Today’s schedule is a bit odd, as I have quite a bit of free time to poke around the lost recesses of wormhole space, but none of it in long stretches. There’s some kind of Alliance Op going on (a system assault that grew out of the killmail bingo I mentioned a few days ago), but since I’m taking my EvE in many small doses today, that looks like a poor option for me — to the scanning probes!
Our current wormhole constellation is partially mapped, thanks to our fellow pilots from down under, so I have a quick shufti and poke my nose into every system in the constellation, but it looks like everyone’s asleep, even Goonswarm, who (once again) owns the null-sec space to which our neighboring class two system connects.
With nothing else to shoot, I let Cab and Tweed lure me back to the home system to explore a magnometric signature they’ve located. Explore with bullets, that is. We do so, gather up the loot, and realize a nice little 55 million isk profit for all of 20 minutes of total effort. I gather up the loot and (rather than doing market research and other nonsense) haul it out to market through a random connection we currently have to high sec — the second one in two days. While out and about, I pick up a few supplies, and skitter back through the dying connection to take a break.
I’m back a bit later in the afternoon, and see from our shared system notebook that we currently have four wormholes in the system. Two are normal, and the previous high-sec connection has died, but it’s been replaced by not one but two additional random connections to high-sec.
“I think Dolby has some kind of high-sec beacon on him,” one of our pilots comments. “He’s certainly making enough use of them.” Apparently, our new pilot has been using the connections out to high security space to do some solo mining, since we don’t currently have any mining sites open in the home system. It’s a bit odd or at least a bit atypical, but as long as he’s being careful, I suppose it’s no problem.
We’re all on voice chat, and I find out why Em mentioned the problem with talking directly to Dolby. Apparently, his computer system is fit with an extensive surround sound system, and he routes all voice comms through the main speakers at some very loud setting. The echo and reverb coming back through the microphone if you happen to be talking when he opens his own mic is, in a word, deafening. Dolby seems to be very proud of the set up, and inexplicably amused by the number of people in his old alliance who ‘hated it’.
I imagine if that amused him, the reaction from his new corpmates is going to seem hilarious.
Despite Dolby’s affection for highsec mining, I decide to look another direction for amusement, and head through our connection to wormhole space to see what entertainments our neighbors might provide. Sadly, the answer is ‘none’, as it’s home to what looks like a PvE corporation that keeps their system meticulously groomed while at the same time avoiding any losses to predator pilots. They may not be big on PvP, but they’re smart and careful and have little to no intention of falling for any bait we throw their way.
I report these findings, and the rest of the pilots in the hole set out to collapse our connection so we can find some other option. We take the wormhole down with no problems and quickly find the new signature, but our new neighborhood isn’t much more appealing than the last, as it’s yet another heavily-pruned system (this one occupied by a couple Russian corporations who are currently sleeping). The only feature of note is a connection to known space only a couple jumps from our home offices. CB runs out to drop off a disused Iteron and pick up one of his Mammoth haulers, and I take out some lower-tech fittings and gear that we never use and probably never needed to bring to the hole in the first place, then it’s break time again.
The evening is drawing on, but we’ve decided to try our luck resetting our wormhole connection once again, overstressing the hole with a series of battleship jumps that brings it crashing down. Tweed and I locate and jump through to the new system and proceed with scanning in what looks like a completely uninhabited system full of sleeper anomalies and other juicy signatures that unfortunately takes quite awhile to sort through. By the time we’ve got the system properly scouted it’s getting late and I’m getting tired, so I leave the riches for Tweed, Dolby, and the newly-arrived Cabbage to plunder, and call it a night.