The Beginning

Welcome to my sudden and extraordinarily simple idea for a healthy spot of writing. This is one capsuleer's quest to have fun in EVE without making ISK. This is my personal attempt to be a space bum, and the stories that come along with it.

All my EVE life I've been intent on making ISK. ISK is wonderful, it glistens in your hand as you trade it in for a fearsome-looking ship, an anxiously awaited module of unmatched efficiency and power, or those three thousand Exotic Dancers to keep with the Militants and Spirits in your hold. At first, it took a lot of hard work to make. Hours of hard mining, nervously glancing around for pirates both player and NPC, or similarly tedious rat chaining, shackled to the asteroid belts by that fervent hope for an officer spawn. Scams seemed few and far between, mostly the fabric of fantastic tales of guile and wit.

But then, all of a sudden, everybody had ISK. Lucky sons-of-guns clutched their Tech 2 BPOs tightly to their chest, basking in the effortless flow of glittering ISK. Those hard grinding miners now had their Hulks, raping entire belts and watching the ore become pure ISK right before their eyes. Hardcore ratters took tough, specially fitted ships into deadspace complexes and came out beaming, arms laden with deadspace loot. Then came the research agents and exploration complexes, both of which turned out sums of ISK far disproportionate to the amount of effort required.

Everybody had ISK. Except for me.

I guess, before I packed my things and left, I could have been called a 0.0 PvPer, as a fleet-battle-loving member of a sizable alliance. But I was discontent with such a calling, for I felt the PvPer in me die a little more each time I had to dedicate weeks or more to grinding belt rats for ISK to replace the ship I'd lost in my latest vicious lag-death. Furthmore, unless I was taking a few months off from EVE, I had been in the same player corporation since day one of my conception.

Something new had to be out there, so I took the 166 million ISK I had, saddled up Apocrypha (my ride) and left.

I had a somewhat nebulous plan by the time I had reached Pimebeka, a system safely cloistered within the Amarr Empire, just a hop and a skip away from Tash-Murkon Prime. I had been south - all I had ever been was south. So I would go west. Once I was dissatisfied with the west, I would go north. Finally, I would reach virgin territory, the drone regions to the east. Along the course of my travels, I would try everything - pirating, mining, trading, freelancing, ratting, scamming, maybe even Empire ganking. I would be loose with my ISK and my opinions. I would find my calling, and I would have fun doing it, all while refusing to allow the allure of a bloated wallet to become my final destination.

Then, a former corpmate made a quip about me being a vagabond. So that's who I am now.

Vagabond in a Stabber.