Full Circle Pirates

January 15th, 2009 in Hasama

Those of you with a keen eye will have no doubt noticed the cloaked Drake in the above screenshot, which I took in January of 2009. Yes, that's me in the Drake. I was four months old and flying a ship I shouldn't have been flying into space I shouldn't have been flying into, in a ship that had no business being there. With a cloak on it. Did I mention I was four months old?

I once orbited a can thief in a High Sec belt while cloaked in that Drake and actually said in local that my ship, "was full of surprises." Oh yes, I was full on Noob once.

While a couple weeks into my Eve career I did move to Null Sec (Providence), our Corp kept a base of operations in Piekura. We would often JC up there and run missions, mine, or otherwise tool about in local. My first experiences with Low Sec Piracy happened in the area around Piekura. I made a video about my very first solo kill. But that was very early on in my career. By four months into Eve I was becoming much more adventurous. I was putting cloaks on Drakes and diving into Low Sec.

I remember the first time a few of us got up the courage to form a small gang and make the jump into Mara. We died so fast to a gang of gate camping Onyx that I barely had time to react before I was in my pod. That was scary. Which is why I started putting cloaks on ships I guess. My memory of the details is a bit sketchy.

Pirates were scary back then. I was just learning how Null Sec worked and I had a good handle on how High Sec worked, but Low Sec? That was a huge unknown scary land to me. It didn't stop me from exploring however. Exploring and watching. The cloak on the Drake, while a typical dumb idea, also had purpose. I wasn't there to fight anyone, and I didn't, I was there simply to watch and learn. I wanted to know what was going on, what the rules were, and why?

I was being indoctrinated into the Anti-Pirate mentality of CVA at the time, so pirates were the bad guys. Scum suckers. Preying on the weak. None of which made any sense to me as a young player, but you go along with things until you find your own way. Eve was complicated enough.

It's funny now of course. Here we are almost six years later, I've been all over New Eden and now I'm the bad pirate in Mara/Hasama/Ishomilken. I've come full circle. Now when people come into Low Sec from Piekura I'm the one with the red skull -10 mark in local.  Now I'm the one reported, the one avoided, the one feared. How many pilots have I killed that shook their head and wondered how I managed to explode their ships so fast? Without warning? How many have I forced to resort to putting cloaks on ships?

As I've said many, many times, I do not purposely prey on young pilots. I shoot everything without regard to age or experience. I can't afford not to. I don't look before I engage. And sometimes, like yesterday, when I do explode someone very young - I'll send them some isk. Or try to convo them. That is something that no one in Low Sec did for me back in the day. I never even got a gf in local back then.

I may be a scum-sucking pirate, but that doesn't mean I have to be evil.

We were all stupid four month old players once.