Escalation For The What…?

Hi All,

Had a boy night the other night and decided I’d do some exploration while getting slightly pickled. Jumped into the Proteus and scanned down a site. Just a bog standard gurista one – killed the dread gurista (ammo and a tag – sigh), but managed to get an escalation out of it.

Ran the next site – killed the DG (ammo and tag – sigh). Hmmmmm. Onto the next escalation.

Ran the NEXT site – killed the DG. Any guesses? Ammo and tag. Damn you’re good.

Kept going, collecting ammo and tags until I get an escalation into low sec. Now by this time I’d had a few glasses of wine, but even so did not want to risk a T3 ship jumping two systems into low. Ding went the light bulb… I’ll use an Ishkur. Small, fast, and not too expensive if it comes to a loss. ECM drones on board for a last ditch get out of dodge attempt should they be needed.

Set the autopilot to stop just shy of Tama (not a particularly good system at the best of times), and a few jumps out had a sudden thought. Implants. Uh oh. Hand brake turn Mr Sulu, and a clone jump to a naked clone later, back to the entry system. There was a destroyer sitting on the in bound gate possibly giving intel to the citizens in low.

With a little trepidation and a notification (must turn that darned thing off), into low I went. And not a soul in the outbound gate. Bamfed through to the next gate and jumped through. Was surprised to see a prowler lurking there, but it jumped through almost immediately.

Local numbered a grand total of two, me included. Off to the site. A Gallente G10 tower needed removal with prejudice. So, maintain a certain distance, afterburner on… and set drones to frag.

What happened next was an exercise in repetition. D-Scan, kill, watch local, d-scan. Local ratcheted slowly up to 8, along with my nerves. Eventually I managed to kill everything (#$%^y damping rats), and started work on the tower. Got a fairly sizable spawn including our favorite – faction frigates.

Thinned the rats out sufficiently that I could get close to the wreck…. opened it and TA DAAAAAH! A Pith – A….. small shield transporter…. and some ammo…. and a tag. Seriously?!?!? Again????? CCP – enough with the shield transporters already. And DG lead/iron/foxfire ammo!

Had already decided on an exit strategy… and bugged out via an alternative route. Local had dropped away, and there was no way to know where they’d got to. No dual boxing in this case and the idea of going back through Tama was making my spidey sense twitch. Jumped through… and I don’t think I saw more than one other person in low sec local the entire rest of the way home.

My friend John has mentioned that exploration is something like spinning a roulette wheel…. I’d just like it to land on something else for once!

 

FS

 

H