Askgar

It was a perfectly ordinary day in eve, me and a corp mate were scanning down sites, hoping to find either a grav or Class 1 wormhole (all we could handle  as the 2 of us) and eventually I found a grav in my mining home system (where I keep my hauler and barge) and we went in and started on it.

We noticed a pilot who kept jumping in and out in various ship, first it was the same as mine, then he came out in a missile boat, then he jumped in and out a couple of times before eventually striking up a conversation with the other corp member.

[ 2010.07.24 14:02:35 ] Corp Mate > Hello.
[ 2010.07.24 14:02:46 ] Triestiono > Hi

Pretty standard opening of the convo, nice and polite, although we didn’t know what he wanted at this point, we’d have been happy sharing the site.

[ 2010.07.24 14:02:54 ] Triestiono > When did you discover this deposit?
[ 2010.07.24 14:03:45 ] Corp Mate > Not sure. About 30-60 minutes ago. Nice tree branch formation it has too!

My corp mate was purposefully playing dumb here btw, the tree branch formation comment was just made to make himself look less knowledgeable than he was.  Next, it takes a turn neither of us expect.

[ 2010.07.24 14:04:39 ] Triestiono > is it worth 5 mill ISK to you guys to keep this all to yourself?
[ 2010.07.24 14:05:02 ] Corp Mate > huh? I’m a noob, you have to spell it out for me.
[ 2010.07.24 14:06:02 ] Triestiono > I’m requesting “protection” money. 5 mill isk in order to leave you guys alone.
[ 2010.07.24 14:06:30 ] Corp Mate > Ah. Let me confer with my partner.

5 million for him to leave us alone… in Hi-Sec where the  most he could do was steal some ore (more on that later).

We talked here (well, laughed really) and decided, he’s an idiot and we both know how NOT to get killed in hisec so ignored him.

[ 2010.07.24 14:11:25 ] Triestiono > well?
[ 2010.07.24 14:11:40 ] Corp Mate > Oh. You still here?
[ 2010.07.24 14:12:22 ] Corp Mate > You’ll have to wait a bit. My partner is still laughing.

I loved this reply, didn’t see it until I got the chat log sent to me but absolute genius, if this happens again I might get my corp mate to invite me into the chat, could be much more fun.  Then, well he isn’t happy so he threatens us and then steals from one of our cans (he didn’t steal much at all though, we didn’t notice the dent in the piles anyway) in the hopes of provoking us into attacking him.

Rule 1 of mining, if someone goes red from stealing from your can, collect the loot in then go.

Rule 2, if a yellow can shows up, ignore it and don’t take/put into it, you’ll go red for them.

[ 2010.07.24 14:14:50 ] Triestiono > wrong choice
[ 2010.07.24 14:15:22 ] Corp Mate > An extortionist AND a thief. your mother must be so proud.

I had to laugh, he’s so confident something will happen and my corp mate (only just off his trial) listened  to everything me and another person in our chat channel were telling him, and then added insult to injury of the failed extortion by making a comment like that.

Once this had happened I decided I HAD to strike up a convo with him, see if he could explain his motivation for trying to extort money from us.

[ 2010.07.24 14:19:37 ] Me > So you really think we’re stupid enough to attack you for stealing our ore
[ 2010.07.24 14:19:40 ] Triestiono > what’s up?
[ 2010.07.24 14:20:00 ] Triestiono > you look like you might be.
[ 2010.07.24 14:21:00 ] Me > Not at all, good try though, especially picking out the new player over the experienced one
[ 2010.07.24 14:22:43 ] Triestiono > yeah, well, I spent 30mins scanning to find this deposit, I feel like I have first rights to it.
[ 2010.07.24 14:23:10 ] Me > It took you 30 mins to scan a site?

So it turned out he was annoyed because he spent ages scanning to find a site then we just strolled in and started mining the site, so he decided to try getting some money out of us.  (Oh, and he left the chat as soon as I made the last comment, I don’t think he appreciated being insulted… again).

Anyway, this was the first decent test of my barge (other than a quick veld trip the other night), it was very entertaining to see how quickly I filled the can and bringing a survey scanner along REALLY helped to prioritise which of the many roids I should mine first.  Also, having my hauler in system really helped for getting the ore back at the end of the day.

Anyway, from being extorted to ransoming, while we were in a worm hole with our big gang on Wednesday some random jumped in on the wormhole, completely ignoring us and going off to try clearing a site on his own, I was on archeology/scanning duty (with a little dps thrown in when I wasn’t doing those) at the time so stayed behind clearing up when they jumped him but they got in, pointed, webbed (etc.) him, got him down to 1/2 armour then… stopped attacking and made sure the npcs didn’t attack him.

Someone opened a chat and asked him how much his ship was worth to him, turns out he hadn’t even bookmarked the entrance wormhole so we offered him 15 million to let him out alive, including the exit wormhole (I was trying to get them to let me give him an exit to null sec we found earlier but they wouldn’t let me ).  I think we all agreed that was very cheap for  his ship AND the exit but as a first attempt, it was fun.  We let him out then went back to our typical Wednesday outing.

After last  weeks POS kill, this weeks ransoming, we’re turning quite malicious in WH space… although with a NBSI corp policy why not?