A change of scenery

Since last weeks post I have now trained Thermodynamics to III, it will be at IV in less than a day. This can only be a good thing and I plan to use it masses when flying some of the cheap throwaway ships that i have. Ive been clone jumping around quite a bit this week too, I now have a stable of ships in The Bleak Lands which is smack bang in the middle of Minmatar / Amarr faction warfare. I've also been around my Heimatar "home" as that's where my Thermodynamics skill book was. I've been in on 8 ship kills this weeks, which while not masses I am happy with considering i have only had a single loss.

I have been pleased to see now that my sec. status as others see it is now at -10.0, whilst I know that it isn't a true -10 it's still nice to have obtained this level of criminal standing.

Lets review the weeks activity:

Vexor
This fellow was hopping around the belts and seemed to be leaving some wrecks in his wake, I assumed that he was ratting. When I eventually saw him i noticed that he was mining too. Now he was a toon of a reasonable age, and many folk always warn about engaging Vexors in frigs but my experience has only perhaps once ever fought a Frig killing Vexor fit, so I engaged and he died. He paid a ransom to save his Pod and was allowed to go free. We chatted a little in local afterwards where I managed to blind him with science regarding the directional scanner and how i had found him.

A day or so later, I can't quite recall, the pilot was in local again and this time in a Thorax. I engaged him again to find I had sprung a tarp! Ohnoes! His friend, who was only young jumped in with a Vexor. I soon had 10 Hammerheads chasing after me plus the ships guns. In retrospect I utterly failed this fight and should have opened up a wide orbit to kite and kill the drones and then move into the ships, but i sat in close orbit and got nuked to hell. But credit to them both for having the stones to come back to low-sec and bait the pirate. I really hope to meet these guys again. They were also so pleased that they killed me and got some T2 mods.

Rifter
I had seen this pilot in a couple of systems and managed to get the drop on him in a belt, he was young and appeared to be looking for a fight so I obliged, It was a good fight which whilst I think it was only going to go my way unless I did something stupid wasn't completely demoralising for him overkill and-blow-him-to-bits-in-5-seconds. Since the fight I have exchanged a few eve-mails with the pilot where we talked about the reasons he couldn't do full damage on me whilst i could on him and several other points. I wish him luck should he decide to go the fully fledged pirate route.

Hurricane
In a gang merrily roaming across the faction warfare zone, this Hurricane and a Brutix were spotted in a complex, as we warped in the Brutix was popped as it appears they were fighting and not working together. I made towards the ship, but had it's full firepower turned on me so moved out of range as my shields were stripped along with half my armour, once someone else was under fire I moved back in by which time he was in serious trouble as the rest of our gang had engaged. The pilot was not amused by the loss of his ship.

Arazu & Jaguar
Entering Amamake, now there was an experience. Talk about a hornets nest. Our bait went into a belt and found a whole host of evil stuff. An Arazu decloaked just near him and he pointed it, the rest of the gang jumped in heedless of the rest of the evil stuff there too, this was going to be a hit and run. The Arazu melted fast and so too did a Jaguar that strayed too close to us. As they popped a bunch of battleships landed, 3 Armageddons were sat together on my overview, scooping what loot we could we bugged out for no losses to our side.

Stabber
Back again in Heimatar I had a Stabber on scan, whilst he appeared to be at a belt on scan, he was not to be found. He must either be in a mission or perhaps a cosmic anomaly, doing a quick 30s scan, a single anomaly appeared. Smiling to msyelf I headed there post-haste but no! He's 60km away salvaging, I make maximum burn for him using my new overheat ability! I probably didn't need to as he didn't react to my presence until I started shooting him. I took 5% shield damage in the whole fight, after his ship was destroyed the language barrier proved too much for him to understand a ransom request so I podded him, not a moment to soon as there was a Jaguar landing as I exited stage left.

Catalyst
Back in faction warfare space within five minutes this guy was in a complex, he was a 2007 character so i though twice about engaging. I warped into the plex and he warped off. I chased him around a little then went to a deep safe, a couple of minutes later i went back to the complex to find he had returned. I took some heavy hits from his railguns on my way in but once under their tracking made short work of him. The pilot refused a ransom and was another corpse added to the collection.

Harpy
A small gang of Tuskers was now formed and a report of tackle on a Harpy was received. Two additional Rifters plus an Arazu went in, The Harpy took out the first two Rifters then started on me, making good ingress into my armour before he popped. He dropped a rather nice Faction Shield Booster plus we recovered all the modules from our fallen comrades wrecks. A nice net gain!

This time next week i'll be preparing the next character review, they do come around fast.