“So what are you looking for now?”<\/p>\n
“In… what? A wormhole?” I’m distracted when Em asks his question, puttering around in the Placid region and running random missions for my Minmatar contacts to repair my once-sterling reputation with their faction.<\/p>\n
You see, CB likes to collect “NPC” items — at one point, long ago, I counted well over 100 individuals milling around “The Party Hangar” in our old tower in the wormhole — a mix of militants, mercenaries, tourists, homeless, Damsels, and (of course) many exotic dancers.<\/p>\n
He also had a fair number of “slaves” that he’d picked up at various ports of call.<\/p>\n
Anyway, when we were moving out of the wormhole, he tossed his hard-partying vagrants into whatever cargo bay they would fit, like packing material to keep the secure containers from shifting. Distribution was random and unpredictable. Generally, it wasn’t a big deal, until I tried to contract with Red Frog to ship our stuff home from whatever system the wormhole had connected to and was informed that “illegal contraband” could not be included in a courier contract.<\/p>\n
Whatever. I just left the stuff in question in the station for CB to deal with on his own time and carried on.<\/p>\n
The next time, however, I was flying a Mammoth-class industrial hauler through Minmatar space and got stopped on one of the gates. A Brutor Tribe hurricane pulled up alongside and tapped on the canopy.<\/p>\n
“Sir, could I see your license and registration?”<\/p>\n
“Sure. There a problem, officer?”<\/p>\n
“Well, we got a call from some of your… cargo.”<\/p>\n
“A… call?”<\/p>\n
“Correct. It seems you have some Wrongfully Indentured Individuals aboard your ship.”<\/p>\n
“Wrongfully indentured… oh. Shi– shoot. The slaves?”<\/p>\n
“The Minmatar Republic does not recognize the practice of legal slavery, sir.”<\/p>\n
“No. No, of course not –”<\/p>\n
“So I’m sure you don’t have –”<\/p>\n
“Do I need to turn over –”<\/p>\n
“– remit your passengers to our Customs officials to begin the naturalization process –”<\/p>\n
“Of course. Of course. Really sorry about –”<\/p>\n
“– will of course be a small processing fee –”<\/p>\n
“Of course.” I eyed the many, many Minmatar battleships slowly wheeling in the general direction of my ship. “No problem at all. Happy to pay. Really very sorry about the mix-up.”<\/p>\n
“Understood, sir. Carry on.” The ship pulled away, but I couldn’t help but feel that the officials involved were not at all happy with me.<\/p>\n
Turned out I was right. While the fine was a paltry amount, the hit my standings took with the Minmatar Government… that stung.<\/p>\n
Then, a few hours, later, it happened again.<\/p>\n
“Goddammit, CB, haul your own damn slaves out of the hole next time!”<\/p>\n
“Sorry. Can’t hear you. Laughing too hard.”<\/p>\n
Right, so there I was in the Placid region, killing time while I waited for the Red Frog freighters to get back to Sinq Laison, and running level 3 combat missions in Appiary<\/em>, my little Ishkur assault frigate.<\/p>\n “Dude?”<\/p>\n “Sorry.” I shook my head. “What was the question again?”<\/p>\n “What are you looking for in a … wormhole. Or wormhole corp. Whatever.”<\/p>\n “Well…” I thought it over. “Not a big alliance, spread out over umpteen systems. Sucks not knowing everyone.”<\/p>\n “Better for defense, too.”<\/p>\n “Eh.” I shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, defense is only a major problem if you’re in the habit of running around kicking other people’s shins — we had alliance-sized problems in our hole because our alliance picked fights and we ended up being the randomly-selected kid who got punched back.”<\/p>\n “Fair enough,” Em said, though I’m not sure he agreed.<\/p>\n “A lot of the guys I’ve followed seem to be mostly active in just a couple systems,” I continued. “AHARM, the Lost in Eve guys, or The Night Crew, or Lone Star Exploration — they all pretty much just live in one system.”<\/p>\n “I don’t know any of those names except AHARM.”<\/p>\n “The rest aren’t big in wormhole politics bullshit,” I explained. “Which reminds me: No wormhole politics bullshit. I just want to live in a hole, shoot people, have them shoot at me, make isk, lose isk, and not give a single solitary fuck about who’s currently blue to who. Simple.”<\/p>\n “Sounds good, if it’s possible.”<\/p>\n “I think it is.”<\/p>\n “So you want to start an alliance with some other corp, or just drop your corp entirely and join somebody else?”<\/p>\n “Either-or, but probably the second option, so guys like Moondog can stay in the current corp and just shoot stuff out in known space — it’s what they enjoy, and I like giving them a home.”<\/p>\n “CB mentioned you guys talked about running Incursions?”<\/p>\n “Sure, but that’s basically just for the hell of it, to see what they’re about. Just to kill time until we figure out what we’re going to do.”<\/p>\n “Sounds good.”<\/p>\n The comms are silent for awhile, which I don’t notice, as I’m too busy laughing at the Angel battlecruisers trying and failing to hit my ship.<\/p>\n “So… what are<\/em> we going to do?”<\/p>\n “That,” I reply, “is a pretty good question.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “So what are you looking for now?” “In… what? A wormhole?” I’m distracted when Em asks his question, puttering around<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-3759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actual-play","category-mmos","tag-eve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3759"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3766,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions\/3766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}