Call me Ishmael

[Kiritsubo, by NeoCom from somewhere in Unknown Space]

Some days ago, like 5 days, I camped a fresh wormhole in Rens while being thoroughly entertained by Alliance Tournament 8. I ran down a few connected holes but found no Holies active and settled in on the J-Space side.

Early on a Rupture entered and started pooping scan probes while sitting on the hole. I waited a bit, but impatience got the better of me and I opened up with torps. Our subject jumped back through to high sec. Little did I suspect that his brief exposure to J radiation had already been deadly.

A short time later he returned in a Rifter, I watched as he sat stationary for some time then warped off into the system proper. I was unable to track him down via D-scan but a Rifter wreck did appear on scan eventually. He didn’t fly into the resident POS so I’m still a bit confused as to how he died.

Sadder but none the wiser our subject returned an hour later in his Rupture. This time I held my fire until he cleared the hole and watched him warp towards planet 1. I came in at about 70km, which put him at 0 and stationary. The slowly approached under cover of cloak and started spewing white hot murder at 18km. He got his guns going on me and I was down to 80% armor, but he had his fill of my secret sauce. His pod also yielded up its nougaty center.

After the combat I noticed the Local tab blinking and had this bit of wit from our subject:

[ 2010.06.19 19:57:57 ] Newbeans > I am in your ish

Not only had J-Space robbed him of his sense of self-preservation his command of the English language was rapidly disappearing.

Holies do the Darnedest Things (part 2)

*Today's guest contributor is Kiritsubo*

Our heroes, having tasted bitter disappointment, traveled up to recheck our first hole before calling it a night. A quick D-scan revealed another Prowler, located in the vicinity of a POS we had previously bookmarked. I warped over to see with my little eye a Prowler puttering around the gun emplacement beneath the station.

The extreme isolation of J Space had claimed another victim. Well, natural selection would teach all the involved parties’ valuable lessons this day.

Nerbert and I warped to 25 on our victim, dropped bombs and opened up with torpedoes. The Prowler exploded quickly and Nerbert exercised the better part of valor by warping out. I stuck around for the pod kill.

Being an avid corpse collector, I approached to scoop his remains. Unfortunately when my transverse velocity dropped the gun battery turned my shiny Hound into so much superheated plasma.

The gods smiled on me though and most of fittings dropped. Nerbert was able to recover my gear and I quickly fit a new bomber and was able to retrieve Cherilyn’s corpse without further incident.

As promised our story has a moral:

1) Don’t do POS maintenance in a ship whose chief attribute is its CovOps cloak.
2) Don’t be greedy. It gets your ass blown up.
3) Don’t ask Kiritubo what he does with the corpses.

~With apologies to Art Linkletter.

Holies do the Darnedest Things (part 1)

*Today's guest contributor is Kiritsubo*

For the experienced naturalist it is well known that long term exposure to wormhole radiation induces bizarre behavior. On a spontaneous Saturday night roam Nerbert and I encountered several fascinating examples of Holies in their native environment.

Going down from Odatrik our first J system had a few POSes but no active players. Nerbert probed for other holes while I D-scanned all the POSes. Finding another hole we proceeded down further. Our initial D-scan showed a Prowler and some POS rubbish. I quickly got eyes on both stations and saw that the Prowler was not at either.

At about this point we think he saw Nerbert’s scan probes and cloaked up. No big, he finishes the scan and we go down another hole. The third system was uninhabited; we probe a bit and find an exit up to low sec. A dead end so we head back up the wormhole chain.

A quick D-scan shows the Prowler active again and we had narrowed down his location enough the first time through probe him without alerting. Nerbert warped in to get eyes on him and attempted to describe the scene. What followed was a jumble to verbs and nouns that made little sense; I had to warp in myself to appraise the situation. Sitting from our vantage point were a dozen Small Secure Containers strung out roughly a few hundred kilometers from each other, two Small Mobile Warp Disruptors and an uncloaked Prowler, piloted by Alia Ravenswing, CEO of Dark Hat, warping randomly (?) between the cans.

The screen captures don’t do justice to this baffling artifact.

Nerbert and I quickly discussed what the possible uses for such an arrangement could be and the sociological implications of this savage dance. A mating ritual, some attempt to propitiate the local deity or a trap for the unwary anthropologist? As the untimely warning of Admiral Ackbar’s screamed in our heads we decided to engage. We warped to 30 on the can to which our subject was closest and attacked. To disappointing results.

Nerbert’s bomb launched successfully, but mine was fumbled due to some recent changes I’d made to the UI. The Prowler cloaked up immediately after we uncloaked, but was briefly de-cloaked by the bomb as he warped to a POS. We quickly got eyes on the POS and showed him ejecting Battlecruiser, Strat Cruisers and other ships from a hanger. This puffer fish response may be a natural reaction to ward off predators; our subject did have the sense to jump in a Loki fitted with CovOps sub-system.

We stuck around awhile longer observing the Loki travel through the up hole a few times, revisit his space totem and finally return to the POS. All the ejected ships were arduously returned to the hanger and the subject logged off.

The meaning of all this furious green activity will be for future generations to puzzle over and study. All I know is we got a serious case of blue balls.

Gentle reader, if you are still with us, please be assured that part 2 of our story will contain blood.