The God of War.

It had been a quiet evening in Egghelende, I had brought out my prober ship for a while, to discover the mission runners I was hunting for had left, or been found already. Then when I swapped back to my rifter, it looked like the missions ruuners knew, and they were back in the system again.

Frustrating really. Nothing was going boom.

Finally we caught something in an asteroid belt, and there was a satisfying explosion! Can't find the killlmail on the board, but i'm sure it will turn up. Even managed to grab that guys pod and pop it too.

It was amusing to find someone in a pod, examining their corpse. It was even more amusing to make that pod go pop too! Two of the same corpse in the same belt! Sometimes you've just got to do these things.

Late in the evening, most of the corp had logged off, there were only 2 of us left, and I decided to be a bit reckless. There was an Ares (see where the god of war title ties in folks?) prowling about the system, we'd seen it at a distance a few times, but hadn't engaged it.

I went looking for it, and I found it.

Looking back, that wasnt the smartest move I'd ever made, tackling an interceptor without a MWD or long range weapons, but like I said, sometimes you've just got to do these things.

So, once I'd tried to tackle the Ares, I was warp scrambled and he was orbiting me at 20km, well out of range of anything on my ship, and of course my AB won't match him for speed so i can't close the gap.

Thankfully my corp mate was on hand to enter the fray, and Allsop came warping into see what he could do.

Thats around when things got slightly more interesting.

Instead of possibly tackling the Ares, just as Allsop warped in, so did a Taranis. It picked Allsop as a target, and I switched my target to the Taranis and started closing on it. At this stage I'm thinking 'Great, now we got this on top of us, we can try to kill it, then the Ares will swoop in on us. We're gonna die.'

The Ares warped out, guess he's not into group action in belts much.

The Taranis was pounding holes in Allsop's ship, but we were blowing large chunks of armor off it too. Allsop let me know he was taking a lot of damage, but to keep on the Taranis.

I started taking damage, a Punisher had warped in to join the party, it was orbiting me.

As the view panned round I saw an explosion, checked my targets, and saw that the Taranis was still there, barely. Allsop's ship had had transformed into a fireball, I was alone. I continued firing my autocannons and rockets while targetting the Punisher. If I lived through this, he was next.

I swapped my web to the punisher, hoping reducing his velocity while keeping my afterburner going would help in some way avoid his incoming fire.

The Ares re-appeared! It warped in 4Km from me in the midst of the fight.

Then the Taranis popped. Relief briefly swept through me as I turned my adrenalin soaked attention to the others. I webbed the Ares since it was close, if the Punisher went down, the Ares was next if I could get to him. I scrambled the punisher and moved to orbit him at 6Km, hoping he was using short range turrets, my afterburners screamed as I gained distance, my shield was gone, and my armor was dropping. I threw on my armor repairer as my guns opened up on the punisher, the Ares was making a direct line out of range. Suddenly I stopped taking damage. Half way into armor, and I'd made it out of range of the Punisher's guns, my armor repairer was steadily replacing the lost bits of ship. He fired his NOS but it mustn't have been on autorepeat, i started cycling my armor repairer in case he used it again. The Ares was out of range of my web, I swapped it back to the Punisher, and my guns really started doing damage.

A few seconds later, the Punisher popped, I checked around and the Ares was 35km away and closing back in. I warped to a safe and breathed a long sigh of relief.

That was a fun fight. I didn't manage to get any loot from either ship as the Ares must have come back in and scooped it all, but I survived to tell the tale. Plus it added to more kills to the killboard!

Finding my way

I've been playing EVE online for around 3 months now, and I haven't had more fun in a game than I've had for the last 2 weeks.


When I started in EVE, I guess I was like a lot of people, with no real idea what to do.

I'd done the initial tutorial, and I was sitting in a space station in a rookie ship. So I needed money, I knew that, and off i went into the nearby asteroid fields and started mining.

Pretty soon I had enough isk to buy my first frigate, a little Gallente Bantam, which I continued to mine happily in.

A few days in, and I got invited to come and join a happy little band of miners who were noob friendly, a little corp called Extraction of Prescious Ores. EOPO. I spent my first couple of months there growing to realise that I found mining kinda boring, and I enjoyed combat quite a lot. within a week I had managed to get a 120mil implant drop from a faction spawn rat, and a blueprint for a Daredevil.

So I stopped mining and started ratting and doing missions. Like most noobs I still had it in my head that bigger was better with ships, and I raced into a Battlecruiser.

I was concentrating on missiles for weapons, and i did pay some attention to the certificates ingame and tried to get the skills recommended for each ship I flew.

I managed to complete quiet a few of the level 4 missions in my drake. I did lose it a few times though, and there was that fateful drunken night when i lost 3 in a row.

With all this ratting and missioning, I did have a few encounters with those nasty pirates ingame, since I was seeking rats in LowSec for better bounties, and I was running missions from a system next to LowSec, so I did get sent in there sometimes. Most of these encounters did not end well for me. I lost numerous ships, and quickly learnt to keep my eyes on Local for hostiles, and warping away from combat in my Pod before I wound up back in the clone vats.



One encounter stands out more than the rest though. I was ratting in Fliet, near OMS, and I had happily taken down two cruiser sized rats in my shield tanked drake, and I was approaching their wrecks to loot them. Since I wasn't paying as much attention as I should, I didn't notice the -10 pirate enter local. If I'd noticed, running and hiding was the plan. As it was, I heard something targeting me, and then I was warp scrambled and webbed, and lasers were eating through my shield.

I returned fire. Using my target painter and quite a lot of heavy scourge missiles, while limping along at some miserably low speed.

I have no idea how long we traded blows, our damage kept pace with each other, and as we both reach around 60-70% armor, the pirate broke off. I was left shaking, adrenalin pumping through me from the thought of losing my ship, at the same time I was almost euphoric that I had survived an attack from a -10 player.

To this day, I can't remember who that pirate was or what ship they were flying.

This encounter was to lead me to the life I live in EVE today.

I continued to run missions, rat, and haul for the mining corp. I set my self a goal. Get my standings to 8+ with the corp I was running missions for, then turn pirate once I had some jump clones.
And that's that I did. I left EOPO with the best wishes of the corp, and some pleas to not come back and shoot them. I bought a few rifters and some basic T1 equipment for them, following the guidelines of some of the 'how to be a pirate' guides in the official forums.
I roamed LowSec, from Yvangier through OMs and beyond Murethand. It didn't work very well. I got in a few fights, and I lost my ship each time. I even got podded. After a few days of this, I was beginning to think maybe I'd made the wrong decision, maybe I'd just been really lucky that day, and pvp wasn't for me. But before giving up, I thought I'd check the forums for a possible corp to join, maybe there was a pirate corp out there that didnt have a 5 mil SP requirement, or a KM requirement.
And there was! Newly formed Pyrotechnics Inc. was recruiting noobs interested in pirating, I posted on the forums went to the office and submitted my application. I haven't looked back since.