It was with some trepidation that I walked down to my ship hangar and looked at my destroyer, a thrasher class vessel packing eight 200mm auto canons and gyrostabilisers to ensure maximum damage. I was going to run a two hour roam, just to get to reacquainted with my pilots (old and new) and to stretch my wings so to speak. The theme was naming our ships after Star Trek vessels but Gorgoleon insisted on naming his after some Star Wars vessel. There was an encouragement to start using the more infamous quotes from the films including: 'Beam me up Scotty' (not actually said in any film), 'Klingons on the starboard bow' (from a song!), 'Set phasers to stun', 'make it so', etc.Like all Bastards roams, we didn't go far - Zach had scanned down a myrmidon and the fleet, already assembled raced across to kill it and then a 15 minute cool off period as our globals counted down. Of course, we were further delayed when someone spied a dominix and off we went, yelling, hooting and hollering. The dominix was dropped in short order and the pilot pulled into 'yarrsom' for the negotiation of his ransom.
"Two hundred million isk please and you and your pretty little implants can leave un-molested." I said, a most reasonable request in my view.
"Five million." Shot back the reply. I chuckled and grinning I repeated my demand.
"Two hundred million isk please. You have ten seconds." There was a pause as the pilot was thinking about the offer. Meanwhile, the pirates were grabbing dropped loot and salvaging the wreck with wild abandon. We do have a second motto as well here at The Bastards and it is 'Leave no wreck or loot, behind!'.
"Nah, I have only +3 installed. I don't have any more." Decision made. I gave the order.
"Pop the pod." Even before I finished the sentence, the pod was smashed open and the corpse of the capsuleer flash froze in the vacuum of space. This too, was scooped up.
A few pilots linked in, thinking they were late asked where the fleet was. They were delighted to find out that thirty minutes into the operation, we had not even left our own system. Mynxee was along for the roam and she said,
"The roam started thirty minutes ago, we just haven't jumped out yet!"
Local was filling up and we finally left and zipped into Geminate via EOA-ZC; the system was empty with a lonely warp disruptor bubble sitting 20km of the gate, no doubt set up to catch those trying to fly back into low-sec. My two scouts, Zach and Jmarr went in two different directions. Zach had hostile contact and he vectored the fleet towards him. We arrived at the gate just as Jmarr yelled out that he was also tackled and webbed. He was too far from us but he kept his head long enough for us to get a picture of the ships that caught him. Mainly frigates and assault frigates.
Not being able to assist with Jmarr we attempted to assist with Zach but he had disengaged when we arrived.
Switching around to racing towards Jmarr's last position yielded nothing too. Disappointed we left this rump part of low-sec and went towards Oijanen and the infamous, BWF-ZZ system.
Finding nothing we went round this time with Happy San as out scout. We giggled when we entered 4-CUM5 but targets were elusive and we didn't have a prober with us; an ommission that I realised but hoped would not be detect.
It was only when we were almost back that we encountered a fleet of stealth bombers and assault frigates. With a whoop and cry we engaged some of them and then the stealth bombers released their bombs. Never knew much about them and from what I have been told, they were expensive and difficult to use. Well, after a few changes and upgrades, they proved to be devastatingly effective and popped half of our destroyer fleet before we could get one of them! Much alarmed, we all whipped our pods out and then raced back towards the relative safety of Evati wit a cloud of hostile ships chasing us!
A successful evening due to the fun we had, AstPlatinum got the award for using the best Star Trek quotes during the roam but I HappySan and Jmarr got honourable mentions for using the most in the evening. However, one can't hide the fact that our destroyers got themselves, destroyed.
Later on, HappySan, n00bish and I tried to unsucessfully tackle a missioning hurricane and yet later on, another fleet tackled two mission drakes and popped them. We got the pods and ransomed them but they weren't too keen to pay us ransoms. Instead they smacked endlessly in local. We then had another roam into null-sec hunting for a complex-running Ishtar - we missed it and ended up losing a cerberus and an expensively fitted rapier to a -AAA- HAC gang roaming through.
Finally a bunch of Bastards went hunting through a worm hole and ended up destroying a POS, stealing a T2 fitted drake, T2-fitted cheetah, mods and killed a ratting raven for lols. Netting a cool 290 million isk. All in inties. Even better that we had some potential recruits in our gangs, no better way to see whether we fit their expectations then flying with us.
Without HappySan's permission, I include his corp account for your fun and enjoyment. Please note that HappySan will have a spiffing new blog out soon. Now to his summarised account:
1. Raelyf finds a wormhole in *****.
2. Raelyf finds wormhole within wormhole - leading to WFC-MY in Catch! (AAA space)
3. Interceptor fleet formed for fun roam
4. Drake & Raven sighted in system next door by scout, at a POS
5. We start heading through the system, planning to roam - Raelyf is more awake than the rest of us and notes that the POS has no Force Field!
6. We warp to POS just in time to see the Raven log off
7. Drake is stolen! DJ sacrifices his Incursus to the cause, which we then pop and collect loot from. Drake turns out to be T2 fit with purger rigs!
8. Corporate Hangar Arrays are destroyed, yielding ~60M3 trit, loads of crappy t1 mods and come simple reaction stuff from the POS. Nothing of great value
9. Ship Maintenance Bay destroyed, dropping Raven, Cheetah, Thrasher and Iteron V!Pilots called in to help move these ships, as none of us really want to abandon our Interceptors.
Raven is T2 fit with rigs, yay!
Cheetah is T2 fit with rigs, covert ops cloak and dark blood armor rep (lol?)
Thrasher is salvager, we destroy it
Iteron V is useful, fitted with 5 Cargo expander IIs (No rigs) - we use this to grab a load of the stuff which dropped from the hangars and haul it back!
10. Ships are taken away to **** via wormhole, and we continue our roam!
A few jumps away in Y-PNRL, just one jump away from AAA's outpost in FAT-6P, our expert scout Ravenesa finds and locks down a Raven ratting in a belt! (A fitting tackler, I'm sure you'll agree)
11. A quick kill later and we fly away with some nice shiny T2 loot, and decide to head back before our luck turns for the worse.
Yay!
Involved parties and special thanks:
Raelyf (Thanks for exploring and getting a roam started!)
Happy San (I'm awesome)
DJ Akula (Sacrificed his own ship to ferry the Drake, and also flew our stolen Raven back!)
Tallitar
Kai
Ravenesa (Yay for Raven tackling a Raven!)
me0de (Kicked that Raven's ass)
Inko (Stole a Cheetah for us!)
Yay for piracy!
It's great to be back.
Oh, we've also signed up for the Alliance Tourney but we're in the random pick list so imshallah that we get in!
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