welcome home

(Raxip Elamp warrior saga mh ed)

After 20 minutes of guilting Raxip Elamp over his lack of recent PvP and all the fun he used to have in the past, the illustrious brass balls Rifter jock decided to grace Molden with his presence. Given the volume of time since his last appearance in the Heath, Raxip has since skilled for new ships, and upon his arrival home, promptly undocked an artillery fit Hurricane and reported dastardly folk about. The resulting tale takes place over the next 80 minutes.

The ship Raxip reported while on the way to his Hurricane was a Broadsword, the name of which I recognized from a new pirate corp in the area. Undocking a Cyclone from Oddelulf bottom station, I guessed the pirates would remain roughly were they had been reported, which was half way between Raxip and myself, and began heading towards Raxip.

Coffee was already in Heild local, and had eyes on the pirate fleet: two Broadswords, one GCCed, the other not. I arrived on the Heild gate in Bosena a few seconds before Raxip managed the same in Aedald, and jumped in, arriving in Heild 40ish AU from the Aedald gate. I was counting on the fact Raxip was out of my corp and an outlaw to clinch the engagement.

Upon jumping, Raxip decloaked and was immediately aggressed by the outlaw Broadsword. With both Broadswords lacking webifiers, Raxip was easily able to maintain comfortable range, and once I was on grid and had the outlaw tackled, was out of immediate danger. With the scrambler on, the Broadsword was dead in the water and meat for our projectile arsenal.

Not to be outdone, the second pirate Broadsword, who wasn't outlaw, decided to engage my Cyclone, incurring GCC and allowing us to easily primary his ship without sentries ourselves. I land a scrambler on the second Broadsword and we make quick work of the HIC. A third pirate piloting a Hurricane smartly warped off, having arrived after the first was destroyed and the second nearing armor damage.

Raxip scoops the loot, and I decide to poke around Heild, as there were another six or more pilots in local not associated with those we just killed. Landing at planet seven, I end up spotting several ships on scan, including a cane, a Cyclone, a Tengu, and an Arbitrator. It takes a few minutes to narrow down the BCs, but eventually they're confirmed at a belt and we warp to it.

Upon landing, the BCs are identified as dueling 170km off the belt, and the Arbitrator slowly moving out towards the pair. The cruiser initiates warp with the arrival of our ships, however the pair of BCs, a SCONE cane and .GCC. Cyclone remain to finish off their fight. We begin burning out to the pair, giving the two a final countdown to finish their fight before we finished it for them. At about 70km the Hurricane explodes, leaving the Cyclone as the only target left on grid.

It loots the cane wreck, and as our ships power into lock range and closer, surprisingly decides to burn towards us and fight. The .GCC. Cyclone primaries me as we exchange tackle, and the inevitable countdown towards destruction commences. Given that it just had a lengthy fight with a cane which often fit energy neuts, I expect the .GCC. Cyclone to be low on 800's, and the fight to be over in less than a minute.

Except the fight doesn't end, as the enemy Cyclone seems to have just enough repping power to match the combined DPS of my Cyclone and Raxip's arty cane. Given this fact, I confirm to myself who owns the Tengu that's still on scan and it's purpose in local: to provide ganglinks for the Cyclone pilot, who's likely rocking to a Crystal implant set and Blue Pill boosters. Regardless of this fact I inform Coffee to hold off on decloaking his Falcon, as we should be able to power through the tank given time.

The Cyclone's tank finally fails after firing its last cap booster, some five or more minutes after initially aggressing my ship. While it was unable to itself break my tank, I was only just matching its incoming DPS by popping a Blue Pill myself and toggling overheat every so often. With the Cyclone down, we begin looting the field, scooping what what was left of both the Cyclone and Hurricane wrecks, only to have the SCONE pilot who had lost his Hurricane warp on top of us in a Tempest.

I had run into this pilot's pest fit a few days prior after engaging a small gang of SCONEs in Oddelulf, and he favored the dual heavy neut shield gank fit. Fearing its potency and possible SCONE reinforcements, Coffee decloaks and begins jamming the battleship, immediately breaking its lock, but not before the pest scared the shit out of Raxip by alphaing his cap and giving him a few volleys of EMP L to remember him by.

I managed to scramble the Tempest a few seconds after it landed, and with Coffee's ECM cycles was free to pound the gank fit's buffer tank down. Coffee lost jams once, in those 20 seconds the pest was able to assign ECM drones on Raxip and alpha my cap, however a quick 800 boost made sure I maintained tackle. The pest was soon out of shields, into armor, and then into structure.

However, this pilot just gave us a decent fight from the .GCC. Cyclone. And ganking people flying solo with Falcon support is boring for both parties. Some furious discussion in gang while the SCONE pest's armor evaporated ended with us deciding to let him go for the price of a song. While things didn't quite work out as a formal ransom (we let him go as he asked incredulously in local what happened), we did get a bit of song out of him, with him singing a bit of "If you're happy and you know it, pod Amarr!" into local. Satisfied, we waited down GCC, stowing loot in a nearby station.

After five or so minutes of waiting, we were informed by TEXN that a previously spotted T3/T2 BC gang had set up a camp in B-VIP, which was only four jumps away. Ignoring our GCC, we moved hastily over to Egbinger, where I swapped to a Maelstrom and waited for the rest of the TEXN gang to accumulate. Once formed up, I jumped my Maelstrom into B-VIP as bait, with the rest of fleet waiting in Egbinger.

I immediately noticed a few things wrong:
1) With no Interdictors, the campers had deployed bubbles, but they weren't pull bubbles, and they weren't large bubbles either. This meant they just deployed them about the regional gate they were camping at random.
2) They had no fast tackle, which meant I was able to warp to the outbound 9SNK gate to hopefully get caught by a pull bubble and snag the engagement. There was no pull bubble, or any attempt to chase my battleship.

With these facts in place, I deducted through logics that these people were idiots, and warped back to the Egbinger gate at 0m. Upon landing, I tackled and engaged their Sleipnir, and their entire gang fell upon me. With aggression acquired, our gang jumped in, and we slaughtered those unfortunate enough to not leave with the local spike. Given that these folks have been flying their utterly NASTY looking gangs around MH a few times in the past, I have high hopes that they'll bumble along again, as regardless of what I'm flying at the time, I'm confident I'll kill at least one poorly fit and wildly expensive ship before going down.

And with their destruction, Raxip and myself decided to call it a night.