A return to the Hunt

It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and *guess who's back*? They returned more times than raw broccoli.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) 

It's been a while, the hangar bears witness to years spent dormant, the lights have been off for a long time, and as such take a moment to warm up when I flip the switch. Slowly the light rises and all sorts of machinations of violence start to take shape, familiar shapes, shapes which at once inspire awe and fear.

In the corner, on my desk, on a small screen, the local comms channel sits barren, Gusandall, the once vibrant Pirate hub, now an empty expanse.

The pull of the black, the vast nothingness is strong, instinctively I board a Strategic Cruiser, a hunter killer, resilient and sneaky. I initialise her start up and she slowly comes to life, I check all her systems, make sure the appropriate munitions and sundries are in the hold and initiate undocking procedures.

As I emerge into Gusandall's inky blackness, I'm struck by an immediate sense of familiarity, and emptiness. I head to Eifer, once the most fertile hunting grounds in the universe... Empty.
Ingunn... Empty
Sotrenzur... Empty
Hrondedir... Empty
Auren... Empty

Not feeling up to venturing too far from home, I start to scan out the various anomolies in the area, and then I start to see one or two familiar faces passing through, some of the old Irregular Warfare boys still call the area home. In the process of probing, I find myself in Sotrenzur, with one of them, and a unknown pilot in a Dominix. Slick Duoros is in a unfamiliar ship to me, an Enforcer, a rather sexy ship, and I soon spot combat probes on scanner, not wanting to spook the Domi I refrain from dropping a set of my own.

Slick reaches out to me and asks if it's me in the Domi, I reply to the negative and soon I'm invited to a fleet  with the promise I won't be shot, an opportunity to knock some of the rust off and to shoot something substantial was one I wasn't about to pass on. Moments later Slick says he has point and is bringing in some black ops DPS, I initiate warp and drop cloak, landing right on top of the Dominix I open fire, two black ops battleships appear only a few hundred metres away and soon the Domi explodes. Moments later all my drones explode as one of the black ops cycles a smart bomb to deal with the Dominix' escape pod, but the loss of the drones didn't bother me, it felt so good to be causing spontaneous explosions again. The owner of the smart bomb was a pleasant surprise, an old friend from those halcyon days of static plexes and Mean Corp clashing with Anti Pirate alliances in the glory days of the Gusandall pocket.

A lot has changed, but seeing familiar faces has eased this homecoming somewhat, still need to find my place again, and I'm hoping I can still make lots of ISK as a solo pirate, but look forward to forging friendships, new and old to where I can still help with bigger targets.

This mornings hunt did turn up a small payday, only a frigate but it dropped a fair amount, even resulted in a little hate being thrown my way:

[ 2019.10.04 10:58:46 ] Lexana > пЕДРИЛО СУКА СДОХНЕШЬ БЛЯ И НЕ ЖАЛКО ДЕНЕГ ЗА ТЕБЯ МУДАК ЕБАНЫЙ
[ 2019.10.04 10:58:46 ] Lexana > fUCK YOU
[ 2019.10.04 10:58:55 ] Kane Rizzel > you're welcome

A nice little 60 mil to start business up again. It's also good to be back writing again, I'm somewhat rusty and it will take me a bit to get back into the swing of things but as with Piracy and PvP practice makes perfect. I'm hoping to see some old faces about and if you're still out there drop me a mail in game, if you know of any fertile hunting grounds and are willing to share, please do so, my little corner of the universe seems very sparse so looking for new opportunities to ply my particular brand of violence.