EVE – A Pixel Nomad

[EVE] Mom, I bought an Astrahus

In the list of things that I expected to do tonight, purchasing (and then moving into) an Astrahus was probably near the bottom of that list, and yet, here we are.

I suppose it’s not a huge surprise, maybe even a natural one in the grand scheme of game play. After all, I’ve done the Orca nomad living thing for a while, why wouldn’t I want to go to the next (obvious) step, and set up a structure.

Of course nothing in EVE is quite that simple. I had to get TO the damn structure, which is of course in a wormhole. To do that, I had to leave the current Wormlife Freeport I’ve been living in, and meander my way through much of the universe, then jump a few times through some other wormholes to finally arrive at my destination.

Rinse. Repeat.

Why? Because of course I need a seed for when I get locked out, (alt on my free account is handling that) and then I also need a few characters to do some of the basic chores like mining, huffing, and clearing some combat sites. I’m also hoping to do some PI there – but I don’t own the POCO, so I need to see if they’re open for public use, and what the taxes are looking like. Then I also need to haul some command centers in. I’m going to wait for a better HS connection to do that one. For now, I’m focusing on just getting everyone into the structure.

But Stargrace, what happens if someone blows it up – which of course, someone will. It is just a matter of ‘when’. I’m hoping to get at least a month or two of use, first. I plan on storing as little as possible in the structure, and leaving everyone logged out in ships. If I lose it tomorrow, so be it, that is the nature of EVE. Maybe I’ll get lucky (hah).

Let’s see where this adventure takes us.

[EVE] Debris Field

I found myself thinking about the bench again today.

Not a real bench, of course. Capsuleers don’t spend much time on planets. But in my mind, it always existed somewhere beneath a Gallente sky, overlooking distant city lights. A place where two people could always meet, no matter how complicated life became.

At least, that was the promise.

The trouble with promises is that they only work when both people mean them.

For a long time, I believed there would always be a seat waiting for me there. That no matter how many jumps separated us, no matter how many years passed, we’d eventually find our way back to that spot and talk about life for a while.

I know better now.

The promise wasn’t broken all at once. It died slowly. By the time I understood what had happened, the bench was already gone.

Blown apart.

By being treated like an option instead of a person.

I sat cloaked in my Helios beside a forgotten wormhole for a while, watching stars drift across the canopy. In EVE, when a structure is destroyed, all that’s left is a wreck and a killmail. Clean. Simple.

Real life isn’t nearly so tidy.

Eventually, I sighed and closed the old memories like an abandoned bookmark folder.

I aligned toward home, engaged warp, and began the familiar journey back to my Wormlife freeport. The stars stretched into lines, the wormhole chain waited ahead, and for the first time in a long while, I stopped looking for a seat that no longer existed.

[EVE] Goodbye, Signal Cartel

Between my new found interest in Guild Wars 2, my forever interest in Wurm Online, and my sporadic interest in World of Warcraft, I have not had much time for EVE lately. No surprise there, I am after all the ‘nomadic’ gamer. It means my interests ebb and flow and I tend to bounce around from familiar game to familiar game. Speaking of, only a little while before EverQuest Legends releases, and yes, I absolutely plan on playing that one.

EVE is one of those games where you pretty much HAVE to be active – especially if you’re in a corporation. I didn’t feel like I could keep up my end of the bargain when it comes to playing, so I decided to step down from Signal Cartel, and rejoin my corporation of one, Quail Creations.

Honestly the nomadic playstyle suits me, there’s no pressure to log in if I get distracted by something else shiny, and most of what I was doing in EVE is something I can continue to do on my own anyway. I can still do all of my wormhole exploration, and while I will miss flying with Allison, I’m confident that I’ll continue to find my way, and I’ll get some stories going again after some time. I do also hope to continue with the bookmarks series over on YouTube, but I know I’ve been ‘away’ for some time. Life has been a lot lately, so my free time has been quite limited.

In any case, there were no hard feelings anywhere, it was just time for me to realize the reality of my situation. While I absolutely adore EVE, and Signal Cartel, I just haven’t had the time lately. At least this way I can’t let anyone down, my stuff is (mostly) safe in High Sec, I’m still living out of a Wormlife Freeport, and the days go on.

Fly your way! o7

[EVE] Treasureless Space

Some wormhole systems feel haunted before you even finish loading grid.

This one did.

The static crackle of the connection faded behind me as I slipped into the system and launched probes almost immediately. Empty local. Just me, the stars, and whatever secrets the system had decided not to bury properly.

The results came back quickly.

Ten relic sites.

Ten.

I actually blinked at the scanner for a second, convinced I’d misread it. Relic runners dream about chains like this. Somewhere, some explorer would have started hyperventilating. I warped to the first site already imagining intact armor plates, ancient components, maybe one of those absurd cans that makes you feel chosen by fate itself.

The loot was terrible.

Not just bad. Impressively bad. The kind of bad that becomes funny after the third site. Burned-out scraps. Worthless fragments. Containers that practically apologized when I opened them.

By the fifth site I was laughing softly to myself.

By the eighth, I’d started narrating my disappointment aloud to no one in particular.

“Ah yes,” I muttered while cracking another container full of garbage, “the ancient civilization clearly valued melted wiring very highly.”

Still, I kept going.

Because honestly? I was enjoying myself anyway.

The system itself was beautiful in that lonely way wormholes sometimes are. A C6 connection loomed like an open wound in space, dangerous and heavy with possibility. Nearby was a Drifter wormhole, pale and ominous, silently daring someone to make a poor decision.

Not me.

Absolutely not me.

I gave both a respectful amount of distance and continued picking through archaeological disappointment in my little Helios instead.

And somehow, despite the terrible loot, despite the utter lack of profit, I felt content. There’s a kind of peace in solitude when it’s chosen. No fleet chatter. No politics. No urgency beyond the next warp.

Just me, drifting carefully through forgotten ruins while the universe remained impossibly large around me.

In the end, I left the system poorer than I’d hoped and happier than I probably should have been.

Not every expedition needs treasure to feel worthwhile.

[EVE] The Bench

There is a bench somewhere in the Federation that I keep trying to find again.

I know that sounds ridiculous. New Eden is enormous—thousands upon thousands of systems, stations, colonies, forgotten outposts orbiting quiet worlds. Entire wars disappear into history out here. People disappear even faster.

But still, every so often, I go looking for that bench.

It sits beneath pale trees on a Gallente planet whose name I can never quite remember afterward. The sky there turns gold in the evenings, and the city lights below the hill shimmer like station traffic seen from orbit. Capsuleers are not really meant for places like that anymore. We become too large, too detached, too immortal.

But somehow, that bench always makes me feel small again.

That’s where I meet them.

Our lives never quite align properly. One of us always chasing duty, distance, obligations, timing. Sometimes they’re across the cluster. Sometimes I am. Sometimes weeks pass in silence before a single message appears asking the same quiet question:

The bench?

And somehow, one way or another, we find our way back.

I think that’s why I search for it so carefully when time passes. Not because I’ve forgotten where it is, but because I’m afraid one day I’ll arrive and find the spot empty. No saved place beside them. No familiar silhouette waiting under the evening lights.

But they always save me a spot.

Always.

Even when things don’t work out. Even when life bends in difficult directions and timing remains cruel. The bench remains ours in the small way that matters. A fixed point in a universe built entirely around motion.

Today I found myself drifting through Gallente space again, chasing fragments of memory from orbit to orbit. A hillside looked familiar. A station tram sparked recognition. For a moment, I thought I had found it.

I hadn’t.

Still, I smiled.

Because somewhere out there is a quiet bench beneath golden skies, and someone patient enough to keep saving me a seat.