From Ronin to Samurai

EVE is a truly strange and wonderful game. When I encounter a person in real life and they ask me what games I play, quickly EVE becomes the topic of discussion. This is how I describe it to the EVE laymen. 

TLDR: Useless story about wormhole space Bushido, nothing substantial, just felt like sharing.

“Imagine a video game where the premise is built around you controlling different space ships from solar system to solar system seeking riches and fame.”” A virtual world with its own player run market system, a market totally devoid of moral objectiveness and fair trade conduct. ”The second you leave the safety of your beginning system, which is but 1 of thousands, anything goes, nothing preventing you from attacking anyone and anything. The only true response to this unbridled chaos is how quickly punishment is dealt by players or in rare situations, the space police.”

The response is usually very awe inspiring, they usually ask “Well what do you do?”

Me? Well I live in Wspace. If EVE is only played by the nerdiest of nerds, only 5% of the nerds who play EVE ever live in Wspace. Its EVE hard mode.

One of the interesting phenomenon’s in Wspace is the rise of an attitude, I hesitate to call it a code because nothing official has ever been written about it. Even if it was officially written down, its population would quickly try and modify it to their own gain.  A kind of mix between the chaos of Mad Max combat aggression and the ancient Japanese Bushido code. 

Honor your word. Always fight.. These two things are really the only consistent factors in this phenomenon. Sure there are instances where this phenomenon is broken, but it seems to continue to be endorsed and practiced by the largest forces in Wspace.

In feudal Japan a master-less samurai was referred to as a Ronin. Because they were former samurai, they couldn’t legally take up a new trade, it wouldn’t matter because most only knew how to make a living with their swords anyway. They usually wandered, working as mercenaries, criminals and killers. Master-less and never to become samurai again.

Well Isogen 5 has taken its collection of Wspace Ronin and made them samurai again, granted them lands, honor and a destiny. Remember with violence comes respect, and in the twisted realm of Wspace, respect brings honor.

Last night we effectively punched a giant in the nose, and lived to tell the tale. SSC known as Sleeper Social Club is one of the largest, one of the most feared and respected groups in Wspace. To attack them in their home is one step short of direct suicide, to do this is a bold move indeed.

Lotor our CEO found we were directly connected to the SSC home wormhole. We also found they were running sites. Interestingly they left their entrances without mass on them. Just a simple large warp bubble protecting the door. We pinged and formed one of the largest fleets I have seen.

To give perspective; we were about to run into a police station with a whiffle ball bat, crack one of the police sitting at his desk over the head, then run away.

We had 0 hope of killing their fleet, but we follow the code previously mentioned. Always Fight. Some people may confuse the “always fight” with “Fight and Die with honor”, again back to the Mad Max Bushido thing, it’s complicated.

With one of their 5 dreadnoughts in siege we charged our T3 Fleet into their home. Lotor provided a hero warp in at the cost of his ship.

We weren’t able to kill the dreadnought, before our Dscans started to detect the response fleet. Our fleet commander told us to align out and warp back the way we came. Because of how warp bubbles work, we ended up trapping some of their own ships in the their defensive bubble. One of the defenders Tengu paid the price.

A small scuffle broke out as we removed ourselves from their home.

Our own loss was Lotors scout ship https://zkillboard.com/kill/45807632/ ,

But our Hit and run technique landed us this kill.

https://zkillboard.com/kill/45807747/ Tengu 

https://zkillboard.com/kill/45807754/ Pod

We could have simply rolled our hole and not attempted to raid them, but we chose the glory of taking on a mighty sleeping foe…. And then quickly running away when it woke up.

The interesting thing is, in every other situation the giant would be mad and seek pay back, but in the twisted Bushido, mad max fight everything, for no other reason than to fight.. we minor Ronin may have just gained honor by simply trying to punch the biggest thing we could find.