Ostingele—Placid

With the blue doughnut of null security growing more and more docile, and the last of the “old breed” solo PvP pilots dying out several months ago, Low-sec entrance gates across the galaxy have seen an influx of pirates and vagabonds ready to gatecamp—but one of their number has met with an unexpected conundrum.

“Listen man, I love killing as much as the next guy. Hell, maybe I love it more than the next guy,” said Dirk Diggler, a Shadow Cartel line member, “but I just can’t keep doing this. They don’t stop coming! Why won’t they learn?”

Diggler reported to Eve Onion on Monday that, in their multiple weeks camping the Stacmon gate in Ostingele Lowsec, members of Shadow Cartel have destroyed trillions in ISK and collected hundreds of bodies without much more effort than pressing F1 every few minutes. Because of this extended period of intense, adrenaline-pumping combat, Diggler noted that some in the alliance have already reported the onset of carpal tunnel, while others have developed an uncontrollable rapid twitching of their index fingers.

But for Mr. Diggler, it was not a physical ailment which caused him to reach out to Eve Onion. Instead, it was the constant return customers which eventually took a grave toll on his psyche.

“Honestly, we would kill the same capsules, over and over again. They would just die, reship, then come right back through the gate. Beyond even the charred bodies and destroyed loot…it was the repetition that got to me. All they had to do was look at Dotlan; just check their maps once to see how many of their brothers had died on that gate. Hell, even maybe think for a second about what had happened to them twelve minutes before, but no…instead they would come back again, and again, and again, never ending, women and children, smoke and fire, fusion and conflagration. Who are we as a species? Do we do anything but destroy and kill? Are we any better than the Drifters? Am I any better than a rogue drone? How is a simple man to live with this constant slaughter?”

After giving Mr. Diggler a moment to regain his composure, we asked whether he would continue his pirate lifestyle despite these newfound moral misgivings. Diggler responded that he was now simply too sickened by the industry to continue his previous line of work. Instead, he was seeking “new opportunities”. Specifically, passing the time by opening a mobile salami and bodywork shop out of the back of his Thanatos. Diggler noted the low, low going rate of bodies in Placid as a key deciding factor in his decision, stating that, “those pirate guys from Firefly always got my motor running, and there’s just too much meat floating around this constellation not to make some solid ISK selling salami in Dodixie.”

Eve Onion decided to check in with some other nearby pirate groups to see if they shared a similar sentiment, but results were mixed—many refused to give quotes, while others just launched missiles towards this correspondent’s ship. The only verbal response to this question came from a lone pirate docked at an NPC station, who mumbled “[u]ngaa, bungaa, me like shooty pew-pew,” in response to the question.

It seems only time will tell if Diggler’s insight will spread further into the pirate community, but for the time being, capsuleers may want to avoid the charcuterie in Dodixie.