Damocles Trigonometry

Editor’s Note: This week we’re featuring Signaleer Yankee Sullivan and his first blog entry. To summarize in his own words: “An in-character take on returning to flying in EVE, discovering new dangers and perhaps finding a new home…”

Yankee Sullivan

Damocles Trigonometry, no one told me about them.

Wait, that’s not what they’re called is it? Drama Thespians, no one told me about them.

I mean, I knew that some group had come along from dead space or the abyss, that they had come on the heels of the Drifters or were Drifters of some kind or another. But what nobody had told me was that these jerks would come and blow you up in High-Sec.

I can hear you ask now: “Well Yankee where have you been? They have been attacking for a couple of years now. You’ve been a capsuleer since YC-113. What were you doing?”

Well I was drunk, for about five years. After some adventures and fights I ended up involved with a fire haired pirate who roamed Low-Sec. I began running hulls and guns for her. Then that stopped, the work and the involvement. So, I began drinking. That was around YC-116. If you have four jump clones, and the right training you can drink almost non-stop and never really have that much of a hangover. So that’s what I did, I drank for five years. Drank in the ways that I had only dreamed of when I was still a mortal, fighting bare knuckle in the back rooms that had cost me both my natural eyes and earned me the favor of the man who repaid me with capsule compatibility tests. The kind of drinking that a man like me can be prone too when the heart is shattered, and purpose is lost.

If I am being honest, the purpose had been lost long before Reese podded my heart. Though I am not sure I really had a purpose before then.

Never mind, this isn’t about why I wasn’t paying attention for five years. The point is, I wasn’t. Then one day, when one of my clones had to be replaced because it had suffered catastrophic liver failure, I hit bottom. As close to bottom an undying Capsuleer can get. That and a brief communication from Reese: she had gone to fight the Amarr and help free her fellow Minmatar from the shackles of slavery or some such thing. She said that she realized that was her purpose and she knew I could find mine somewhere out deep in the black.

Paying out for a new clone and looking at that communication right next to my shrinking bank account made me realize I needed to do something. I won’t give her credit; it was a fiscally based decision I swear. I looked over the assets I still had and outfitted myself an Imicus with a probe launcher and a full suite of scanners.

We all know there’s no fortune to be made in High-Sec. But if you’re in a cheap ship and you’re looking for lost sites to exploit, no other capsuleer is going to risk the swift and complete wrath of CONCORD to blow you up. So maybe I admit I was being a little lazy. I’m no stranger to the art of safes, deep safes, perches and jump clears. But as I said before, no one told me about the Donation Tricycles.

So, I went, and I warped myself over to a star and began to leisurely fly away from it while I launched my probes. I’d never been great at probing down signals or ships. Plus, I think maybe the map and probe interface have been changed, it all seemed different than I remembered. Soon I forgot about all my other sensors and scanners. I was focused on guiding little probes around the system while I searched for Angel or Serpentis treasure. Getting that signal percentage up to one hundred percent in those moments became my sole obsession.

That was when the little buggers popped up, and I didn’t catch it, because in all my time in High-Sec the only things that had ever posed a threat in open space was another Capsuleer, and there weren’t any around. By the time I realized what was happening my power capacitor was being neutralized and an alarm told me my shields were down. I watched for a second…a stupid peer had decided shooting an Imicus was worth losing their ship to CONCORD. I waited another second and I was still being attacked. Too late I switched my readouts filters, it was no Capsuleer. That awful shrill sound filled my ears as the last of my ship’s armor was blasted away. Then a moment later the old familiar sensation of my pod being hurled out of my dying ship. I warped immediately away and put into the nearest station.

A short time later I was getting my insurance pay out sorted. Over and over I thought to myself never had I ever been attacked by something like a Domestic Troubadour in High Security space. My lips curled up as I realized I needed to catch up. That years of drinking and lonely heartache hadn’t just cost me ISK and a clone, it had cost me my edge, my awareness. A new determination filled me to become not just competent with probes, but a master. I would also learn who the Dental Triumphs were and where they came from, and how to fight them. I began to cycle through the GalNet when I saw an advert for Signal Cartel and saw that they were a group of explorers who eschewed aggressive action and sought the riches of both relics and knowledge throughout space. Not really the type of people I figured to want a former bare-knuckle fighter turned capsuleer gun runner. But I figured they could at least tell me who the Dancing Triglycerides were, so I hit the apply button.

Now, some small corner of myself feels a glimmer of hope that maybe this is where I belong.

For anyone else like me, maybe crawling out of the bottom of a bottle, or some sort of prolonged sleep, perhaps a decadent vacation, let me tell you this: Damavik Triglavians exist and they will kill you if you’re not paying attention in even the safest corners of space.

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