In ancient feudal Japan, when the ways of the Samurai ruled the land, honor went a long way; indeed, the writings and teaching of that time gave us the notions of bushido and “warrior code” that are still talked about, ad nauseum, by annoying Eve players to this day. Honor counted for so much back then that warriors who were captured by the enemy, or felt they had tarnished their honor or code, were encouraged to take their own life as a display of fealty to the bushido code by way of committing Seppuku, or hara-kiri; because what better way to do cleanse your tarnished honor than by ritualistically and horrendously disemboweling yourself with your own sword in front of an assembly of on-lookers?

In Eve, you’re bound to come across players who take the ideas of “e-honor” and “e-bushido” far, FAR more seriously than is probably warranted in a video game. Amusingly, these players also tend to be the most fun to mess with, as their reaction to those not playing the game “their way” tend to be the most extreme and hardline, which is to say, fun.

Luckily, to every point, there is a counterpoint, and thats just what I am; the counterpoint. Pushing extreme and super-serious players towards their own breaking point is what I do best, and I like to think that my actions keeps the game balanced, and while I’m sure saying the word “fun” here will ruffle some feathers, lets just say they keeps things “not serious and terrible”.

This turned into a little bit of a long one, and I’m rambling now, so here’s a quick TL;DR to wet your appetite and then lets start at the beginning:

TL;DR: I awox a corp and push their Orca pilot so far over the edge he murders his own Hulk and Concords his Orca.

…yeah, you’re going to want to read this one.

Call Me Ahab:

Many a moon ago, in the days of less well-read carebears and ridiculous in-game aggro mechanics, it was realized by a few of us that some of the same aggro-spreading bait tricks that we used on mission runners could be turned around and used to hilarious effect killing Orcas (as a side note, I’m not one to disclose “industry” secrets, but rule #5 of the official Ninja Code of Secrets clearly states “thou shalt not disclose intimate details of sneaky abuse of game mechanics unless said mechanic no longer exists”, so I’m opening the book on this one). Back then, since aggro was person-to-person, or person to corp instead of this global “suspect” flag we have now, the following scenario played out like a fine concerto.

First, in a safe-spot somewhere, you would have your main jet a can, and then have your un-fleeted (fleeting negated aggro) Orca pilot, while flying an Orca, take from your can, thereby giving you aggro rights on him/her. Using this now CONCORD-sanction aggression right, your main would then shoot at your Orca (always a slightly off-putting feeling) and bring it into armor before stopping. The Orca pilot would then warp into a belt where a previously scouted target Orca was mining and begin approaching them while opening a convo. Should they accept, the basic story fed to them would be something to the effect of “oh man, I totally went afk in a belt and these rats got me into armor! LOL, glad I heard the alarms and came back!”; the next step was asking for help.

If they had remote shield/armor reps already fitted (a lot of mining fleet Orcas do actually fit one to help defend their fleet against rats) or rep drones in the hold, all the better. If not, then you being the prepared boyscout you are conveniently had some in your drone-bay that you’d be happy to abandon for them to scoop if they’d be willing to rep you up a little (you know, those station fees for repairs are SO expensive!).

I think we all know where this goes from here, but basically, when someone agreed to help you and started digging their own grave repping your criminally-flagged Orca, they now had a direct line of aggression back to you, without even realizing it. As soon as those helpful reps landed on your Orca, you’d warp your main in, point the target Orca which was of course now blinky red to you, and lay on the hurt. It may sound complex, but this worked a staggering number of times.

Times have changed though, and the above way of hunting the great whales of New Eden is no longer viable. However, with my new-found taste for infiltration and awoxing, I’ve been back to hunting whales; voraciously. In fact I’ve gotten about 1 or 2 a week pretty consistently over the past 2 months. The specifics of the method I’ll keep under wraps, but suffice to say, its really not that complex, and basically involves a lot of talking, a lot of bullshitting, and a whole lot of stabbing in the back. Suck it, bushido.

Killik Twilight:

When I first came across Killik Twilight, I knew we were going to be fast friends: multiple mining barges and a big shiny Orca out at an ice anomaly harvesting away, and a very welcoming recruitment pitch. I immediately put in an application, and later that day, was accepted. As I prepared my attack for the next ice respawn, as is wont to happen to easily distracted agents of chaos such as myself, I found MORE potential new friends! Because I just can’t say no to a quick Orca kill, I applied immediately to the new corp, was accepted instantly, and was happily spitting antimatter charges at the side of their Orca within about 90 seconds of applying.

About an hour later, my ADD side-project complete with the whale slain and my corp history looking even more terrible, I noticed one of the directors of Killik logging in, and if there’s one thing you take away from CCP game trailers, its this: “dare to be bold pilot”. And bold I was; I put in a second app in as many days with Killik, and once again, astoundingly, was accepted. I watched the one online member log out towards the end of their corps time-zone, and I plotted.

I didn’t have to wait long. The very next day, while on my way with a different alt to scout their favorite ice system, opportunity knocked harder than I could have possibly expected; my logi alt (who of course had Killik marked in his overview), spotted the Killik Orca pilot, in an Obelisk, motoring towards a market hub. I scrambled to refit for reps, and get my little boxcutter there as fast as possible, but sadly, with the Obelisk only 4 jumps out from its clearly market-hub destination (and not autopiloting), my shooter 12 jumps away, and no means of grabbing a bumping ship that quickly, I could only watch in dismay as my prize docked safely.

Stewing about missing my potential Obelisk kill I decided to crack a beer, put on a movie, and camp out the corps home station in hopes of the ice belt respawning.

Finally, the ice anomaly returned, they undocked, and neutral eyes watched them head right to it; lovely. In what has become reflexive muscle memory at this point, I moved neutral logi into position near the Orca, hit accept on my pending corp invite, undocked, warped directly to the logi and laid down the pew-pew. I locked up both my new friends, and very quickly brought the Hulk to about half structure before pulling DPS and attempting to negotiate demands in corp chat.

Solaras Sion, my Orca target, wasn’t biting though. After telling me where I could put my own fist in no uncertain terms, Sion effectively told me negotiations were over. I kept working on the Orca though, while keeping the Hulk pinned, thinking that maybe the pressure of having over a billion isk in ships both in structure would bring out his inner hostage negotiator.

And then, magic happened.

Apparently sensing the end was near, Sion, like a bushido warrior of old, decided to go full Samurai and commit Seppuku, in grand fashion. While pinging away at the Orca, I suddenly watched the Hulk vanish in a blaze of fire right next to me with no warning. I’d been keeping an eye on my open log and had seen no self-destruct message, but I put that question aside as I seized the opportunity to lock up the Hulk’s pod and give him a fast track to station. As I switched back to the Orca, suddenly:

…wait did he just?

Yes, yes he did. Sion, giving absolutely zero fucks, knocked off his safety and sent his drones at my neutral logi, resulting in what I think is the first time I’ve ever seen an Orca get CONCORDed. Sion did manage to quickly get his pod out, and with that, I was suddenly alone in the belt and attempting to process what I had just witnessed. Finally, my Orca friend started talking, and it was then that I realized the full glory of the situation: Sion had murdered his own Hulk WITH HIS ORCA. I scrambled to the corp losses tab to preserve my new unicorn of killmails for glorious posterity:

Channel Name: Belligerent Undesirables boxcutter alt > holy shit

boxcutter alt > he killed the hulk

boxcutter alt > with the orca

boxcutter alt > ….

-redacted- > wut

-redacted #2- > wait…. what?

boxcutter alt > Solaras Sion > there you get nothing

boxcutter alt > hes wrong

boxcutter alt > i’ve got so many memories now

-redacted #3- > but seriously, congratulations on permanently damning that pilot from ever being able to be recruited by any reputable corporation. Lets recap: * Corp sends invite to absurdly obvious AWOXer to join corp * Obvious AWOXer becomes more obvious by joining a different corp for a total of 2 hours before re-applying. * said AWOXer warps in on mining op and locks down Hulk and Orca, both the same person. * instead of negotiating a ransom of any kind, said person decids to mercy-kill his own Hulk using his Orca * taking things from Defcon 2 to 1, Orca then turns his drones (apparently on purpose?) on a neutral ship, ensuring he goes down in a blaze of glory/mind-boggling stupidity. But Wait, There’s More!: The more savvy readers amongst you are probably already screaming this, but there’s one more fun tidbit here: under Crimewatch 2.0, having shot at my neutral logi, Solaras, Sion, a confirmed Orca and Obelisk pilot, gave my logi pilot killrights. Sadly, though I’ve waited over a month to publish this post in hopes stumbling into an incredible part 2, none of my alts, nor any of the people I recruited to help keep an open saw Sion log in ONCE since, which though I hate to say, really does improve my opinions of him. Its maybe not “making-up-for-awoxing-your-own-hulk-and-concording-your-orca” smart, but its certainly a start! -Aiden

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: AWOX, Orca, Pew-Pew, schemes