Log Entry 3 (J132721, W-space)

J125925

When I woke back up, the Drake was gone (fine by me, he was getting boring). Instead, a cautionary re-scan of the system turned up two ships. While narrowing down their locations, I discovered that one of them was a Heron.

Kickass.

It didn't take me long to get a full-strength hit, but when I warped in on his location for the first time, he wasn't there. I figured it must be due to some signal deviation from my probes. So I scanned again, warped again, and found the problem.

The bastard was running, using a MicroWarpdrive. No wonder he was so easy to find; all that power had jumped his signature radius to roughly the size of a battleship! There was no way I could catch up to him as long as that MWD was turned on, which meant that little excursion was pointless. So I started looking for another wormhole.

After a few minutes of scanning, I found one, albeit a very unstable one. Its center was fluctuating chaotically, sending out dense ripples of highly-curved spacetime. It was quite intriguing:

Given that amount of instability, I knew collapse was imminent, and hurried through.

C5-SUU, Detorid

Wonderful. K-space. At least it was nullsec, so I didn't have to deal with idiots randomly broadcasting garbage throughout the system. I kept looking for another wormhole.

3-LJW3, Detorid

Here again? I thought wormholes were supposed to be random. Instead they keep spitting me out in the same region of nullsec.

While idly scanning for people, I found what, at first glance, looked like a sizeable mining operation. I found something slightly different upon warping in, however:

A pod-pilot operated starbase. More a random jumble of structures and ships than a base, which is why their unofficial name, "POS", is so fitting.

The "mining operation" I thought I'd discovered turned out to be a large collection of industrial and military ships, sitting inside the POS's forcefield. I had my camera drone grab a picture of the Capital-class Rorqual industrial, partially occluded by the POS's control tower, surrounded by a few basic cargo ships, and one battlecruiser further off to the right:

Unfortunately, since they were all behind the POS's forcefield, stealing them was out of the question. Pity.

XSUD-1, Detorid

Found another wormhole without much effort, was a bit surprised by its size once I warped in. I sent my camera drone out a ways to grab a size comparison picture. The Greypoint was easily dwarfed by this monster, hardly even visible in the picture:

J142535

First scan for ships showed the system as empty. Finally.

Scan for wormholes pulled up two hits, by far the most I'd seen so far. And both lead to more w-space! I decided to take a peek through both, to see what was on the other side. Went through the most unstable first.

J172512

Empty. Went back through J142535 to check out the other one.

J153054

Also empty. As a result of a completely arbitrary decision, I decided to continue on through this system, and see what I could find.

While keeping an eye out for people, I scanned down another wormhole, leading to more w-space.

J111753

First thing I noticed was an alert from my shield systems, reporting a major hit to the shields. Upon closer examination, I found that my shield batteries had, in fact, recieved a significant boost in capacity, and were merely recharging to fit the new cap.

While searching for the source of this recent development, I happened across an entry from the ship's computer, logged the instant the Greypoint had entered the system. Turned out to be yet another unknown spatial phenomenon, possibly a protostar:

With the intial confusion out of the way, I did a quick scan for ships, which came up empty. Just the way I like it.

Searched for another wormhole, found one that led to more w-space.

J234252

Another warning from my ship's computer. I don't know how the Greypoint's systems were affected, but I didn't have to look around to see the "phenomenon" in question, as its strong tidal forces were distorting space throughout the system. It was, quite obviously, a black hole:

Luckily, I was far enough away to still have full navigational control.

Scan for ships was, again, empty. Scan for wormholes yielded another one to w-space.

J103448

No oddities, and no people. Six systems so far without a single soul. I assumed, at this point, that I was pretty deep in unknown space. Started scanning for another wormhole.

Got at possible hit, but had some serious trouble getting it at full strength. Turned out to be a wormhole to more w-space.

J132721

This system was, and still is, awesome.

Right off the bat, my first scan gave me at least five ships, divided into two groups. One of the ships appeared to be an industrial ship, an Iteron. I assumed "mining op", and spared myself a small chuckle when an escape capsule replaced the Iteron's signature.

Turns out, it was not a mining op, and the Iteron did not get destroyed. It was a POS, inside w-space. I'd heard that some corporations were setting up outposts for prolonged w-space operations, but I never expected to encounter one myself.

This was a fairly sparse POS, with just a control tower, maintainence outpost, and hanger array visible through the forcefield.

The Iteron pilot had swapped out his ship for another stored in the hanger array (a mining barge). While checking up on him, I discovered that he was the CEO of ARK-Corp, the executor of the SATRAPY alliance of corporations, and the oldest pod-pilot founded corporation in New Eden.

I made a note of the names of every ARKC pilot around the POS, and went looking for those other ships I'd gotten a hit on.

Turns out these guys belonged to a completely different corporation, and weren't in an alliance. I wondered if the ARKC guys knew they were there. Their corporation ticker was "RYUKE", and they were obviously new to the corporate scene. I'll bet they didn't even know there was a POS there.

The ARKC guys continued to sit behind the forcefield, probably waiting for the RYUKE idiots to clear out, which meant there wasn't much fun for me to be had here. So I took a nap.

When I woke up, the RYUKE lackies were gone, and there were now five ARKC guys sitting at the POS. Upon closer examination of their ships, I could see the telltale shimmer of armor and hull repair modules at work, meaning they'd been in some kind of fight. Another ship warped in while I was watching, bringing their total to six.

At first I was confused as to how they'd managed to get so many of their corp buddies to the POS, since wormhole connections are entirely random. A quick scan for more ships revealed the answer: there were two high-sec linked wormholes in the system. The ARKC members that were already here must have taken a peek out both wormholes, and sent their coordinates to the rest of their corporation while they had access to the interstellar communication network.

The high-sec wormholes had brought us another treat: two Drakes were also in the system, both piloted by extremely young pod-pilots.

I didn't have the firepower to take them on myself, but the ARKC guys did. I didn't even have to worry about convincing them that the youngin's should be blowed up; their hostile intentions had already been made clear by a warp disruption bubble that they'd set up around one of the wormholes, and the destruction caused by the Scorpian-class battleship sitting just outside it.

So I scanned down the Drakes at their safespots, dropped their coordinates in a small container just outside ARKC's POS's forcefield, and sat back to watch the fireworks.

Of which there were none. The ARKC guys chased one drake out of the system, and couldn't find the other one (curse their ineptitude). I found him, of course, stealing from an ARKC cargo container full of valuable minerals. Not that I can condemn him, I was planning on doing the same. So I one-upped him, instead. I waited for him to warp out with his haul, and then I blasted the container to pieces. Tens of thousands of cubic meters worth of expensive and rare minerals, hours worth of effort spent gathering them, lost to space. A beautiful sight.

The ARKC guys quickly became uninteresting after that. They've been sitting inside their POS and doing absolutely nothing for the past few hours. I think I'll get some actual sleep, and see if anything's changed when I wake up.

Log Entry 2 (J125925, W-space)

5H-SM2

Ran around in null-sec for a bit before I finally found another wormhole.

I scanned it down in a system belonging to the Tau Ceti Federation. Cowardly frogs. I was understandably eager to get back to the beloved emptiness of w-space.

J124327

A reflexive warp off to a random planet yielded an idiot just sitting there, uncloaked, all fat and happy. In a Heron. He was the CEO of some random corp, AMUR was their ticker, I think. Made me wish I had some guns.

Instead, I left the half-wit to do my scanning free from his detestable ignorance.

Once at my safespot, a preliminary scan of the system for interlopers further reinforced my growing disgust at having my coveted w-space solitude disturbed.

At least four other ships, and two of their pilots gabbing in local. I scanned down a Raven, Dominix, and Nighthawk taking on some Sleepers. The Dominix warped off, I tracked him to a high-sec wormhole, which obviously was their way in. Now their childish antics and lack of a healthy paranoia made sense; these kinds of pilots couldn't have come in from the null-sec wormhole.

The Heron was obviously their prober. I scanned down the Raven again, sitting at a safespot with the (still uncloaked, idiot) Heron.

After a while, the larger ships left back through their high-sec wormhole, leaving the Heron behind. I decided to continue monitoring him while looking for another wormhole out, on the off-chance he found one before I did.

He didn't. So I decided that he sucked, and left through the new wormhole I found.

J101012

Almost instantly, the Greypoint's computer warned me of "Local Spatial Phenomena" having an effect on the ship's systems. A quick look at the surrounding starfield revealed why.

In the distance, there was this... bright thing. I still don't know what it was, but it was kinda pretty. So I snapped a picture:

Like I said. Pretty. But boring.

This system was much smaller than the last one. A cursory scan for ships came up empty, to my delight. Within minutes, I had a wormhole scanned down. Unfortunately, it led to low-sec. Ugh.

The whole "having guns" idea had been tossing around in my head for a while, accompanied by images of exploding Herons. I remembered the high-sec wormhole I'd found a few systems back, and decided a brief foray into Empire didn't seem so bad, if big boom-boom things were the end result.

Nani, Lonetrek

Back in K-space. And Empire. Yuck. Let's go get those guns.

Aikoro, The Citadel

With the Greypoint looking particularly fancy - two new turrets elegantly extending her silhouette, new electronic warfare systems complementing that extra bite - we were ready to head back into w-space. The wormhole I had just scanned down looked used; for once, I didn't mind. Much.

J125925

Immediately, I knew this system would be interesting. The wormhole spat me out amidst the wreckage of ingenuous suckers, juvenile in their expectations of w-space. Their gutted ships and floating corpses spoke to my lust for ruin and embitterment.

Some lucky bastards had formed a nice camp around the wormhole's exit, and were bringing righteous cruelty down on any whom came through.

Except me.

I activated the Greypoint's warp drive, with the nearest planet set as the destination. Two of the gankers tried to chase me; fortunately, the Greypoint's special Covert Ops cloaking system held through the warp, and my pursuers found nothing.

Safely cloaked, halfway between the planet and the wormhole, I started scanning. The system's current occupants were grouped mostly around the wormhole; one Heavy Assault Cruiser, one Interceptor, one Battlecruiser, and two Assault Frigates. I say mostly, because my scanners also picked up another Covert Ops signature elsewhere in the system. The signal was intermittent, and kept jumping randomly, which told me the pilot must have been using his cloaking systems liberally.

He was obviously working with the gank-team surrounding the wormhole. I revised my earlier opinion on this system, and abandoned my original enthusiasm. This was not going to be interesting. The gankers would sit around the wormhole, killing people, until it collapsed. Then they'd probably scan down another one and leave. Their prober, while not very good at staying cloaked, was competent enough to evade my scans. No fun. So I took a nap.

I woke up a few hours later to an empty system. The original high-sec wormhole had collapsed, and the gankers had gone.

I found a new wormhole almost instantly. It was stable and unused, but led to high-sec. I was getting tired of seeing that. I got comfy about 100km out, and sat back to see if anyone came through.

Just as I was considering leaving, the wormhole lit up, and out popped a Drake. He warped off to a nearby planet. I followed. To my surprise, he didn't even bother setting up a safespot; the idiot must think he's alone.

I watched him probe out a group of Sleepers, and hit upon an idea. He obviously hasn't considered the fact that there may be someone else here, and these solo-types aren't very proactive about collecting the loot from their Sleeper conquests.

So I decided to be a dirty thief.

I watched him chew through wave after wave of Sleepers, and I began bookmarking the locations of their wreckage. When I was certain he was sufficiently distracted, I warped in right on top of a lifeless Sleeper ship, that he had destroyed, and stole everything I could. Then I warped out. My cloaking systems were disengaged for less than a minute; I doubted he noticed me. And even if he did, there was nothing he could do. So I did it again. And again.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself.

Emboldened by my success as a dirty thieving bastard, I went after some of the larger Sleeper wrecks, which also happened to be closer to the still-active Sleepers.

Immediately after exiting warp, the Sleepers had a lock on the Greypoint. They burned through her shields and made a small dent in her armor in the few seconds it took for me to transfer the loot and warp out. The Greypoint's small signature radius was probably the only thing that kept me alive.

After that, I decided to call it a day. Leeching off idiots from Empire is only fun when huge scary Sleepers aren't shooting at you. And I've learned nothing if not to be overly cautious.

I'm now sitting at my safespot, cloaked, and getting ready to fall asleep. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to put those guns to use.

Log Entry 1 (3-LJW3, MZ-PA2, Detorid)

11/03/09

Decided to begin recording my travels in W-space.

Currently in 3-LJW3, after being spat out here by a wormhole.

I started exploring the Wormholes as a retreat to solitude; I aimed to make W-space my permanent home, away from the ignorance and idiocy of Empire, from the petty bickering of null-sec power blocs. W-space was to be my sanctuary, occasionally interrupted by adventurous pod-pilots, whom I hoped to stalk, pester, and extort, as entertainment.

This was my dream.

If only these stupid wormholes didn't keep leading back to shitty null-sec.