been working on invention and managed to secure several Nighthawk BPC’s two were sold to corp mates and the rest held in case the corp wanted to go for the build. In the meantime they decided to pop out and grab some ice in 39P.
They brought two Endurances, the fit they had used down in low sec near Eldjaerin to get hold of heavy water. Eldjaerin seemed like a world away now. That was even before the FI.RE days. They had been half way across New Eden and back since then. Karen was happy settling in, working on the Dread builds had been a lot of fun, especially when she saw Mori’s face when he saw the contract. He had been training to fly the thing for months now.
The Endurance was perfect for some casual mining. It was a low cost easy to fly option. Quite hard to catch and whilst it did not maximise income it was relaxing to fly because it was cheap and easy to get away. They had both escaped several attempts to catch them in Tabbetzur and had managed to keep the fleets fuelled with heavy water. The cloaking device meant they could both warp to a safe spot and go to sleep if necessary. They could also scan down gas clouds, refit and go out whenever the opportunity arose.
If Karen was being honest there was very little point in the survey scanner, but then there wasn’t much else would fit on the hull anyway. She always brought extra Warrior II’s although Acolyte’s would be better in Delve.
They were out on the belt, casually mining with the local Brave Collective members. It has been quiet. A few incidents with Blood Raider locals. Local was busy. So much so that Karen had switched her local to small icons. Karen would have been very nervous normally but not today. This was just a bit of casual mining. It was a few hours in when a neutral appeared.
One of them edgy types that likes to sound all threatening. Karen warped her and Abby to a structure, pinging Local as well as the security channel. The ships eased into warp easily and nestled into tether on the nearby Fortizar. From their location they could watch local.
It wasn’t long until he left and the expedition could get started again. They would be leaving soon with enough harvested for the next builds. Time to find some ore and get back to mining. Sometimes it makes sense to just take what you need, let others get stressed about having it all!
The Ashimmu Manifest was complete and in the hangar the next stage of the build was to start the intermediate composite reactions. Along with this there was a series of composite reactions to build. Most of this wouldn’t take very long and built didn’t look too complicated to her. The end result however was an interesting ship. A hybrid. The bonuses it had, depending on skills of course, were:
20% bonus to Stasis Webifier range
15% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer drain amount
100% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage
This would be a handy ship for ESS defence or on some of the home defence fleets.
She needed to get in place Carbon polymers, sulphuric acid, Oxy-organic solvents, carbon fibre, and thermosetting polymers. Most of this would only take a small part of the day. At the same time she could start pressurised oxidisers and the reinforced carbon fibre reactions. Again these would not take very long. Then there were the hypnagogic neural link enhancers, the ultradian cycling neuro link stabilisers, the sense-heuristic neuro link enhancers and finally goal-orienting neuro link stabilisers.
All of these materials were needed before the advanced components could be built. She looked at the blueprints most of the materials were self-explanatory, I mean most of these ships utilised carbon polymers and various solvents along with carbon fibre. What she found particularly interesting is the biochem materials in particular. Take the Hypnagogic Neurolink Enhancers these bad boys typically used by the Imperial Navy enabled the capsuleer to more quickly link to the ship systems. This is the stuff that makes the capsuleer godlike.
Looking at these builds it was incredible just how much they enhanced the pod pilot. Extending awareness to ship components, speeding up reactions and enabling the extensive use of multimodal processing. No wonder pod pilots outperformed conventional ships controlled only by a crew and single mode commands from a captain. By the time commands had relayed from a ships systems to a captain and then commands relayed back it would delay ship systems responses by minutes. A pod pilot could initiate the most important subroutines much more quickly. As a consequence crew were only needed for very peripheral maintenance, often referred to as passive jobs, and jobs that were not central to a ships core sub routines.
To build just one unit, and most ships needed dozens. You needed helium fuel blocks, lime mykoserocin along with malachite mykoserocin which was quite hard to locate. This is why someone like Ekloke was so useful. He had a network of agents running throughout New Eden able to locate anything that was required for one of her builds. Nothing could be built without spending a lot of time sourcing materials and moving them around. You could source everything yourself but that would take far too long, besides other pod pilots had specialised in the gathering, sourcing and trade of everything you needed. The time spent looking for stuff you were not well equipped to source would be wasted time.
Karen entered her pod, travelled through the station’s inner core and down to her Deep Space Transport Capernaum. She instructed the AI systems in the station to load the reaction materials into the fleet hangar and undocked. The reactions station was a short hop across the Goonswarms Economic Zone (GEZ). The ship entered warp smoothly and arrived within minutes. The materials were unloaded and she accessed the reaction formulas from the corporation hangar and set everything to build. The longest was going to be less than a day so she remained in place while the reactions completed. Picked up the newly composed materials and flew them over to where she could assemble them into advanced components. These included:
U-C Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4
G-O Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4
Auto-Integrity Preservation Seal Blueprint x 19
Life Support Backup Unit Blueprint x 10
Two days later and the final build was delivered to Xanden in 1DQ. It was a thing of beauty.
Karen caught a shuttle across PS-94K to the Reactions structure to see what else was needed for the build. Looking at the manifest she pinged Abby that they needed:
10 Malachite Cytoserocin 10 Lime Cytoserocin 10 Vermillion Cytoserocin 24 Viral Agent 10 Azure Cytoserocin and some 24 Supertensile Plastics. She located a load of preservation seals in 1DQ as well and pinged them over to Abby on contract.
“Do you mind picking these up for me please?”
“Sure.” Pinged back the reply.
Abby got up from her desk, initiated Goonswarm security channels for Delve and initiated her SMT map overlay. The map sprung into life. All of the systems in delve were mapped out in two dimensions with links between each system where the gates were connected. She could see that there were plenty of alerts already for the time of day. She was heading to 1DQ which was only three jumps but still risky enough. This is why she was using her deep space transport ‘Othrunda’.
She went down to the bay where the ship is located and quickly checked that everything was okay. Once the checks were complete the ship slowly left the docking bay and exited the station. PS- 94K was fairly quiet in local. She aligned the ship to 39P checked the map alerts, everything seemed fine, nothing within 7 jumps. She hit warp.
The trick with a deep space transport, everyone knows, is to align and cloak simultaneously whilst waiting for the ship to gather speed from the Microwarpdrive pulse. In this instance Abby aligned to the anti-Plex that connected 39P to MO-G and hit warp just as the micro warp drive cycle was about to finish. The ship hit warp immediately just as it de-cloaked. Learning this had been a fundamental skill for living in 0.0 space. This and the combination of intel along with the SMT tool reduced the risk of running into gate camps significantly. It wasn’t completely safe but the risk was greatly reduced. Using this method Abby was able to get to 1DQ with relative ease.
Everything in 1DQ seemed to go well until it became obvious that the market was out of Vermillion Cytoserocin and Azure Cytoserocin. Such is the way. Abby settled in to wait at the station, she was going to be here for some time. She pinged Ekloke.
“1DQ out of Vermillion and Azure Cytoserocin, could be an opportunity for you?”
As she was heading towards a favourite restaurant in the keep star she received a ping back.
“Okay let me get in touch with my associate, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” Such is the way.
Builds always require time. The golden rule of building ships is never to be in a hurry. If you hurry you can lose billions of ISK. You will not do the necessary scouting, or you will undock at a hub with too much cargo and get ganked. Never rush! This was a relatively easy acquisition, in the past the team had to face all sorts of difficulties just to build a few mining barges in 0.0. They were yet to lose anything significant but it had not been easy. There were times when the blockade runners had almost been destroyed.
Ekloke looked at the market data coming out of high sec. The market in Domain was not much more expensive than The Forge for both those gasses he pinged ‘The Associate’.
“Pick us up Vermillion and Azure Cytoserocin from Domain if you could please. I will rendezvous at the usual location.” He sent through an order for some further items and got up from his desk. He needed to go on a short trip. He boarded ‘Orlana’ in the dock, did a quick systems check and undocked. He opened up then map and initiated his SMT overlay. Then he initialised each of the relevant security channels. He set the ship to align to the out gate and watched the channels and the map for any activity. Once he was sure he had as clear a path as he could expect he hit warp and was gone.
In high sec The Associate was already on the way to their destination. This was going to be a quick job for their friend. New Eden works like this. Most of the economy operates on a patronage system. Capsuleer’s trade ships for favours and frequently provide material to each other for free in the understanding that the favour will be repaired at a later date. Ekloke had provided The Associate with the use of a very expensive ship and in exchange they were available for him whenever he called. They went to the trade hub, scooped up the gas for a reasonable price and headed to the rendezvous point.
Meanwhile Ekloke was leaving Delve on his way to high sec. as he travelled the security channels buzzed in the map led up around him. There were no neutrals in local and nothing seemed to get in his way as he travelled. It did not take very long to get to the rendezvous point. When he arrived in the station he settled in to the local coffee shop waiting for The Associate to arrive.
He had an excellent view outside of the station and watched as her blockade runner uncloaked at the docking point before she docked. He waited for the associate to come to the coffee room. She smiled cheerfully.
“Hey! How have you been?”
“Good!” He smiled. “Trade is good, and we are much more secure than Immensea.”
“That’s good.” She had been helping supply the team in their efforts to resupply the FI.RE coalition and that had been a tough ask. Getting stuff in and out of that area of null was a logistical nightmare. This was however a piece of cake.
“How have you been?”
“I’m good, high sec remains as crazy as ever. There is a lot of activity on the pipe right now.” The Associate operated a very patient approach to trade between Jita and Amarr. Takeing the back routes, avoiding Gankers and making ISK in the process. Ekloke had operated the same route before moving to Null. “I have paused trading. You know how it is these Gankers eventually get bored, you just have to be patient and give them no ‘content’.”
He smiled. Ekloke had prided himself in always being able to deliver courier contracts on time as well as having never lost a Freighter. Mostly because he was careful, very methodical. The Associate had adopted a similar approach and together they now had a trade route that extended from Period Basis to Jita. These Journey’s were, of course organised around their ‘couplings’. They liked to enjoy each other as much as the ISK from the trade. They left the coffee shop arm in arm and went to The Associate’s quarters for some fun.
———
The journey back had been uneventful until Ekloke got into YQX-7U when his local channels suddenly lit up with war targets and neutrals. He immediately checked his surroundings. He had come through an ‘AnsiPlex gate’, he could see on scan warp disruptor bubbles. He knew instinctively to avoid warping to his out gate. Instead, he scanned towards the nearest station and immediately hit warp in that direction whilst cloaking ‘Orlana’ there was no time for the Sabre he could see towards his out gate to react. He landed a hundred off the station fully cloaked and immediately warped towards the out gate at 70 km. At this point he changed the direction of the cloaked ship and started to keep eyes on the gate.
He reported to the Intel channels what he could see, in turn setting the map alight with reports of different ships jumping in and out hunting his allies. The intel was crucial, it allowed his allies to form a response fleet and for those travelling to avoid the area. He sat in space for over an hour reporting the movements of the enemy. This is why you never rush in New Eden. The buzzed through to Abby. “Could you pop along to YQX-7U and scout me home please?”
“On my way.”
Jumping through gate blind was always one way can get your heart racing but when you have a deadline to meet and some important cargo it is better to take your time and be sure that you can make it. There is no point feeding the sharks that like to circle looking for easy kills. Any ecosystem has it’s bottom feeders, and gate campers are just that.
It wasn’t long before Abby came through the gate in her shuttle. “It’s clear, don’t waste your time there is probably a cloaked Sabre on the other side. There are definitely two enemies and local and a further three neutrals. Proceed with caution.”
Ekloke was already aligned, he hit warp and ‘Orlana’ took off at warp speed. The ship landed and initiated the jump smoothly. Before long he was on the other side without waiting for any reaction he immediately hit warp to a station in a random direction away from the gate. He cloaked ‘Orlana’ at the same time and was warping within 3.5 seconds. Behind him a Sabre uncloaked and bubbled the gate. But they were both too late and the bubble was in the wrong place.
“I’m through.” Ekloke said calmly as ‘Orlana’ warped off to the station.
Meanwhile, in YQX-7U, Abby was returning to the gate she jumped through in the shuttle. The bubble was quite poorly placed, and on the gate was Don Hubba and the Sabre pilot W1star were at the gate. The shuttle was gone before they could react. Both Abby and Ekloke jumped through the AnsiPlex gate into one 1DQ. They delivered the package so the build could continue.
Mori was sitting across the table from Karen. He hadn’t seen her for at least three months since his deployment to D06. She looked stressed, then almost always she looked stressed.
“How have you been?”
“Okay, suppose.” She was looking down at her hands.
He didn’t like it when she was like this. Introverted, perplexed, it always meant she was thinking too much.
“How are you finding Pegasus?”
“It’s great.” She looked up at him and smiled. They had moved into a new Fortizar set down by the corp their new home since the eviction from Immensea. Even stranger perhaps, was the fact they were now in Goonswarm Federation. The very group who had attacked them when they first moved out To Immensea. Such is the way in capsuleer culture, alliances were fickle and sometimes associations very short lived. Mori had found himself once more on the front lines of an alliance. Only this time he had moved into logistics operations. Karen’s pacifist tendencies must be having some influence.
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh this and that. We built a load of mining ships for the alliance market in 1DQ. Those sold really well. The market is much more heavily regulated out here, if I’m honest it is much better looked after than it was in Immensea. We’ve also built three dreadnoughts for members of the Corporation and a further two we’ve been trying to sell on the market. Building dreadnoughts was a bit of a mission.” She smiled her eyes brightening up.
“How do you mean?”
“Well the materials are hard to come by. We’ve had to source gas from all over new Eden. It needed lots of planetary materials and loads of minerals from high security space. It took months to source everything and assemble it.”
He’d been aware that she had been working with Ekloke and Abby on this. But he wasn’t quite sure what it all involved. He didn’t really have the attention span for this kind of operation.
“If I told you that a wetware mainframe essential to the building of a Phoenix that probably wouldn’t surprise you. What might surprise you is that part of the materials come from livestock. Don’t you think thats odd?”
He laughed. “That is a bit weird what on earth does livestock add to a wetware mainframe?”
“Ekloke tells me they are essential for producing biotech research reports. That some construction blocks and nanites are all added together somehow in a production facility and we end up with these biotech research reports. I can’t quite understand it. It’s either some sort of strange trade he’s involved in, you know how he is? Or there is some weird thing going on in that facility in PS-94K.” She looked across the bar and glanced up at the monitor screen playing back advertisements on Quafe. “Anyway did you bring the BPC?”
“Yes I have it here.” He handed the package across the table. Then rested back in his seat drinking from his cocktail.
She looked excited in that childish kind of way that she did when she first started building cruisers for the corporation over in Immensea. “So we finally get to look at a Tech three BPC!” She glanced through the materials and smiled. “This is fairly straightforward we have most of this already I’m pretty sure I could build this within a few days.”
“It’s an interesting hybrid ship isn’t it?”
“Yeah, stasis webifier range looks very useful along with those energy drains and neutraliser’s.” You gonna build this for the corp mate we talked about aren’t you?”
“Xanden?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course it is his blueprint and up to him whether he wants to use the ship are not.” It should be fun to see this being produced. I haven’t built anything for a while I spent most of my time preparing the Rorqual for krabbing.”
“Oh really? So you’re becoming less pacifist?”
“Those blood raiders owe me a ship, and it seems like an honourable thing to do for the alliance.” She looked at him intently.
“Yeah, they’ve been good to us since the eviction.” Mori had been impressed with the Goonswarm Federation. Their organisation was astounding was so much happening in their space it took them months to figure out where to make their contribution. They were always constantly at war and there was plenty to do. The downside of this was he saw a lot less of Karen, Abby and Ekloke.
“They certainly have, I’ve learned so much about shipbuilding in such a short time that I can barely remember what we were trying to do in Immensea. Such is the way.”
“Yeah, I’ve learned a lot to about how the null blocs operate.” Mori was deployed in DO6 to support Brave Collective and what was left of their old alliance the FiRE Coalition. The Goonswarm Federation had offered them safe passage through their space. Cosmos Collective had been recruited alongside this operation into Goonswarm Federation. This move had been a very wise decision by the CEO Dan Dingle and leadership. It had given the corporation some breathing room after the constant wars.
“Yeah same here. I still think the whole idea of content and having to be at war is a bit juvenile. Such is the way.”
“Don’t be silly, everything will be so boring otherwise. Besides you can’t just let these bullies push everyone around. I’m glad we are fighting to defend free space, even if it is in the name of a large power bloc.”
“Whatever.” She looked sideways, bored.
“Okay so how does the manifest look?”
“I’m going to have to pop to 1DQ to pick up some of these materials. I definitely have the auto- integrity preservation sales and I think I have some of those life-support backup unit somewhere. The rest I can build quite quickly.” She started to get up.
“What are you up to later?” He asked hopefully.
“I expect I will be in one 1DQ if you want to join me?”
“That would be nice and pop along after the Corp operation.” He smiled as he got up and left the table.And
Pliction is the narration of a player’s experience in a game in the form of a story. It differs from fiction in that fiction is more or less story telling for the pure joy of story telling, usually around non-real events and designed to fill out a world or perspective on the world. Fiction is the picture from the inside. Pliction on the other hand fiction focused on the interaction between social worlds. The internal world of the game and the player experience.
Now of course fiction can be based on real events but often the intention is to more or less change facts and adjust these to build a great story focused on a fantasy world or series of events based in the real world. Pliction contrasts with this kind of storytelling because it is much more realist. It is a way of directly exploring the content and meaning of one’s own interaction with the medium of the game. It is designed to take one’s own experience and turn it into a narrative and ‘ground’ this experience in the game as a game. Pliction therefore crosses mixes creative writing with the game content and the player experience. It is effectively a form of autoethnography with added creative writing.
What does this mean? Autoethnography is effectively the use of one’s own experience to critically explore aspects of daily life and experience. You write from your own point of view and critically evaluate it that experience from various different perspectives. For example, you can write about free swimming or jazz music from your own experience as someone who takes part in these social worlds. What is a social world?
A social world is described as a unit of social organisation that is meaningfully important for those who interact in it. It is composed of the things they say, the activities they engage in as well as the technologies and routines they become involved with (1). As a concept it covers the social arrangements that are studied by symbolic interactionists – effectively social organisations that are not formal bureaucracies but which we can discern fairly easily by looking at everyday life. Eve is one such social world. Dog walking is another, as is cycling and running. All of these are effectively social worlds.
Pliction is basically turning your interaction with the social world into a story, engaging with your in game experiences through creative writing. It gives you time to reflect on what the game is about, how it works and most of all what its key dynamics are. In my last few posts, for example, I was able to reflect on my experience as an old player returning to the game after 9 years away. You can see I noticed through the writing that there is an awful lot of ‘mansplaining’ in Eve. I only noticed that when narrating the interaction between Karen and Moriarity, I didn’t intend that really to happen. It just did and it seemed appropriate at the time.
I didn’t intend initially to do pliction when I started this blog, the blog is after all a bit of fun. But I do think it is working to help me see something new about the game I did not anticipate when I had started at first. I don’t even think pliction as an idea is that new either. I have played MMO’s since they first hit the universe (Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft and many many others). There has been plenty of this this kind of narration before. But sometimes it is better to give something a name. Then people will know what you are about eh! I remember lots of fictional stories based on gameplay in Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft (though I never quite got into the story of the latter). I think many of the roleplaying fraternity are very familiar with this kind of thing. But I am not entirely sure they really care about the idea as a form of social criticism or exploration.
Let’s see where it leads.
References
(1) Unruh, D. 1979. Characteristics and Types of Participation in Social Worlds. Symbolic Interaction, 2, 115-130.
He had a cold swagger about him. His hair was dark brown, cut short. His mouth was firmly closed and his jaw set square. He was browsing through something on his holo-tab, she could see the light flickering across the glasses as the screen scrolled up and then flickered through different tabs. He settled on a post. Looked up at her and smirked.
“Yes?”
“You look like fresh meat. Did someone ‘Gank’ you?” His head tilted to the side, inviting a comment.
She frowned. From the Voluval on his face she knew he was a Kanenald from somewhere near Rens. One of those smug metropolitan types that think they are better than everyone else. ”Bakheth’ scum.’ She thought. She sighed looked down at the bar, thought ‘Mehar! What the hell’.
“Yes. Someone destroyed my ship and pod.”
“You need to do something about your fit.”
‘You need to do something about your manners’ she thought. There was a short pause and without any invitation he continued.
“I mean look. From this readout you didn’t even have a multispec hardener fitted. I’m surprised you survived ‘belt rats’ let alone a ‘Ganker’.”
It was true, she had struggled to control the shields when Gurista’s attacked but she didn’t think it was THAT bad. Johnny had told her to invest in a shield hardener, preferably tech II. But obviously she was focused on getting the skills to handle tech II crystals to boost yield. She hadn’t thought about the vulnerability of the ship. She was getting irritated now. ‘What a wanker!’
“Johnny did say we needed one of those. And excuse me, but what the hell is a ‘Ganker’?”
“You don’t know what a Ganker is?” Behind the glasses she could see the eyebrows rising.
“Err no.”
‘But I bet I am about to find out’. She thought as she shifted her leather clad butt uneasily in the stool. There was an uncomfortable squeaking noise of new leather/butt on leather.
He looked up, seemingly exasperated and then shook his head.
“Gankers are pod pilots who enjoy ‘podding’. They get off on destroying your ship and pod before CONCORD can save you.”
“What?”
“Yup, there are people who get off on podding you. Kinda like jerking off on you or dry humping you while you wait in a queue.” He glanced sideways as if half expecting someone to start jerking off on him.
“Why? Why would anyone…..”
“Because they can. It’s that simple. There are all sorts of arguments about it. You could argue that they love their name flashing up in lights on the kill boards. Gives them some sort of notoriety or something. I think that it is really just ’cause they can.”
“What a bunch of morons!”
“Hmmm… you could say that, but you could also say someone who doesn’t bother equipping their ship properly is the real moron.”
“Are you calling me a moron?” Now she really was getting angry. She could feel the heat building at the back of her neck.
“No, no! Look I’m sorry. It’s just that is what ‘they’ would say!”
“I can’t believe you just called me a moron! Twat!” She couldn’t help herself. Usually if a thought came into her head it would eventually find its way out ….and become ‘a thing’.
“Steady on now. No need to get your knickers in a twist! I’m just sayin’….”
“What exactly? Just what are you sayin’? That Johnny’s death is my fault? That somehow I am the one who pulled the trigger on the neutron blasters? I mean what sort of stoopid is that?”
“Of course not. Gay Pride what’s-his-face, or whatever, is responsible for his own behaviour. But HE would argue that YOU are responsible for begging to be killed. Half asleep floating around on a belt with your ass hanging out.”
“I was only mining. I mean how the fuck does someone make a big deal out of that? What sort of moron would….” She was getting increasingly frustrated with this conversation, had a banging headache and just wanted to go to sleep.
“I know, I know. Maybe look at it another way – I mean some of these people have kinda turned this into an art form.”
“What-the-fuck, are you on? An art form. Do you want me to put that in the letter to Johnny’s family? Sorry Johnny died the way he did, my ass was hanging out and Gay Pride Boooom wanted to make some art – the explosion made a pretty picture if that helps.”
“No no of course not. But they think that managing to ‘gank’ you effectively is somehow. ‘Winning a game’.” He was getting into this now, she could tell. But there was nothing worse than being ‘mansplained’ to, especially after a ‘gank’. He wasn’t stopping either.
“Think about it, CONCORD’s response can be pretty much timed. You only have so many seconds to cut through a ship’s shields, armour and structure.”
“You admire these Mathera fucker’s don’t you?”
“Of course not. But as you say they are Mathera fuckkas!” With that he flicked off his holo-tab, stood up and went to leave. “I have sent through a fit you might like to think about for your ship. Maybe think about it eh?”
“Yeah right Mathera fuckka!” She stood and stomped off from the bar before he could reply. Her holo-tab blinked with the message.
I am going to have a look at what changed in Eve to see if I can piece together some history around why mining became so misaligned by a section of the player base. Although to be fair, I know before I start, in many respects that question is already wrong. You should be wary of any assumptions (or prejudices) you have before you start concocting a wrong headed questions and answers.
A lot of MMO players struggle with Eve Online because it strikes them as terrifyingly ‘open ended’. Nothing is obvious to a new player when you start playing. The game gives very few hints. Up until relatively recently CCP has not really helped new players that much. This has been left up to the community . Whilst there is an incredibly dedicated community in Eve they certainly have had their work cut out for them. Thankfully this has now changed dramatically with CCPs recent updates. The game is now much more new player friendly than it has ever been.
My first challenge was to skill Karen into a proper tank and to develop some decent drone skills. I knew this was probably going to take a while but as long as I stayed alert I would probably be able to survive long enough to have something that was going to make a solo Ganker think twice. I also aimed to be able to stop NPCs from being any kind of threat. This is what it means to go down the rabbit hole of Eve. You start with a problem or even a positive goal, set out your plan to get to your goal and off you go.
Tanky Retriever Fit.
I wasn’t expecting this part of the game to become such fun! CCP had completely revamped ship builds with a new in game fitting management tool whilst I had been away. And like Wow! To the right of this text (hopefully) is the build I was aiming for. This can be assembled in game and you can see where your skills are lacking, you can adjust your fit with relevant modules and tweak a fit to your own style of play. You can see that the goal for me was to get a better shield. I knew from playing on Mori that the damage ‘type’ the Non-Player Characters (NPC’s) pump out is important. From the Eve University Wiki I could see that The Angel Cartel Pump out 60% Explosive Damage, so Explosive Resists would be handy, I also added a Damage Control II as well as Reinforced Bulk Heads for added tank. Again Eve University have this covered in a beautifully written page on Tanking.
By the time I had all of the skills into the training queue it was going to be around two full weeks whilst Karen skilled into these modules. Also notice how I only had Acolyte I Drones which only deal 20 EM HP damage – this is of course the wrong type of damage for Angel Cartel rats. Again showing just how complex the game can be. I would later need to reskill into Valkyrie II drones after finding this important fact out! Once again you can look at the Eve University Wiki page on Drones for more information. But as always this is the game. It is about problem solving, setting goals and cracking on with doing what you need to do.
The problem though is that I was vulnerable and very aware that this was the case. It was back to some skills I had learned when playing Mori in Low Sec, a really handy tip I learned from an EZStreet member and of course scouting out Gankers from Zkillboard’s Ganked page.
DScan is your friend!
The simplest solution to having no tank is to watch local very closely and just not be there when Gankers appear. This was going to be a bit of an inconvenience but really it wasn’t that big an issue. I would later learn that this routine is essential to be able to effectively play other parts of the game and it really is so basic it should be developed by everyone. I got into the habit of watching local, when the number changed I would right click and look at who had arrived. Characters with a minus security rating, new characters and anyone with mediocre ratings deserved special attention. I would often also look up characters on Zkillboard to see if they were into ganking. I was especially careful when any kind of destroyer came onto DScan especially at low range. I found myself developing a habit of warping at the first sign of anything untoward. I would also just log off for the day if the system looked suspicious or sometimes roll over to Moriarity if I felt like PvP.
Control + A on Local Chat
A second really handy tip was to left click on any character in local chat and hit <Control + A>. This has the effect of highlighting all characters currently in the system. Anyone new to the system is not highlighted and can be checked out fairly quickly. These were simple methods I developed over the next week to stay safe. As time went on I was starting to enjoy mining more than running around in factional warfare. This became especially true as the time I spent with Karen in COSMOS developed. This was especially the case when I was introduced to the all ‘new’ moon mining by COSMOS CEO Dan Dingle.
On these ops we would often find ourselves in systems that were at a cross-roads, by this I mean these systems were ‘on the way’ to somewhere. Local was constantly changing and it could get very stressful to figure out who was new to the system. Hitting Control-A and highlighting who I knew was there made it much easier to see who was new. I could use one character to highlight all and another to check the security status of those coming through and D-Scan for new ships.
COSMOS CEO Dan Dingle
Warning signs on D-Scan included any Catalysts or Thrshers. In fact post Gank if I saw any of these in local I would just dock up. My best defence was not to be there when the gankers arrived. Certainly until I had the right skills and ship fit. The interesting thing is that over the next few weeks I got this so well practiced that I became a little complacent.
During one of our ops someone appeared in local annoced themselves as our ‘Ganker for this evening’. I docked immediately and waited, but then they left local. We got back to mining. It was a corp op and we were enjoying chat on vopice comms and before we knew it the ganker was on grid shooting. I panicked thinking quick quick. Found it difficult to get all of the drones in on time and the ore over to Karen’s hold. Honestly if they had landed beside me I was definitely going to lose my ship. Too slow! Too Slow!
There were just no guarantees really other than staying completely alert. This was before CCP decided to update mining of course!
Everyday Eve 