On Infamy

One thing an actor always has to deal with is the chance that he might get just a tiny bit of recognition, which isn't always a good thing. In this case, Karot, CEO of Aduro Protocol and highly esteemed "expert eight year vet" (ordained by his own members onto such a pedestal) seems to have taken a personal interest into my adventures. Probably because I joined his corporation earlier this afternoon and nailed two of his newer players straight out of their baby-barge retrievers and sent their pods careening into the twisting nether.

Don't get me wrong, I understand patience. Anyone with even the smallest sliver of that virtue themselves would realize that I've played the sit-and-wait game a few times in the past, and it's certainly paid off. But sometimes it's not about the ISK. A lot of times, forcefully ejecting newer, impressionable players out of their shiny, new, expensive (in their terms) ships they've worked hard for is all the reward necessary.

And such was the case when the two retriever pilots were so paralyzed by having my Catalyst strip mine their hulls to pieces. They just logged off, never said a word. I caught on quick enough that they had whined rather loudly on their corp's vent about how the events transpired, because shortly after, Captain Amazing, Karot, logged in and fleeted up with me. Once I saw he was in an assault frigate, I packed up my shit and got out of there. Not being extremely well versed in PVP, I don't even know if I stood a chance. Given I didn't have PVP mods, nor any decent skills, my immediate reaction is 'no', but a certain fight I engaged in on my alt account as a Wolf vs a Cormorant brings back vague memories of how scary a destroyer can be, even on a tech 2 hull. But I digress.

Karot informs me that I should pay the noobs back for their retrievers, but I bestow some wisdom upon him and tell him to buy them new retrievers himself. There's no way an eight year old player can't foot the bill for two noob fit mining barges, and secondly, buying them for his members instead of me would only serve to bolster their bro-respect for each other and strengthen his corp as a whole. See, I'm not always a bad guy! This is really the case though. Each mistake is an opportunity in life as it is in EVE, and the mistakes were all made on their side. His directors were clearly given too much power without the proper knowledge on how to use it, namely the power to recruit me without the knowledge to figure out that I'm not going to be giving them Orca support anytime soon. Now he knows to fix it, and the bill was only... what? 10 million ISK? You might as well just call me a corporate security consultant at this stage, because I guarantee you I saved them some hurt down the road. And frankly, I'm a little insulted an eight year old player wouldn't even audit a single recruit. It's lowering the standards of the EVE community as a whole.

Regardless, I say my piece and drop corp, only to pick up another within minutes. And lo and behold, this group of zerg inviting clowns have exactly what I'm looking for; a shit-fit Orca pilot desperate for a bro to haul and boost for in a belt. My mouth starts salivating, and as I desperately pound the keys to more deceptive prose, spittle splashing against my oily, crumb-filled keyboard, I gain the trust of the pilot and we make a hot date out in Caldari space in a 0.5 system. About seven jumps into Caldari space, I'm suddenly ejected from the corp back into Caldari Provisions without a word. Then it hit me - Karot was so upset by my earlier exploits, that he's now decided to play internet spaceship mall cop, and began warning potential prey off with his rape whistle.

I suppose I'm going to pick up more unwanted attention the further into my escapades I go, but the beauty of the method lies in it's simplicity, and it would not cause me much harm to be rid of Touchfuzzy Getdizzy altogether. Starting a new capsuleer on a campaign of deception, tyranny and villainy seems like a necessity at some point down the road anyhow, but time can only tell if that's really the case. After all, I've been brutally burned in the past myself, but there's a certain point where you just stop caring. We'll see how the infamy, however large or small, plays it's role when the curtains open on a new stage.

It aint over until the Orca sings!

Today I woke up to a fairly decent newbie-trained Catalyst on one of my alt accounts. The beauty of destroyers is that you can put out a lot of hurt with very little time investment, so I selected a mask on the wall and set off to find an audience for my divine comedy.

I immediately was taken in by this startup corporation looking for industrialists. I told them I was a hulk alt looking for a laid back corp to mine high sec ore with, provided they had orca boosts. From the conversation, I got the impression that the guy was overly ecstatic that someone in a mining ship bigger than a shit-fit bantam was interested in his oh-so-enticing offer of asteroid belt adventures. So he immediately accepted my application, and I convinced him to go on a 'mining op' in his home region, whereupon I would supply the Hulk, and he would supply the Orca boosts.

A note to corporate recruiters, this guy was making all the classic mistakes. Didn't give two shits about corp history, API, who my main was, if I could even fly a fucking hulk to begin with (I can't, if you couldn't already tell), and didn't even have the smarts to check his members tab to see if what was flying to his home system was, in fact, a mining barge, and not a destroyer. I started to actually get the impression that this was going to be Too Easy(tm) and I was being troll baited into a trap. Nevertheless, with little to lose and a quickly-established persona within the corp and the tiny alliance it had just joined, I pressed on.

Eventually, we get to his home space, and I let him know that once he's in a belt I'll warp to him. Instead, he figures it'll be best if I go first, so I mention that I'm warping in with a smaller ship first to scan the belt and clear out rats, as to not alarm him if he picks up Catalyst on d-scan. Sure enough, once I give the signal, it popped up on my overview. An Orca was landing in the belt.

Knowing his fit, his entire tank consisted of a t2 mshield booster in the mids, which wouldn't slow down a catalyst anymore than shooting paper airplanes at a freight train would. Immediately tackling him and engaging him, it actually took him well longer than it should have to realize the deception that had been played on him.


[ 2012.04.08 21:04:51 ] seth ritch9 > go to a belt
[ 2012.04.08 21:04:52 ] seth ritch9 > ill warp to you
[ 2012.04.08 21:05:49 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > okay, ill go scout one out.
[ 2012.04.08 21:06:30 ] seth ritch9 > ok
[ 2012.04.08 21:06:31 ] seth ritch9 > gl
[ 2012.04.08 21:06:47 ] seth ritch9 > fonz when u get to misha just warp to me
[ 2012.04.08 21:06:52 ] seth ritch9 > you can refit your ship with my orca
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:33 ] seth ritch9 > tell me when
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:34 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > okay, this one looks good, im at a good spot to start mining
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:37 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > warp to me
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:42 ] seth ritch9 > okey
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:44 ] seth ritch9 > :)
[ 2012.04.08 21:08:52 ] seth ritch9 > dont freak out when a big ass ship nearly hits you
[ 2012.04.08 21:09:07 ] seth ritch9 > :3
[ 2012.04.08 21:09:10 ] seth ritch9 > on the way
[ 2012.04.08 21:09:11 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > okay
[ 2012.04.08 21:10:06 ] seth ritch9 > warping
[ 2012.04.08 21:10:44 ] Fonz Deninard > UGHHHHHHHHH 9 more jumps
[ 2012.04.08 21:10:58 ] seth ritch9 > beautiful ship
[ 2012.04.08 21:11:27 ] seth ritch9 > .... i gues ur going to kill me : /?

 

That's right, genius. Immediately after posting that message, he must have thrown his keyboard and ripped the cords out of the wall, because he dropped offline for the rest of the engagement. I get a little bit of a kick whenever anyone does this, because it's entirely an emotional reaction. Sensibly, logging off would accomplish nothing, so rather than try and spend the 5 minutes it took to actually dps his structure to 0 in an attempt to save his ship, or even barter for it with me, he just decided to resign his fate in a 'if I don't see it happen, it won't be as bad' mentality. I'm a little disappointed, honestly, because me being me, I'd rather have made the a bounty than see the orca get popped.

After the ship popped, I salvaged what I could and popped the wreck. Then, in fleet, his buddy asks me why he's gone offline in the first place, and I think up some quick magic.

[ 2012.04.08 21:14:52 ] Fonz Deninard > Wheres seth?
[ 2012.04.08 21:15:49 ] Fonz Deninard > ?
[ 2012.04.08 21:16:16 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > he said he got his dick stuck in gatorade bottle but he said he'd be back
[ 2012.04.08 21:21:10 ] Fonz Deninard > wtf?.... k
[ 2012.04.08 21:21:14 ] Fonz Deninard > 3 more jumps
[ 2012.04.08 21:21:18 ] Touchfuzzy Getdizzy > cool

Eventually, his newbie zerg-invited buddy of a corpmate lands in system, warps to me at 0, and I pop his little rookie ship and his pod. Corp chat gets pretty heated fairly fast, and the orca pilot decides to play the 'no big deal, I can buy like 5 orcas its just a minor setback' card we've seen so often in an attempt to convince me that I've wasted my time. What's ironic is the most angered of all of them was the newbie pilot, who apparently felt so horrifically violated that one of his brothers in arms shot him to pieces in space. The interesting dynamic however, is that whenever these ventures go down for me, I always manage to leave on somewhat amicable terms. I let them know that I've made them a stronger corporation, and that they now know to audit their member selection more carefully, rather than risk another undesirable like myself. They actually thank me, I top up on fuel in my catalyst, and set off in search of another audience. And the space opera continues.

An ode to a fellow thespian

So in my travels of the great space opera, I've met a lot of people who play a handful of different roles. But while certainly having heard of individuals like myself (it's what initially attracted me, after all), you wouldn't believe my actual surprise when I finally met one.

In my adventures of 'trying everything' while always leaving options open on the side for my next victims, I ended up hauling my ass out to a wormhole with a few friends, and that's kept the iskies flowing for a good while now. Always interested in indoctrinating a few carefully selected participants into our operation, however, I decided to hit up the Recruitment channel and post a small ad to see if there's any decent pubbies about looking to (help us) get spacerich. Turns out I get a message from none other than Psychotic Monk of the Skunkworks. He gives me a pitch about how he wants to help out with some cap ships he can fly, can offer some t3 cruisers and just wants to make sure he gets his fair share of the loot. You know something's up when you click Employment History only to have it almost crash your PC from loading the list, though. I break it to him pretty quick after reading the blog that was linked directly in his character's bio that he's barking up the tree of someone who has more than a double digit IQ, ask if he's got any exploits coming up he wants a hand on, and we part ways on pretty amicable terms.

His blog's a pretty fun read if you get a kick out of hearing some of the shenanigans that goes on in high sec zerg corps, and it's definitely revitalized my desire to get back into the awoxing game. Best of luck to Skunkworks in their hardly-legal adventures, and may you always outwit your prey. But one question. What does 'safariing' mean anyways?

On CVA space..

So most recently I was a pretty active member of the CVA coalition out in Providence space for a few months to try my hand at nullsec, and see how deep I could seed myself into their garden of expensive spaceriches. And I have to say, it's a mountainous load of crap. I don't even know where to begin with the amount of fail that's in the air out in Providence, so I'll work with what I got.

I worked my way into an industrialist corporation part of Apocalypse Now, which is one of your standard carebear alliances that obsesses over bragging that they own sov space, but are essentially being piggybacked by CVA (which says a lot about how terrible you are, considering CVA can't even protect their own moms from themselves these days) in exchange for being in their joke of a coalition.

The entirety of my experience in the warm hands of Apoc space can be summarized in this short but informative video. Being so close to Catch, you'd get triple A wandering in with so much as a single stealth bomber and the entire fucking region goes into lockdown mode. So I spent my hours perfecting my PI setups and counting station spins while alliance leadership shit out concrete bricks anytime undocked one of their own carriers within 10 jumps, and threatened to get their precious non-working killboard a lossmail that would supposedly attract anyone from Jita to Japan to our space.

I immediately established that the CEO didn't know anything about what his supposed specialized field was. To put an example off the top of my head, it had to be explained slowly to him why people were ice mining Dark Glitter instead of Enriched Icicle, when the refined value of the former was triple the latter. His two directors at the time weren't even proper directors, and nobody generally seemed to give a shit about the corp as a whole when the CEO would blow a tampon when he logged in to find nobody was ice mining for his towers.

So I decided that this venerable group of champions would be a great place to sink my teeth into. Now it takes a pretty thick skin to be able to pull the trigger on your 'fellow man' in-game as it can anywhere, but when you put it all in the context that you have to suffer through a few months of failed PVP ops, being locked down from the entire region because of a single cloaked Pilgrim, and corps in your alliance folding nearly on a weekly basis to either reform because of shit management (in some cases being kicked entirely only to have that former corp merc Apoc out of spite,) you find it much easier.


So eventually getting tired of my isk per hour being comparable to fishing for pennies in a scummy, green, muck filled muddy wishing pond, I used what permissions I had (which were rather extensive) to strike. The entire operation took about 4 hours, and in the end I had offlined three towers, salvaged and looted the modules and towers of two, along with the fuel of all three. The third tower I didn't bother taking down was an alliance deathstar, since it would have taken so damn long, but I at least stole the cyno generator the alliance was using before just offlining the tower altogether.

One of the things I worried about when planning my grand escape was what I was going to do with "all the shit." When you start to add up all the assets a corp has, you quickly realize that there's no real legitimate way to carry all of their crap back up Jita mountain in any elegant manner, so I decided to melt down what I could, save for anything worth not melting, and pos fuel. In the end, the vast majority that was larger than a blueprint was sold back to Providence on the market. Ships, pos fuel, and the odd expensive implant or module. I didn't have to carry much on my way out.

In my deconstruction of all the corp's assets, however, I noticed a Providence sitting in one of the ship maintenance arrays. Awesome, I thought, but this fat piece of shit is too big to haul out and I can't pilot it myself. So I asked around in alliance intel on an alt character if anyone could pilot a Provi, and sure enough someone by the name of Aeryn Guerra pipes up pretty quick. I offer the guy 50 mil if he moves the Providence to the corp's home system one jump out, and he mentions his hesitation because his pod is worth upwards of 750 million because of a mining foreman link. So I reassure the dude, give him a password to get into the bubble, and sure enough he takes the thing to the station and trades it over for the 50 mil. Day's not even over and I've already netted a billion.

Aeryn thanks me, I thank him, and we part ways. But unfortunately for him, that's not the end of it. Once I've gone and set up market orders for all the fuel I've stolen for dirt cheap (which, humorously, was purchased in large quantities by the very corp I stole them from later) I get back in my hauler and head out to the final POS to pick up some miscellaneous blueprints, moon goo and modules. I then notice that Aeryn Guerra is just sitting in his so-called expensive pod about 100 km off the pos bubble. I do a couple runs, and notice the guy isn't moving, and start wondering why the hell his dumb ass is leaving a nearly 1bisk pod sitting there afk. So once I finished draining the entire corp wallet, the entirety of their assets, and have my market orders set up, I pack what little I can into my drake and undock for the last time. Sure enough, his inattention hasn't ceased, and he was still afk off the bubble. Fortunately the warp in point was not a difficult one, and I decide to make my exit known.

True to his word, the thing had a mining foreman link on it. The guy must have gotten real flustered and heard the low armor claxons and such, because he convo'd me pretty freaking fast after he went pop. What he didn't know at the time was that I was the same person that asked him to move the provi, so the entire thing seemed pretty random to him. I play dumb at first, then move on to tell him that he's been podded because he assisted in theft of corporate assets.

[ 2012.03.25 22:32:12 ] Aeryn Guerra > wtf gives with the podding?
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:13 ] Ophilia IV > Yo
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:19 ] Ophilia IV > Sorry about that
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:29 ] Aeryn Guerra > that was a 800 mill pod
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:41 ] Ophilia IV > I doubt that, i get a pod every time i eject from a ship
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:42 ] Aeryn Guerra > am i KOS to you or something?
[ 2012.03.25 22:32:56 ] Aeryn Guerra > really
[ 2012.03.25 22:33:06 ] Aeryn Guerra > check the price on the fucking mining forman mindlinks lately?
[ 2012.03.25 22:33:39 ] Ophilia IV > I haven't, but I heard the economy is doing pretty good since crucible. why are you asking?
[ 2012.03.25 22:34:46 ] Aeryn Guerra > cause that was plugged in at that point
[ 2012.03.25 22:34:55 ] Aeryn Guerra > why the hell would you pod someone that is blue / NRDS
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:37 ] Ophilia IV > Like I said I'm sorry I was aiming for the shuttle for target practice... you must have gotten in the way?
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:48 ] Aeryn Guerra > arent you funny
[ 2012.03.25 22:35:59 ] Ophilia IV > Why were you hanging out outside a pos to begin with?
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:09 ] Aeryn Guerra > next time i am helping out a corp m8 of yours moving a freighter i will keep it next time
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:19 ] Aeryn Guerra > if you guys are going to be dicks about that
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:41 ] Ophilia IV > I'm being as diplomatic as I can... I took a customer service class in college
[ 2012.03.25 22:36:50 ] Ophilia IV > How can I help resolve the situation?
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:01 ] Aeryn Guerra > then reimburse me 766 mill for the mindlink and i will be happy
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:34 ] Ophilia IV > Why should I reinburse you? You got in the way. This isn't even your space.
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:50 ] Aeryn Guerra > cause you are NRDS
[ 2012.03.25 22:37:57 ] Aeryn Guerra > again i ask am I KOS
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:02 ] Ophilia IV > Oh wait, you're the guy who helped our corpmate move that providence?
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:11 ] Aeryn Guerra > Ummm yep
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:20 ] Ophilia IV > Okay, that explains it. Sorry, you are KoS.
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:30 ] Aeryn Guerra > How are we KOS
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:48 ] Ophilia IV > That providence belonged to our corporation and you aided him in committing theft. You owe us a billion... with the implant down, thats 300 mil left. You can pay me directly or talk to my Ceo?
[ 2012.03.25 22:38:51 ] Aeryn Guerra > thats news to me
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:03 ] Aeryn Guerra > excuse me?
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:13 ] Ophilia IV > You heard me, theif. You owe us for stealing that providence.
[ 2012.03.25 22:39:31 ] Ophilia IV > the audit log clearly shows you traded it to him, how do you explain this?
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:01 ] Aeryn Guerra > Not my fault he was a corp theif
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:21 ] Aeryn Guerra > jsut helping about a friendly face
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:23 ] Ophilia IV > And it's not our fault that you helped him without asking some serious questions. You can either pay up or remain KoS to the alliance.
[ 2012.03.25 22:40:54 ] Aeryn Guerra > oh relaly
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:11 ] Ophilia IV > Yeah, we take this kind of thing very seriously.
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:25 ] Ophilia IV > The thief already been reprimanded and podded himself.
[ 2012.03.25 22:41:54 ] Ophilia IV > No, I was refuelling the pos and saw all this shit happen, which is why I know you did it.
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:10 ] Aeryn Guerra > why would i steal a providence when i have billions of my own!!!!!
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:13 ] Aeryn Guerra > dont need more
[ 2012.03.25 22:42:20 ] Ophilia IV > The greedy only get greedier.
[ 2012.03.25 22:43:23 ] Aeryn Guerra > fine im sorry about the providence but leadership will hear about this


So the clueless clownshoe pays me 300 mil just as the leaders of the alliance log in, and are inevitably pulled into the chat. Not wanting to delay things too long while I'm so far into the green, I close the chat and just start heading for the jump bridges out to high sec while my permissions are still okay, hoping confusion will last longer than anything I could say. Not a single soul stopped me, and corp didn't even blink until I was within pissing range of Jita.

The most angry of them all was the owner of the Providence, who actually started the lame 'watch yourself in RL' death threat song and dance. Really, davevanloo, that stuff is beneath you. I thought we were bros.

The CEO actually just kind of admitted that it took some dedication to infiltrate for a period of time better measured in months, congratulated me, and on my way I went, about 4-5 billion isk richer than I was when I woke up. While the payout was definitely nice, I can honestly say that I had some good times out in Provi space. Definitely not worth the upkeep of sticking around, but good times nonetheless. I sent them a nicely worded mail after I was safely away to clear the waters, come clean and say "Surprise!" and let them know some heartfelt wisdom that if they could survive this, then they were true bros and could overcome even the chains of the alliance that bind them down. I like to think it had some effect, since they seem to be still around today despite waking up in the morning with absolutely nothing left but their arses hanging in the wind.

Keep struggling on, East India Ore Trade.

Prologue

So as I'm sitting here with my leg still bouncing with a bit of the aftereffects of a decent toke, listening to the surreal strings of Lemon Jelly, I figure it's a good a time as any to give a bit of background concerning my adventures and exploits in New Eden.

I'm known by a fair few names in EVE, some of which you could no doubt learn through doing a bit of simple investigative work, but more likely from myself directly. For now, we'll go with Thespian. I've been stumbling around EVE on and off, ever since it came online. While most of my exploits are in the more recent years, I remember the newer days of piloting spaceships as well as anyone could.

I've done a little bit of everything, but what I've certainly done the most of is industry related. The carebear in me capitalized on the notion that in EVE, I could be part of a growing and very steady (Ha!) parallel market. But through a combination of peer pressure, a need to balance the status quo, uneasiness with monotony, and a general sense of mischievousness, there's been that darker, oh-so-close-to-piracy side of me that needs to come out. These set of posts will mostly focus on that aspect of my vampirism, and the need to feed on the blood of other delicious spaceships and carebears in order to keep myself sated.

Now I've never done my share of scamming in the "local-Jita" sense of word, but I have stripes when it comes to the act of deception. I've made at least two sizable corporations completely fold, and recently (while not completely) crippled a null-sec corporation's wallet and assets significantly. All of it done from the inside.

If you're in the mood to label our sort as terrible human beings, that leap of logic isn't always a safe one to make. That is to say, I'm a pretty average guy with what would generally be considered decently high moral standards outside of the game. But the distinction is exactly that - reality, and the game world. Maybe a big roleplaying background can help to make that distinction easier to understand, but it's one you have to make when you get into the real gut of EVE as a game - a sandbox. And what a scorpion filled sandbox it can be.