The Time Has Come to Talk of Many Things...

At very least, my lack of posts, my new mercenary corporations, and the upcoming 3.0 edition of the Beginners Guide to Piracy.

Before I say anything else, however, I want to give a (belated but heartfelt) congrats to Mynxee on not only getting elected to CSM but landing the chair... person? position as well. Looking foreward to seeing what you can do/suggest/guide as a CSM member. I really liked your platform, and if you can get even a tiny portion of your ideas to CCPs ears the game (and low sec in particular) will be better off for it. Good luck.

As for my rather low rate of blogging output, I have only meaningless excuses to offer (my internet was down, I was out of town for a while, etc.) and an apology to those few readers I have that actually want to read what I have to say on a regular basis. The truth is I simply haven't had much inspiration to write anything on top of the hour or two of daily work I've been putting into the piracy guide. In any case, I have been wanting to do some posting. I wanted to do a post theorycrafting teams for the alliance tourney, but I was unsure how to do it without giving away what my alliance plans on using for the next year or letting slip any information about the team we were hired to train.

Speaking of which, some of you may know that I have recently departed from the life of pure hardcore piracy. I ground up my security status over the course of several weeks before returning to empire to head up a new initiative for the Blood Money Cartel: The Hatchet Men mercenary corporation. I've been feeling for a while now that I need a bit of a change of scenery, and so far Hatchet Men has been exactly what I was looking for. In addition to providing a different species of PvP, it has also allowed me to begin expanding the Blood Money Cartel towards the original (and continuing) goal of the organization, namely becoming a robust criminal organization with strong branches in a wide variety of EVE PvP arenas.

Mercenary work has been an interesting and refreshing change from piracy. While the PvP itself is often far less interesting, (more along the lines of camping and ganking than daring solo work and fighting against the odds) the thrill of the hunt and the kill has been replaced by professional pride and the satisfaction of a job well done. In addition, unlike piracy, I actually get many opportunites to play with some of my more expensive toys without worrying about getting ganked or stuck in a gatecamp.

The Hatchet Men team so far has done an excellent job, with 100% efficiency on six out of eight of our combat contracts thus far (in addition to a 100% efficiency so far on our current contract). I'm extremely proud of my fledgling mercenary force, and our numbers and lethality are growing rapidly from the five members we started with a couple of months ago.

Shameless Advertising: If you are interested at all in hiring or joining Hatchet Men, our Merc post is Here,

and our recruitment is Here

I have still been engaging a bit in casual piracy, however, especially because Mercenary Work is not exactly the most daring PvP most of the time. I need my solo/small gang fix every once in a while. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it,) Hatchet Men has been extremely busy with contracts, and I havn't had much time yet to do anything other than hunt and camp war targets.

In other news, I have been working hard on the new eddition of the Begginers Guide To Piracy (3.0), and plan on having it done with in a month or two from now. It is currently 65 pages at 9 point font, so it's been taking quite alot of work, but I am confident it will be worth the effort. I may be looking for some assistence editing and proofreading in the coming weeks; if you're interested in helping me, please leave a comment to that effect.


Good hunting,

-Skira