The Soldier

The Soldier
At Heart And In Mind


What makes a person a soldier? What type of baseline personality leads to traits, qualities, actions, behaviors, and values that lead to a person who has the wherewithal to jump into the fray, guns blazing, cigar smoldering, and lips curled?

After Zee's recent exit from stage left, searching for something larger and greener than what we can provide in his eyes, am I curious to explore the notion of the soldier. What is this notion that human conflict, domination, and competition are somehow bred into people or born from the start? I am a philosopher, hell I am even majored in it, though the slip of paper means relatively little to me. The things I ponder when these questions come to mind lead me from one vast extreme to the other of the collective notion of human hubris and valor both.

What is a true soldier? I am a true soldier. Plying my secret trade in small, miniscule, and calculated steps one foot in front of the next, I am the epitome of one who by nature embodies the hunt. Though I may not seem it, the ultimate bloodsport to me is the hunt itself. The kill is a hollow easy thing. It is the anticipation, the hunt, the great divide between predator and prey. I am always calculating, everything I do ingame is a calculation, I even make mistakes on purpose, for my own reasons. Sure, no one is perfect, I mess up plenty, hell I never intended to get podded like I was, though I knew I was taking an action that had a higher degree of risk that I would be. I woefully assumed that my targets might have their overviews improperly setup. Wow, was I wrong. But I learned more. But some of my mistakes are an experiment of their own put into play for a reason. This is about learning, taking calculated risks, to better understand your opponent. Pushing the envelope.

What I am hunting though? Am I on LSD or something or is this some sort of sick joke? No.

I used to love the hunt in Warcraft. PvP in Warcraft was a dying art. You had to really search for it. The best PvP? Solo.

I would go to Stranglethorn Vale, stealth up, and just hunt. No, killing lowbies is easy, you are right. What is not easy, is hunting them, nurturing that animal in your breast that has thousands of years of hunter instinct built into its every fiber. Learning to channel that instinct is the key to nurturing an effective competitive spirit in nearly any virtual or real competition or actual conflict. Tapping into the understanding required to manage the fear, anticipation, apphrensive, situational decision making, critical thinking, and the like in sometimes ridiculously complex and dynamic situations where there are mere seconds to make the right choice. What do you think they do to train the Navy Seals? They train the instinct out of them, amplifying the fight response, and numbing the flight response. They train Navy Seals to manage or negate fear. And that is the key. Clear and critical thinking.

So, right now you are thinking, okay so you went to a lowbie zone as a level 60 and hunted easy prey, this is the biggest slop of shit I have ever heard, how does that make you a hunter?

Did I not follow my prey for ten or fifteen minutes, observing their patterns of movement in a zone known for constant hostilities? Did I not kill them once in a situation where I could quickly dash behind objects to belay my actual presence and encourage them to lack a full understanding of what was going on? Did I not follow them again after they returned to their body, not killing them, but simply observing their next move, how far would they run, would they stay, would they hearth, would they call in help, would they stand and wait for my inevitable return? Again, and again, and again I tested them, learning how they reacted, putting a pattern to their behavior. And I did not do this just in lowbie zones, I did this everywhere. This is not the mind of a gamer, this is the mind of a hunter, slowly categorizing, profiling, and analyzing his intended prey to perfect the hunt. I used to wait in crypts, stealthed up, for a half an hour, just for the one lowbie who wandered down there solo, busting his way through 10-20 mobs that were 2-3 levels higher than him, finally getting to the bottom level, and then I would gank him, repeatedly, again and again until all the mobs respawned, then I would simply stealth up, leaving him abandoned, alone, deep inside a crypt with mobs that were too tough for him to begin with, just to see if he hearthed, or was emboldened by the conflict to fight his way back out. And you know, I would let him, all the way to the top, and I would not pursue him further. Yes, yes I was an ass, but I was learning, perfecting my understanding of what the average player would and would not do in the game, from the bottom to the top, from the lowest to highest level. I would even form packs with a few trusted friends and go into the starting zones where the lowbies were not flagged to us, just to see what we could accomplish. Just how many 60s would show up, how many lowbies would flag themselves, how many would run back to their town, how many guards would we be able to take on and for how long. How did they behave, what did they do, how could we most effectively dispatch them. We were hunters. The point was not to drive them out, or overpower them, that was easy and to be honest I consider it a base and lowly initiative to simply gank lowbies or defenseless players for the sake of it alone, without some driving force behind it. The point was to hunt, and perfect the hunt. To learn about our prey.

One time in particular comes back to me when I think about it.

"I'll never forget the one time that I convinced my friend Candwe to come out to STV to see this solo hunting I kept telling her about. I made her follow me while I stalked this lowbie for 15-20 minutes, just watching him quest and shit, no interaction whatsoever, but I went and I ganked 2-3 people right in his area, then I stealthed up again, and waited for the inevitable, someone reported in alliance local that a 60 was ganking, so this guy gets scared, and he runs back to the town right."

"I follow him there, and I sit there, and then I start /wave /greet /grin at him and stuff"

"he can't figure it out, he's like ???"

"finally after about five minutes of walking around the town trying to see who was waving at him, he musta realized he should do a /who, then he figured out it was me (because the opposing faction does not register with a /who), the 60 that was reported, so he runs into the inn really quick "

"I stealth into the inn, top level, and I gank his ass and dash out of the town and run off into the night"

"Candwe was o.O o.O o.O o.O o.O"

"I think I honestly scared her, she refused to go hunting with me anymore, lmao, I mean she thought it was hiliarious how the guy couldn't figure out who the hell was waving at him, but I think she was like 'oh wow this is too evil for me' HAHAHA"

So, yea, big deal right, again, I have a point I hope, you're thinking right?

Well, my point is, I'm tired of losing members every month or two because they think we do not have enough opportunity for competitive gameplay for them, or that the grass is greener somewhere else. I can assure you, you will find few people capable of the levels of depravity I am ingame concerning human conflict and PvP. You should have seen some of the sick things I did to people in Warcraft in the name of the hunt. There are a few people like this already in the alliance as it is, I am not unique in this respect. Uriella for one comes to mind, or Psyclone, Maximus, Logic, Varian, or Staigor. We are all depraved f*%ks who love to strike out on our own
randomly into the depths of space and just pound on a f&%ker because we can, and learn how to do it better the next time.

So, people want PvP, and I am going to give it to them, but this may be one of those be careful what you wish for situations, because up until now we have been fairly straight forward in our approach to PvP. We bring out a gang, we go out, we try to find a solitary or small group of hostiles that we either out match or are on the same level as and we give it our best, otherwise we make best speed in the opposite direction.

No more.

At least, not in my fleet, the Gremlin Squadron. Our fleets serve a very specific purpose that is critical to our residency in Providence space. We are the guard patrol that goes out at night, checking the fences and the tree lines, ensuring there are no lurkers in the bushes, and chasing out or destroying anyone who does make it across the fence. But this is not the entirety of the PvP experience, and far from it. And I am all for turning us more into a soldier's outfit than sentry duty at the fences or border cops.

You know all those reds that float around in Providence in small stealthy or swift boats that can easily escape a situation that goes south, slowly moving from one system to the next, waiting for just the right moment to strike, those are hunters. We are prey. Blobs in Providence are an anomaly of a broken mechanic. EVE was never intended to be nothing but a Primary Fest but it is. You join a large fleet, all you get is a numbers game. Who gets off the first few rounds of shots and knocks out half a dozen crucial ships before the other blob can. It's simple.

But the hunt, the hunt is not. And I am going to train hunters, not prey, nor cannon fodder. Big fleets are fun, but after awhile it dawns on you that big fleets are for big politics, and unless you have something at stake personally or within your organization beyond the principle of the matter like us, there is really no reason to participate.

Competition is a fickle unforgiving beast. One minute you are about to hammer the nail in the coffin and the next minute the coffin is laying on the ground with the lid busted off and you are dead in a pool of your own blood. This is the reason we hunt. To learn about our prey, perfect our mastery of an art that has been bred into our bones for millenia. This may all sound too abstract, too over the top, too tongue-in-cheek to you, but after I'm through training the Gremlin Squadron, you will be grateful for the experience it brings.

What does this all mean?

I have decided to help us both financially and structurally at least in respects to PvP as it continues to be a flash point for our corporation. The next member we lose will be because we have TOO much PvP, and not the other way around.

I will be privately funding the fuel, operation, and progress of the manufacturing POS myself from now on. I will be using the Ark to ferry goods to and from low security space. I will be ratting. And I will be PvPing. That's it.

You are talking to the guy who when he made the decision to get into PvP the first thing he did was go straight to Syndicate 0.0, the shithole of the universe, and run around for a week, busting gatecamps, and following people around, observing how they operated and lived, learning about my future prey. I don't mess around.

Anyone who joins me, will be trained to be a hunter, and nothing else. You want to be a hunter, you come to me.

Where will the Gremlin Squadron go to train in the hunt? Where won't we go?

I am tired of hearing about PvP, so we are going to go find some. Better grab your sack and clench your teeth, because it will be a sleigh ride in hell. Just ask Jacob, I took him out there last summer, to Syndicate, he got podded. Heh.

Chris (Varian) once told me that he had never quite seen someone fly a ship like that in EVE when it came to our corporate tourney that we had in February; the one I won by the way with a Kestrel of all ships all the way to the last round when I had to sacrifice it to pop Varian, and then was forced to hop into my Caracal. He was being sincere, and though it is rather obscene of me to pander my own compliments or the fact that I won the tourney, if you have something to share, you should share it. And I have something to share with anyone who flies under my banner in PvP. I have been so long in the administrative role since I formed this corporation that sometimes I forget that I am a sonofabitch when it comes to PvP and I know a thing or two. Heh. Time for me to share. Hope you have a strong stomach.

Btw, we are going to start the tourney system up again, it'll happen every other weekend. The first tournament will be Saturday the 1st at 02:00 EVE on the test server.

See you there, prey.

:)

We Will Rise