¶ For centuries, New Eden has existed in a state of tentative peace. Every now and then, there would be a ripple in the fabric of the Non-Aggression Pact between the four empires, enforced by the CONCORD Assembly. Sometimes these ripples would be minor, sometimes they would be quite major indeed. But always they were mere ripples, never tears.
¶ At 09:07 on 2008.6.10, that peace was shattered. An unidentified mixed fleet composed of Minmatar and Thukker Tribe warships plowed through Ammatar and Amarr defenses in an overwhelming blitzkrieg offensive, liberating tens of millions of slaves and returning the Starkmanir tribe to their Minmatar brethren. At 14:27, a Caldari State fleet breached the Gallente Federation border and did not stop until it had captured and locked down the Federation’s capital system of Luminaire.
¶ It was a day of triumph and joy for some. For others, it was a day of horror and grief. Many felt emotions across the spectrum, crying tears of profound pride one moment and wracked with mourning the next. For everyone in New Eden, it was a day of pandemonium, waves of which were felt in the farthest 0.0 star clusters. Nearly a billion lives were lost that day across New Eden. Their blood has ushered in a new age. The CONCORD Assembly still enforces law in the core regions of the four empires, ensuring relative safety to citizens and capsuleers not involved in the wars being fought between the Matari-Gallente bloc and the Amarr-Caldari bloc.
¶ In the interest of history, I log here in this Chronicle a recording of The Scope’s new feed from 2008.6.10. I offer no commentary beyond that which I have already said, which has already been too much; nothing that can be said does justice to the sheer impact of that day.

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em·py·re·an –noun

1. the highest heaven, supposed by the ancients to contain the pure element of fire.
2. the visible heavens; the firmament.

This is where we live. Work. Fight. In the empyrean. Our destinies are forged here. Whether we mine for precious minerals with which to build implements of destruction, or use those implements ourselves to try and impose our will on those who would share the empyrean with us, we make our own way.

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Unfortunately it is the nature of life in 0.0 (at least, the way we’re living it) creates political situations and security concerns regarding what information can or cannot be released to the public.  Thus, as this Chronicle is being publicly broadcast, I have had precious little to log here of late.

That said, I wanted to let anyone who is following DFIAS’ progress know that we are still very much alive, our skills as pilots are improving and our position in New Eden is looking better and better for the future.

¶ Far and wide. Sometimes, that’s how you have to travel in search of fun or profit in New Eden. Sometimes, that’s where you have to look for affordable equipment, especially if you’re like me and have committed so many crimes that the Four Empires don’t allow you in their high-security systems.
¶ If you’re lucky, you’ve got a close friend or two who might be persuaded to pick things up for you and bring them to your lowsec base of operations. I’ve managed to befriend a young Caldari capsuleer with a penchant for Badgers - the last few days, he’s been invaluable as many of the things I need to outfit the “Wendigo” are either unavailable in low-security areas of Molden Heath or they’re ridiculously expensive. It saves me quite a bit of ISK and travel, and what’s more, the Caldari works for Tobacco.
¶ Still, while Tobacco isn’t overly expensive, it adds up. And though CONCORD pays well for killing Angel Cartel employees by the Machariel-load in Omist, that’s not one of my favorite pastimes. Not that I mind the wholesale slaughter of less-skilled fighters… it’s just boring. Besides, I think of myself as a pirate and shouldn’t a pirate make his living off of other capsuleers? It was time to hunt.

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I just upgraded to the new version of WordPress and found out that the previous version was not very good about alerting me to the presence of new comments. As a result, upon updating the blog software, I found over 200 comments in the moderation queue… of these 200, over 170 were spam (who knew there were so many ringtones on the internet!).

This left dozens of posts unseen - I had no idea I’d had so many readers and so much feedback! And one post even from Kane Rizzel, someone I consider to be a living legend and whose blog I check daily for new exploits. I hope he didn’t take my failure to approve his comment on The Wolf as a snub - it was entirely unintentional; I’m honored to have high-caliber PvPers reading The Defias Blog!

In the future, I will endeavor to be much more alert to new comments.

¶ I’d heard that, when in a time of extreme, insurmountable and inescapable danger, a pod pilot might simply shut down all of his ship’s primary and secondary systems, logging off his connection to the vessel through the unique interface created by the capsule technology.  The idea is that upon realizing that the pod pilot’s connection to the ship’s systems has been terminated, all of the ship’s available power will be diverted from all of its other systems to the warp drive, flinging the ship to a random point in space and effectively out of harm’s way.  This emergency warp, using all of the ship’s available power for the warp core, is generates a strong enough warp field to defeat any manner of warp scrambling.  This is called a “logoffski”.
¶ I’d also heard that, when a pod pilot uses this tactic to escape from harm, they must make sure that they have not come under fire already, because it takes much longer for the ship’s power to be diverted to the warp drive if it has recently been employed in defense of the ship whether it was being used to power weapons systems, shield systems or armor systems.  I’d heard that it can take up to fifteen minutes for a ship to enter emergency warp under these circumstances.  If a ship is sufficiently sturdy, it might just last the 15 minutes and escape destruction.
¶ I present to you a Tale of Two Logoffskis.

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¶ I’m not dead yet.  To the contrary, in fact.  And I’ve finally been able to get away from the training simulators to fly an actual ship and fire my weapons in anger.  Between training and politics (both within Anthrax Death alliance and without), I just haven’t been able to find the time to do much of anything, let alone record my experiences here.
¶ Tonight, though, I managed to get some pod time in flying first a Wolf, then my old Stabber (which I’d forgotten about), and then a couple of Stiletto-class interceptors.

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¶ It’s been a while since I’ve made an entry to this chronicle. I, personally, haven’t had occasion to engage in any entertaining nor even exciting activities. In testing the limitations of the Wolf, I’ve lost two ships (one to a Harbinger, the other to two cruisers - one of which neuted my cap, taking my Centii C-type Small Armor Repairer out of the equation or else I’d've killed them both).
¶ Shortly after Shan Dollean made his entry into the [DFIAS] Chronicles, he got his first solo kill. Since then, The Defias Brotherhood has been on a whirlwind recruitment drive, increasing our numbers by 30 and, with the help of new Industrial Director Cronos Deacon, we’re building a re-vamped industrial division to help us meet our needs.
¶ We’ve even got capital pilots in the corporation, now - [DFIAS] has come a long way since December, and has even farther to go before I sleep.

¶ New Eden has lost a little bit of its’ gloss for me recently. I guess I’ve hit a bit of a flat spot, wondering where my life is gonna take me… up ‘til now, I’ve been content with disrupting the plans of the Angel Cartel, and living off the proceeds, and joining in with the defence of Omist when hostile forces come calling – and of course helping the Defias Brotherhood maintain its presence in Omist by doing what I can to keep its tower running.
¶ But just recently, things have got a bit routine. Destroying Angel battleships isn’t quite the challenge it used to be. Defence ops have become fewer and further between (which I believe is a testament to the defence capability of the new Omist residents) – although Stain Empire still maintain their frequent nano-gang visits; we may be becoming a more capable as a defence force, but it’s still better for us to let them pass.
¶ So I thought I’d try something a little different. Since Defias grew from being a pirate organization, I thought I’d try my hand at a little belt piracy. So, with a sense of anticipation and excitement, I left my Omist clone at the TCF manufacturing plant in 6T3 and returned to Empire space.
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¶ flashfresh wrote that hunting in New Eden is a case of Feast or Famine. “Some weeks,” he said, “there is a bonanza of loot and ransom and then there are weeks and weeks of nothingness.” Operating primarily in Omist for the benefit of my corporation, the only action I see tends to be defense against the random gangs roaming through in nano-fitted heavy assault or recon cruisers. Every once in a while, it’ll be something else… like the three command ships that came in last week.
¶ Anyway, operating primarily in deep space, I don’t get many opportunities to look for fun in Empire, and I never get any decent opportunities for profit. I had accepted long ago that, for the moment, mine would be a life of Famine.
¶ Until last night.

¶ Warning: This entry is quite long, but then, it was an eventful night!

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