One of the things I heard over and over upon my return to Eve three months ago is “safaris are dead”. CCP added the ability to toggle friendly fire for corporations, effectively killing our ability to join corps with the intent to shoot as many things as we can and utterly disrupt their day. At the height of the Belligerent community, safari was probably the most common topic of conversation. You can read some amusing tales in the archives of this site. Unfortunately, the stories from the most productive times of safaris were lost with the belligerentundesirables.com domain expiration.

For the uninitiated: safari was Psychotic Monk’s term for what is more widely known as awoxing. The distinction being that safari was generally done in high sec, and like everything Monk led the charge on we pushed it to its limits and CCP ended up patching it into oblivion.

Let me go on the record first by saying that I don’t entirely object to CCP’s decisions here. I always felt like forcing friendly fire upon corps was not a particularly logical mechanic. It generated massive amounts of content for BU members and served as an excellent “trust no one” lesson, but when I objectively consider how it works in the context of Eve I’m forced to admit that the current state of optional FF is what should have been in place from the start. I should also note here that I think CCP should have addressed the use of neutral logis before this change was made.

Now that I’ve done that bit of housekeeping and said my piece on a popular topic among old-timers, let’s get to the story I came here to tell. While high sec safaris are all but dead, we developed the concept of a reverse safari around the same time. Monk went so far as to establish Reverse Safari Venture Industries as a corporation to recruit potential targets. It saw some limited successes, and is still a viable method of visiting trust issues upon unwary capsuleers. I know of several groups still routinely using it.

Today’s tale was submitted two weeks ago by one Iaculus. I managed to procrastinate that long before posting it because hey, it’s what I do. Here’s how he described the setup:

I logged in to EVE the other day after work and saw that the corp adverts I had been spamming around had worked, and I had a message in my mailbox from Cairax Annages – a miner looking for a corporation to join. I asked him for full API keys for all of his accounts, and reviewed them carefully for evidence that he might be a war target alt, as well as making a quick appraisal of his wallet and assets. He didn’t have a ton of assets but had about 4 billion in his wallet.

Here’s an edited segment of their first conversations:

Cairax Annages > ill start making my way over since im 20 jumps away

Iaculus > we’re about to get a little mining op going – feel free to join us when you get here

Iaculus > if you need any assets shipped just create a courier contract for me and i’ll haul them over tommorrow

Cairax Annages > ive got a whole lot of ore (i guess) stored over here, ill try to figure out how to make a contract to have it shipped

Cairax Annages > ok, well that answers that question LOL

Iaculus > yeah no problem, i’ve got a freighter

Iaculus > just no collateral please the wallet’s a little light at the moment

Cairax Annages > sure

Cairax Annages > a courier contract right?

Iaculus > yeah

Cairax Annages > i’ll make it available for the corp

Iaculus > ok awesome

Cairax Annages > This is a lot of ore I think

Cairax Annages > 651,992 m3

Iaculus > yep, no problem though i can haul that

Cairax Annages > ok cool

Iaculus > my freighter hauls 750000 or so

Cairax Annages > i’ll pay you for it since its a lot of jumps but i dont know what a fair price is

Iaculus > ok, how about 10 mil? that’s a little better price than a freight service would give

Iaculus > or whatever you want to pay really, no big deal

Cairax Annages > ok ill set it for 10 million, that sounds about as good as anything hehe

Cairax Annages > i wont set any collateral

Iaculus > ok

Cairax Annages > ok all done

Cairax brought his alt Sairax into the corp with him. After patiently waiting for the opportunity, our hero spotted a retriever and badger on the move. Overcoming his disappointment at having so little to ransom, he moved to intercept. In Uaculus’s words:

Soon he jumped into system with me and held gate cloak as long as he could. I didn’t know if he had guessed my intentions and was trying to formulate a plan or if he was just afk. I overheated my warp disruptor and waited. Soon he decloaked 12km from me and I landed point and demanded ransom in corp chat.

The 25 million isk ransom demand was met with silence, and the retriever was destroyed. His cover blown, Iaculus immediately failed the courier contract to ensure his ownership of the mountain of ore, scooped a shiny Damage Control 2 from the retriever wreck, and moved on to hunt the badger.

It died.

So did the pod.

That badger was carrying nearly all the assets in his API that weren’t in the courier contract.

Cairax went on to demonstrate the proper reaction to bad things happening in Eve:

Iaculus > yeah this whole corp is a scam

Cairax Annages > oh ;/

Iaculus > ;D

Cairax Annages > well joke’s on me i guess lol

Iaculus > at least you got your pod out

Sairax Annages > yeah, thank you for not podding me at least ;/

Iaculus > no problem

Sairax Annages > well don’t really know what to say…good setup though! lol

Iaculus > loot fairy bad 😦

Cairax Annages > good show man

Iaculus > thanks for being a good sport!

Iaculus > this ganking brought to you by the Belligerent Undesirables

Cairax Annages > yeah dude, i’ve read a lot about people getting wrecked by stuff like this but kinda…shocking? i guess is the right word when it happens to you lol

Cairax Annages > lesson learned on my part

That bit about the loot fairy being bad? If you don’t understand what he’s talking about in a retriever and badger kill, you didn’t click the killmail links. Go do that now. I’ll wait. Done? Good. Now get that stupid grin off your face.

In proper BU fashion, our hero took the time to explain to Cairax why flying around with PLEX in the hold is a bad idea, invited him to the dark side, and was just generally an excellent human being to his in-game victim. I’ll let him close this out:

In conclusion – highsec reverse awoxing in a corporation with friendly fire turned on is still definitely a thing. Recruiting people to such a corporation, however, is more difficult now, with the best bet being newbies and guy like Cairax back from an extended absence and unaware of the new game mechanics. These players should still be killed though, even if they have apparently low value – because who knows what may be in their cargo holds? Iaculus’ Rule #1: Kill everyone who isn’t your collaborator. (Maybe kill them too for appearances).