Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Eve Online 0.0 Experiment - Post 018 - Casualties Of War (Part 1)

Casualties Of War - Part 1

Not to be deterred by my earlier death at the hands of a rogue mining laser that looked suspiciously like a cruise missile, I had resolved to make another attempt to reach the holy land of Taisy and was reminded of a classic Victorian 1892 song:


Taisy Taisy,
Give me safe passage do!
I'm half crazy,
The gate camp won't let me through!



I decided that since it was now 2 minutes after EVE had come back up from the daily server shut-down, I would probably now stand the best chance of breaching the defences....

I left PF-QHK and set off along the same course I had followed an hour or so ago.


Two easy jumps later and Local looked like this:



Gasp! I was being given another opportunity to collect the 3.2 million isk bounty by killing the evil Thaard. Perhaps the universe was trying to tell me something.

Although it was very tempting to steam towards him in my miniature shuttle, making vague and unintelligible threats, I decided that the job at hand was more important and I valiantly pushed on towards Taisy.

Another 13 jumps or so and I entered one of the systems I had passed through earlier (which had been empty at the time) and all of a sudden I was being shouted at by a pilot near the gate.



Well naturally I did the only sensible thing I could do and ignored him. This was clearly yet another attempt to collect my frozen corpse and I was having none of it. I bravely evaded him and jumped through the gate, surely to my impending safety...

After having passed through the portal, my autopilot was suddenly not functioning and I was hovering in space with a multitude of dazzling and flashing lights before my n00b eyes.

I felt like the star of the movie "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" who, at the end of the film, had clambered over a massive mountain in order to stand before a magnificent display of twirling illumination and unusual sonic delights, emanating from strange and wondrous alien ships.



There were an astonishing FIFTY pilots in Local and my ship was now being destroyed fast with all the heavy gunfire. I began to suspect that within moments I would once more be dead and back in Venal.

In a split-second I hatched an ingenious plan: I decided to make an exclamation of shock and awe, cleverly designed to cause all 50 pilots to stop firing at me.

I wondered how many thousands of people in the history of EVE had died after randomly encountering such a large gate-camp. I suspected it was a very big number. I also wondered how many different things these valiant fallen travellers had said, out of desperation, in a futile attempt to save their ships and lives, as they were being mercilessly gunned down.

If only they had known that the most effective way to cause 50 people to instantly stop firing was to say this:



Surprisingly, it worked...

Evidently, my exclamation had indicated to these people that I really did not care who they were, or indeed why they were shooting at me, and that their 50-man gatecamp was irrelevant to a fearless n00b like myself. They had no choice but to conceed defeat.

A man in a shuttle had singlehandedly conquered an entire batallion of war-hardened long-term pilots. My heart was racing uncontrollably...


"What is this?" - I demanded, in a state of growing confidence.


"This is a war!" - shouted a hardened soldier of fortune from somewhere on the battlefield.


(I could have sworn I heard him add "Sir" at the end of his statement, as a mark of his new found fear and respect for me.)


"Ooooh" - I replied, as several deadly warheads forcefully exploded in the distance.


(to be continued...)

12 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nooooo, I wanna know what happens next!

3:43 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should've listened to Joerd :)

4:21 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

*writes that down to use against gate campers*

4:29 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder when he will learn to set his clone to an empire station :)

5:38 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is quite the cliffhanger.

5:47 pm  
Blogger 0.0 Experiment said...

I love a good cliffhanger.

6:08 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awww whenever I try to use something like "Wow, this is cool" I still end up a frozen corpse. Maybe I'm not putting the emphasis on the right word... "WOW, this is cool" ... "Wow, THIS is cool" ... or maybe.. "Wow, this IS cool"... I shall try these variations!

7:09 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Really great stuff. I was laughing my ass off when I read "Wow, this is cool!"

Keep up the good work.

7:57 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My guess is that someone recognized your name and told people through TeamSpeak to halt their fire.

After all, you might be our only hope of ridding the universe of Thaard Bof't. As such, your progress should be nurtured.

The downside is that we can't allow you to leave the North and as such will have you shot down whenever you get near Empire. Nothing personal :).

8:09 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Love it :D

9:01 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wii I can see my name in the screeny of your overview. Thou I didn´t make your KM. That must mean I´m a friendly guy who responds to "this is cool" ;) (Or that I had a juicier target)

12:30 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I haven't read all of your wonderful episodes yet (about a 1/3 of the way), but I believe this will be my favorite one of all time. Forever and allways..."Wow, this is cool!"

-Narf, The Amazing

3:04 pm  

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