[EVE Online] Detroid Drifters & The Rattlesnake Rodeo

Filed by E

Every year Signal Cartel does something I can only describe as science-nerd Christmas: The Jove Observatory Survey.

We scatter across New Eden like hyperactive data analysts, poking our noses into every region to check whether a system has a Jove Observatory, and—if it does—how many unidentified wormholes it’s cooked up this year. It’s equal parts research, tradition, and “what if we poked the Drifters again for fun?”

This year, I volunteered to wander through Detroid. Detroid! Home of:

• not much,
• even less,
• and Drifters who regard privacy as a myth.

I hopped system to system in my trusty Helios, scribbling notes like an excitable intern:

• Jove tower present? ✔️ / ✖️
• Unidentified wormholes? 0 / 1 / ★PANIC★
• Any Drifters glaring at me? Always ✔️

Detroid was calm in that eerie “someone turned the danger knob to mute but forgot to tell the fauna” sort of way. Since I was already in the neighborhood, I figured I’d nip across the border into Insmother—because explorers make bad choices with confidence.

The moment I landed in system, d-scan lit up with exactly two things:
A Rattlesnake.
And someone clearly very bored.

They saw me. I saw the gate. We all saw the general vibe, which was: “E is about to get chased like a cartoon coyote.”

Sure enough, the pilot landed on grid with that “howdy stranger” energy. I’m in a Helios—fast, slippery, about as dangerous as a paper airplane. They were in a Rattlesnake—chunky, expensive, bristling with enough drone damage to turn me into abstract art.

I hit the afterburner. They hit everything else. And suddenly I was threading celestial pings and safe spots like some discount space-ninja.

Another hunter appeared—because apparently Insmother was running a two-for-one explorer special today. I decided, very rationally:
Nope.

I made one last safe, bounced cleanly, de-cloaked, and did the single bravest thing an explorer can do in nullsec:

I logged off.

Gracefully.
Peacefully.
Like a possum playing dead.

I’ll return when the local wildlife has wandered off or gotten distracted by a wormhole.

Jove Observatories: catalogued.
Unidentified wormholes: noted.
Insmother: rude.
E: alive, somehow.

Fly clever, fly curious, and when in doubt… just turn the ship off and hope for the best.

o7