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
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Capsuleer's Log, YC117.3.29 "Caue de Lumine"
6U-MFQ
F-W6B4 - Oasa
The loss reports gave a name to our fears.
Apollo Tyrannos.
Seventy-two hours ago, one of our forward patrols detected an unidentified wormhole in a system near our base of operations. We'd been seeing Circadian Seeker activity there for weeks now, and the location of the Jove tower had been tagged as soon as its cloak had failed-- the wormhole however, was a new development and I'd ordered eyes on it around the clock as soon as the report had come in.
The Seekers continued to behave as they had since their appearance, warping around the system and scanning objects for reasons still unknown. They paid no particular attention to the Tower itself other than the occasional scan, and the odd Sleeper installations surrounding the wormhole received much the same sort of scrutiny since we'd noticed their presence. The wormhole emission signatures matched nothing in our databases, and our observations of conditions at the event horizon suggested it would be unwise to attempt a jump. I wanted it watched nonetheless.
I was twenty-seven jumps out, preparing to light a cynosural beacon for a supply logistics op when the scout came across my priority comm channel.
The voice was heavily accented, his cadence deliberate. "Commander Stahl, a battleship has entered 6U-MFQ via the wormhole. Eyes on target at two-hundred eighty-seven clicks, standing by."
My Russish was a bit out of practice, but I'd been working it out since The Red Bridge had backed our claim to sovereignty and taken our alliance flag as their own. I keyed up. "Keep your distance and report movements. I'll have a CovOps squad on your position inside of ten minutes." I quickly gave the go-ahead to jump the freighter in on my beacon and put word in to the squadron back home to scramble bombers to the scout's location.
I'd seen the Rhea off on the next leg of its journey and set my course back to Oasa when the squadron leader reported they had arrived on the scene, six strong. Red Bridge had sent a wing to support their man, making for eleven ships on the field, silently observing the Drifter vessel from behind their cloaks.
The bizarre ship made lazy circles in the vicinity of the wormhole and Sleeper structures, occasionally warping to the Jovian tower to do the same. It did not appear to exhibit any of the inquisitive behavior of the Seekers, in fact, it didn't seem to take notice of much beyond the mysterious Jove construction. I ordered my squad to close distance on the wormhole to one hundred kilometers when the Drifter warped away to the tower again. My inability to be on location was beginning to eat at my patience.
The bombers were forming up on their new perch when Red Bridge reported the Drifter ship inbound on the wormhole. I was fourteen jumps out and burning hard to get a look at this thing with my own eyes. Tukoss' warning and the destruction of the Rex had done nothing to deter me, much to the contrary, my curiosity had reached a fevered pitch.
Suddenly, pilots were swearing in my ear in two languages. The battleship had dropped out of warp right on top of the bomber wing, breaking their cloaks and sending them scrambling into random evasive maneuvers. The squadron leader was struggling to give the order to break off and regroup over the cacophonous comm chatter when the ship erupted in golden light.
The Red Bridge report of the event states the Drifter vessel deployed several free-floating energy weapons upon exiting warp and destroyed the six bombers with six consecutive volleys without hesitation or provocation. Appended to their narrative of the event are the six loss reports naming the pilot of the battleship as one Apollo Tyrannos.
No records exist of such a pilot in CONCORD databases or Empire census logs. A deep query of historic and technical records revealed a rather interesting connection-- both search terms appear to originate from a dead language dating back scores of millenia. The words predate the empires, to a time before the Eve gate, when we were all of one star, one world. After several passes through a linguistics engine, the logarithms finally teased out an intelligible translation of the name:
Terrible God of Light.
It with an unsettled mind that I send my reports to the Arek'jalaan Project and Society of Conscious Thought. Of the few actions within my capacity, sharing data in hope of determining the motives and intentions of these mysterious beings seems to be the most prudent. Whatever the Drifters want, one thing is clear:
They are more than capable of taking it.
This is Gunner Stahl, Captain of the warship Quantum of Fury, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
F-W6B4 - Oasa
The loss reports gave a name to our fears.
Apollo Tyrannos.
Seventy-two hours ago, one of our forward patrols detected an unidentified wormhole in a system near our base of operations. We'd been seeing Circadian Seeker activity there for weeks now, and the location of the Jove tower had been tagged as soon as its cloak had failed-- the wormhole however, was a new development and I'd ordered eyes on it around the clock as soon as the report had come in.
The Seekers continued to behave as they had since their appearance, warping around the system and scanning objects for reasons still unknown. They paid no particular attention to the Tower itself other than the occasional scan, and the odd Sleeper installations surrounding the wormhole received much the same sort of scrutiny since we'd noticed their presence. The wormhole emission signatures matched nothing in our databases, and our observations of conditions at the event horizon suggested it would be unwise to attempt a jump. I wanted it watched nonetheless.
I was twenty-seven jumps out, preparing to light a cynosural beacon for a supply logistics op when the scout came across my priority comm channel.
The voice was heavily accented, his cadence deliberate. "Commander Stahl, a battleship has entered 6U-MFQ via the wormhole. Eyes on target at two-hundred eighty-seven clicks, standing by."
My Russish was a bit out of practice, but I'd been working it out since The Red Bridge had backed our claim to sovereignty and taken our alliance flag as their own. I keyed up. "Keep your distance and report movements. I'll have a CovOps squad on your position inside of ten minutes." I quickly gave the go-ahead to jump the freighter in on my beacon and put word in to the squadron back home to scramble bombers to the scout's location.
I'd seen the Rhea off on the next leg of its journey and set my course back to Oasa when the squadron leader reported they had arrived on the scene, six strong. Red Bridge had sent a wing to support their man, making for eleven ships on the field, silently observing the Drifter vessel from behind their cloaks.
The bizarre ship made lazy circles in the vicinity of the wormhole and Sleeper structures, occasionally warping to the Jovian tower to do the same. It did not appear to exhibit any of the inquisitive behavior of the Seekers, in fact, it didn't seem to take notice of much beyond the mysterious Jove construction. I ordered my squad to close distance on the wormhole to one hundred kilometers when the Drifter warped away to the tower again. My inability to be on location was beginning to eat at my patience.
The bombers were forming up on their new perch when Red Bridge reported the Drifter ship inbound on the wormhole. I was fourteen jumps out and burning hard to get a look at this thing with my own eyes. Tukoss' warning and the destruction of the Rex had done nothing to deter me, much to the contrary, my curiosity had reached a fevered pitch.
Suddenly, pilots were swearing in my ear in two languages. The battleship had dropped out of warp right on top of the bomber wing, breaking their cloaks and sending them scrambling into random evasive maneuvers. The squadron leader was struggling to give the order to break off and regroup over the cacophonous comm chatter when the ship erupted in golden light.
The Red Bridge report of the event states the Drifter vessel deployed several free-floating energy weapons upon exiting warp and destroyed the six bombers with six consecutive volleys without hesitation or provocation. Appended to their narrative of the event are the six loss reports naming the pilot of the battleship as one Apollo Tyrannos.
No records exist of such a pilot in CONCORD databases or Empire census logs. A deep query of historic and technical records revealed a rather interesting connection-- both search terms appear to originate from a dead language dating back scores of millenia. The words predate the empires, to a time before the Eve gate, when we were all of one star, one world. After several passes through a linguistics engine, the logarithms finally teased out an intelligible translation of the name:
Terrible God of Light.
It with an unsettled mind that I send my reports to the Arek'jalaan Project and Society of Conscious Thought. Of the few actions within my capacity, sharing data in hope of determining the motives and intentions of these mysterious beings seems to be the most prudent. Whatever the Drifters want, one thing is clear:
They are more than capable of taking it.
This is Gunner Stahl, Captain of the warship Quantum of Fury, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Capsuleer's Log, YC117.3.22 "The Changing Tide"
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED] - Oasa
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. -H. Melville, The Whale
In those rare moments of quiet, I look to Caroline's Star. From my current vantage point deep in the drone lands, all that remains of it glows a yellow and ochre smudge against the mundane backdrop of the Oasan nebulae. The superluminal event had sent me down a thousand wormholes looking for answers, but all I'd found were more questions. And an obsession verging on insanity.
In my madness I had lost the El Dorado to raiders while returning from a meeting with Hilen Tukoss himself. I'd been furious over Tukoss' refusal to leave his hideaway and join me on an expedition to a nearby anomaly, one of the massive structures that had recently appeared all over known space. He'd sent me away with a warning to avoid even traveling through systems fostering the mysterious towers, and when I inquired as to why, he spoke but one word:
Drifters.
I'd set out alone to investigate the structure, and with my attention focused on searching for intel on the Drifters, the sound of my warp drive shutting down was the first indication that I was in trouble. I killed the search terminal and pulled up my defensive overlays. I had two interdictors spitting out warp disruption probes while burning hard into optimal range, and a Loki trying to close in to hold me down. Goonswarm. I kicked on my afterburner and set my Geckos on the 'dictors, in an attempt to keep them off of me long enough to get out of range of the probes. I was scrambling to avoid the Loki's webifiers when the fighters dropped out of warp. My long range scanner pinged a Nyx in system! I overheated everything I had in a last ditch attempt to get away but it wasn't much use against a squadron of Einherjis.
I climbed out of the clone vat in Perimeter with a bad taste in my mouth. In my months of searching, I'd turned up nothing and nearly gone bankrupt and insane in the process. I couldn't go on like this. The Scope report on the loss of the Rex to a Drifter superweapon cemented that idea in place. I regretfully sent a notice of separation to the Signal Cartel. I had enjoyed my time with the organization, but I can't play a passive role in what is to come. The destabilization among the alliances and deafening silence from the Empires is turning New Eden into a more dangerous place by the hour, and in times like these I need my guns more than principles.
I'm still an explorer at heart, but I'm a realist above all.
My fixer put me in touch with some old associates of mine that were in the midst of reforming their corporation and offered my assistance to their cause. The Drifters had shown how effortlessly they can destroy capital ships, and their willingness to do so-- this tells me it is the strength of numbers we need in the face of such a thing.
We will build an army. We will secure our sovereign systems. We will survive.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the warship Quantum of Fury, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
[REDACTED] - Oasa
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. -H. Melville, The Whale
In those rare moments of quiet, I look to Caroline's Star. From my current vantage point deep in the drone lands, all that remains of it glows a yellow and ochre smudge against the mundane backdrop of the Oasan nebulae. The superluminal event had sent me down a thousand wormholes looking for answers, but all I'd found were more questions. And an obsession verging on insanity.
In my madness I had lost the El Dorado to raiders while returning from a meeting with Hilen Tukoss himself. I'd been furious over Tukoss' refusal to leave his hideaway and join me on an expedition to a nearby anomaly, one of the massive structures that had recently appeared all over known space. He'd sent me away with a warning to avoid even traveling through systems fostering the mysterious towers, and when I inquired as to why, he spoke but one word:
Drifters.
I'd set out alone to investigate the structure, and with my attention focused on searching for intel on the Drifters, the sound of my warp drive shutting down was the first indication that I was in trouble. I killed the search terminal and pulled up my defensive overlays. I had two interdictors spitting out warp disruption probes while burning hard into optimal range, and a Loki trying to close in to hold me down. Goonswarm. I kicked on my afterburner and set my Geckos on the 'dictors, in an attempt to keep them off of me long enough to get out of range of the probes. I was scrambling to avoid the Loki's webifiers when the fighters dropped out of warp. My long range scanner pinged a Nyx in system! I overheated everything I had in a last ditch attempt to get away but it wasn't much use against a squadron of Einherjis.
I climbed out of the clone vat in Perimeter with a bad taste in my mouth. In my months of searching, I'd turned up nothing and nearly gone bankrupt and insane in the process. I couldn't go on like this. The Scope report on the loss of the Rex to a Drifter superweapon cemented that idea in place. I regretfully sent a notice of separation to the Signal Cartel. I had enjoyed my time with the organization, but I can't play a passive role in what is to come. The destabilization among the alliances and deafening silence from the Empires is turning New Eden into a more dangerous place by the hour, and in times like these I need my guns more than principles.
I'm still an explorer at heart, but I'm a realist above all.
My fixer put me in touch with some old associates of mine that were in the midst of reforming their corporation and offered my assistance to their cause. The Drifters had shown how effortlessly they can destroy capital ships, and their willingness to do so-- this tells me it is the strength of numbers we need in the face of such a thing.
We will build an army. We will secure our sovereign systems. We will survive.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the warship Quantum of Fury, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Exploration Log, YC117.2.3 "The City of Gold"
Perimeter
Kimotoro - The Forge
I'm on my feet before I even realize I'm not in my capsule. It's been weeks since I've slept in a bed, and the soft, seemingly unfamiliar pinging of the NEOCOM in my quarters had been only moments before the screaming siren of my hull caving in under the assault of some dreamspace pirate. There are certain aspects of being a capsuleer that you never really get used to, and the dreams are one. They seem to get more vivid whenever I'm in port; the longer I'm not out in open space, the louder it calls to me.
They say the neural implant we have to thank for our immortality takes a snapshot of your glial tissue a split second before you even realize you're about to die. From that point of view, I've never actually died. Not once. But even if I can't quite articulate a description of what vacuum tastes like, I know-- we all do. And though the brain I carry in this archaic simian skull of mine isn't the one I was born with, something deep within it remembers exactly what happened to its predecessors. The dreams tell me so.
I shook myself out of that now-familiar funk and set about finding the source of my rude awakening. Looking over my feeds, I took note of a few corporate mails needing my attention, but it would appear that my wallet was this morning's offender. A significant draft had triggered the alert, but luckily there was no cause for worry. A courier had just delivered a rather important package I'd been waiting a number of weeks for at this point; the collateral they'd paid to secure the contract had been returned to them and I had a very large shipping container that I'm sure the dockmasters would be happy for me to relieve them of. I was certainly pleased to see it made it here in one piece.
Delve is a long way from The Forge. It was there I had been deployed with my former corporation, and where I had been forced to leave assets behind upon my departure. I had carried what I could in my blockade runner, but such a ship wasn't meant to carry something as large as the Ivy Mike; a Stratios-class vessel I'd built for hunting enemy scouts. It had taken a good portion of the profit from my recent expedition to convince a courier to return it to me, and there was still a significant risk it could have been stolen or destroyed in transit. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to have been awakened so.
After the brief business of taking delivery, I moved it to my hangar to tend to the purpose for which I'd gone through such great expense: refitting as an exploration vessel, with minimal destructive capability. Never in my career as a pilot have I ever done such a thing with a ship of war, and I couldn't help but appreciate the novelty. I took one last look at her as she was.
Four-hundred-four exquisite meters of sleek white, with a bit of red in all the right places, bristling with lasers and a belly full of lethal drones. She'd served me well, and I'm sure she would continue to do so until the day she becomes another of my many dreams. There was a certain sadness in removing her teeth, though her hidden claws remain and of those there are many. Where there were once devices intended to trap and kill there was now an assortment of scientific instrumentation, and more than a few wild cards for anyone that may seek to cause me harm. I may have taken a creed of non-aggression, but I am far from naive-- there are too many dangers in the wilds to go about unprotected. Even demilitarized, the Ivy Mike was a thing a beauty.
There was one last thing to attend to before taking her out for the second first time, and that was the name. Ivy Mike was a name tied to ancient history, as significant as the discovery of fire. But like fire, the very mention brings to mind destruction-- not at all a fitting name for a ship with intentions such as mine. I seek discovery, adventure, and of course the wealth that comes with the procuring of rare things. A ship that searches for the mythical and mysterious needs a name that suits such a cause. And I think I have the perfect one in mind.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the exploration vessel El Dorado, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Kimotoro - The Forge
I'm on my feet before I even realize I'm not in my capsule. It's been weeks since I've slept in a bed, and the soft, seemingly unfamiliar pinging of the NEOCOM in my quarters had been only moments before the screaming siren of my hull caving in under the assault of some dreamspace pirate. There are certain aspects of being a capsuleer that you never really get used to, and the dreams are one. They seem to get more vivid whenever I'm in port; the longer I'm not out in open space, the louder it calls to me.
They say the neural implant we have to thank for our immortality takes a snapshot of your glial tissue a split second before you even realize you're about to die. From that point of view, I've never actually died. Not once. But even if I can't quite articulate a description of what vacuum tastes like, I know-- we all do. And though the brain I carry in this archaic simian skull of mine isn't the one I was born with, something deep within it remembers exactly what happened to its predecessors. The dreams tell me so.
I shook myself out of that now-familiar funk and set about finding the source of my rude awakening. Looking over my feeds, I took note of a few corporate mails needing my attention, but it would appear that my wallet was this morning's offender. A significant draft had triggered the alert, but luckily there was no cause for worry. A courier had just delivered a rather important package I'd been waiting a number of weeks for at this point; the collateral they'd paid to secure the contract had been returned to them and I had a very large shipping container that I'm sure the dockmasters would be happy for me to relieve them of. I was certainly pleased to see it made it here in one piece.
Delve is a long way from The Forge. It was there I had been deployed with my former corporation, and where I had been forced to leave assets behind upon my departure. I had carried what I could in my blockade runner, but such a ship wasn't meant to carry something as large as the Ivy Mike; a Stratios-class vessel I'd built for hunting enemy scouts. It had taken a good portion of the profit from my recent expedition to convince a courier to return it to me, and there was still a significant risk it could have been stolen or destroyed in transit. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to have been awakened so.
After the brief business of taking delivery, I moved it to my hangar to tend to the purpose for which I'd gone through such great expense: refitting as an exploration vessel, with minimal destructive capability. Never in my career as a pilot have I ever done such a thing with a ship of war, and I couldn't help but appreciate the novelty. I took one last look at her as she was.
Four-hundred-four exquisite meters of sleek white, with a bit of red in all the right places, bristling with lasers and a belly full of lethal drones. She'd served me well, and I'm sure she would continue to do so until the day she becomes another of my many dreams. There was a certain sadness in removing her teeth, though her hidden claws remain and of those there are many. Where there were once devices intended to trap and kill there was now an assortment of scientific instrumentation, and more than a few wild cards for anyone that may seek to cause me harm. I may have taken a creed of non-aggression, but I am far from naive-- there are too many dangers in the wilds to go about unprotected. Even demilitarized, the Ivy Mike was a thing a beauty.
There was one last thing to attend to before taking her out for the second first time, and that was the name. Ivy Mike was a name tied to ancient history, as significant as the discovery of fire. But like fire, the very mention brings to mind destruction-- not at all a fitting name for a ship with intentions such as mine. I seek discovery, adventure, and of course the wealth that comes with the procuring of rare things. A ship that searches for the mythical and mysterious needs a name that suits such a cause. And I think I have the perfect one in mind.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the exploration vessel El Dorado, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Exploration Log, YC117.1.31 "New Opportunities"
C-PEWN
Esoteria - O-PQU0
I'd spent the recent days in the far southern reaches of known space searching for relics in the wake of yet another parting of ways. There are no ill words to speak for my former corporation or colleagues, suffice to say that money and numbers would carry farther than mere hopes and dreams. Having said my goodbyes, I set off on an expedition not in search of profit, but clarity of mind.
My travels had taken me far and wide, and as chance would have it, a wormhole had delivered me to the doorstep of old enemies. This was Skeleton Crew space, and their leader was quite adept at hunting pilots that got too comfortable under their cloaks. My worries were few; changing allegiances had altered the terms of engagement at this point, and there was a begrudging respect where hatred and rage once lived. It didn't take very long for one of them to hail me on the local frequency. After all, we'd shared the blood of war and like all old warriors, we love to reminisce.
It seems the telling of tales with my former foes had been time well spent, as I felt a sense of peace I'd not known in many years. Bidding farewell to the crew of skeletons, I prepared for my journey home-- a hangar I keep in Perimeter where I can stretch my legs and plan my next move. Travelling to The Forge from Esoteria is no easy task, many dozens of systems have to be navigated through hostile regions before you reach even minimal CONCORD protection. Even at the helm of an SOE Astero, there is a significant likelihood that I'd fall prey to hunters before making safe space. Having a half-billion isk in assorted relics and salvage in my hold, I'd prefer taking as few risks as possible. I had a buyer lined up who'd offered to pay for my ship as a finder's fee in addition to the value of my haul, that kind of bonus only comes from those that can afford it, and people like that don't like to wait.
Fortunately for myself and many like me, recent events around New Eden had borne a solution to problems such as these: Thera. The vast system had been revealed in the catastrophe somehow involving the superluminal event known commonly as Caroline's Star, the disappearance of the Jove and most of their inter-regional gates as well as the astonishing number of newly-reported wormhole systems. All of these events occurred simultaneously, and that mystery has been a splinter in my mind since the day it happened. Thera would get me home, and allow me to do some research along the way.
I pulled up the current Thera wormhole connections via the EvE-Scout service, thoughtfully provided by the enterprising corporation of the same name. I had much to thank those pilots for lately, as I had used their service many times to turn a very long trip into a very short one, though the lawless nature of the mysterious system still provides enough danger to keep one wary. In a stroke of luck I've rarely experienced, there is an active connection a mere six systems away, I only need to get there and recon the area before making the jump.
As I was about to close the NEOCOM window, something in the corner caught my attention-- an advertisement for a startup corporation allied with EvE-Scout, the very same people I had to thank for my many successes of late. The Signal Cartel bills itself as a passive entity devoted to exploration, a sort of explorer's union. It occurs to me that this may be the kind of organization I would do well to be involved with, as my lust for knowledge and wealth rarely provides camaraderie and support when employed by conventional corporations. As I make my way to the Thera entrance, I think seriously on this potential career move. I tune into their recruitment channel, and discuss my future.
By the time I'm safely docked in Perimeter, I've accepted an offer of employment from Signal Cartel. I contact my buyer and conduct my first business as a cartel member, with a strange sense of pride in the having of an ethical organization at my back. Such a thing is not without its commitments, however. In joining their ranks I've set out to be the rarest kind of pilot-- one that seeks great danger and reward at the furthest reaches, but in so doing no harm.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the exploration vessel The Scavenger's Daughter, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Esoteria - O-PQU0
I'd spent the recent days in the far southern reaches of known space searching for relics in the wake of yet another parting of ways. There are no ill words to speak for my former corporation or colleagues, suffice to say that money and numbers would carry farther than mere hopes and dreams. Having said my goodbyes, I set off on an expedition not in search of profit, but clarity of mind.
My travels had taken me far and wide, and as chance would have it, a wormhole had delivered me to the doorstep of old enemies. This was Skeleton Crew space, and their leader was quite adept at hunting pilots that got too comfortable under their cloaks. My worries were few; changing allegiances had altered the terms of engagement at this point, and there was a begrudging respect where hatred and rage once lived. It didn't take very long for one of them to hail me on the local frequency. After all, we'd shared the blood of war and like all old warriors, we love to reminisce.
It seems the telling of tales with my former foes had been time well spent, as I felt a sense of peace I'd not known in many years. Bidding farewell to the crew of skeletons, I prepared for my journey home-- a hangar I keep in Perimeter where I can stretch my legs and plan my next move. Travelling to The Forge from Esoteria is no easy task, many dozens of systems have to be navigated through hostile regions before you reach even minimal CONCORD protection. Even at the helm of an SOE Astero, there is a significant likelihood that I'd fall prey to hunters before making safe space. Having a half-billion isk in assorted relics and salvage in my hold, I'd prefer taking as few risks as possible. I had a buyer lined up who'd offered to pay for my ship as a finder's fee in addition to the value of my haul, that kind of bonus only comes from those that can afford it, and people like that don't like to wait.
Fortunately for myself and many like me, recent events around New Eden had borne a solution to problems such as these: Thera. The vast system had been revealed in the catastrophe somehow involving the superluminal event known commonly as Caroline's Star, the disappearance of the Jove and most of their inter-regional gates as well as the astonishing number of newly-reported wormhole systems. All of these events occurred simultaneously, and that mystery has been a splinter in my mind since the day it happened. Thera would get me home, and allow me to do some research along the way.
I pulled up the current Thera wormhole connections via the EvE-Scout service, thoughtfully provided by the enterprising corporation of the same name. I had much to thank those pilots for lately, as I had used their service many times to turn a very long trip into a very short one, though the lawless nature of the mysterious system still provides enough danger to keep one wary. In a stroke of luck I've rarely experienced, there is an active connection a mere six systems away, I only need to get there and recon the area before making the jump.
As I was about to close the NEOCOM window, something in the corner caught my attention-- an advertisement for a startup corporation allied with EvE-Scout, the very same people I had to thank for my many successes of late. The Signal Cartel bills itself as a passive entity devoted to exploration, a sort of explorer's union. It occurs to me that this may be the kind of organization I would do well to be involved with, as my lust for knowledge and wealth rarely provides camaraderie and support when employed by conventional corporations. As I make my way to the Thera entrance, I think seriously on this potential career move. I tune into their recruitment channel, and discuss my future.
By the time I'm safely docked in Perimeter, I've accepted an offer of employment from Signal Cartel. I contact my buyer and conduct my first business as a cartel member, with a strange sense of pride in the having of an ethical organization at my back. Such a thing is not without its commitments, however. In joining their ranks I've set out to be the rarest kind of pilot-- one that seeks great danger and reward at the furthest reaches, but in so doing no harm.
This is Gunner Stahl, captain of the exploration vessel The Scavenger's Daughter, signing off.
END TRANSMISSION
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)