Oh, where to begin here? Let’s start with a little James Brown.
It’s not my usual taste, but he has released some real gems in an expansive
back catalogue. “The Payback” being one of those gems and quite suited to the
subject of this entry. Sadly, this musical segue has given me a ridiculous
theme to write this entry by, and I am a sucker for ridiculous ideas (like
drake roams). Think of that what you will but There was a time when I
thought it was a good idea (apologies - it wont get any better than that, but don't stop clicking those links!).
Payback. It’s easy to get wronged in
eve. Thieves and scammers have become so accepted as a part of the game’s
culture that there are a few well renown. As far as infamy goes, Awox hit the
jackpot to get his name used as a verb for blue-tackling. Maybe it’s because
many pilots see the appeal of fame or infamy and want their own little slice,
and here I reference Skunkworks. They weren’t the ones who invented the various
methods of awoxing incursion fleets or using aggression mechanics to gank the
fleets, but they are the ones people associate with it. The story about it
being a protest about the ISK people generated by running incursions and
therefore raising PLEX prices was about as flimsy as they come. It was about
the attention and the lols.
I used to fly with a guy who, through innovative use of the
in-game notepad, kept tabs on everyone that had ever wronged him with the
intention of paying back every single one. From the guy who first popped him
when he first discovered lowsec wasn’t safe to take shortcuts through in your
best ship, to the old friend who popped his ship in a wardec. Payback is not
always forthcoming and tends not to be particularly noteworthy when it does.
I’d love to say that for all these pages of notes, my former cohort didn’t hand
out one ounce of retribution, but he did get the latter of the two I mentioned.
He’d tracked his target to Dodixie and waited for him to undock where he waited
with his Arty Thrasher, and moments later payback came in the form of a shuttle
killmail. Epic.
Personally, I don’t mind little
things like who popped my ship once upon a time, so why Bring it up? Well,
some things I do mind. Slander, for example. Running a corporation in
Disavowed. Was one of The things that I used to do. After I left, some things
were stolen from inside the forcefield of one of the Blackstar Privateers
corporation towers, but crucially, not from inside the hangars. I believe a
couple of guys lost an Orca, a Legion and a couple of other smaller ships. It
was initially assumed that one of the game patches had made them bug, which was
reported to have happened to another corp within the alliance. Odidi Peyo, who lost
the Orca (which I had built for him) petitioned it. His response was that the
items were still in game, but the GM couldn’t reveal where they were or who had
them, ergo, stolen.
This was never announced publicly, but I was blamed for this. I
know this because I was in contact with the guys who had lost ships. Odidi had
asked me directly whether I’d taken his ships, apparently just to clear up the
issue and accepted my ignorance of the thefts and was Bewildered at the news.
At the time, Odidi was one of the officers within Blackstar, under IamSeannn
and Dizzy Uzzy and relayed this information back to them in the command
channel.
IamSeannn> Odi, it was Jay. It’s the only logical explanation.
Now, let’s ignore how I got the chatlog for a minute and work
through Sean’s logical reasoning here. Firstly, I had been out of the
corporation for 4 weeks and had all my toon out of the wormhole for at least a
week longer than that. On the exact date that the ships went missing, I was on
holiday with my wife, celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. The hotel did
have WiFi, but I had made a point of not bringing a laptop – just had better
things to do. I mean, if you go to Amsterdam
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that
this particular set of circumstances won’t stop a determined thief, but
Iamseannn always struck me as one of those people who have a habit of Talking loud and saying nothing. The important thing to me was that no one who had
anything stolen believed that I did it. My own theories on the theft implicated
either himself or Dizzy. Before I left, he was moaning about leaving ships
floating in the forcefield – free intel or something. Circumstantial, I know,
but combine that with the chips the pair had on their shoulders about me
leaving. Certain people in Blackstar would send me snippets of the corp chatlog
which showed how insecure Dizzy in particular was at stepping into my shoes,
feeling he needed to point out that they could manage without me etc. Just
words though, and they needed something to cement this. Something that could
either prove their quality as leaders or discredit mine by painting me as a
thief. This is why I suspect them of stealing the ships themselves, but like
them, I have no proof. I believe that the total of this Grand Heist came up to
slightly less than 2 billion ISK. If I was going to blacken my name, it would
be for a lot more than that. I’d just sold a carrier toon as well, so I was in
a situation where I could say I've Got Money.
Fast forward a couple of months to
just after I joined United System’s Commonwealth where I was enjoying small
gang PvP (not massive blobs) and just being able to play the game instead of
being The Boss. Jay was on pewliday in highsec at the time, and my other
toons were living out of an Orca in the USYSC C5. Disavowed roll into us one
night while I was busy in highsec. Their scouts buzzed the towers to see who
was home while their fleet was waiting the other side of the K162. From their
public channel and several others, I could tell who was online, who their FC
(Max Leadfoot) was and could guess at the size and composition of their fleet. Knowing
they had roughly 3 times our numbers in T3’s alone and had undoubtedly Max’s
links and Nag ready to jump us with other caps on standby, it was looking less
like a potential fight and more like a lossmail donation. Our own scouts
confirmed my suspicions. Obviously feeling Superbad from the fleet backing
him up, IamSeannn’s alt piped up in local.
Maya Scorsese> Hi Val. miss u
There was some other smacktalk, but nothing witty or noteworthy
enough to mention. This many not appear noteworthy itself, but I tend to
remember These Foolish Things. Especially when, as Sunday night, we roll the
connection to find a way to bring some caps back in but instead of finding a
viable jump location, we find the Mighty Disavowed. The timing was interesting,
since I was on dotlan looking at a jump-plan when I noticed the top alliance
movers on the right which listed Disavowed as having -254 members in the last 7
days. Looks like they had a clearout. Everyone except Viperfleet had
amalgamated into Pandora Sphere.
While the rest of the chain was being
scouted, Galmas did his usual trick of intercepting scouts leaving the hole,
catching an unsuspecting covert ops and Poerkie’s Enyo that had gone in to get
rid of the Eris. At some point, a Gila even warped in and thought better of it,
leaving some poor Anathema to bravely scoop the Gila’s discarded drones. One
covert ops did manage to make it past the one man blockade and find his way
into our home system – an obvious alt of Jezza McWaffles, also creatively named
Jezza. One of our guys asked if we could still get a fight out these guys,
which left me thinking; Please, Please, Please! Jezza was obviously scouting
the POS’s to get intel on our numbers and fleet comp. This is the sort of thing
I would use D-scan for, but Jezza is pro and uses combat scanner probes.
On his way out, he found three of our
ships, including a bubbler attempt to catch him on the static. He bravely
jumped back into our home system and hid, giving me the perfect opportunity to
provoke them. I had a feeling that everything I said in local would get relayed
back to his alliance. Actually, I was counting on it. I dropped a bit of light
banter in local, as well as a few gifs as a way of saying Bring it on… bring it on. While this way going on, IamSeannn’s alt, Maya Scorsese seemed to go
AFK next to Galmas for a full minute. This tends to be a good way of waking up
in highsec. Oh, it’s a cruel world.
Jezza> I’ll probably just yolo out
at some point.
This told me two things. Firstly,
Jezza was the type of cretin to still be using ‘yolo’ and, secondly, it was now
time to deliver my coup de grace in local.
Jay Joringer >
DE.NY don't fight anymore?
Surely no self-respecting PvP alliance could suffer such a slur. Especially
from a small, independent corporation such our ours. I was not disappointed.
The scouts reported IamSeannn in a Vagabond, backed up by Poerkie in a Dominix
as well as a couple of Gilas and an Oracle. Catching them out on a cross-jump,
we caught them between two interdictors at different ends of their static. Most
of their kitchen-sink fleet warped off to safespots, but Bloemkoolsaus’ Oracle
was slightly behind and was given the pod express for his tardiness.
From there, our fleet split up. With
Galmas inside their home system, myself on their static K162 side and the rest
of the fleet on the only other wormhole out of their system. Sherpa chased them
around with combat probes until they decided to Get it together and make a
run for it back to their new home. Poerkie landed first in his Domi and
returned fire. Poerkie’s backup arrived and jumped through the WH into their
home as my own backup arrived. The Domi lit his MJD while one of the Gilas
jumped back into the static to escape. Sadly for IamSeannn, his Vagabond
couldn’t burn away quick enough to escape my webs or Galmas’ scram. As the
local tank sputtered its last throes of resistance, I decided to say ‘hi’.
Jay> Hi Sean. Miss u
IamSeannn> bye
IamSeannn> :(
IamSeannn> ransom?
The guns answered that one. OK,
it’s only a couple of kills, so the build-up might seem a little overindulgent
but I’ll admit the accusation of stealing irked me. I didn’t think possessing
the frozen corpse of my accuser would provide satisfactory consolation, but the
wait has been long enough. It even left me thinking to myself I Feel Good, and perhaps more than a little smug. Well, there it is. It might
seem a little thing, but there’s all the ‘knowing’ that goes with it. I think
Sen put it best:
Sen Cate > he'll love it that you are top damage
There's that too, as well as seeing the mighty Disavowed run from little
old us.
No comments:
Post a Comment