Saturday 15 August 2009

Wormhole Adventures of the Bloody Red Phobos

So, finally something interesting happened today, but before telling you about it I'll have to give mad props to fellow pod pilot and corpmate "Andreiv", gifted Buzzard pilot who provided warp-ins on all occasions mentioned below, thus missing out on getting on the actual killmails. Thanks, Andrei.

After downtime today I was chilling in drydock, spinning my camera drone around my Helios, pondering whether to go scanning or not (Andrei being a lucky bastard netted 2 medium c-type boosters in as many days)... while I was spinning and spinning and spinning, corp chat blinks. It's Andrei, and he has news. Turns out he's in a class 2 wormhole, and there's 3 ships with him: a Hurricane, a Thrasher and a Probe.

"What are the pilots' names, can you tell?" ask I, to which he replies "Oh, there are no pilots... can you fly those things?". Imagine my disappointment, I can't fly the 'Cane, being gallente/amarr specialised and neither can my colleague... tsk tsk... we'll have to blow it up and see what falls out... "Hold your ground at the wormhole entrance in K-space," I say while jumping into a Deimos, "I'm coming over".


Some gate jumps later I find myself at the wormhole entrance in Otitoh, The Forge region. We both jump through and gang warp to the ships. I start shooting up the Hurricane, which goes down like a bag of rocks, then turn to the Thrasher, which by the name seemed salvage fitted. Then it dawns on me I did have Minmatar Frigate trained, which meant I could fly the thrasher and the Probe frigate next to it. I climb into the Thrasher to jetisson any sleeper loot, but I'm disappointed to only find some Reinforced Metal Scraps. So I climb back into the Deimos and shoot the damn thing to pieces. This of course meant that I didn't get a killmail for it, since it became my ship when I climbed aboard, but hilariously I got an insurance payout:

Your friendly insurance company has transferred 300,000.00 ISK into your account for the recent loss of your ship. This payout is the default payout for an uninsured ship. If you are interested in better insurance then please visit a station with an Insurance Service for further details.
I blew the Probe out of the water just as the owner, Jopie Adam, was appearing on directional scan in his Capsule. What a time to appear... :P

We thought that was the end of that, went home, put the loot away and so forth. Andrei had to take his son to the park, so he logged, and so did I after a bit.

As I came back on tonight Andrei greeted me with more news - in the meantime the corporation Jopie Adam belonged to, one "Nuclear Fabritronics" had anchored a medium Caldari POS in the wormhole, together with some assorted hangars, making it look like they were moving in. "Great", I say, "... not much we can do about it by ourselves".

Then something interesting happened: while decloaked to launch some probes, Andrei's buzzard appeared on their directional scan. Promptly, a message appeared in local:

[18:55:10] andreiv > Dreakco Marilius > Buzzard Pilot- Suggest you leave or you will be scanned down and destroyed
"This is rude", I say. "Yeah, especially since the three of them are huddled up at POS in an Iteron, a Hulk and... a simple Capsule. Hey, maybe they'll start mining, there's a gravimetric sig I scanned down here" said Andrei. "Yup, the Hulk just warped into the gravi site".


"Hang on, I'll get a surprise lined up for them." I said and went to get the brand new Phobos I had gotten some time ago but which I hadn't had time to use yet.
"... if they're so pissy about people coming and going through the system, we'll see if we can't ransom them". I hoped by the time I got there all three would be hugging a can in the belt, sitting ducks just waiting to be bubbled and shot down.

While I was on the way a Heron pilot stumbled into the system. Promptly he was hailed in local the same way as Andrei was:

[19:23:55] andreiv > Dreakco Marilius > Heron Pilot- Suggest you leave before you get shot Down and Destroyed
OK... those guys seriously needed to be taken down a peg or two.

"Hang on, Hulk is warping to POS. He's coming back, and there's a Retriever with him. It's Jopie Adam, the guy whose ships we blew up... but the two are 60km apart". Judging by the time it took the hulk to fill up and warp to POS I figured it was probably cargo rigged. "Okay, we'll go for the Hulk. I'm almost there. Get to about 5km of the hulk and I'll warp to you. As soon as I say GO, you jump out to avoid getting caught uncloaked by my bubble. Ready.... GO". I yelled GO as I was in warp towards Andrei. The nimble Buzzard aligned and warped before I arrived.

I came out of warp 8km away from the hulk. Bubble up - he's not going anywhere. I locked him and started pounding with my Heavy Ion II's. The Retriever got out. Sensor Booster was on, expecting his drones... but there were none. And his shield went down extremely fast because it turned out he hadn't fitted a shield booster. A couple salvos more for his armor and hull and he's history. His pod was caught in the HIC bubble and web and I was going to offer a ransom... 30mil should be OK, considering the price hike of implants... but before I could finish typing my business proposal in local, I was made a counter-offer in a language I didn't understand, but which didn't sound too friendly:

[19:49:41] Dreakco Marilius > Ja jy dink jy is slim, POES
So without any more haggling, Dreakula, the Hulk pilot won a free trip to the cloning vats, all expenses paid. I also blew up the hulk wreck since my cargo was still full with cap charges and ammo, neither of which I wanted to jetisson to make room for a couple of strip miners and assorted junk.

[19:50:05] Brutus Septimius > that's for being rude to passers-by
[19:50:15] Dreakco Marilius > Bite me :P
[19:50:35] Dreakco Marilius > Being rude to passers by that come in here and lock me will get shot at
[19:50:42] EVE System > Channel changed to Otitoh Local Channel

I have no idea what Dreakco's last line meants exactly, but given the fact he spent all the time in an Iteron inside the POS shields doesn't make me take his threats too seriously...

After we were back in K-space, I ran that first line through Google translator with "detect language" as a "from" selection. It came out: "Yes JY JY Dink is smart, Cat", which I interpreted as "yeah you think you're smart, pussy?"... is that Dutch, or am I mistaken?

Tsk tsk... W-space takes its toll on people, makes them irrascible and not quite rational. Mining Plagioclase in unsecured space while yelling at passers-by to leave or be destroyed by a Hulk, Iteron and Retriever doesn't shed too good a light on you.

Again, thank you, Nuclear Fabritronics for chasing our boredom away :)
Killing a few pilotless ships and a Hulk isn't something to brag about, but given the circumstances it needed to be done. I'm sure any other pilots would have done the same.

Fly safe.

3 comments:

  1. I can confirm that 'Ja jy dink jy is slim, POES' and 'Yes JY JY Dink is smart, Cat' both are NOT Dutch.

    I don't know why Google translator suggests it's Dutch, because it is my first language...

    Very nice blog btw!

    - Marcel MM

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  2. Nice Blog Brutus, enjoying reading it so far!

    The language in question is Afrikaans...used in South Africa.

    What the guy said (my Afrikaans is not perfect - but I've had this said to me a few times so...) is " yeah you think you are 'slim' (cool/hardcore), poes (slang term for vagina and EXCEPTIONALLY rude)"

    So there you go - podding him was appropriate and hopefully he had implants in. :)

    Fly Safe

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  3. Yes, Anonymous is mostly correct, it is Afrikaans, and not very nice at all.

    "slim" however, means "clever".

    ReplyDelete