New Year Entry

So, YC 116 is coming rapidly, over 20 entries have been created and it's been over five months since the creation of this blog already. Some people took it to themselves to celebrate this, and some winter festival called Christmas by giving gifts and shooting fireworks and snowballs around.

Surprisingly I received a few gifts too, the biggest one from a certain capsuleer, named Jandice Ymladris. Being a clone soldier, I can not really do much in return materially or through ISK. As a way to show my gratitude for this gift, and to return the favor, I will give a shoutout to her Arcology Project.

What is the Arcology Project exactly? Simply said, it is a charity project run by the capsuleer Jandice Ymladris, aiming at giving refugees and homeless from the various different conflict zones a home at the Irjunen system, specifically at planet VI, on board the Caldari Provisions Food Packaging station.

Aboard the station they are given various jobs to keep themselves busy, and they are always provided with healthcare, nourishment and other necessary daily needs. They accept all kinds of refugees from high-ranking officers to exotic dancers, even livestock and pets.

The project has been running for several years already, but apparently as inspiration from my own blog, she created her own and named it Aurora Arcology. She originally focused on her project only, giving it regular updates at a weekly basis. But after a while she began reporting on news happening throughout New Eden, which greatly boosted the popularity of her blog.

So, a shout-out to Jandice and her project, she really deserves it. She has been a great help in the refining of this blog, helping research information, improve layout and come up with suggestions for new entries, and this is the least I can do to show my gratitude and appreciation.

I sincerely wish that you, Jandice, and everyone else, will have a good upcoming year. I would also like to thank my Suresha Sakaane Eionell, my brother in arms Phalad Sahantum, and everyone else in the Intaki Liberation Front for the support they have provided, I hope the next year will be just as successful and prosperous as this one. I will keep writing new entries to indulge readers into the life of a clone soldier, and hope you continue enjoying them.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ   

Recruitment

I talk a lot about my life as a clone soldier, how our battles are bloody, our lives are irrelevant, how many of us suffer from madness, how we just don't care. But I have never talked about how you enter this life, how do you become a clone soldier? But before that question, why would you want this life?

We scream, we suffer, we die, we get reborn and do it all over again until eternity. The ISK we earn is pocket money when compared to capsuleers, and most of the time they sit comfortably in their pods, away from all the pain, suffering and misery they create, and are a part of, while we suffer through it all every day just get a couple hundred thousand ISK. Why would you ever want to become a clone soldier? Sometimes, you don't have that choice.

If you have ever heard of the Valklears, they are an elite Minmatar military, and they recruit criminals sentenced to death. They go around the various tribal courts and look for potential recruits to offer them an alternative life in the military instead of death. Many Matari clone soldiers had served in the Valklears, the kind of shit we go through isn't that far off from being a Valklear.

Like the Valklears, I was recruited by the Federation from the Stacmon court. I was being sentenced to death for all the crimes I had commited in the Syndicate, and in Federation space. I was offered an alternative, join the clone soldier program. On paper we volunteer for these programs, but in reality it's more like drafting. From what I have seen, most of the people who are recruited into clone soldier programs are former criminals and murderers, no wonder how many of them seem to lack any common sense.

Of course, not all are forced to join the program, some have actually volunteered willingly. Why? For patriotism, maybe, or maybe for the ISK, who knows. But not everyone with an ISK sign on their eyes and a glint of patriotism can join this program. You need to have seen combat, you need to be good at it, and you must be willing to throw your life away, those are just a few of the various things recruiters are trying to find from potential clone soldiers.

We are an even more select bunch than capsuleers. All they have to do usually is have the right genes to be compatible with the capsule neural interface, and then they are shoved into an academy where they turn normal men into demigods basically. We have to go through years of pain and suffering before we are even considered for the clone soldier program.

When you finally get recruited and you join the program, you can pretty much say goodbye to your previous life forever. The kind of things they make you go through in training, it can be brutal, and it can change a person quite significantly. Going back to being a mortal, a baseliner as capsuleers often call them, is virtually an impossibility. Maybe that's why most clone soldiers are former criminals, they have no lives to go back to, making it easier to let go. Let go of what? Your humanity.

We are constantly being told in training how our bodies are worthless, and the only thing that is valuable in us is the information we carry in our brains. The first time we get our implants installed, we are actively encouraged and pushed to kill ourselves. We are given a weapon with a single bullet, with a note that tells us to kill ourselves. “Self-preservation is the basest of instincts. Only by subverting the will to live can you truly become immortal", they say. Maybe there is some merit to that. By not caring about your life at all, can you become the ultimate immortal soldier.

Then when you finally pull the trigger and let go of your basic instincts, we go to the extremely brutal part. Both males and females get shoved into stock 200 pound clones. We do firearm training with live rounds killing each other. We are trained to ignore the pain, keep going and do everything in your abilities to complete your objective, even going as far as using your injured and dying squadmate as a meatshield to get through a wall of gunfire.

When all of that is done and you complete your training, you get deployed into your own quarters, you get your first selection of dropsuit fits and you are left like that to fend for yourself. At that point, we could barely be considered human anymore, detached from normal life, detached from death and pain itself. Some regain their humanity, and then work their way to become corporation CEOs, renowned soldiers, great tacticians or anything else you can imagine. The others, they lose their last shreds of humanity and become mindless killing machines.

That again begs the question, why would you want this? Everyone has their own reasons, but why did I become a clone soldier? I believe in Ida. Even if I was sentenced to death, I would have been reborn to a new life, a better life maybe. Why did I choose this one instead? I do not know. Whatever my reasons were a year ago, have long been forgotten. All I can say now, is that I do not regret it.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ   

Scrambler Rifle Analyzation

After the feedback I received from my previous blog entry, people seemed to be very interested in getting to know more in detail at all the various different items DUST mercenaries use. So for the past few days I have been researching very heavily into the most used laser weapon we have, the Scrambler Rifle. With aid from my friends and a lot of searching through the Galnet, I have made a solid description of it. Do note though, this is merely my theory of the materials it is made of, and what the physics behind its firing mechanism are, not an official:

Released by the Carthum Conglomerate, the CRW-04 Scrambler Rifle is a pulse laser weapon, which shoots laser-induced plasma that disrupts enemy shield systems very effectively(why this is so, and how shield systems work in general I might discuss in another entry later). Headshots made with this weapon are extremely lethal, as a shot to the head scrambles the target's brains, where the weapon derives its name. The weapon shoots charge based rounds, where the longer you hold the trigger the more damaging the round will be as it hits the target.

The rifle's basic frame is built out of Tungsten Carbide, a popular composite used within Amarrian technology with gold colored decorative alloy plates on the exterior. The stock is made out of the same alloy as the exterior decoration, colored a dark gray while the grip is made out of leather. With the Amarr, aesthetics is function, and thus they have spent a great deal in making sure the Scrambler Rifle also looks as good as it is lethal and I must say, it is one of the best looking guns you could ever own. The firing mechanism is based on three key components, capacitor unit, frequency crystal and magnetic rail. Below is a picture that should help understand which part is where:



The capacitor unit is the basis of the entire rifle, which powers the magnetic rail system,  holographic sight and, with the help of the frequency crystal, starts the ionization reaction within the pre-charge ammunition.

The frequency crystal, also known as the focusing crystal, which is synthetically manufactured Zydrine, modified to emit Gamma wavelengths, is the second crucial component in ionizing the pre-charge ammunition along with the laser it generates.

The magnetic rail consists of two parts, the inner rail and the outer rail. In the inner rail, the charging plasma round is contained within a magnetic field that keeps it intact until the weapon operator releases the trigger. At the moment the trigger is released, the inner rail deactivates and the outer rail kicks in, guiding the charged plasma round out of the gun and also giving the round extra velocity, both with the help of magnets.

So what actually happens when you press the trigger and the magazine you inserted to the scrambler rifle begins feeding ammunition to the charging chamber? First we would have to know what the actual round is before it is charged. The round is neon gas, stored within a simple container. When the magazine is inserted and the weapon operator pulls the trigger, the round is cycled into the charging chamber, directly in front of the frequency crystal.

When the user keeps holding the trigger, the capacitor powers up the inner magnetic rail, while acting as an electrode and begin charging the crystal with electricity. A laser beam is then generated by the crystal, evaporating the thin casing storing the neon gas and begins heating it rapidly while the inner rail keeps the gas together. The neon gas then ionizes and turns into plasma, and at this point the round becomes lethal. The process is similar to how a plasma globe works.

The further the trigger is held, more gas is ionized into plasma which in turn increases the heat of the round, causing more damage as it impacts a solid object. When the trigger is released, the inner rail is deactivated and the outer rail powers up, propelling the charged plasma round out of the rifle and pointing it at one direction.

Some heat and energy is also lost in this process, warming up the focusing crystal as a result. If the gun is fired too rapidly, the focusing crystal doesn't have time to cool down, until it reaches a point where the crystal suffers microfractures and vents all the built up heat around the gun. Normally this heat would be lethal to the weapon operator and thus it has a safety installed to prevent fatal overheating, but thanks to the dropsuit armor DUST mercenaries use, this is not a concern and the safety is disabled.

What the actual round is then after it has been charged and sent out of the rifle? A mixture of plasma that makes the ammunition itself, and an electromagnetic field surrounding the round to keep it intact long enough for it to reach the target. When the round hits a solid object, the electromagnetic field collapses, disrupting the shield systems of the target because of the electromagnetic field, while the intense heat released from the plasma round disrupts them further. This electromagnetic field also emits wavelengths in the Gamma frequency, and upon hitting the head of the target, this radiation bombards the brain with lethal doses of radiation, in other words it scrambles brains where the name of the weapon is derived.

And that is my understanding of how the scrambler rifle works and the specifics of how the firing mechanism works. If you have any suggestions for new blog entries or want me to research a new weapon, please tell me so. Also a thanks for Jandice Ymladris, Erun Talan and Devan Corvel for helping me with research!

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ   

Profile Dampener Theorizing

When I was researching weapons and equipment for my Dangerous Equipment blog, I had ran into the problem that there isn't much information at all about these equipment most of the time. The only source of information I had was the brief description attached to them as part of the NeoCom. In particular, the profile dampener got me curious, as the only description I had about it was what it does, it reduces your profile signature. It leaves a lot of questions open:

How does the profile dampener reduce your profile signature? What is profile signature? Why is your profile measured in decibel? Curious, I started researching various different equipment and dropsuits relating to profile signature, made a thread about it and asked for other people's opinions about their functionality. With the help of another helpful mercenary by the callsign of JDEZ09, we formed up a solid theory on the exact function of profile dampeners and active scanners, and I thought to share it here.

First of all, in order to understand how a profile dampener works, we need to know what profile is, and how scanning works. Reading the description of the Active Scanner comes to help:
Sending out a triggered pulse of high-frequency magnetometric waves and interpreting the results with an uplinked onboard computer, the Active Scanner gives ground units a snapshot of enemy positions. Projection nodes set at specific angles on the hand-held device, generate a vectored impulse capable of extracting objects from high-noise environments. Feedback from the pulse is filtered to reduce ambient clutter and pinpoint targets lacking IFF signals.
On top of that, the general fact that your profile signature is measured in dB, decibel, this would imply that  your profile is tied to the amount of noise your dropsuits makes which somehow affects the magnetometric waves the active scanner sends out. There is also the description of the scout dropsuit which tells us more about how profile dampening works:

The Scout dropsuit is a lightweight suit optimized for enhanced mobility, multi-spectrum stealth, and heightened awareness. Augmented joint servo motors give every movement extra speed and flexibility, while integrated friction and impact dampening materials reduce the overall sound signature.

This high-tech suit is coated in adaptive camouflage, a thin layer of bio-hermetic membranes interwoven with microscopic optical sensors that control millions of individual pigment ferro-crystals. An integrated AI-53 "All Eyes" sensor system wraps around the inside of the helmet, which also includes a chemically scrubbed atmospheric filtration system.

After some discussion with a few mercenaries, we came to the following conclusion:

Our dropsuits emit an electromagnetic field around the suits, probably because of the shield systems installed. Extremely tiny ferro-crystals(within the pico and nano range, 10^-9 meters and onwards) coat this electromagnetic field which are vibrating in a low frequency and volume, thus the dB measurement. When the magnetometric wave from the active scanner passes through this electromagnetic field, it changes the frequency of the wave and changes speed, caused by the vibrating ferro-cystals within the electromagnetic field.

This change is what the active scanner detects, which then calculates the changes in speed and frequency caused by passing through the electromagnetic field, which allows the electromagnetic signature to be displayed in Tacnet(basically a UI which displays all the electronic signatures sent out by both friendlies and detected hostiles). It is also possible that traces of the magnetometric wave stick into the ferro-crystals, which allows for the active scanner to keep the detected signatures within Tacnet even after it has been deactivated.

However, if your profile signature has been reduced by the use of a profile dampener or a low signature dropsuit, aka. reducing the vibration within the ferro-crystals, it is likely that the frequency of the magnetometric wave simply does not change enough in order to have a reliable result of its exact position, which is why there is a margin of error. Too small and there is a small margin of error which increases as more signatures too small to detect reliably get scanned by the magnetometric wave. But if there is none, aka. there are no hostiles at all within the range of the magnetometric wave, there is no margin of error.

Most of you are probably reading my writings because you are interested on what the life of a clone soldier is and all the phenomena we experience within our profession. Do you like this type of content too? I wrote this mainly because there hasn't been much else to discuss lately, and there are various different modules, dropsuits and equipment I would be interested in researching into and sharing the results. Your input would be appreciated greatly.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Honour

Nearly every clone soldier in existence has some kind of military or combat background, from Mordu's Legion or the various empire militaries, from a time when military units were close-knit and death had a more permanent effect than just a financial loss. Honor was also an often used concept within these military units, dishonourable acts and betrayal was greatly frowned upon and led to severe repercussions, sometimes even death. When these mercenaries and professional soldiers then became clone soldiers and started forming their own corporations, many of them kept on their concepts of honour. Then when these corporations began assaulting districts in Molden Heath after they became available, they faced a nasty surprise, awoxing.

Basically, someone from their corporation betrayed them, turning against their own friends and wreaking as much havoc as possible, through friendly fire mostly, to make sure that the opposing side would win. I met the member of a corporation, where the recently promoted CEO went rogue, emptying the corporation wallet and disbanding it entirely, and this member was very angry. He was shouting about finding that traitor and reporting him to an empire to remove all his clones and permanently kill him. His corporation's motto was even "Death before dishonour", which kind of explains the irony of honour within capsuleer and clone soldier circles.

There simply isn't any.

Ask yourself, how would a regular soldier get punished if he were to awox, kill his own friends, destroy his squad's assets and relaying intel to the opposing side? He would be killed, or discharged permanently from duty, that's pretty much it. Among capsuleers and clone soldiers, death is irrelevant and a financial loss at best, and the only discharge of duty possible would be to fire that person from your corporation, CONCORD or the empires don't even lift a finger to deal with these sort of things. Repercussions of betrayal are minimal at best, and when you can do pretty much anything without suffering negative consequences from it, it brings out the worst side of humanity:

People are selfish, self-centered idiots who only care about themselves when the call comes.

There is a common saying we say to capsuleers and clone soldiers who get betrayed or scammed in some way: "Welcome to New Eden", which shows how normal betrayal and distrust is in here. The only way to really combat betrayal and make sure it doesn't happen to you is being very careful of who you trust, those who trust people too much usually get betrayed easily.

This dishonour also applies to places which might not always involve corporation management and ISK scams, for instance within ground combat. For instance, after we gained access to flaylock pistols, people noticed how powerful these things were and began using fits with two flaylock pistols and absolutely wrecking everything. People cried foul, saying that it was "dishonourable" to use this kind of equipment, and demanded that we used less optimal equipment in the name of "fairness". Of course this is simply a fallacy, and the continued use of flaylock pistols would have kept on forever, if they wouldn't have been tweaked to be less effective. This doesn't mean that honor is non-existent though, sometimes I have witnessed two scouts, facing off each other with nova knives, while nobody else interfered with them in the name of having an enjoyable duel, for instance.

But point is, in a world where death is meaningless and dishonour leads to basically no repercussions at all, people quickly turn against each other for their own selfish gains. That is the sad truth and all you can do is to adapt or fall with those who stubbornly cling on their pre-capsuleer and clone soldier ways. As for myself, my loyalty stays with the Intaki Liberation Front, and I can't think of a better offer to join another corporation right now. But this might change later down my career, I'll never know for certain. Whatever comes in my way, all I can do is adapt, or die.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Dangerous Equipment

Have you ever considered how dangerous the profession of a clone soldier can be? We throw ourselves into a wall of gunfire willingly every day, endure huge amounts of pain for a couple hundred thousand ISK worth of profit a contract. But have you ever considered how dangerous our own equipment can be? Sometimes, it's our own equipment that is more dangerous than the actual hostiles we are engaging.

Consider the Amarr Drop Uplinks, which use quantum entanglement and miniature wormhole technology. Ever wondered why you're very disoriented when you first spawn to an uplink? That's because your body is being bombarded with lethal radiation, which would lead to your death in a span of days, if not hours. But you don't care, you're going to be dead in 30 minutes anyway.

And even when you do die, the trusty Nanite Injector that can revive you. You basically get pumped full of nanites that repair the damage to your body and restore regular cardiac rhythm. Mind you, this very technology is used to kill you in the most excruciating way possible. But obviously it's nothing. Just a few seconds of agony and excruciating pain as your internal organs are liquified before waking up in a new clone again.

The reason we don't care about this is because we are "immortal". Death is a financial inconvenience at best, and pain is something we experience regularly as a part of our occupation, so we get numb to it. Because of this, we often ignore safety protocols installed within our weaponry for more lethality, prime example being the Laser Rifle. Normally there would be a failsafe installed to these weapons to prevent excessive overheat and lethal damage to the user. But with all the body armor we are wearing, and the general not-giving-a-damn attitude we have, they have been removed from the versions clone soldiers use, I have seen people being killed because they overheated their weaponry too much.

Even if it isn't our own equipment killing us, we have modules and dropsuits that can be very painful to use, or have questionable features. Let's start with the standard Amarr A-1 dropsuit. They integrate a hydra-membrane graft directly into your neurological system, in other words the dropsuit is directly fused with your spine. This might improve reaction times, but at the same time they use your body's own energy output to power the suit's shield systems or the exoskeleton in heavier frames for example. In essence, the Amarr dropsuit is a parasite you willingly let into your body.

And finally, there are the biotic modules, implants that are integrated directly into your body's bodily functions to improve them. Cardiac Regulators for instance attach an implant into your body that regulates your heartbeat, allowing for greater stamina and less energy consumption. Imagine if this implant malfunctioned, you'd instantly go into a cardiac arrest, in other words a heart attack. Myofibril Stimulants is a system which directly stimulates the muscle fibers in your muscles to make you punch and kick harder. If this implant malfunctioned it could possibly leave you paralyzed. Kinetic Catalyzers basically increase the kinetic energy your sprinting creates by pumping you with drugs, which makes you run faster. Do I even need to explain why this sounds questionable?

When reading all this, I suspect that the greater danger to our healths are not the hostiles we fight, but our very own equipment. Does it stop us from using them? Of course not, we are "immortals", we simply don't care. It improves our combat capabilities so we use them anyway, regardless of their negative side-effects they might have. That is a dangerous mindset to have.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ 

Bad Arguments

Ever since the start of the mercenary Intergalactic Summit, there has been a constant debate between the Gallente and Amarr, most of them seeming to be boiling down into the same circular argument:
Gallente Mercenary: "You Amarr are dirty slavers!"
Amarr Mercenary: "All of you Gallente are corrupt hypocrites!"
There are some merits to these statements, but most of it is just glaringly exaggerated stereotypes.

The most common stereotype the Amarr have revolves around their ideals for slavery. Most non-Amarr think that slavery performed by the Amarr is brutal, bloody and involves lots of torture, rape and other vile means. If you look around the Galnet a bit, you can find an article detailing the methods on how slaves in the Amarr Empire are controlled, and it is very brutal at times. However, most of the Amarr I know argue that there are strict laws on how holders and slavers treat their slaves, and that the methods of control only apply these methods when the slavery is disobedient, not just whenever they feel like doing. This argument does have some weight to it, and I have the utmost respect to my Amarr contracts, but I still do not accept these methods of control, even if they are seldom used.

However, they often point out that the Gallente are not as good and pure as they often portray themselves to be, or think they are. They specifically have pointed out to the case of Anvent Eturrer and the way he was executed. His execution was done by the Federation, and was exceptionally brutal and inhumane. On top of that, there have been lots of rumors about Gallente torturing their prisoners, which have always been denied by the Federation. However, several Caldari Prisoners of War have been extracted from Gallente facilities, often in very poor condition which would refute these denials.

Then there is the case of the Intaki, who have been taking lots of flak from the Federation ever since the start of the Gallente-Caldari war centuries ago. We have been living in lowsec Placid at the mercy of pirates ever since CONCORD and the security systems were established. At the start of the Caldari-Gallente war, all Intaki that were supporting or sympathetic to the Caldari were exiled permanently, and from these exiled the Intaki Syndicate and Mordu's Legion were born. And finally, with the CONCORD's Emergency Militia War Powers Act, all kinds of capsuleer militias have been further causing trouble within lowsec Placid. I could mention several other cases too where the Gallente navy and the Black Eagles have done questionable acts in the name of "security", but you get my point. Gallente are not the pure and righteous good guys they are often portrayed as.

But don't mistake this as hate for the Gallente. For all the bad they have done, they have also done good, which has often been downplayed by the Amarr mercenaries arguing with Gallente mercenaries. For example CreoDron, a Gallente corporation has always been the frontier of drone technology, which has been an immense help in industry, healthcare and other important aspects of society. Its founder, Ceul Darieux was also an icon of the Gallente ideal, he even had a solar system named after him.

In the end, both the Amarr and Gallente have their good sides, and their bad sides, in their own way. Believing that there is a universal good or bad is a false belief.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ 

Doubts and Faith

A few hours ago, I made a draft for a new blog entry, which would explain in detail about the recognition I have achieved over the few months, and how that some day I would have to stand up to our beliefs and argue for our cause. I was doubtful if I could actually make compelling arguments which would hurt the credibility of our organization. I had it nearly finished, and fully intending to publish it for the greater audience to read, when I started thinking: Do I really need to know how to debate on the Galnet?

From what I have witnessed about the arguments in the Intergalactic Summit and Galnet in general, they hardly if ever actually change anything, most of the time all the involved parties remain firmly rooted in their own beliefs. I have yet to witness any debate ending: "Yeah, you're actually right and I was wrong, I'll believe like you do now!", instead they continue on forever until they degrade into just insults being thrown around. Several Amarr have to deal with ignorant people constantly insulting their beliefs in reclamation and slavery, and especially their faith. One of them replied:

"And why should a God show itself? The purpose of the Faith is to believe, not to know for a certainty. Its is my Faith that armours me from doubt so that I do not fear the darkness of New Eden."
- Kador Ouryon
It may not be quite the same context as the matter I am discussing right now, but there is some merit to his words. They get a lot of crap thrown at them for their beliefs, some of it might be even true, but they continue have faith in their God. Isn't that really all that I need, unwavering faith on our cause? I might not be as good on defending it as Sakaane or Bataav might be, but I will still stand up to my beliefs when they are questioned.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ 

Identification

How do we identify ourselves on the battlefield, or outside of it?

Most of us wear dropsuits nearly around the clock, and under the armor is nothing but a stock clone with barer than minimum facial characteristics. Most of the time during the heat of battle we sometimes can't tell the difference between a friend and a foe even with the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) system, nevertheless identify specifically who is the person wearing the dropsuit.

When outside of combat in our quarters, we never meet other people in person, we just talk through text or voice comms. The only place we can have physical contact with other clone soldiers outside of battle is in the Warbarge for a minute or two. This is a problem not only from a tactical and logistical, but a psychological viewpoint too.

I feel, and quite a lot of my friends also feel, that we are all too similar. We blend in to the mass and are indistinguishable from each other. Many capsuleers have pointed this out, since they have troubles distinguishing us from each other while communicating with them. We can not select the portrait we use for text communications, we can't customize the looks of our dropsuits. It has a toll on your morale when you feel like you're just a faceless clone, a tool to be used by others with no free will of yourself.

In essence, the only identification we have over ourselves is our callsign, and our voice. Some people come up with the whackiest callsigns to try and single themselves out, some being very silly. Others use voice modulators to make their voices sound funny to make their squads memorable experiences. But most often of all, people use special dropsuits.

Over the course of our mercenary careers, after doing special contracts or achieving something special for our empires, we get rewarded special equipment, dropsuits and vehicles. Usually these dropsuits have special paintjobs or other characteristics that makes them different from other dropsuits. For instance I have a stock of Federal Defense Union Scout G-1 dropsuits, colored Gallente green. They're horrible and I would never imagine using them during combat, but it makes me singled out, different from the sea of grey assault suits.

Even if people can see these special dropsuits for only a few minutes at most, it still makes me feel more unique, more like an individual and not just another grunt paid to shoot someone who was paid to shoot you. And finally, we use our memory. We memorize the voices we talk to, we associate them with names, and address to each person by their name during the heat of battle. It also increases the sense of trust and brotherhood among the squad, when we can call each other by name and can rely on our squadmates to keep us alive and win the battle.

Oh yeah, in case you are wondering, the piece of Intaki on the bottom of each post is my name and rank within the Intaki Liberation Front. It reads "Grahisha Denak Kalamari Intaki adiit nikaay.", translated into Sergeant Denak Kalamari, Intaki Liberation Front. It used to be padati - private, but since I was recently promoted, it is now Grahisha, sergeant. Yay!

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Independence of Mercenaries

in·de·pend·ence 
noun
Freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
That is the dictionary definition of the word independence. It's kind of funny, how the life of us clone soldiers is often thought as independent, free from the control of the empires, like capsuleers. But honestly, we are more dependent on the empires than we think we are. Sure, we can select the contracts we want to take, take control of districts in Molden Heath, form our own corporations, participate in the Empyrean War etc. etc. Capsuleers can do all this and even more, even CONCORD can't do much about them other than blow up their ships if they happen to break law in highsec space.
 
But let's ask ourselves, what can we really control ourselves?  The contracts we take are exclusively made by the empires or subsidiaries to those empires aside the few pirate corporations. The entire Empyrean War is nothing but a huge pendulum, as I have described in my earlier entry, anything we do there has no real effect to the galaxy at large. You might say that we have real control over the fight in Molden Heath, but even then those districts are nothing but status symbols and free ISK generators for the few huge corporations that control the majority districts.
And what about our equipment? Vehicles, dropsuits, modules, even our implants, all manufactured and controlled by the empires and their subsidiary corporations. If they wanted to, they could remove every single Sagaris and Surya that exist. 
Oh wait, they did that.
Not to mention that CONCORD could restrict us from doing any kind of contract, or just straight out biomass all our clones and permanently kill the entire clone soldier population.
Oh wait, they do that too in a regular basis.
When a battle ends, all of the clone soldiers fighting at that moment will instantly black out and get transported back to their mercenary quarters. It's sudden and comes without warning, all from just a push of a button.
We might be immortal, unphased by death itself. But we are still very vulnerable, we could simply stop existing from the push of a button. It's a very scary, but real possibility.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ   

Celebration Entry

So, I've been looking at the statistics of my blog quite a lot recently, and my blog has now reached over a 1000 views ever since its creation. I'm honestly happily surprised that my blog has reached this kind of popularity in just a few months, I have even received appreciation from a high-ranking CONCORD employee for this blog, which I am very glad for. Since it has been a while from the last entry, I decided that I would tell you readers a little about the reasons why I created this blog in the first place.

The first entries to this blog were created over half a year before the creation of this blog, when I was still a relatively green recruit within the clone soldier world. I had purchased myself a leisure clone just recently and was exploring my mercenary quarters in this new body. With this newfound body, I also got access to some equipment a normal clone soldier usually had a lot more difficulties acquire, one of them being a camera drone. I happened to be particularly bored for that day, so I decided to purchase myself a camera drone and started recording.

From there was created the first entry, which was a fairly lengthy and dull description of my past and how I ended up becoming a clone soldier in the first place. I never expected to release this to the public, and for a long time it stayed within the logs of my NeoCom for several months, since my corporation, BurgezzE.T.F was undergoing some major changes, and Molden Heath was just recently opened up for mercenaries to conquer.

A few months later, I had started to progress to the point in my mercenary career that I was pretty much just a pointless wanderer. I had no higher goal to strive for, my corporation's attempts at conquering a district in Molden Heath were less than successful and I just didn't care at all anymore. I thought that if I found myself a new corporation, I might find a purpose to what I am doing, and not just slog through each battle to get paid and be done with it. Soon enough I found the Intaki Liberation Front, when I was looking through the capsuleer Intergalactic Summit, a member of the ILF was talking something about the Ida faith.

I remember reading about the ILF before, but until now I had no interest at all in them. So after reading through this member's, Tiberius Wenchel's thread, I decided to check on the corporation, properly this time. It didn't take long before I decided that the ILF was at least worth the try, so I wrote up an application and was soon invited into an interview with the Suresha, Sakaane Eionell. That very old video entry I had made a few months ago I had published into a fairly unknown part of the GalNet, but our Suresha found it anyway, and mentioned that I could possibly convert it into an ILF blog. So I read through the pilots blogs other ILF members had created already, and after I was accepted into the ILF, I recorded another video entry.

I was still debating how I would create my blog, and I had concluded into a text format after my second video entry was done. So after about a week or two of tweaking my page, I made a transcript out of my video log entries and published them, and thus my blog was born.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you readers who have shown your interest on my blog and continue reading them. I was never intending this to be more than a personal leisure time project of mine, and it keeps me motivated when you keep reading my blog. I would also like to thank the Intaki Liberation Front and all of its members for giving a meaning to my mercenary career and supporting me throughout it, I am glad to have found such a corporation, and I am proud to be its member.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Close Relations

I have had a lot of discussion about families with my fellow clone soldiers, most of us don't seem to have much contact to their families anymore, some even have their families deceased. I haven't seen anyone have any friends who are not capsuleers or other clone soldiers either, baseliners often avoid us, and for a good reason. In a way, being a capsuleer or a clone soldier can be very lonely at times.

I haven't had any contact to my family or relatives for decades, and when I tried to find out where my parents had went, my father finally broke the cycle of death and rebirth, and my mother had also reborn with another identity. My relatives? Don't even remember I existed. My old friends? The few I had have actively tried to avoid me every time I have tried to contact them. Even my old contacts from my hitman times barely remember me, and it has barely been two years after I became a clone soldier. From this, and the recent discussions about marriage, love and other close relations, and from a topic I read in the capsuleer IGS about having kids, I have slowly come into a realization about myself:

I'm probably not going to have close relations with anyone.

I mean, I am a mercenary, I kill people for a living. Most of my days are spent fighting people, often in very painful fashion. When I'm not doing contracts, I'm preparing for them, and with the little time I'm not doing either, I usually spend in solitude, doing my own things. What baseliner wants to be with a man like that, or even a capsuleer or a clone soldier for that matter? It's even worse with capsuleers, unless you're someone who only ever shoots rocks and makes things out of them, you actively participate in killing hundreds, even thousands of people every day when killing pirates and other capsuleers.

Even if you found someone you love and want to raise a family with, how is that going to work? Unless you retire from your career or significantly reduce your active time, you can't really devote any time to your significant other, which becomes especially apparent when children are introduced. What about other clone soldiers? Most of us usually suffer from a PTSD, and those who don't are usually utterly disinterested in any closer relation with anyone.

Being in the ILF has given me a sense of direction, a goal to strive for. I'm not aimlessly wandering the galaxy without any other purpose but to survive another contract to get paid anymore. But I still can't help but feel lonely, since nobody isn't probably crazy enough to even try and engage in an intimate relationship with me. If, when I die permanently and be reborn, the Kalamari bloodline will die with me, since I am not an Idama I am most likely not going to remember my past life.

Kind of ironic really. We "immortal" infomorphs, unphased by death itself, but yet we still have an urge to pass down our DNA -- our legacy with a significant other. I certainly would want to, who wouldn't? Even if I have, an interest in a certain clone soldier, I doubt it would work out at all.

But in the end, I was probably doomed to walk my path alone to begin with and be the last of the Kalamari. In that case, I will certainly try my best that my legacy will be passed on, if not by blood.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Pressure Valve

That is how a friend of mine described the Empyrean War, as a pressure valve. Why would she describe it as that, as she is a fierce supporter of the Caldari? The answer she gave me was quite simple, really:


"...until the day the pressure valve is not enough, and the empires go to war for real.

At that point, the choices are essentially swift victory or an age of dust and ashes, perhaps even a new dark age as the outer powers take advantage of the empires' struggles and move in. The worst case in such a scenario is that Sansha's Nation emerges the eventual victor. It would be nice if that were unlikely, but a power that builds its forces by swallowing others' populations is a threat indeed.
...only do not say that the war is without point. This is a thing that must be, until the empires weary of rage and rhetoric and return to the wary peace of the prior century."
-- Yun Hee Ryeon

When I think about it, it is actually quite a compelling argument in my opinion. Right now, the Empyrean War doesn't really affect anything, it's an ISK farm for most capsuleers, and that is where they get the best goodies to fit their ships with, and the control these militias have over the systems is nominal at best. A few weeks later and the ownership has switched hands again.

I still firmly believe that this war should not be happening at my homeland, over Intaki and her colonies, and I will continue fight for the secession of our land, even if it is going to take an eternity to achieve. However, when I think about it, there might be more to this war than we'd think. Perhaps, it is not really meant as a war, but as a method of keeping capsuleers, and the tensions between the four empires in check. If the Empyrean War were to cease right now in its current form, what would happen?

Honestly, I do not know. But if my friend Yun Hee is correct, what would follow is a full-scale open warfare between the nations, where they put their own armies and fleets at risk, resulting in an even greater chaos and bloodshed than the current Empyrean War is causing. And if things were to go really bad, Sansha's Nation would press even harder on their incursions, with big enough of a force that the current forces fighting on these incursions would not be enough. Then things would go really, really bad.

Still, it is not right for the people living on the planets designated as the warzone to suffer the consequences of a war they had nothing to do with, especially that Intaki was one of the founding planets of the Gallente Federation in the first place. But is the war a, necessary evil to maintain the powerbalance between the empires, until a peace can be established? In any case, I hope that a peace of some sorts can be established to stop this nonsense.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Death

Death. A concept that affects every single living being, but yet is barely understood. Even we "immortals", the capsuleers and clone soldiers still experience death, even if it is only temporary.

Most capsuleers on average die a handful of times during a year, depending on their profession. Most likely all of those deaths happen inside the pod, done quick without pain or suffering. But we clone soldiers, we are different. When we die, it usually isn't a calm, peaceful death. Most of the time, our deaths happen in pain, in the middle of a battlefield. Then when your body finally gives up and you die, you are quickly shunned back into battle to experience the same again. We die more often within a month that most capsuleers do in several years.

I remember this one time, when I was doing a contract, a sniper rifle bullet had penetrated my shields and went through most of my armor, I was running to a friendly logi to patch me up again, when I suddenly felt a sharp pain on my shoulder, collapsing on the ground in pain. Information suddenly appeared on my visor as I was lying there on the ground, telling me that a Caldari Assault dropsuit hit me with a Toxin assault rifle bullet, it had shattered my shoulder and ruptured my lungs, and I was lying there helpless as I felt my insides disintegrating. I tried to scream for help, but all I could let out was gargled cough, blood filling up my helmet from the inside as my lungs were collapsing. I was lying there helplessly for a full minute, before my body finally gave up and I died. Next thing I remember I was back in my quarters, lying on the ground and feeling like my insides were on fire.

Right now all of that only seems like a distant bad dream, but the pain, the panic is still very much real, and I will never forget the pain I have endured. Sometimes I can be lucky and die from a bullet piercing my brains, or from an explosion, only a quick pressure on your body before the darkness.

Darkness, that is the best way I can describe the feel between switching bodies, when I can be considered dead. Usually it is said that there isn't anything during this transition period, maybe it's because of this implant I have, but I can feel that darkness for the brief few moments it lasts. I used to dread it, I was afraid of the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness. But nowadays, I welcome it. I like the darkness, the emptiness, the silence, in there I can be by myself, away from the pain of battle. Sometimes it is over before I realize it, other times it feels like an eternity. I wonder if this is how Idama feel when they are passing on in life and inhabiting a new body.

When I have talked to the clone soldiers who have had the first generation implants in their heads have described a voice talking to them, whispering them what to do, what to think, what to say. I have never experienced this voice myself, but sometimes I feel like, there is an alien presence in my mind. Sometimes, I barely remember the battle I was just in, the only thing I remember is walking in the Warbarge and brief flashes from the heat of battle. Sometimes when I do remember the battles, I feel like these memories are not mine, but someone else's. When in battles, sometimes I feel like I don't have control of my body. I don't know if I'm going to turn right, turn left, or just stop and collapse on my knees, I feel like a helpless observer.

Being a clone soldier can be very tolling on the mind, and many of the people I have known, who were completely sane in the start, have become insane, maddened by the constant death and pain. We say that these clone soldiers: "go 514", since many of the first generation clone soldiers experienced hallucinations of the number 514, often written in blood. I wonder if the same is happening to me. Am I going insane, am I losing my mind? That is a question I fear to ask myself.

All clone soldiers have found their own ways to deal with these questions, and the ever-present madness that is pressing on our minds. Some just snap and go 514, some try to retire and go back to civilian life, a life that is never going to be possible for them again. Others don't seem to fight at all, they embrace the madness, they become the wind instead of fighting it, making them even more deadly. The rest of us who hold on, have different ways of dealing with it. I focus on my conviction, my ultimate goal I strive for in the form of liberating Intaki to keep my mind off the madness.

But in the end, there is always going to be a question troubling my mind, a question I can not answer myself, yet is always haunting me:

Who am I?

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Upon Afterthought

A few months ago, I believed that the Gallente Federation had its problems, but was still overall good and not a total wreck like some other people claim it to be. That belief is slowly fading away, when time and time again I run into Gallenteans that are completely ignorant of other ideals, governments, faiths or anything not identified as Gallentean. For now, I have simply tried to correct their false views and moved on, but today, something really, upsetting happened to me.

There is a mercenary, going by the callsign of DeadlyAztec11, saying that he is an Intaki like me. At first, I was respectful of him, he seemed a peaceful, sensible person and most of all, I wasn't all by myself as the only Intaki in the Intergalactic Summit. Then he comments that the Amarrian scriptures are an abomination. Okay, that was acceptable in my view, still has my respect. Then he babbles something about a Caldari secret facility with top-secret documents stored in a facility within Caldari Prime about some Caldari Breeding Program. My friend Yun Hee tried to correct him, only to be replied with blind ignorance. Okay, annoying, but still manageable. But then, comes this.

And that was it, I snapped. I lashed out at him and called him with the most rude and vile insults I could think of in Intaki. The amount of ignorance he showed with that post was through the roof, and the last shred of respect I had for him was lost. He is not an Intaki, he is a pawn of the Gallente, his mind filled with propaganda and false beliefs about the Federation.

...

I tried to be calm, I tried to make reason with him. But when he calls my corporation, and thus me terrorists with no actual evidence, that went way too far for my comfort. Yes, I may have been a bit too extreme with my replies, and on afterthought, the insults may have been too much. After all, I am pretty much the only person representing the Intaki Liberation Front on the Intergalacting Summit, and what kind of an impression do I make of our corporation when I lash out like that? It's just, I am really passionate about the corporation which I am fortunate enough to be a part of. To see my corporation insulted like that, I just can't be calm and try to resolve the matter peacefully. At least I wasn't alone defending the ILF, surprisingly an Amarrian, True Adamance was the first one to jump in to defend our corporation, and soon after that Yun Hee Ryeon also came in. I thank you both for that.

I think I'll make a correction about the ILF, and an apology for my lashing out at a later date, once I have gathered my thoughts. Sorry, everyone.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Feelings of Being an Outsider

Some of you capsuleers(and the mercenaries too) reading my entries will have probably seen me in the Summit, or on other venues discussing mostly mercenary issues. When political debates or discussion about ships creep up, I usually fall quiet and focus on middling with my own things. I usually do that because during those talks I'm completely lost. I don't know what useful I could really contribute to those conversations, since I lack the knowledge in those subjects, and nearly all discussions in the Summit revolve around those two things usually, politics or ships. This leaves me in this slightly weird situation, which will be the topic for this day's entry.

Honestly, I don't even know why I'm in the Summit. Most of the time I'm just quietly doing my own things due to the reasons described above, and even when I try to comment something on the topics I usually get disregarded quick, from what I have noticed. I'm not saying that is the case, but that is how I feel when I'm in the Summit or other places which are mostly capsuleer populated. Basically, I feel pretty much like an outsider. Maybe it's because I don't really have the skills to maintain a proper discussion or a debate, at least Foley seems to be doing fine whenever he is around.

Regardless, it doesn't really feel nice when you're just sitting there, watching others talk while you just awkwardly stand there and think of what to say or do. Heck, I'm not sure what to even say anymore beyond this point. Is this a rant? A complaint? I'd say this is more a remark of my own feelings of insecurity when trying to interact with others socially. I mean, Foley probably doesn't have much more clue about politics or New Eden's ships than I do, yet he still gets around well while in the Summit. I could probably delve myself into the inner workings of every single ship in New Eden, but still left speechless when actual talk about it starts, the same would apply to discussions about politics, at least when not talking about the Intaki.

Then again, I write a lot in our own Intergalactic Summit than I do on the capsuleer one, or in the Summit in general. Maybe because the issues we mercenaries deal with are easier for me to talk about, or that I just feel more comfortable when around others of my kind Even though clone soldiers and capsuleers share similar kind of cloning tech, we are miles apart in pretty much everything we do, even our markets and economy are separated, and for a good reason. Perhaps if a channel was oriented that was mainly populated by mercenaries I would have more to talk about.

But in the end, that won't really solve my feelings of insecurity towards strangers, that'll be something I'll just have to start learning to fix. I hope so at least.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Of War and Passion

One year.

One year I joined the clone soldier program and joined one of the immortals, fighting for ideals, for ISK, for fame and sometimes just because I am good at what I do. Three years I have fought in countless battles, died countless times only to wake up again in a new body. Those countless deaths and seemingly never-ending pain involved with those deaths can take a toll on a person. It certainly has for me, and a lot of other people. People deal with these issues in different ways. Some take a break, some keep on working and endure it, some find their own methods of relaxation to wind down with between battles. But generally I have seen one habit grow generally on all clone soldier, and that is the numbing of feel. Basically, we do not care anymore.

When you think about it, it does make some sense. You are a person that is practically immortal in combat, fighting other people who are like you in battles that never seem to have any impact on the galaxy, even in Molden Heath. No matter how hard you fight, no matter how much you want to win the battle, in the end all that you have really accomplished is push back the immortal enemy to fight again another day. Eventually, you stop caring for the battles you fight. You just go in, suit up and fight for 5 to 20 minutes, and after that the enemy retreats, you get paid and you return to your quarters to queue up for another contract. You don't really think about it, you just do it like a mindless drone. Death is irrelevant now and your actions seem worthless in the grand scheme of things.

That is a dangerous habit to have, and I have already seen some people become numb because of it. They only accept contracts that have the quickest battles for the maximum reward, use cheapest gear they can get for the maximum profit. They don't communicate, help out others or try working as a team with other soldiers, they just go there, fight and then leave without ever saying a word. And honestly, I have started to suffer from the same issues, fighting has become, boring. Even in Molden Heath, where corporations can fight for a piece of their own land, actually conquering a district doesn't yield much results. You get a lot of ISK from biomassing and selling all the excess clones you create on the district, fight on the distrct at the same time every day of the week to fend off all the attackers trying to conquer that piece of land and make a little more ISK. Even the biggest corporations that control nearly everything in Molden Heath have started to become stale, rarely any fights are happening now because no one has the will to do them anymore.

How could we fix this? The easiest and most obvious answer would be to have something that actually matters and has an impact on New Eden, but that is very much easier said than done. I have read something about the things capsuleers do in space, specifically in the nullsec regions with the moon mining and extracting resources from planets to make high-value materials to construct high-end ships and modules. Sovereignty over these systems can tip the balance of power and cause entire alliances to collapse, that would be something us clone soldiers could really use to boost our will to fight if we could somehow help with these fights in a significant way.

Or if we could get a massive cannon to point at the sky and shoot capsuleers with it, that would be quite cool too.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Retirement and Uncertainties

Gallenteans,

each day I seem to like them less and less, at least when talking about the ones visiting our Intergalactic Summit. All that they seem to do is shout very obnoxious their own ideals of freedom and universal rights, and most of the time they can't even write correctly, I thought their translator implants would give them the ability for basic grammar in the very least. But that isn't the point of this day's entry, what I'm here for is to talk about a whatif scenario I was presented with. Ironically this was presented by a Gallente, so maybe their credibility was redeemed a little bit when it made me think.

The Gallentean in question babbled something about all the factions making peace and stopping all wars together and all that other utopian perfect society crap and what would we do since clone soldiers would be banned. The scenario in itself isn't really that important, but rather the question what would, I do if(or when) I am out of job? That is an interesting question indeed, and I didn't really think about it until now. What I replied was that I would fly back to my homeplanet Intaki, find some nice spot to live in on the mountainside where I could sustain myself independently and live in solitude. I was also thinking of possibly moving to an Ida temple and become an Idama eventually, the concept of rebirth in the Intaki culture has always fascinated me. Why would I want to live in solitude? Well,

I don't know exactly. Honestly, I don't really know much about why am I doing the things that I'm doing, why I accepted the invite to the clone soldier program, why I became a mercenary, why I'm even writing these entries at this very moment. I suppose I follow my instinct mostly when I make decisions, most my life has been mostly relying on my gut feeling honestly. But right now I'm thinking about how long my career as a clone soldier and a mercenary will last. A year? A decade? A century? All of this could be possible, I could burn out in just a few years and start my retirement plans early, or I could last for decades, even centuries until some freak accident occurs and my consciousness is lost somewhere to the cosmos(we are far from being immortal).

The lifespan of a clone soldier is unpredictable and very violent and brief most of the time, and I have a feeling it will be the same for me, regardless of my beliefs about the universe and my duties towards helping the efforts to secede Intaki from the Gallente Federation in a peaceful manner. It kind of saddens me to know that a clone soldier's life is deemed to be like this, but on the other hand, it's not so bad. I earn large amounts of ISK, not (yet) as much as a capsuleer, but still more than a regular baseliner would in their entire lifetime. Not only that, I have found several great friends to share our victories and losses, and I consider them a family I never had.

But I'll never know for certain, perhaps that was one of the reasons why am I in the situation where I am right now. The thrill of knowing that you could be the most renown mercenary in New Eden, and the very next moment pummel down to the bottom. Plus I've always had a thing for big guns and explosions.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Change

First proper entry to this thing, about a thing I started pondering when I was talking to a friend of mine in the emissary I had just set up. The entire conversation was about a different subject, but something she said could be boiled down to a question: "Am I the same person who I was before becoming a clone soldier?". Technically not, most of my time is spent using clones that are nothing like me and don't even have the genetic structure that would link me to those clones. But still I use my name Denak, talk the same way, act the same way, my family would still recognise me if I met them again in my leisure clone.

But am I the same person deep down? The more I think about it, the more I am uncertain. Three years ago, when I was recruited into the Immortal Soldier Program, I was impulsive, quick-tempered and generally quite aggressive and loud mouthed. Now, reserved, thoughtful, quiet when among strangers but very relaxed when with friends, some might even call me cold and ruthless when in combat and that I fight without honour. Years of conditioning and strict authority when being trained might have had something to do with that, but in my opinion it's about something else, my implant.

No, I'm not talking about the generation 1 implants that caused their users to go crazy, I'm talking about the general idea of my "immortality". While I disagree that we are anywhere close to being immortal, you can't help the feel in combat that you seem invincible when even death itself can not reach you. For some, it could make you reckless, uncaring about others and yourself and living just to get another paycheck. For me, it has made me think about the situation, why I fight for the reasons I am fighting. In the faith Ida, it is believed that death is only the beginning of the journey, that after you die you are reborn in a new body to experience life again. Only the Idama can remember their past lives, and are the ones that can break the cycle. They think that cloning is only an extension of this faith.

I do not follow Ida to all it's beliefs, but the concept of rebirth has always made me ponder. Personally, I believe that when I die in battle, I am reborn in a new body just like in Ida, only that the body which I am reborn to is predetermined. I am an experience wiser, and I am now prepared to back right back into battle.

So have I changed after being made a clone soldier? In some ways yes, on others no. I am a lot calmer now than I used to be and also more open towards other people and not so cautious. Are all the changes good? I would like to think so. I may sometimes overthink things or not think them through properly, but in the end I like the new me.

Prataya yavati, readers.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Introduction pt. 2

And here is the second entry I made after I decided to continue making these diaries.

Entry #2
**The feed is turned on again, showing Denak now sitting on a chair behind a desk, wearing a lot more formal attire than the last time he was in front of the camera drone. He clears his throat a bit and straightens up his jacket, before speaking up**
 
It's been a while since my small diary about myself, 217 days exactly according to my NeoCom. A lot of things has been happening during these days, and I suppose I could go and explain at least most of it.
 
The most obvious one might be my suit, that's part reason due to us clone soldiers gaining access to our very own Intergalactic Summit, that'll be discussed later though. The reason why I'm wearing this is because I have set up an unofficial emissary for the Intaki people, explaining our habits and ways to the general clone soldier populace, and maybe clear up some misonceptions about our people. I even got a chance to talk to a fellow Intaki and speak our own tongue, it's been a while since I've last actually used it.
 
Anyway, the emissary is set up in a place called the Summit. No, not the one where people connect via holo, but an actual summit with rooms for people to set up their own emissaries to represent their corporations, nations, races or anything else. I find it quite refreshing to all the typing in the Galnet forum, both capsuleer and clone soldier versions. It was set up just a few weeks ago, and so far only my own unofficial and one PIE Inc. emissary has been set up here, I hope that more emissaries will come up, at least it will give me something to do when not fulfilling contracts.
 
Speaking of contracts, we have also gained a few new toys to use in ground combat, most notably new dropsuits and weapons, the scrambler rifle, plasma cannon and flaylock pistol. I've given a try to all these new weapons, and they are quite handy, there's also promise of getting a lot more weapons soon, wether or not that means a few months or a few years. We've also gained a few new dropsuits to fiddle with and some updates to my own. It caused a slight hassle at the start but I've adapted by now. And on top of that all, the Minmatar tribe Thukker opened Molden Heath for clone soldier corporations to conquer, which has been a major topic of discussions ever since its announcement a few months back.
 
As for personal developments, not much really has happened. I've gained new friends, lost old ones, all the while continuing to accept contracts and gain ISK steadily. One big thing is leaving my previous corporation though, just recently I had been accepted to the Intaki Liberation Front, since I Have recently regained my interest into my own planet's state, joining the ILF seemed like the best way to help the Intaki Assembly regions thrive again, if only in limited ways. I bid farewell to my old corporation Burgezz, I didn't really have the time to stick around and hear what others had to say since I was quickly removed from communications lists after announcing my leave, I hope they weren't too angered about it.
 
While the final processing of accepting me into the ILF are ongoing, I'll stop this here for now, I got other duties to perform, these logs might quickly be published into Galnet if all goes correctly with my application processing, maybe someone will end up hearing these logs after all.

Introduction

Entry #1So, I don't know why am I doing this, and I am fairly certain this is a very bad idea if someone actually finds this recording. But I am still doing this, telling my lifestory to a person who might never even come. But maybe after centuries when my implants have failed and I have permanently died, someone will find this and read my lifestory. Here we go...

What there is to say about me? I am Denak Kalamari, a clone, somewhat an ostrich, a mercenary and a fairly efficient melter of faces up close. I am fairly normal sized, six feet five tall and a well built body. I was born to the Gallente Federation on the Intaki Prime planet. This is my first 'life' so to say, as the Intake have a practice of transferring old minds into an infant's body to preserve his life as a non-capsuleer. How did I end up becoming a mercenary? That is a long story.
Unlike most Intaki, I used to have a hard time keeping my emotions in control as a child, and I often found myself in fights with fellow children. Throughout my infancy and to late teens, I was very reckless and impulsive. When I finally turned 16, I moved away from home and started working for the Intaki Syndicate. Most of the time I was just smuggling contrabands and evading CONCORD whenever possible. Of course sometimes I got my share of fighting with the dealers I was smuggling the contraband. During a delivery to a Syndicate pirate, an assassination attempt was made on his life via the use of an explosive device. I was caught in the blast, but not mortally wounded, that is where I got the burnmark on the right side of my face.
When I turned 22, I was given a weapon in my hand and told to shoot a specific target. Of course I had handled firearms before for self-defence, but I never had to use it. The name of my target has long been forgotten, but the important thing is that it was the first time I killed a person, which laid the path for my mercenary career. From thereon out I was hired as a hitman, killing targets from regular pirates to famous crimelords which gave me the food to my table.
When I turned 28, I had built a reputation of being a fierce hitman, killing targets up close and personal with brutal efficiency. Then something quite unexpected happened, I was contacted by the Black Eagles intelligence organization. They had been tracking my movements for several years now, and had considered me as a candidate for the Gallente military's top secret project. I was told that if I accepted the call, I would become immortal. Since death wasn't going to be on my list of things to do, and I never liked the idea of being reborn or living my life in a capsule, I took the call. Little did I know where I got myself into.
I was transported over to a top-secret military located somewhere within Gallente deadspace, shielded with very powerful profile dampeners and a cloaking device. Once inside, I was moved onto a room that seemed to be the operating room. I was put into sedatives and after that my first memory was waking up on a bed with the worst headache ever and a large circular scar around the top of my head. I had lost all my hair and was only wearing a robe to cover myself. For several minutes I just laid there, observing the prison-like room until someone entered.
Finally I was told what this all was about, the immortal clone project. Due to my high combat-prowess and efficient killing, I was a prime candidate to work for the Gallente dropclone army. After that, several years passed where I was put through dozens of surgeries, put under rigorous disciplinary training under extreme conditions of pain, suffering and borderline torture, all used to 'prepare myself for the final trial'. At the age of 30, after learning to live with a gun at my side and trained to withstand the most extreme forms of pain, that final trial came.
I was placed into a room with nothing but a table, a chair and a gun on the table. A simple command came through the speakers, and the message was simple: "Kill yourself." At first I was shocked in awe at the command, rapidly switching my gaze from the door to the weapon and back to the door. Slowly I seated myself to the table, holding the pistol in my hand. I stuck the muzzle in my mouth, against my forehead, my temple, even against my chest. My hands were shaking and cold sweat was running through my body. But if this is what it took to be immortal, I would do it. I put the barrel of the gun back inside the gun, closed my eyes and held my finger over to the trigger. When I finally squeezed on it, I heard a loud bang, and then nothing.
I don't know about others, but the brief period between death and rebirth is always startling. And I felt confused, disoriented and sick in the very least when I woke up in my clone body. It felt so strange reawaking in a completely strange body. Our battle clones are always stock, only when we are not in battle can we use the personalized clones. I stepped out of the capsule I was standing in, shakily taking steps forward with my brand new body. When I was greeted by one of the scientists, only then I realized how big I was. Nine feet tall and with the strength to topple a small frigate, the scientist calmly examined me, muttering something about full conciousness transfer. I was stuck for several hours as the doctors and scientists examined me very thoroughly before I was permitted to leave. There was a window on the side, where I noticed I was on a planet now, with snow, ice and glaciers everywhere.
The place seemed to be a training facility of sorts, with hundreds of other clones like me training to get used to switching between bodies rapidly and always be ready for combat. This went on until I was eventually turned into an immortal soldier for the Gallente and other empires to use. I mostly do contracts for my corporation and occasionally do freelance work with other mercenaries. I was also one of the rare, or maybe even the only person to retain my original body before I was made to a clone soldier, that has allowed me to bypass some of the restrictions other clone soldiers would have, like being able to accept and give ISK from and to capsuleers and be able to travel around more freely in New Eden outside work.
So there you have it, my lifestory. Guess I could keep recording entries to this as a sort of a self-diary, maybe I could publish this on the Galnet if or when I pull out from the mercenary scene. But we'll see.

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