The question of “why” has always intrigued me more than “what” or “how”. While “what” and “how” demonstrate a repeatable process, “why” reveals someone’s intentions and motivations. And let’s be honest, long after a person’s “how” has been exhausted, their “why” keeps them fighting for a cause. In the article below, Andre Vauban explains in his own words why he fights for the Gallente Militia.

Why do I fight for the Gallente in Factional warfare? It seems like a simple question and I should be able to answer this question with a simple one line response. I fight for the Gallente because “Gallente rules, Caldari drools!” The truth of course is much more complicated and the real question should be why do I continue to fight for the Gallente in Factional warfare.

Why I started fighting for the Gallente goes back to 2006 when I started playing this game. A few of my real life friends had coaxed me into playing a subscription game which I said I would never ever do. They were running Gallente missions at the time and told me I had to create a Gallente or Minmatar character because those two factions were allies and I couldn’t be Caldari or Amarr. I had no clue, so I looked at Gallente and Minmatar and picked the one I liked best. I obviously picked a Minmatar character.

The group I was with was what I now call “carebears”. We mined and we ran missions. We even flew out once to help Ushra’khan defend 9UY4-H from CVA and promptly died in a fire. We split time between running Minmatar and Gallente missions. After some time, we got into lowsec POS reactions and focused solely on Gallente space to stay close to our towers. As time went on, the role player deep inside slowly shifted from Minmatar focused to Gallente focused. As we ran more lowsec towers, we slowly inched towards more pvp combat. Then something wonderful happened in 2008, Factional Warfare was released.

At that time, I created “Andre Vauban” to be my FW character as my other characters couldn’t be involved in dangerous war declarations. We started a small corp in Gallente militia since it was close to our POS towers and we had the standing which was much higher back then. We eventually folded into Microfunks where I met X Gallentius. I was hooked on PVP and continued to form relationships with various members of Gallente militia like Val Erian. I eventually moved my main into DeathFunk, the parent corp of Microfunks, and moved to Nullsec. We initially fought in Syndicate and Cloud Ring. We then fought in Omist, Tenerifis, Detroid, and Immensea. I thought Null PVP would be the ultimate PVP, but I quickly tired of Null Sec and moved in with some of my original “carebear” friends in a wormhole. Wormhole life didn’t grab my attention either. At that point I thought of giving FW a try again. I joined up with my old friend XG, who was now in a scrappy little start up corp named Quantum Cats Syndicate with both Andre and my “main”.

I continued to channel my inner role player to give me a reason to fight. I was a closet role player at that point. I didn’t play “in character”, but I looked for RP reasons to define my actions. I started reading www.backstage.eve-inspiracy.com and other RP forums. I became fascinated with the plight of the Intaki. I read about Tibus Heath and loathed the character. I was always a fan of good science fiction like Farscape, Babylon 5, and Stargate. I was hoping and trying to have Eve fill that void.

Over the last several years Eve has failed to fill that science fiction void and I have drifted further away from the closet role player I once was. QCATS as a whole as also followed this line of progression moving from NRDS to NBSI and toning down the RP. I have now been flying with some pilots for 5 to 6 years and the nucleus of QCATS has been together for 3 to 4 years. Over this time, the relationships we have forged have become quite close.We play other games together like WOT and LOL, although I still refuse to play LOL. QCATS has become a family within EVE to the point where members often meet in real life to have dinner or drinks.

I fight for Gallente militia because of the people that comprise the core of Gallente Militia. I twist the Gallente role play to suit my needs, but I could probably twist the role play of Caldari, Amarr, or Minmatar towards my needs if they were composed of the same individuals. It was just random chance and a long string of connected circumstances that lead me to Gallente. I guess that was a very long winded way of saying, “I fight for Gallente Militia because I clicked on a button to choose my character 8 years ago, which lead me to running Gallente missions in Gallente space, which in turn lead me to joining Gallente when FW was released.

Why I Fight – Andre Vauban was last modified: by