Savannah
Georgia - U.S.A
Gunner Stahl undocked his very first Ibis on November 10, 2004.
While I had created a great many characters during the beta test and to this day still have a hisec alt that predates him, he was my first real character. The first "okay, I know what I'm doing now" toon.
I didn't know what I was doing. I had no clue that over a decade later I'd still be making skill plans and setting goals in some old online game for a character that I'd jokingly named after a minor villain from a mediocre Emilio Estevez movie. Yet here I am, ten plus years on, checking corp mails during the work day, staying on top of alliance activity via the killboards, shooting off a quick text to a fellow director about buying POS fuel before the weekly jump freighter op and tweaking ship fittings on my lunch break. Then I go home and play the game.
My Icelandic hockey hooligan space captain became a hobby. He's been on a thousand adventures with hundreds of corpmates over the years. He's been a miner, a hauler, a mission runner, a recruiter, a builder, a beggar, a pirate, an explorer, a mercenary, a lone wolf and a CEO. From carebear to carnage incarnate and everything in between. At this point, Gunner has a life; He has a story, and it continues every time I log him on.
In January of this year I undertook a brief stint with Signal Cartel, New Eden's "best darn exploration corporation" (an apt description, I highly recommend joining or setting to blue). I was hungry for something different, and the idea of turning a traditionally solo occupation into a more social experience was intriguing. Even their passive credo leads to some interesting theorycrafting and gameplay. It was a fantastic experience, and in having to look at the game in a different way than I ever had before I found the motivation to start putting together a story from what I was doing at the time.
The log was an idea I had some time ago; to write about what I did in the game that day from the perspective of the character doing it. I may have my reasons for doing things, but how does Gunner feel about it? He lives in this fantastic world, a political and economic machine constantly in motion, a small piece of it all-- and while I have my own excuses for blapping an ihub or watching a particular gate for hours on end, Gunner's motivations have little to do with game mechanics and dev blogs. It's all very real to him, and from that point of view a Sunday night bait POS bash in the name of 'content' turns into the high drama of one man doing his part to support his fleet and get them home safe. The simple act of refitting and renaming a ship becomes a somber moment of reflection on what it means to be a capsuleer and the psychological baggage that comes with such. Most of all, I think it helps impart some soul into the avatar.
The entries themselves are organic, much like the game. I don't log in thinking "I'm going to do something today and write about it" because it isn't something I can force. I takes a special combination of events and involved parties to advance Gunner's story, and that is not at all a predictable thing. An evening of ratting capped off with a random blackops scout kill isn't something I think Gunner would write about at the end of the day. But as it turned out, getting bored one afternoon and deciding to poke at the Drifters next door played nicely on his obsession with the ongoing mystery, something I feel he would want to record his thoughts on.
I like to think of Gunner Stahl as a real character. He has his own motivations, his own worries, his own goals. With the exception of the last one, they differ greatly from my own. And I believe that it is in my treatment of him as less an in-game version of myself and more a protagonist in a book not guaranteed to have a happy ending that really makes me look forward to each and every undock.
Because if there's one thing you can count on in New Eden, it's never knowing what will happen next.
This is Joseph Sherman, author of the Capsuleer's Logbook, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Capsuleer's Log, YC117.4.19 "War Comes Home"
[HO4E-Q]
D4J-PP - Oasa
The sky was alive with fire.
Tachyon beams lanced through expanding clouds of gas and sheared metal, flashing crimson and gold streaks across a hundred starship hulls hung heavy with malevolence. Drones schooled around the carriers, playing cat and mouse with the enemy bomber wing. Dreadnoughts sat at range, throwing volley after volley into the madness-- hatred and death rained down upon the heads of our enemies, the battlefield awash in a thin, orange haze.
The Drone Lands were under siege; Triumvirate had made fast moves into the Reach, Solar Fleet had the Outer Passage and Cache under assault and the frequent raids in our space by Questionable Ethics had been pinned down to a starbase on our doorstep. It was there we laid down our gauntlet, soaking up fire from the defensive installations, to waste no time taking down their control tower. We could not allow the enemy a foothold this deep inside our lines.
Our timing had been fortuitous, heavy fighting on the eastern front over the weekend had kept Tri/Solar forces busy around the clock, and QE could only muster a squadron in defense of their tower. Their bombers were employing hit-and-run tactics to harass the dreads but their tackle was doing little more than keeping distance and watching the tower come down. I was skirting the main body of our cruiser wing in my interceptor, keeping an eye on the periphery. The bombers were little more than a nuisance, but it was safe to assume they had put word out to their allies that we had mixed capital fleet on the field. I would be disappointed if this wasn't a trap to lure out the big toys and they didn't bring in reinforcements in an effort to kill our heavy hitters.
I was burning hard radial to avoid laser battery fire when the flash from the tower exploding gave rise to a triumphant cry over the voice comm. The fleet commander urged calm and ordered the capitals off the field. The operation wasn't a success until those assets were safe. I pulled my ship into a lazy spiral around the aligning Moros and Naglfar groups, a pair of Chimeras off my starboard were slewing around, still providing each other with capacitor boosting. We were nearly in the clear.
Half of the dread wing were catapulting into warp when the Sabres landed on the field. In an instant the remaining capitals were pinned down and my gravmetric array started singing with battleship returns as the Triumvirate fleet began dropping out of warp. Machariels... the bastards brought part of the Mach fleet that had been wreaking havoc on the eastern front over the past week. Not good, not good at all. Our cruisers moved to make range on them as I peeled off to make distance. Our main force was here to support the tackled capitals, but there were still several dreads that had made it off the field en route to the station. I leapt into warp to confirm they had made dock safely.
My heart sank as I coasted out of the warp tunnel off the station perimeter. The dreadnoughts were two hundred kilometers to my aft, caught in an interdiction bubble and being harassed by an Ishtar squadron. I keyed in my warp drive to close the gap and made to engage the Sabre responsible for the damned bubbles. Sentry fire put an end to that idea, forcing me into evasive maneuvers as the offending HAC pilot and his Bouncers lit up my active target display. Burning through shield booster charges fast, I overheated my microwarp drive and got out of his targeting range as friendly fast-movers began landing on top of his group. I pulled back within range of the dreads just as the Sabre went down; taking the liberty of removing him from his pod for the trouble he'd caused us here tonight. Incoming drone fire continued to fall on the behemoths as they waited for the last of the interdiction probes to burn out, warp drives primed for the escape. After an agonizing moment, the bubbles collapsed, and four very grateful capital pilots made their run for the station.
Word filtered in that the main body of our fleet was holding their own against the Machariel onslaught, with the triage carriers keeping the subcapital contingent alive as they were working on killing off the remaining interdictors. The Ishtars began bugging out in their direction, hell bent on forcing success on their operation. We gave chase into the heart of the battle.
Back in the fight, our 'ceptor wing set to work cleaning the sentries from the field. The HACs were dependent on them for damage and each one killed cut a pilot's offensive capability by a full twenty percent. I was chipping away at a group of them when a brown blur shot past me, landing projectile rounds as it went. Svipul.
Tactical destroyers are some of the fastest vessels around; highly advanced, seductively lethal in the right hands. He broke hard off my starboard, and started pouring on the transversal in an attempt to kite me off the main group. Having none of that, I burned down into the bubbles to see if he would give chase. My Crow couldn't kill him alone, but keeping him busy trying to kill me would make him a better target for the rest of my wing. He took the bait, came about and ran for me again, closed fast and broke a tight orbit, autocannons eating into my shields as my rockets ate into his. At a distance, the intertwining of our ships became a lazy waltz, our radial velocity zeroing out rhythmically as we fought, gradually pulling him into optimal range for our subcapitals. I called for fire.
One, two, three; shield. One, two, three; armor. One, two, three; dead.
Dumping the remaining charges into my shield booster, I pulled back into the blob in search of the remaining interdictors. To my surprise and relief, I found none on my overview. We'd broken their tackle while I was busy with the destroyer, and the last of the bubbles were starting to come down. Artillery rounds and sentry fire streaked into empty space as the carriers and dreadnoughts slipped away into the darkness. The fleet commander, voice laced with adrenaline and pride, declared victory with the order:
"Return to base, return to base. I repeat, RTB. Let 'em go home hungry!"
A triumphant cry again broke out across the comm as the fleet moved to disengage, this time with not a word from the commander to quiet it. I pulled out to two hundred clicks of the starbase remains to keep eyes on the field until the last ship was safely away, then I left the enemy with their defeat. We'd sprung their trap, denied them their prize, destroyed their tower while trading only a handful of losses in the doing so.
A battle well fought, a victory well won.
gf
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the Murder of One, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
D4J-PP - Oasa
The sky was alive with fire.
Tachyon beams lanced through expanding clouds of gas and sheared metal, flashing crimson and gold streaks across a hundred starship hulls hung heavy with malevolence. Drones schooled around the carriers, playing cat and mouse with the enemy bomber wing. Dreadnoughts sat at range, throwing volley after volley into the madness-- hatred and death rained down upon the heads of our enemies, the battlefield awash in a thin, orange haze.
The Drone Lands were under siege; Triumvirate had made fast moves into the Reach, Solar Fleet had the Outer Passage and Cache under assault and the frequent raids in our space by Questionable Ethics had been pinned down to a starbase on our doorstep. It was there we laid down our gauntlet, soaking up fire from the defensive installations, to waste no time taking down their control tower. We could not allow the enemy a foothold this deep inside our lines.
Our timing had been fortuitous, heavy fighting on the eastern front over the weekend had kept Tri/Solar forces busy around the clock, and QE could only muster a squadron in defense of their tower. Their bombers were employing hit-and-run tactics to harass the dreads but their tackle was doing little more than keeping distance and watching the tower come down. I was skirting the main body of our cruiser wing in my interceptor, keeping an eye on the periphery. The bombers were little more than a nuisance, but it was safe to assume they had put word out to their allies that we had mixed capital fleet on the field. I would be disappointed if this wasn't a trap to lure out the big toys and they didn't bring in reinforcements in an effort to kill our heavy hitters.
I was burning hard radial to avoid laser battery fire when the flash from the tower exploding gave rise to a triumphant cry over the voice comm. The fleet commander urged calm and ordered the capitals off the field. The operation wasn't a success until those assets were safe. I pulled my ship into a lazy spiral around the aligning Moros and Naglfar groups, a pair of Chimeras off my starboard were slewing around, still providing each other with capacitor boosting. We were nearly in the clear.
Half of the dread wing were catapulting into warp when the Sabres landed on the field. In an instant the remaining capitals were pinned down and my gravmetric array started singing with battleship returns as the Triumvirate fleet began dropping out of warp. Machariels... the bastards brought part of the Mach fleet that had been wreaking havoc on the eastern front over the past week. Not good, not good at all. Our cruisers moved to make range on them as I peeled off to make distance. Our main force was here to support the tackled capitals, but there were still several dreads that had made it off the field en route to the station. I leapt into warp to confirm they had made dock safely.
My heart sank as I coasted out of the warp tunnel off the station perimeter. The dreadnoughts were two hundred kilometers to my aft, caught in an interdiction bubble and being harassed by an Ishtar squadron. I keyed in my warp drive to close the gap and made to engage the Sabre responsible for the damned bubbles. Sentry fire put an end to that idea, forcing me into evasive maneuvers as the offending HAC pilot and his Bouncers lit up my active target display. Burning through shield booster charges fast, I overheated my microwarp drive and got out of his targeting range as friendly fast-movers began landing on top of his group. I pulled back within range of the dreads just as the Sabre went down; taking the liberty of removing him from his pod for the trouble he'd caused us here tonight. Incoming drone fire continued to fall on the behemoths as they waited for the last of the interdiction probes to burn out, warp drives primed for the escape. After an agonizing moment, the bubbles collapsed, and four very grateful capital pilots made their run for the station.
Word filtered in that the main body of our fleet was holding their own against the Machariel onslaught, with the triage carriers keeping the subcapital contingent alive as they were working on killing off the remaining interdictors. The Ishtars began bugging out in their direction, hell bent on forcing success on their operation. We gave chase into the heart of the battle.
Back in the fight, our 'ceptor wing set to work cleaning the sentries from the field. The HACs were dependent on them for damage and each one killed cut a pilot's offensive capability by a full twenty percent. I was chipping away at a group of them when a brown blur shot past me, landing projectile rounds as it went. Svipul.
Tactical destroyers are some of the fastest vessels around; highly advanced, seductively lethal in the right hands. He broke hard off my starboard, and started pouring on the transversal in an attempt to kite me off the main group. Having none of that, I burned down into the bubbles to see if he would give chase. My Crow couldn't kill him alone, but keeping him busy trying to kill me would make him a better target for the rest of my wing. He took the bait, came about and ran for me again, closed fast and broke a tight orbit, autocannons eating into my shields as my rockets ate into his. At a distance, the intertwining of our ships became a lazy waltz, our radial velocity zeroing out rhythmically as we fought, gradually pulling him into optimal range for our subcapitals. I called for fire.
One, two, three; shield. One, two, three; armor. One, two, three; dead.
Dumping the remaining charges into my shield booster, I pulled back into the blob in search of the remaining interdictors. To my surprise and relief, I found none on my overview. We'd broken their tackle while I was busy with the destroyer, and the last of the bubbles were starting to come down. Artillery rounds and sentry fire streaked into empty space as the carriers and dreadnoughts slipped away into the darkness. The fleet commander, voice laced with adrenaline and pride, declared victory with the order:
"Return to base, return to base. I repeat, RTB. Let 'em go home hungry!"
A triumphant cry again broke out across the comm as the fleet moved to disengage, this time with not a word from the commander to quiet it. I pulled out to two hundred clicks of the starbase remains to keep eyes on the field until the last ship was safely away, then I left the enemy with their defeat. We'd sprung their trap, denied them their prize, destroyed their tower while trading only a handful of losses in the doing so.
A battle well fought, a victory well won.
gf
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the Murder of One, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
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