Something's changed

A long time ago I used to work on the streets. No, not that kind of street work, you fools! I used to sell pizza outside a pizza joint, to the various assortment of drunken nightclub goers that were starving. A lot of them were violent too, but never to me - my pizza and I were the source of their happiness!

However, the environment meant I had to develop a certain street sense, being able to 'feel' the atmosphere around you, to know when trouble was brewing, to know who to watch as the potentially dangerous, and who were the weak and innocent.

I feel like that right now. It's like, instead of having 'street sense', I've developed 'space sense'. I feel like I understand who's dangerous, who to avoid, who to hunt, and who to attack. I know how to escape other hunters, and how to leave the area without being caught.

It really is a good feeling, one which I'm sure won't last forever. No one gets it right all the time, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

In the past few days, I've had a number of engagements in my Taranis interceptor that I have usually been able to slip away from if I haven't been winning, or have simply wanted to avoid contact. This has included against a Drake, just to test the capabilities of the ship. Even though orbiting at 1,000m managed to avoid most of the Drake's defensive fire, I was still down to about 80% armor while I had only whittled his shields down to about 80%. I warped away, with the pilot in local commenting that he wished he had fit a web and scram...

It's awesome to enter a fight expecting to lose, but being able to survive it instead.

I've been roaming the lowsec systems, looking for targets. They're few and far between, with many of the inhabitants being other gangs looking for targets themselves. It's the occasional stray, naive pilot that ventures into lowsec, not really understanding what they're getting themselves into. Like the pilot in lowsec in a destroyer, mining. Who mines in lowsec, unaccompanied and in a destroyer? New pilots that don't know any better, that's who.

I feel sad for those people who have so many losses and no kills. Who die so many times, and don't seem to learn anything about surviving. I really feel sad for them.

It makes me want to help them more. And I've decided that after a fight against someone that doesn't seem to know any better, I will offer some kind of advice in local, hopefully to make them think more about what they're doing, and maybe even help them survive in future. It's the least I can do as I take the loot from the shattered remains of their ship...

I took one of my corp members out on a training mission last night. It was good. The purpose was to find a target for him to get his first kill. He's a new guy, a friend of mine, someone that I've taken under my wing in order to help him become a hunter too.

Unfortunately, the trip was uneventful. After maybe a couple of hours, through a dozen systems, we found nothing. But along the way he learnt how to use his scanner, how to make safe spots, how to use flashpoints, how to align and always expect to be jumped at any point, and how to work in a fleet.

Hopefully soon, he'll learn how to tackle and kill too.

It's exciting when I have two very skilled, capable, and deadly pirates want to join my corp because of my style. Birdog and Jalif. Both of them tried to hunt me down and kill me when they first found me, and both of them failed. And now they've joined my corp. I like that.

As a result of my new members, and of the style of play I've been venturing into, I've found a sense of direction for my corp. Here is the new description for it:

Have you ever seen a pack of scorpions? No, you find them by themselves. Scorpion's Sting is a corp for the loners, the hunters, the dangerous few who want to rely on their own skills and wits to find and destroy their prey.

Contact Black Claw if you would like to learn more.