Embarrassment, Milk & Rum and an Awkward Moment

I got into space on Friday afternoon and roamed around the Essence area when Creed Corbett, my ever faithful scout, reported an unnamed Catalyst running a mission in Hulmate. I headed over to him in my Tristan as Creed Corbett scanned him down. It was only a noob, but the scanning practice Creed got is invaluable. If only I knew the embarrassment that was to follow...

Creed pins his location and warps me over to him. I land pretty close and had him tackled in no time. I yawned as I hit the "Keep at Distance" button to avoid the likely blaster assault and sent my drones to work. Half paying attention I noticed the screaming alarms as my armor got dangerously low. What the hell? Rails! I had to make a split second decision, run away or try and take him down as his tank was getting thin as well. I decided to try the latter and attempted to get close while keeping my transversal high enough. It was too little too late though, and soon I my Tristan was no more. This was terrible flying from me, but I thought I'd exchange a GF to the Catalyst pilot and leave him be. Instead of just exchanging a GF though, he decided to taunt me in local, and this was unacceptable. So I went and collected another Tristan, and headed back to Hulmate. Still hovering at the mission warp in gate I locked him up again, got in really close and personal, and destroyed the Catalyst in about 10 seconds. This worried me, why did it go down this fast? I popped his pod and checked the kill log.

Catalyst

That fit just added insult to injury. I swallowed my pride and went on my merry way again. In Meutralle I found a Firetail, piloted by a someone old enough to know his way about a battle. We started a close orbit and my ion blasters and hobgoblins were doing severe damage. Then I noticed his distance starting to grow. I hit approach, overheated my point and ab and hoped that i could sink him before he ran off. I did, and immediately felt a little better about my piloting skills again.

I got into space early the next morning and soon, Duke Thunderhorse from Min0r Threat, announced that Judge Sarn was busy FCing a drunken roam. I quickly downed a glass of milk and rum, as it was still too early to drink, and headed over to their location.

Judge Sarn's drunken roams usually tend to be one of the most disorganized fleets you could possibly hope to join, for obvious reasons. These fleets usually die pretty horribly too. Why join them then? They are the most fun you could hope to have in the few hours they take place, especially since Judge talks more and more as he consumes more and more whiskey. I always imagine Judge looking like a black leathered drunken version of Santa Claus. Kinda like described here.

This roam wasn't the typical comical disaster as it usually was though, as we bagged more and more kills as time progressed. You can read about on their blog. I was very proud of my how my Tristan performed but before the fleet ended, it got blown up. Judge replaced my loss with a fitted Jaguar, exactly like the one he was flying. He soon lost his though and I scooped his loot and corpse and continued on the roam. It wasn't long before the Jag I was piloting also got blown up, along with Judge's loot and more notably...his corpse. I never heard the end of this, and apparently, I owe him one now :D

I'll suggest Min0r Threat to anyone looking for a pvp corp where every member will become your (drunken) brother. It doesn't matter if your just starting out, or if you've been pvping for ages. They're friendly, some are very experienced and most offer help to whoever is asking.

Later that day Creed once again reported a pve ship in Hulmate. After some scanning I warped towards him, but was surprised to see Groggolog already engaging. He called for a truce in local which I accepted and we proceeded to kill the Omen.With him out of the way both me and Grog was in an awkward position. Do we start killing each other or warp away? Then I noticed I was taking heavy fire from him. Seems like in my haste to lock up the escaping pod, I locked up and scrammed Grog instead. My drones saw this as an open invitation to open fire on his Rifter and Grog returned the favor. I was sitting dead still in my Tristan so I've taken a substantial amount of damage when I noticed the misunderstanding. I recalled my drones, and reminded Grog of the truce. When he didn't respond I reengaged him, but then he stopped firing. He reopened fire on me just as I recalled my drones again, and I was a few volleys from death before he stopped shooting me again. We both laughed at the confusion that just transpired and went our merry ways.

All in all, this was a great weekend of pirating, and I barely even logged in on Sunday. Hopefully I'll have the same luck during this week.

For a full summary of my kill logs over the weekend, check out my killboard.