The More Things Change...

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
Malvina Reynolds - Little Boxes

Wow, a week goes by and I'm stuck just trying to catch up with the news.

Mynxee joined Noir. I had the pleasure of pressing the "accept" button on her application. Was an interesting experience for me. She seems to be enjoying herself so far.

CSM5 is now open for applications. Mynxee is planning to run. Since I know her quite well there isn't much of a reason for me to look into any other candidates. I fully intend to run in CSM6, but we'll have to see when the times comes.

AAA took two constellations consisting of 12 systems with 12 stations away from Providence holders and inserted their own holders. That war is progressing quiet nicely.

And for anyone that was wondering if Dominion would provoke any new "great wars", look no further than IT vs. the Northern Coalition. That should be a huge and fun war to watch.

For the record, I'll have a post up every Thursday that displays some recruitment or "hire us" message for Noir. It'll stay on my front page until Tuesday, and Wednesday I'll post normal content.

For the record, Noir Academy has opened recruitment again.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

Heh, almost missed today's update...

I think it's about time I push my updating schedule to once a week. Between overtime at work, my officer position and trying to get in some PvP, I just don't have time to do three updates a week. Most of you folks've probably noticed a marked lack of quality as of late. Y'all deserve better than should get it.

See you next Wednesday, my new update day.

And/Or Ka-Kow

Gotta leave town
Got another appointment
Spent all my rent
Girl you know I enjoyed it

Ain't gonna hang around till there's nobody dancing
I don't wanna hold hands and talk about our little plans, alright!

Cold hard bitch
Just a kiss on the lips
And I was on my knees
I'm waiting, give me
Cold hard bitch
She was shakin' her hips
That's all that I needed.
Jet - Cold Hard Bitch

"Check Check! Raven in a belt," Jimer said, interrupting our conversation on the morality of slavery in the Amarr empire.

"Get us a warp in!" Someone said quickly.

"I'm on it!" He said, and then after a short pause, "Warp to Jimer now. Warp to Jimer now. I'm decloaking and pointing it,"

My ship entered warp almost immediately as did the rest of the gang, still cloaked.

"He's pointed" Came the message a few moments later from Jimer's Arazu.

The Bombers landed immediately and began to pour down the DPS. The alpha damage broke his tank in moments and he wasn't long for this world.

After Nidia dropped his bubble the pod exploded in a shower of goo.

"Cloak up now!" The order from Alek was short and to the point, we followed it.

Local had climbed as we hit the Raven, it was almost certainly bait, again. These guys had a habit of offering us bait and failing to deliver on the switch before we managed to blow it up. Just as we cleared the field, loot in tow, the backup landed. Battlecruisers, Hacs, Hics, 'Dictors, 'Ceptors and a Dramiel for good measure. They'd all landed on the outside of the bubble, and were to far away from where our gang was to decloak anyone. Stirring the hornets nest was always a fun game.

So we waited in our safes, listened to the inevitable smack talk and waited for them to disperse. As is inevitably the case, they did so. We began to move around freely again and searched for targets.

Thirty minutes later, the opportunity came. Our bubbles managed to catch a Sabre as it was pulled behind the outpost, and we all warped in to kill it. It got dispatched in short order and we sat by our bubble as the loot was collected, and intel came in from outside the system. No jumps, no gangs. This was just an unlucky soul.

A few minutes later a Drake undocked, and we turned our eyes to it. Local hadn't gone up, but they'd had a lot of people in local to start with, all docked. He began to lob missiles at our bubble, so Jimer decloaked in his Arazu again. He put a point on the drake, and it began to fire at him. Since it had been kind enough to agress, we decloaked everything and began to burn him down.

That was when it got interesting. Our DPS had him to about half shields when the blob undocked. BC's, Battleships, cruisers and an Incursus for tackle. A motely crew, but more than enough to ruin someone's day. I was already getting ready to bail out when the Chimera undocked and launched fighters. Time to go, I thought.

"We'll kill the Drake before we leave," Alek said to an incredulous comm channel, "Overheat if you can,"

No one questioned him, and as the Drake's final shields evaporated there wasn't time to blink as his ship exploded, "Cloak up and get off the station, NOW," Alek said.

I honestly hadn't imagined they'd try again, but less than twenty minutes later we got a call from Jimer again. "I've probed out a Drake, he's not moving and I'm sitting about thirty off him. It's gotta be bait, he's only a few million kilometers off the station,"

"We can take it, anyhow. But we should put all our bombers on the grid before we decloak to point it," I said before pausing for more orders.

"Yeah," Aleks added, "I was about to say the same thing, If you can warp cloaked, warp to Jimer at a range. Jimer, if you see any of us decloaked, decloak and point him,"

"Roger that,"

Through some miracle all six stealth bombers landed without decloaking anyone, and Jimer decloaked first, pointing the Drake. The rest of us decloaked as the D-Scanner filled with hostiles.

It was far to late for him, and two volleys later he was toast. The gang on the station just sat there, dumbfounded, and eventually redocked.

"Boosh!" Someone said as we cloaked and warped off. Another bait ship down, and this was becoming a pattern.

It was a good day.

Tyrannis Teaser

Yeah, I'm Advertising Again.

Interested in Mercenary Services? Hire Noir.!

EVE Blog Banter #16: No Seriously

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: "Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you'd like to share with the wider Eve community?"


It takes a really long time to fix your standings or your security status. It is mind-numbingly boring. *shudder*

More Blog Banters!(With a bit more content even)

CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom

The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal

Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed

Rantuket: Blog Banter 16

EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey

Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University

Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!

I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination

Prano's Journey: Just Like the Very First Time

A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously

Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101

A Mule In EVE: If I only knew

The Planet Risk Show: Dared to be Bold

Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!

EVOGANDA: Why?

A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter

Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??

Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts

Learning to Fly: Noobing

Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!

More to come soon...

Jonathan Dreck and the Case of the Dead Débutant

This is my entry into Silver's First Annual Fiction Contest. Sorry for the length, normally I'd chop it up into more manageable pieces.

_________________________________________________

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

Roy Batty - Blade Runner

I'm proud of my office. It's a Noir owned and operated office, but I still call it mine. The floor tiles are this special turquoise color that nobody makes anymore. The door is made of kanta wood and glass. The building is old, the office is old. Not quite as old as my profession, but it's getting there. I'm an Ex-Cop who "freelances" as they call it in the Caldari State Police. Mostly I work for private clients, and sometimes busywork from the corporate guys to keep the doors open. A private detective isn't always that picky about what jobs he does.

I looked up when she said, "Jonathan Dreck?" It was reflex. You hear a voice that soft, that pretty... you look up. She stood in my doorway like an angel that had just avoided drowning. Her brown trench coat stained dark with the rain. Her soaked hair framed her perfect face like a painting.

As she dripped water from her chin onto my turquoise tiles, I answered her, "Yeah, that's me,"

She sighed, as if she was relieved. I watched her take her coat off and hang it on the coat rack. She was wearing a tight red dress under it. I'd just popped a couple of crash to start my day, and her dress was riding higher than I was. When she sat down across from me, I smiled.

Her eyes were the kind of blue that made you think of the ocean, and her lipstick was so red it made you think about your own mortality. This was the kind of woman I had thought they didn't make anymore. If I'd known they did, I probably would've taken better care of myself. Still, I wiped the crumbs from my mouth and pulled out my pen and paper.

"Noir has a reputations for discretion, can I count on you to keep that up?" She said, lazily tracing a line across the desk in front of her.

"Is it raining tomorrow?" I said with a laugh. To an offworlder that phrase may've seemed out of place, but here on New Caldari Prime, the answer to that question was always yes.

"Good," She stopped and looked intently into my eyes, "Because I need you to find out who killed me,"

"Oh, another one of those," This wasn't the first reactivated clone to come into my office trying to find out who got them reactivated. I got at least one a month, and after my first few run-ins with ex-husbands and old friends I learned these weren't cases you took lightly. Or at all if you could avoid it.

She perked up at the comment, "You've got some experience in this then?" She said with that same soft and pretty voice.

"A fair bit, yeah," I said, knowing where this would lead.

"Can you help me then?" She asked, with a note of pleading in her voice.

"I make it a point not to get involved in clone cases, it just gets messy,"

"I can make a deposit of ten thousand isk, if that's enough,"

"Sure," I said picking up my pen, "What's your name?"

"Angela Fields,"

_________________

"You never could turn down a damsel in distress," Finny was laughing as he looked at the picture. Finny was my contact in the department. He'd been my partner before I retired, and he'd managed to move up a few ranks since then. Today I'd met him at a coffee shop across the street from the station, one of the few in this part of town that sold pastries as well as coffee.

"You think you could turn her down?" I asked with a grin, pointing at the picture.

"Not a chance. God was good to this one,"

"Or a surgeon," I shot back.

"You complaining?"

"Nah, but I don't need you to evaluate her assets, I need to get a hold of the report from her death,"

"Yeah, I picked that up," He said, opening the folder in front of him, "It's definitely a homicide. Someone spiked her drink with propacin,"

"That's a quiet way to go," I said, cocking my eyebrow, "But why go to the trouble when she's got clones to fall back on?"

"We're not sure. One thing we do know for sure though is that her husband is having an affair. But he's got an alibi,"

"Where was he?"

"At a Heth rally," He chuckled.

"So he's a fucking patriot. What've you got on the propacin?"

"I sent a couple of guys to the Matar quarter, but no one heard or saw anything,"

"No one out there told the cops what they wanted to know? Shocking,"

"You can laugh all you want, but the Propacin came from the Matari and if we can't get anything out of them, you're at a dead end,"

"Give me a name, and I'll see what I can do,"

_________________

Maver was a relic from an old case of mine. Some Amarr slavers wanted him back, and paid me a pretty good deposit to track him down. He threw up a sob story, but it didn't matter. I wasn't going to send anyone back into slavery. He owed me, and big.

You can imagine my surprise when I rang the doorbell and all I heard was him knocking around inside. I ducked around to the back of the house, and stood near the back door. Sure enough he came splashing down his steps with a bag in tow.

"Hold on there Maver," I said, cocking my pistol.

"Hey Johnny," He said, before turning around.

"That's the second time you ran when you knew it was me,"

"Yeah, 'cause I could get killed for talking to you now,"

"You could get killed for not talking to me," I nodded to the pistol in my hand, "So lets talk about propacin,"

"Fuck off," He started looking agitated and picked up his bag again.

"Fuck off? Really? Look, you got a couple of options here. One: You tell me what I want to know. Two: You don't tell me what I want to know and we get you into jail where you belong. I imagine the State will be happy to expedite your extradition to the Amarr,"

"You wouldn't do that, I know you,"

"They'll pay pretty well for you, so yeah I might," I stopped talking and nodded to the gun, "Just tell me who you sold it too, alright?"

"Some rich woman. Caldari,"

"What'd she look like?"

"Blond, blue eyes... very red lipstick,"

I cocked my head to the side, "Alright uh... get back inside,"

He nodded to me and went back up his steps, wincing as larger water drops fell from the roof onto his head.

This was already getting messy.

_________________

Ruri's Cafe was a favorite haunt of mine. Just a little place in a little corner of a big city. I went there to relax sometimes, and sometimes I went there to work. Today I was working.

I walked through the door and knocked the bell above it. Ruri looked up at me and smiled. I took off my hat and carried it in my left hand. Ruri was that kind of girl you always imagined you'd marry, but I never got around to talking about it. Her and I had a history, like almost every other woman in my life these days. Of course I was here to meet a girl I had no history with.

She had picked out a corner booth next to the window, and I walked towards it and sat down across from her. She was already eating a sandwich with a glass of water.

"I talked to your husband," I said quietly.

"Did he tell you?" She asked, her face pained with more emotion than I could muster in a year.

"He didn't have too," I said with a wave of my hand, "The police report said he was having an affair, but he has an alibi,"

"He wouldn't tell me who,"

"I can find out for a bit extra," I laughed at the end of the sentence, even I knew that was a long shot.

"No, I don't think that's necessary," She said with far off look in her eyes.

"I think you killed yourself," I blurted out just before the waitress came to our table. Angela's eyes went wide for a moment.

"John, what're you going to have today,"

"The usual Karen," I said with grin. She walked away with a smile of her own, and I turned my attention back to Angela as she started to speak.

"Actually that's not too hard to believe," She raised her eyebrow as she said it.

"Why not just leave him?"

"I love him,"

"There's gotta be something else you can do,"

"Coping has never been one of my strengths," She said, looking through the window as water streamed down on the other side.

"I'm sorry," I said softly.

"I know," She whispered back. She stood up and walked to the register, paid for her food and stopped by the door, "Thanks for helping me out Johnny,"

"No problem babe,"

She blushed for a moment and walked outside.

She made it two blocks before she died. There was something in her water.

It always gets messy.

Noir. Recruitment

Ever think about joining a professional mercenary corporation? We're hiring good pilots who're ready to play at the next level.

We're looking for players who meet the following requirements:

-Extensive PVP experience backed up by strong KB stats
-Specialize in a T2 ship and/or T2 Tanked+Gunned BS
-Passion for small gang PVP
-Relentlessly aggressive attitude
-Self sufficiency
-Mature personality, thick skin, and professional demeanor
-Sec status above -2.0

Do you have what it takes? Apply today!

A Brutor Walks Into a Bar

A Brutor walks into a bar and says, "Give me a beer before problems start!" The bartender gives him a beer and moves on.

Later, the Brutor orders a beer again saying, "Give me a beer before problems start!" The bartender looks confused, but he gives him the beer.

This goes on for a while, and after the fifth beer the bartender is totally confused and asks the man, "When are you going to pay for these beers?" The Brutor cracks his knuckles and says, "Ah, now the problems start!"

She's a Total Blam-Blam

Oh don't lean on me man
Cause you ain't got time to check it
You know my Suffragette City
Is outta sight...she's all right
David Bowie - Suffragette City

"Woah!" Hallan pushed his Manticore to the left as a volley of torpedoes streaked in his direction.

"Whoo hoo," Came a woman's voice from the Nemesis, as it released another volley of torpedoes, "How 'bout a little fire?"

"This is how we're playing it then?" He piped through his comms at her ship.

"You left me!" She replied as another volley flew in his direction.

Hallan keyed up his remote sensor dampener. He activated it and the Nemesis's targeting computers went dead.

"Now can we talk?"

_________________________

"You're being unreasonable," Hallan took a drink of his Quafe and rolled his eyes.

"I'm being unreasonable!? You dump me and then show up a couple of years later and offer me a job?"

"Yeah, that's what I did. You're a good pilot but I didn't expect a face full of Infernos,"

The girl threw her drink into Hallan's face and got up.

Hallan wiped the drink from his face with a towel and smiled, "Still got that sense of humor,"

The girl smiled to herself as she walked towards her hangar.

"We're not done!" He yelled after her.

"I know," She muttered back.

Declarations of War Podcast Episode 11

Here's a link to our latest podcast, with myself as one of the hosts.

Chapter 2

I joined Noir. about 6 months ago and it was kind of a new chapter for me. I came from a pirate corp that taught me a lot about PvP, but less about the finer points of success in it. I've spent the last 6 months polishing my PvP skills, mostly flying one ship(a stealth bomber), and perfecting my skills in it.

I've made friends, fought old friends. I've disconnected and reconnected with people I knew.

I've spent the time working hard to learn FCing small to medium sized gangs. Learning the rules of null sec, war decs, and wormholes. I've participated in PoS defenses. I've been all around New Eden and I've made a bit of money doing so.

Yesterday I got promoted to a leadership position in Noir. as one of its 4 officers.

So I guess this is a new chapter.