The Anniversary

The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

As is more common these days, I missed something of great significance...

NovaKane Incorporated turned four on the 25th of January 2011.

From humble beginnings four long years ago, it has grown to be respected by its peers and feared by its adversaries.

In four years we have inflicted 110.5 Billion ISK in damage, killed 2026 space ships, ransomed countless pilots and stolen anything that wasn't nailed down. we have also lost 10 Billion ISK, which is quite a scary stat to be honest.



The Rizzels and associates would like to thank all the friends we have flown with, the enemies and sometimes friends we have fought against, the victims, the unlucky and the downright stupid for four great years, we hope to share many more with you all.

Rolling in Delve

Jayne: "Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in command."

In the vastness of space it's easy to forget your roots, there's always new adventures and with them the adrenaline fueled, heart stopping encounters that become legend, if only in your own mind.

Delve, a fortress, controlled by the mighty Band of Brothers, our mortal enemy. The war against the Ascendant Frontier taking its toll on the residents of Feythabolis, the combat pilots struggling against the rip tide of the BoB war machine.

Fleet operations to the average pilot is some of the most tedious fights imaginable. Hours of planning, setting up, waiting, waiting for a few minutes of heart attack inducing action. For some this is the Pinnacle of combat in the EVE universe, being able to follow commands, align in the right direction and press the buttons when told to at the target that was called by someone else.
For the pilots of Ars Caelestis this was a frustrating way to get anything done, the ASCN FCs more liable to get us killed than to get us to kill anything, we were more used to small gang combat and guerilla warfare.

We were out of our depth in Feyth, no capitals and very few tech 2 snipers. We were however very good at fast moving hit and run gangs, something we did frequently whilst in Huzzah, raiding Firmius Ixion space. We were most comfortable flying together and always looking for fun and excitement. With this in mind we were tasked with running raids into Delve.

Now all this was at a time before the updated navigation systems were introduced so no "Warp to Zero". Instead we had a system known as "Instas". These were pilot created bookmarks in space that would enable you to warp close to a gate. I had thousands of "Instas" programmed into my navigation computer however no pilot in Ars Caelestis had any for Delve so it was back to the old school for our operations: small, agile and fast ships would be used, MWDs the first module fitted.

We were based just outside of Blood Raider controlled Delve, we would strike from lowsec and retreat once the op was over. Our first op was a suicide hit & run mission to get a feel for the area and gauge the response time of the locals. There were eight of us in assorted frigates and cruisers and as was so often the case I was volunteered to scout, something I enjoyed quite a lot and probably what sowed the seeds of my solo career. I was in a vanilla tech 1 Rifter (MWD, web, point, nano, overdrive, small armour repper, 150mm autocannons and a rocket launcher), It was after all a suicide mission so no point in spashing the isk with named or tech 2 fittings. With no Instas I would warp to a gate at 15km and burn the rest of the way with my MWD so speed was essential and is why the Rifter was fit that way.

Delve was empty, our first few jumps a barren wasteland. I had started to move two jumps ahead as the FC asked and it wasn't long before I saw the first sign of life, there was another pilot in System but my onboard scanner revealed nothing. I was hammering the scan button like a monkey on Crash bashing a drum, the rest of the gang making all speed to catch up. I was waiting just off the gate when my scanner revealed the hostile ship, a Cheetah, uncloaked and heading my way.

My overview lit up as the Minmatar covert ops frigate burst out of warp 15 clicks away from me. My heart rate accelerated, my voice over comms "Hostile Covops on gate, engaging" I initiated target lock and closed the distance, lock resolved and tackling gear jumps into action. Webbed and scrammed, the Cheetah was going nowhere... NOWHERE! Strangely enough, the Cheetah locked me and agressed, the rest of the gang had jumped in and initiated warp to my position. My orbit around the stricken covops a mere 500m, my guns and rocket launcher raining sweet death, the Cheetah exploding in a beautiful flash just as the first of my support burst out of warp, my targeting systems resolving the lock on the escape pod, scrambled. The delightful squish it made as it popped still a sound I love to this day. A glance at the killmail showing that the precious Covert Ops Cloak had been destroyed, at the time they cost approx. 80million ISK but that didn't matter in the slightest to me, I was grinning like a madman as I had just gotten my first solo kill and I was stoked.

We proceeded on our way, going as far as NOL when we decided to call it a day, it was getting late and targets we could engage were very rare. We had however stirred the hornets nest and a response gang started to give chase. I had become seperated from the rest of the gang and was trapped in a system, hostiles waiting for me on the gate out. I was creating and bouncing safespots until the hostile gang decided to chase the rest of my gang who had taken the quickest and most direct route out of Delve. I was however stuck with hostiles in front and behind me but there was another way out of Delve which was three times as long but it was one I took, the scenic route.

I docked up in our forward operations HQ, exhausted and in desperate need of a cigarette. Our suicide operation was a complete failure as we didn't lose a single ship, we only had the one kill to show for our trouble too but it was one of the greatest nights of my life.

The fall of Ars Caelestis

Harrow: "You didn't have to wound the man."

Mal: "Yeah, I know, it was just funny."

Time for some history. A while back I spoke of Ars ex Discordia [ARSED] and said I would one day explain how it came to be, so sitting here in my hangar I try and recall to the best of my memory the events that led to the fall of Ars Caelestis and the rise of Ars ex Discordia

You have to know where you are from to know where you are going.

Ars Caelestis was formed by pod pilots affiliated to Ars Technica , a Science and Technology website which I have been a member of for a very long time, seven years in fact and its gaming offshoot Arsclan. The majority of the members come from the two forums and so it was with me, I was introduced to Eve by two pilots of Ars Caelestis while chatting on the Ars IRC server one evening and have been playing ever since.

I joined Ars Caelestis when they were part of Huzzah Federation, I said goodbye to my friends in Ex Coelis, another Ars affiliated corp, sold all the assets that wouldn't fit into my Rifter and headed for Agil, where I would be meeting up for a corp op. The op was shrouded in secrecy but once everyone was there the first Ars Caelestis freighter was unveiled, a Charon and I was to be part of the escort down to Catch and my new home in V2-VC2. It was during this op that Ars' reputation for diplomatic incidents started to grow, a pilot blue to Huzzah but due to some misunderstanding not blue to us was bumping our freighter and the FC ordered us to lock but not fire, to which the pilot took exception and threw his toys out the cot to alliance leadership.

A lot of hubris later things calmed down but our CEO, Achilles Thorongmir was not best liked by the rest of Huzzah leadership and his abrasive manner rubbed people the wrong way but the rest of the corp tolerated it as he was ours and we always defend our own. Ars Caelestis had merged with the Organised Combat Consortium, another Huzzah corp and together put forward a candidate to take over leadership of Huzzah to try and fill the vacancy left by the departure of Hans Roaming to MC. Our candidate lost the vote and things were not kosher. A decision was made to leave Huzzah and during this time a rift was formed between us and the OCC pilots as it was revealed that they planned to pull out. Achilles flew off the handle and booted most of them, locking them out of the V2 station. The information passed down to us was one of betrayal and we stood firm behind Achilles. Huzzah were informed of our intentions to leave in a period of two weeks and within a week Catch was invaded by Against All Authorities. Huzzah didn't have the capitals to fight a POS war and our allies were hesitant to throw capitals in against the overwhelming force against us.

Ars pilots flew in combat gangs right up until our notice expired a week later, retreating to Agil to decide our future, Huzzah was kicked from Catch a short time later, not able to fight against the odds. From Agil we would run combat gangs up and down the pipe and camp HED-GP and during this time Achilles approached CYVOK of Ascendent Frontier for standings as we enjoyed flying with their pilots in the pipe and would prefer not to be shot at but shoot with. CYVOK came back with a counter offer of a place in ASCN to which the majority of pilots agreed, it was a good opportunity.

We moved en masse down to Feythabolis and set up our HQ in PMV, we were paired with a Capital corp in Darkstar1 and set about entrenching ourselves. Life was good, plenty of good ratting, the miners and builders got together for ops to supply the corp with ships and mods once more. Things were looking up, we did combat ops on regular occasion and were present for the unveiling of the Universe's first player owned Titan. We would run combat escort for freighters and even locking down systems for outpost deployments. Things were on the up and up for us, we were even in the process of deploying our own outpost when all hell broke loose and ASCN space was invaded by the mighty Band of Brothers. ASCN, as big as it was, was just not capable of fighting the well oiled BoB war machine, the alliance was bloated with carebears and the few combat corps like Ars tried desperately to hold back the tide, even to the point where we ran ops deep in Delve to try and disrupt logistics and ease the pressure on Feyth by opening another front in the war.

I had become very frustrated with the alliance at this time, trying to get ammo for my combat ships was getting very expensive as the T2 producers of the alliance were inflating prices, during a time of fucking war they were ripping their own alliance off. The ASCN empire was crumbling, CYVOK's Titan was destroyed and the carebear corps were fleeing to empire, the alliance leadership in disarray. Slowly the combat corps gave up, Darkstar1 had left overnight leaving just us in PMV, AZN had fallen and things were looking bleak. Eventually the decision was made to leave, pack up shop and evacuate what we could.

A freighter was loaded with what we could and an evacuation op from hostile territory was planned. We were approached by XirtamVOTF of Imperium Alliance, asking if we'd like to join and seeing as we had few options available we agreed. Xirt surprised and impressed us by organising an evacuation escort who flew all the way from their base in Great Wildlands to help us. The evacuation was tense and we were chased by BoB who eventually gave up when they learnt of reinforcements in the shape of Goonswarm coming down the route.

We eventually set up in E02 as part of Imperium Alliance which would soon become the reborn Curse Alliance under Xirt. Ars continued to grow as a corp, rebuilding from the ashes of ASCN which had taken a toll on us. The corp was near depleted financially from the war against BoB, our BPOs still stuck in PMV and the pilots fatigued from near constant war. We would rebuild with myself and others donating BPOs and ISK to the corp, doing what we could to get back on our feet. During this time we would still go out on combat ops, even aiding in the Lotka Voltera Titan abortion in JV1V.

Things took a turn for the worse when our CEO Achilles went totally batshit insane. I went to bed the previous evening drained from a combat op, I awoke the next day and all hell had broken loose. Achilles had taken exception to comments made to him in a leadership meeting to tone down his rhetoric on the Ars forums, he accused everyone of betraying him and kicked every member from the corp, we had 24 hours to get what we could, he had emptied the corp wallet, the hangars and our entire BPO collection along with the Maelstrom and Hurricane BPOs I had donated. He had taken the corp capitals and proceeded to laugh and antagonise us in corp chat. Achilles had made the biggest mistake of his life. He was kill on sight to the rest of the alliance and we were out to get him. One of our pilots popped his Rapier in his Vexor and people were clone jumping everywhere we had an office to try and rescue what we could, one of our enterprising industrial pilots even managing to eject ships from a POS whilst ramming his ship into the shields, wapa is a fucking hero. Curse Alliance helped us where they could but we were in dire straits, no ISK, no BPOs and no corp. A small shred of light shone as we were informed that Achilles was scammed out of a corp dread and a carrier with an auction scam.

Tessa Vaako had taken the reins and posted on eve-o about the betrayal and theft here
Achilles delusions of grandeur went further into the ludicrous with this thread on eve-o

Within 24 hours the exiled pilots of Ars Caelestis had reformed under a new banner, Ars ex Discordia was born from the ashes of Achilles betrayal. Contrary to what Achilles believed, a corp is not the leader, but the pilots who fly under its banner. Ars ex Discordia was better, stronger and with a new vision.

While trying to rebuild from this latest setback, Xirt had RL issues which stopped him from logging in and Curse Alliance started to fracture, Infinitus Odium and Black Omega Security had already left the alliance and soon ARSED would join the exodus. Our pilots financially depleted needed something but weren't prepared to go back to empire so it was off to the Free Trade Alliance, a project set up by Goonswarm for tenants to the recently acquired Lotka Voltera space where corps could join and use the space for ratting and mining along with defence. ARSED pilots started to rebuild even joining in Goonswarm combat ops where we could. Our battle hardened veterans earning a reputation which would eventually lead to an invitation to join Goonswarm.

ARSED has gone from strength to strength under the Goonswarm flag and continue to fight against old enemies like BoB and helping to kill Shrike's Titan. The corp has capital strength and a firm industrial backbone with dedicated pilots and I salute my old corpmates, you guys have done an epic job.

Alliance life was not for me however, so I left a corp I love to do my own thing, become a Pirate.
I left 0.0 after a year of fighting and struggling to become a better pilot. 0.0 doesn't allow for much individuality, you're just a very small cog in a very big machine. You're a number, a statistic, the only time your name is mentioned in a fight is when the opposing FC calls you primary or secondary. I didn't just want to follow the FC and punch some keys, I wanted to actually fly my ship, fight my way, pick my own targets, pick my own fate and solo Piracy in lowsec was the salvation I had been seeking, it has allowed me to become a much better pilot. I wanted recognition for my abilities, not to be "Oh, you're from X corp/alliance"

I would love to fly with my friends in Ars ex Discordia again, but I doubt it will ever happen, the political landscape, lag, blobs, caps and anonymity of 0.0 is just not for me.

Something wicked this way comes

Factional Warfare is upon us and with it I foresee more targets entering lowsec to be preyed upon by Pirates. While I'm not actually participating as I can't enter highsec I eagerly await to see what becomes of it and hopefully it takes off.

In space... no one can here you go yay

Two years... A long time in a universe as harsh as New Eden... Two years

Last night I celebrated my second cloningday, two years since I fell out of the cloning vat and took my first steps into the chaos that is EVE

I remember well my first Rifter, purchased with the help of the residents of Arsclan. I remember well losing it to Worlds Collide. I would eventually master that mission and in doing so it helped me buy my first Rupture. The very same Rupture I spent hours ratting in Abudban, Alakgur and surrounding lowsec space. It was lost in my first PvP encounter to DruzidelCastro's Deimos. However I had it insured and the payout helped me buy another Rupture and I was soon back to ratting, getting my first faction drop of a Dramiel BPC which sold for a mammoth 100million ISK, a fortune which would set me up nicely and soon I was joining The Black Sword on expeditions into lowsec with my trusty Rifter

Shortly after I left the good people of Ex Coelis and joined up with friends in Ars Caelestis (now Ars ex Discordia) and its journey with Huzzah Federation, Ascendant Frontier, Imperium, Curse Alliance and Goonswarm
My combat experience growing from fighting against the best, Band of Brothers, Against All Authorities, Omniscient Order, Lotka Voltera, Beyond Divinity and the Privateers, Firmus Ixion, Sniggerdly, Burn Eden and the Establishment.

Forged in fire but wanting to learn more and no better place to go to school than lowsec and the world of Piracy

Lowsec PvP is unlike anything I had experienced before. You have to be sharper, more alert and know exactly what your ship and that of your opponent is capable of. There's no FC telling you what to do, who to shoot and when to disengage. No one to blame if you screw up, no one to fall back on should things be going south.

There's only you.

Life as a solo Pirate is difficult to say the least but I have made friends along the way, often by gunpoint, like flashfresh, an exceptional pilot, Pirate and gentleman. He is a massive inspiration to me and has recently left the solo life and joined the Black Flag, a great bunch of young pilots forging a name for themselves with potency in combat that belies their age.
Karlemagne and the Black Fleet, Pirates whom I flew with on occasion during my first months in the area. No idea what happened to them but Karl has recently returned to Gusandall and I look forward to flying with him again.
Mean Corp, a fearsome collection of Pirates with legendary smack, my Red/Neutral status with them goes back a long time but I have become good friends with a few of their pilots like Deathstar and Waycharles
Redbad and the Tempered Steel Legion crew, Realzonk and the guys from Hellaquin, Lucius Cain who has just returned to the area and the residents of Independence, you guys have all made the journey worth it even though at times we have shot each other.

I've also made a hell of a lot of enemies with a red list to rival most nullsec alliances. Pirates and anti-Pirates alike, these guys make lowsec very interesting.

Boom shalak lak Boom

I celebrated last night by undocking in my favourite ship, a Rifter, the epitome of Minmatar ruthlesness. I decided to go do some belt hunting in Eifer, my spiritual home, a system I know backwards.

It was dead quiet, not a soul and a reminder that Piracy requires patience to be succesful and is not always non stop PvP as you'd imagine. My thoughts were snapped back to the here and now as someone had entered Eifer and my scanner was quick to confirm a Rifter target near Planet IV's cluster of asteroid belts. I warped to the planet and quickly narrowed him down to belt 3 and engaged my warp drive, my heartbeat increasing with every passing second, the thrill of the hunt pumping adrenaline through my system. My scanner showed my mark still ahead of me and I burst out of warp with my tackling systems primed and proceded to lock the rifter who was 6 clicks off my starboard. Lock resolved and the Warp Disruptor and Stasis Web kicked in trapping the Rifter. I settled into an easy orbit, taking my time, savouring every moment. I activate my guns one at a time, the rocket launcher being activated last. Soon they are tearing holes in the armour and hull of the motionless Rifter, he had locked and engaged me but it was far too late and he exploded in a blinding flash, my targeting systems already locking the escape pod, my Warp Disruptor kicking in as it resolved and I send the pilot home, care of the Clone Vat Express. The corpse making a nice trophy to be added to "The Morgue"
I loot the wreck and warp out to a safe spot in system to wait out my Global Criminal Countdown and Eifer once again goes silent. There's the odd passerby but none staying long enough to play.

I head back to Gusandall and dock up, that single hunt, that single kill enough to satiate my bloodlust.


The Dark Side... We have Pie...

I just want to welcome some old freinds and ex corpmates to the wonderful world of Piracy. Jon, Lars and Xynie have recently left 0.0 and started down the path to the Dark Side in different corps and I wish them every success. I hope you guys have as good a time as I am and if you're ever in the area holler in NovaKane and we'll go cause some Chaos.