Acting on Intelligence

Day 5 - Curse

At last! Curse! Where the action is, or so I had been told back over on the West side of the galaxy. I'd had my bloodlust whetted by the battle I had watched on the way here, and was itching to watch a bigger, more exciting splodefest.

Then I checked the galaxy map... and it turns out I had been misled. Despite a rather large number of ship and pod kills in the region, there were relatively few active pilots, and even less who were willing to bandy words with a stranger in a shuttle.

So here I was, sat in H-DOC, whistling into the solar wind, when finally I was answered by a friendly native, Selty:

 

I could scarcely believe my eyes. Truly I was doing the fabled Grand Tour our ancestors once spoke of... for here was another European nation to tick off my list: France. And these Frenchmen were less timid than some of their countrymen. Section XIII held this area, apparently, and they are, in general, not a friendly bunch. They revealed to me a very cunning ploy... the ultimate distraction for a pod pilot. When an unknown enters their system, they will play fairly friendly at first, chatting a bit and linking up videos of something no hot-blooded capsuleer could say no to: tits. Or, if that fails to capture their attention, a chimp raping a frog's mouth.

Meanwhile, as the unsuspecting pilot either faps or craps him/herself, they are scanned down and systematically vaporised.

Apparently I was beginning to outstay my welcome here in the center of the French Badlands, as more accusations of spamming began to fly, until one unsavory character, Elm'o, continually blanketed local with a big block of silence. He kept up this childish behaviour for at least ten minutes. After informing him of the folly of spending all his time watching local just so he can say nothing, I decided to see if other denizens of Curse were a tad more friendly. I continued my chat with Selty as I moved on, and learnt a bit more about my brief, reluctant hosts, Section XIII.

Apparently, they had very recently been involved in a battle with elements of GoonSwarm and their allies (GoonSwarm and co being a rather large and dangerous force in the galaxy, or so I've gleaned). Acting on intelligence, they had invaded a nearby system in which they were building a 'supercap', a term that was new to me:

So these crazy, cheese-eating, wine-swilling surrender-monkeys not only didn't surrender, they blew up a super-expensive super capital ship in production, a Titan, for kicks and giggles. Perhaps I should move on a bit quicker then, I thought, as I set my course to the other edge of Curse.

A few jumps later, I was sent an invitation to talk from someone I didn't know. This young pilot went by the name of Jenem, and she had sought me out personally. She wanted to know where in the galaxy she could find true enlightenment. As I was yet to find it myself, and feeling both honoured and a bit weirded out, I returned the compliment the only way I knew how: with a spin of my patented destination decider.

And so she was sent of into the northern wastes of space, near to Jovian territory, into a dangerous, populous part of the galaxy. Entirely unintentionally.

Unfortunately for me, the karma of the Eve galaxy works rather quickly... as I was deciding the fate of another noob to the stars, I was being hunted down by someone who wasn't quite so new. Then this happened:

Once more, bugger.

As I was actually watching when I got blown to smithereens, I created an artists impression, which I think is perhaps slightly more dramatic than what it really looked like:

And that was the end of my first foray into Curse! It was brief, strange, and over all, French. While I was there, during my conversations with my young disciple Jenem, I was prompted to wonder at the future of my Corporation... and now that I was back in slightly more civilised space, I was tempted to pause, take stock, go to Glastonbury festival, and come back reinvigorated and ready to take on my next destination.

Where shall I go next? Answers on a postcard please!