It's like fencing

My brother sent this picture to me yesterday, asking if I remembered that. As if I could possibly forget! We were both on the Miel-do-jun team in school; Dad took this picture of me, Valar and my classmate Irade training.

Miel-do-jun is a gladiatorial contest incorporated from the Jin-Mei after they were absorbed into the Gallente Federation. Blood-sport, however, did not appeal in the technologically advanced empire, and it quickly became translated into holographic fighters controlled by players wearing full-body VR-control rigs. Professional Miel-do-jun fighters train rigorously and their interface with the control rig is enhanced through specialised cybernetic implants. Like most sports, Miel-do-jun is accessible to the public through home-size holographic projection tables, and most Gallente schools have teams for interscholastic competition.

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This is the result of the first Art Challenge between myself and Helicity. Hel asked me to do a picture of 'Gallente indoor sports, played by young people'. This nearly went a very wrong direction; fortunately, I managed to rein in my imagination a little :p

I asked Helicity to paint a 'small provincial Amarrian shrine' and I think he did a fantastic job with it ^_^

What Would Martha Stewart Say?

My friends, I am distraught!

It is, of course, of the utmost importance when expecting company that the host/hostess should have the parlour cleaned to sparkling, with carafes of tea and coffee already prepared for when the guests arrive so that they will not be kept waiting in expectation of refreshment. One hopes that the host/hostess shall as well have prepared an assortment of cakes or biscuits to offer, should the guest be hungry as well.

Thus it was with some distress I discovered us to be utterly unprepared for when representatives of GiS arrived at our station earlier this morning. Not only was the parlour still an utter shambles from the party last night ('what party' you ask? why, the party we have every night!), but we were out of coffee, the tea-tin had been used to prop up one leg of the coffee-table after it had been broken, someone had swapped the salt for the sugar as a belated April Fool's prank, and the milk carton had been drunk from. Not only that, but the revellers had consumed the last of the biscuits we usually save for company!

This will not do! I tell you, we shall be the gossip of the cluster if this continues! Already people say in Bei that the Bastards could not even step forward to greet GiS, so ashamed we were at the state of our parlour, and heaven forbid we should have consumed our own cake in an uncharacteristic act of gluttony!

...I still think 'cookies' should be made an ingame item. YOU try luring the little boys with sweeties which don't exist and see how far you get!

Care and Feeding of Your Pet Rookie

A friend of mine dropped me a message via Facebook, saying that he was considering giving Eve a try, and could he contact me ingame if he did? Of course I said yes, and this evening he sent a text with his ingame name.

But before that, it got me thinking. The New Player Experience (NPE, as we shall henceforth refer to it here) has changed a lot in the introduction of the latest patch. I've played with it a bit, but not actually to the point of creating a character; my only open slot is on Shae's account, and I've been hesitant to sacrifice Shae's training time.

Now, though, I felt kind of an obligation to at least sit through the beginning of the NPE so I could help my friend work through it if necessary. So I created Rani Estrella, put Shae's long-term training on pause, and sat down, prepared for the grind.

Oh, what a grind. I was going loopy by the time I logged Shae back on and resumed her training queue. I'm not particularly enthralled with the new NPE.

But lest I taint everyone else's impressions of it with my jaded older-player perspective, I have created an in-character blog for Rani at http://raniestrella.blogspot.com in order to document the experience.

My intention is to log in Rani for an hour or so every day (there may be days I don't; we all have Real Lives which must bet tended, too), train her up during that time only so as not to munch too much of Shae's SP, and go through the rookie experience a bit at a time, with accompanying blog entries to keep track of how things go. She's receiving no monetary assistance other than what she earns through the game, and the IC bit is to force myself to leave my previous experience to the background and produce an unbiased account.

This should be interesting.

Hellcats Office Tackboard 02

This afternoon, Mynxee showed me a pic she took when I was off setting up in MH. Asa managed to make off with Flash's shades, and Mynx was pissing herself laughing describing his efforts to get them back!

That's one for the wall, that is!

Design Flaw

Station Commander Arisin Korth leaned with his elbows on his desk, holding his head in his hands, wishing he could have a drink on-duty. Or several drinks. He needed them.

Nobody seemed to understand what station commanders had to go through every day. Yes, they had a vast command and sub-command network to maintain and manage the metropolis-sized platforms and their thousands of residents, let alone the transient spacefaring population. At the end of the day, when people didn't know what to do -- or were reluctant to take responsibility for difficult decisions -- it all came back to land on his overflowing in-box.

As if that wasn't bad enough, being in Gallente space meant that certain Amarrian standards had to be relaxed lest they rankle the delicate democratic sensibilities of their gracious hosts. The maintainence and service staff had to be hired and paid reasonable wages, rather than being brought in from a nearby slave colony -- immensely more convenient, and it meant he wouldn't have them all threatening to go on strike if their wages were not raised.

There was a hesitant tap at the door. 'Sir?'

His voice muffled behind his hands, Korth answered, 'Yes, Vernire, what is it now?'

The door opened. Docking Supervisor Scott Vernire looked more apologetic than ever. 'I'm terribly sorry, sir, but... there's a problem in hangar 4212-B.'

Sighing, Korth ran his hands back over his hair, carefully shaved to look respectably recessed, then clasped them on the desk in front of him, regarding the supervisor tiredly. 'What kind of problem?'

'Well...' The younger man bit his lip and straightened his jacket nervously. 'One of the capsuleers bought a capital ship. He's having it assembled just now and... Well, sir... It doesn't fit.'

Korth's long features sagged. 'Doesn't fit. The grandest cathedral complex on Amarr Prime could fit in those hangars with room to rattle, and someone's bought a ship which doesn't fit?'

Vernire's face crumpled unhappily. 'Yes sir. You... I think you should see for yourself.'

They left the office and took a lift down to the hangar in question and went to the observation lounge. When he saw the problem, Korth stopped dead, his mouth falling open. 'My God...' he breathed. 'What is that?'

It was dark, rusty red, marking it clearly as a Minmatar design, eye-achingly ugly against the soft golds and ivories of the hangar, its jagged lines threatening to pierce the graceful Amarrian arches. The null-gravity field suspended it upright above the platform as crew and construction drones swarmed around it like a cloud of insects, buzzing and snapping with bursts of welding sparks and crackles of raw electricity. The looming hulk rose from a delicate point into a towering blade shape bristling with solar panels and antennae, and ended in ragged, unfinished plates and gaping mid-construction holes a hundred metres short of the domed ceiling.

'It's... the pilot said it's a Naglfar,' Vernire says, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar name. 'Minmatar dreadnaught.'



'But for Heaven's sake,' Korth exclaimed, gesturing to the unfinished top of the ship. 'How far up does it go?! The hangar is only three kilometres high!'

Swallowing hard, the Supervisor retrieved a notepad and pulled up the design specifications. 'According to this, the dreadnaught is... f-four kilometres tall.' He blanched and looked at the Station Commander uncertainly. 'We'd have to remove twenty decks plus services -- at least! -- for that to fit.'

Korth rubbed his face, groaning inwardly. 'Well, best get started on it, then.'

'Uh. S-sir?'

'Start figuring out how to cut a Naglfar-sized hole in the hangar.' He looked at Vernire. 'Do you have any idea what these people pay us in terms of berthing, apartment rental, crew housing, entertainment? What we earn in a year is nothing to them. Get on the logistics to open up the ceiling in here.'

'But sir... how will he undock?'

Both men looked at the smaller arch of the hangar's exit into the docking lanes. Korth sighed, looking even more tired.

'You'll think of something.'

Phantom Module Syndrome

There's an afterburner in my hangar.

No, no. No. I don't have an afterburner in my hangar.

It's just there.

It's not mine. I can't get rid of it. It thinks it's fit to a ship which belonged to the last pilot to use this hangar. Where this pilot went, or who he or she was, I don't know. I wish they'd come get their afterburner, since it's taking up space.

It's not even physically there. We can move it, and we have. Just into a distant corner to keep it out of the way. But if we try to remove it from the hangar, it... I dunno. It comes back. According to Aura, I can't sell it, repackage it, trash it, use it or can it... because it's fit to another ship.

And sometimes... sometimes it just moves by itself.

I dunno. We leave it off in that corner and it seems happy to stay there, but every once in a while, it'll be out on the docking ring where someone will invariably trip over it because they aren't expecting it to be there. It doesn't matter if we stuff it in a locker, crate it, cover it with other loose modules... it will still somehow end up looking like it's expecting us to fit it on something. But we can't...

And the weirdest part is that only my crew and I seem to be able to see it. We asked station security if anyone else had seen the Ghost Afterburner of Evati rattling its chains around their hangars, but they just looked at us funny and asked if we'd been at the absinthe again...

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OOC: inspired by a glitch which caused a module icon to remain in my hangar after fitting a ship ^_^

My Best Killmail Ever

It seems even if I get a personal killboard, I won't be able to post this since it happened on the Singularity server, so I'm posting this here for the amusement of posterity.

2008.03.16 23:35:00

Victim: Fio Shovah
Alliance: NONE
Corp: New Age Flying Industries
Destroyed: Ares
System: Arzi
Security: 0.1
Damage Taken: 1682

Involved parties:
Name: Shae Tiann (laid the final blow)
Security: -8.0
Alliance: Atrocitas
Corp: Under the Wings of Fury
Ship: Atron
Weapon: Hyperion
Damage Done: 0

Yes, I apparently strapped an entire Hyperion onto my frigate and then dropped it on Fio's assault frig.

What actually happened was that I had a smartbombing Hype (long story -- it was an Alliance exercise that got very, very silly towards the end) and did some vague amount of damage to him. Hype got popped shortly thereafter by Alliance-mates in carriers, I docked, hopped in my scouting Atron and cloaked outside the fight-zone before the sentries noticed me.... by which point Fio got himself GCC'd and since I was the last player to do him damage, I got the 'final blow'... in my Atron.

Gotta love the quirks of game mechanics ^_^

That Meme Thing

I've been multi-tagged for this by Mynxee and Sarah Conna.

And I'm kinda screwed on the tagging part since everyone else I know has been tagged already, so just no going to bother (this is why doing something like that in a small community is silly).

The Rules:

• Link to the original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share 7 facts about myself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

:Seven Facts About Shae:

1. I'm the oldest of three kids in my immediate family, the third-oldest of 16 grandchildren, and the oldest unmarried child in my extended family; cue all my rellies expecting me to settle down and sprog sometime soon :p (but not my parents! \o/)


2. I was trained to be a racing swimmer by the time I was 12, but I wasn't competitive enough to want to join the team. I just loved swimming, and I miss it now.


3. My family are relatively conservative northern Baptists. Because I had nothing else to rebel against when I was a teenager, I went hardline pagan. These days, I consider myself areligious and borderline spiritual: I research about other religions to understand them, I accept that some people need their religion, and let the issue stop there.


4. If you really -- really -- want to put me in a bad mood, leave me in a room with the television on. Most shows annoy me because they seem lame and contrived, and the commercials turn me into a raging anti-society maniac.


5. I've been using Photoshop7 since I first got a ripped copy from a friend in 2001. My current copy is legal (yes! I bought the whole thing, box, manuals, disc and all... for £25 off eBay...)


6. I'm largely a self-taught artist, with only a few techniques learned from Saturday-morning art classes when I was in high school to supplement. I tried to attend a fine-arts academy after I finished high school in 2000, and after six weeks of being told I was drawing a box (The. Same. Goddamn. Box. Six. Bloody. Weeks.) 'wrong' and being sneered at for suggesting that Photoshop is as valid and effective an artistic tool as a paintbrush, I walked out in the middle of a class and never went back.


7. I'm FAR too polite and have a hard time getting out of conversations where the other person won't shut up, even if I'm bored and running late. This includes drunken corpmates on comms at stupid o'clock in the a.m, total strangers who are deliberately trying to offend me, and my relatives when they're being ignorant and closed-minded.

Extra! Because I was tagged twice :p

8. I have an incredibly vivid and active imagination. It's why I write so damn much, why I draw so damn much... and why I don't touch drugs harder than alcohol and caffeine, because I'm deathly afraid of what the contents of my head might do to me.

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All Tomorrow's Parties

Laser light, red, blue and violet, stabbed and sliced through the darkness towards me, tracing arcane patterns through the nebulous haze. A deep, rhythmic pulse thrummed in counterpoint below the shriek, settling into my bones and pushing me faster, barely a heartbeat ahead of the lasers.

It was Saturday night in Evati, and I'd found a club to chill out in.

It wasn't too crowded, but there were enough people to let me know the place wasn't considered a dive, either. The beats were heavy and pounding, the melodies grating square-waves, the vocals by turns sensitive and anarchic. Long-haired men in heavy boots and leather trousers stomped in time while women in tight dresses swayed on platform heels strapped up to the knees. Thin ribbons of incence-laden smoke trailed from burners suspended from the high, arched ceiling.

You don't have to change your mind
'Cause you're beautiful
Beautiful
No matter what you say and what you do
Beautiful
Created for a plastic world

I spent half the time dancing to anything that sounded good, whether I could identify it or not, and the other half people-watching, sipping vodka mixers and resting my feet -- it had been a couple months since I'd last worn these boots, and the height of the heels put a lot of pressure under my toes. In order to conceal the line of capsuleer tech running up my back, I'd opted for a short, high-collared purple dress with gold tracery stitched into the gauzy outer sheath; it covered the tattoos I'd had done on my back, which I was a bit disappointed about, but it was a small price to pay for anonymity. It may have looked strange in a room where most people wore black, but I'd been attending clubs like this since I was old enough to get in the door; there's a level of self-confidence you attain through acclimation which allows you to get away with the most outrageous breaks in custom, and as long as you're having fun, nobody else cares.

One thousand milligrams searching for you
Day turns to night
The dawn meets the sun at the sky
I need you to try

While people would dance with me, nobody made any propsitions -- just as well, since I'd have turned them down. A club like this was the sort of place where people went to see and be seen, to enjoy the music, drink and socialise; walking home with a one-night partner was at the bottom of the priority list. At one point I spotted an old friend of mine, Mebrithiel Ju'wien, among the crowd; we caught up a little and danced to a song before she decided that she preferred the harder music being played in the room downstairs and left with a promise to drop me a convo later.

The rain that falls for weeks
Painting pictures on the streets
Twisted stars beneath my feet
I cruise the crowd

It was a good night, four hours of solid music, the deejays swapping off sets behind the control panels like mad scientists over a fiendish creation. By the time the lights came up, I ached from head to toe, had made a few new acquaintances, and caught up on news with Meico and Metus, neither of whom I'd seen for a while. I staggered back to my quarters feeling happily mellow and plugged into alliance comms while I settled down with a cup of hot chocolate and checked messages. That may have been a mistake, since by the time I actually got to bed the daytime lights were coming on in the station, but hey... it's the weekend, right?

Eve Has Sound?

When I'm not on comms for deadly important reasons (see: combat, purposes for hearing the FC) I usually have some music playing. I live for music: I'm a professionally trained mezzo-soprano, perfect pitch, etc, etc. I get depressed if I've got nothing playing during the quiet times, and what I listen to can affect my mood. On my iTunes, I've set up different playlists with mood themes and specific ones for each story I'm working on.

Eve has its own soundtracks: one for travelling, one for combat. I mostly only use these when I'm on my alts, since they give me the freedom to roleplay a little, to view Eve as if I were an actor in a sci-fi drama.

Well, that is essentially what each of us is ^_^

Eve, for me, has a tribal feel: lots of djembes and doumbeks, irregular rhythms and complex patterns, overlaid with grungy guitars, airy synthesizers and introspective or rebellious vocals as appropriate. Sometimes it goes drum'n'bass or even jungle, sometimes it's more ambient with a bit of a sad touch.

My Eve playlists include tracks like Arianrhod and Sredni Vashtar by Faith and the Muse, Papua New Guinea by Future Sound of London, Above&Beyond's Indonesia, multiple songs from Loreena McKennitt, Hybrid, Fields of the Nephilim, Opeth and The Prodigy, Junkie XL and Dead Can Dance. I use other soundtracks to add an orchestral touch, mostly The Crow, The Fifth Element, Firefly (betcha didn't see that one coming ~_^) and most recently, Iron Man.

What's your Eve Soundtrack?