Well, this is it.
Today, on May 30th YC118 I am officially retiring from being a clone soldier. This past year or so I have been largely inactive preparing my final exit from the mercenary life that my previous blog posts have covered, and disconnecting myself from this implant. According to statistics provided by CONCORD, during my more or less two year career as a clone soldier I had taken the lives of 21012 clone soldiers, lost my own life 10700 times and accepted at least 1517 contracts. So much blood spilled. So much pain endured and misery caused.
I would like to think that over these years living the life of an immortal soldier has given me a new perspective on the Idama way that many Intaki hold in high regard. Before they were nothing more than a group of overthinkers who could see 'deeper meaning' in the moles of their feet. But now, after several years working with the ILF, studying the Intaki and just being on Intaki V for the first time in over a decade have given me new perspective - as cliché as that may sound. Maybe there is deeper meaning in the moles of my feet after all.
The life of a clone soldier is always a hectic one - jumping from contract to contract on yet another desolate world around New Eden, enduring the pain, the suffering and the brutal onslaught that is clone soldier combat for that ISK that you can do it all even better. Every single one of us, our kind, the immortal soldiers, we all lose a bit of ourselves to the endless war. Some may even lose their minds and that was a risk I faced daily during my active period. I studied the Intaki to counterbalance the madness of combat, their history, their heritage - my heritage. I can not help but feel drawn to returning to my roots.
Of course I am not saying that being a soldier of fortune and a clone soldier are bad things - far from it. The clone soldiers of New Eden while destructive have also done good to help better the broken and warring empires, we have left our own mark on this galaxy and while the peak of our glory has already gone past, there will always be a need for a soldier with a gun in his hands to control an anti-MCC cannon on some far flung planet in the middle of a war zone. The rumors I have heard of new technology makes me think that a second resurgence may still be a possibility. Perhaps there will still be a time where I take up the shotgun and remote explosives again.
But for now, I focus on my study of the Way. I have to say, Intaki V is incredibly beautiful. The bustling diamond city that I see in the distance from my home, rising from the tropical rainforest each day is truly a privilege.
Farewell.
Tranquility
Silence.
Tranquility.
Inward reflection.
Peace of mind.
I sort of mentioned about these things in my previous entry, but after some time spent as a capsuleer, I can finally notice the stark difference that is daily life as a clone soldier, versus the one I have now. Everything is so, detached, so remote from the depths of my ship. That may sound like a bad thing, but considering my background, I welcome this change fully.
When I was a clone soldier - a duster - most of my waking hours were spent in combat, and the ones out of combat I spent recovering from said combat. Training to live under a constant barrage of stress and adrenaline was pretty much mandatory. Nowadays I just...float. I let my mind wander to all sorts of places while I watch my ship peeling away at asteroids and occasionally discuss with the crew member I have working aboard. Just the mere idea of having subordinates, people who rely on me to support them and their families is a strange thing to me.
Perhaps now that I've had this clone for longer than any other in my entire career, I've had the chance to distanced myself from all the pain and stress and really reflect on the things I had done, both good and bad. I can still clearly remember doing a few, questionable thing while I was working with non-clone soldiers on contracts. I'll be telling more of these experiences I've had as time passes, but right now, I want to enjoy this tranquility.
Perhaps now that I've had this clone for longer than any other in my entire career, I've had the chance to distanced myself from all the pain and stress and really reflect on the things I had done, both good and bad. I can still clearly remember doing a few, questionable thing while I was working with non-clone soldiers on contracts. I'll be telling more of these experiences I've had as time passes, but right now, I want to enjoy this tranquility.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Conversion
I am now a capsuleer. I have been capsuleer for quite a while now.
This may seem like a big thing, and in some cases it was. I debated about this for a long period of time, and the process of conversion was just as long, and many times more expensive and difficult. But the actual act itself, letting your old body die and waking up in your capsuleer implanted body, it was almost like routine. I suppose a full one and a half years of dying and waking up into a new clone has made me accustomed to the process. Arguably, it was a lot less painful and chaotic than what I had to go through.
Why did I do it? There were several points that contributed to my decision, but the simple fact of burning out was undoubtedly the biggest factor. I have countless articles written about the struggles and stress clone soldiers deal with at a daily basis, and I myself stated that they can burn out incredibly quick. I was the prime example of all those issues I detailed.
Now that this conversion is complete, and I have been flying in space for a few months, the difference is fairly daunting. For once in my life, things are quiet, the only sound I hear most of the time is the quiet hum of the engines. When I open my eyes, I don't see a grey, dust-ridden battlefield stretching to the horizon, I see space. Vast, endless space. And I can feel the ship around me.
Every capsuleer goes through this, but it still feels a simply mind boggling, unique experience to me. The rumbling, tingling, cold and warmth, all the little things the vessel I control, I feel to every little detail. I just can't describe it sufficiently. The intimacy of a dropsuit one wore can't even begin to compare to the ability to control and feel an entire space ship several times the size of any MCC, tank or dropship I have ever seen.
But even so, I still have my roots down on the ground, in that barren, dusty battlefield. I may be piloting several tons of metal with a mere thought in the vast endless space, but at the core, there is still a soldier, and all the memories of being one. My time as a soldier has shaped me to the person I am today, even if the memories associated with it are only of death and misery.
And where does this all leave me and this spot of mine in the GalNet? I do not know, to be honest. I am no longer a clone soldier, I can not be a clone soldier, which results in the name of this blog and the entire premise of it becoming outdated. But does it really matter in the end? I may have had this noble goal of "documenting clone soldier life", but in all honesty, this is-, and has always been, a place for my musings about my life as an immortal, regardless of its form.
To the few of you who are reading, following and commenting on my work and support me, I extend my deepest gratitude. I can't promise you that I will update this at a regular basis, as of late the only basis for writing anything here at all has been: "when I feel like it", or: "when I have inspiration". But what I can assure you is that this won't be my last entry. I still have great many things to think about.
This may seem like a big thing, and in some cases it was. I debated about this for a long period of time, and the process of conversion was just as long, and many times more expensive and difficult. But the actual act itself, letting your old body die and waking up in your capsuleer implanted body, it was almost like routine. I suppose a full one and a half years of dying and waking up into a new clone has made me accustomed to the process. Arguably, it was a lot less painful and chaotic than what I had to go through.
Why did I do it? There were several points that contributed to my decision, but the simple fact of burning out was undoubtedly the biggest factor. I have countless articles written about the struggles and stress clone soldiers deal with at a daily basis, and I myself stated that they can burn out incredibly quick. I was the prime example of all those issues I detailed.
Now that this conversion is complete, and I have been flying in space for a few months, the difference is fairly daunting. For once in my life, things are quiet, the only sound I hear most of the time is the quiet hum of the engines. When I open my eyes, I don't see a grey, dust-ridden battlefield stretching to the horizon, I see space. Vast, endless space. And I can feel the ship around me.
Every capsuleer goes through this, but it still feels a simply mind boggling, unique experience to me. The rumbling, tingling, cold and warmth, all the little things the vessel I control, I feel to every little detail. I just can't describe it sufficiently. The intimacy of a dropsuit one wore can't even begin to compare to the ability to control and feel an entire space ship several times the size of any MCC, tank or dropship I have ever seen.
But even so, I still have my roots down on the ground, in that barren, dusty battlefield. I may be piloting several tons of metal with a mere thought in the vast endless space, but at the core, there is still a soldier, and all the memories of being one. My time as a soldier has shaped me to the person I am today, even if the memories associated with it are only of death and misery.
And where does this all leave me and this spot of mine in the GalNet? I do not know, to be honest. I am no longer a clone soldier, I can not be a clone soldier, which results in the name of this blog and the entire premise of it becoming outdated. But does it really matter in the end? I may have had this noble goal of "documenting clone soldier life", but in all honesty, this is-, and has always been, a place for my musings about my life as an immortal, regardless of its form.
To the few of you who are reading, following and commenting on my work and support me, I extend my deepest gratitude. I can't promise you that I will update this at a regular basis, as of late the only basis for writing anything here at all has been: "when I feel like it", or: "when I have inspiration". But what I can assure you is that this won't be my last entry. I still have great many things to think about.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Uncertainty
I do not know who I am anymore.
What I have seen, what I have experienced, what I have done over this half a year of absolute silence; it all has confounded me to the point where I question my own role in the grand scheme of things.
I do not know why I am here.
I was hunted by a foe far beyond my capabilities to take head on, so I evaded them. I ceased all communications and fled, doing whatever I could to survive. To survive, I had to do hasty decision - questionable acts. What ended up happening, caused a lot of innocent blood to be spilled.
I do not know where to go.
I have begun reaching for my old contacts again, reforming connections; the looming threat over me has been dealt with, Even so, my career has been shook deeply. I adapted a whole new way of life over a half-year period, and now I can barely perform a clone soldier contract without feeling like an absolute wreck afterwards. The discomforting feel that I am immortal again has returned.
I do not know who I can trust.
Six months of distrust. Six months of being a puppet. Six months of bloodshed, death and misery for people I barely knew and had no loyalties at all towards. Now, just being around people is making me uneasy.
I do not know why I am doing this.
Just the mere act of bringing these thoughts of mine into words is giving me great struggle, further questioning my decision to do it in the first place. This site has been the place to gather and share my thoughts, but I want to tell more. I want to tell of the deeds I had done, of the experiences I had, but I mustn't. I can't. I won't.
I do not know what to do.
I do not know.
Maybe one day, when my mind is clear I will share these experiences. But for today, and the foreseeable future, pouring my thoughts out onto this page of text will suffice. For all the bad things that have happened though, I can find solace in one thing:
I am not alone anymore.
Denak Kalamari
What I have seen, what I have experienced, what I have done over this half a year of absolute silence; it all has confounded me to the point where I question my own role in the grand scheme of things.
I do not know why I am here.
I was hunted by a foe far beyond my capabilities to take head on, so I evaded them. I ceased all communications and fled, doing whatever I could to survive. To survive, I had to do hasty decision - questionable acts. What ended up happening, caused a lot of innocent blood to be spilled.
I do not know where to go.
I have begun reaching for my old contacts again, reforming connections; the looming threat over me has been dealt with, Even so, my career has been shook deeply. I adapted a whole new way of life over a half-year period, and now I can barely perform a clone soldier contract without feeling like an absolute wreck afterwards. The discomforting feel that I am immortal again has returned.
I do not know who I can trust.
Six months of distrust. Six months of being a puppet. Six months of bloodshed, death and misery for people I barely knew and had no loyalties at all towards. Now, just being around people is making me uneasy.
I do not know why I am doing this.
Just the mere act of bringing these thoughts of mine into words is giving me great struggle, further questioning my decision to do it in the first place. This site has been the place to gather and share my thoughts, but I want to tell more. I want to tell of the deeds I had done, of the experiences I had, but I mustn't. I can't. I won't.
I do not know what to do.
I do not know.
Maybe one day, when my mind is clear I will share these experiences. But for today, and the foreseeable future, pouring my thoughts out onto this page of text will suffice. For all the bad things that have happened though, I can find solace in one thing:
I am not alone anymore.
Denak Kalamari
A Farewell
It seems my past has finally caught up with me.
After being a clone soldier for nearly a year and a half, dragging through the death, pain and discomfort, it has finally become my time to leave. That also means that this blog will be shut down. I won't divulge in the specifics or reasons of my leave, all you need to know is that this blog will no longer be updated because of it.
The first entry to this blog was written on the seventh of July YC 115, nearly a year now. It has come a long way since then, enlightening the clone soldier, capsuleer and baseliner communities with ponderings and analyzing of the life of a clone soldier throughout it all. A lot has changed over this year, my corporation, my agendas and myself as a person. I've questioned my sanity, doubted my own existence, relished the madness and thought a lot about it all.
It feels funny, thinking of how I was going to retire into Intaki V after a long and hard-earned career as a clone soldier, and turns out that dream was shattered long before I could reach it. Instead, I will be on the run, again. Running away from a past that keeps clinging onto me like a leech.
I don't really what to do now. I might disappear into the eather and start anew, maybe restart my old career and atone for my debts. Heck, I could just off myself and be reborn, going through yet another cycle as an entirely new person. Maybe then I could get peace for myself.
Sigh.
In retrospect, my career has been quite a lively one. I suffered through the brutal and rigorous training you take when you first become an immortal, I've survived a manhunt on our kind by Tibus Heth, I've went on a manhunt against our kind, I've participated in the great battle crucial to Tibus Heth's fall, I've suffered through madness, self-doubt and apathy and I've most importantly lived through them all, through countless deaths and rebirths. The endless cycle.
You will probably not hear from me again, at least not through the public channels. You might hear stories from my friends, tales of my adventures. But there will be no new stories, no new adventures to go onto, no new experiences, no new things to write about. Just, running away, and hiding.
I am sad to see it all come to this, to see all my efforts went to waste, my goal of helping the Intaki people secede will never be fulfilled. But there's no bad without good. Regardless of where I may end up, I'll do that knowing that I have left my mark in history. Maybe not as a significant individual, but as being a part of something greater, being one of the first few to have been achieved the closest thing to immortality one can achieve.
I hope all of you readers enjoyed my writings, and I thank you for having encouraged me to keep writing, it has been a blast.
Farewell.
After being a clone soldier for nearly a year and a half, dragging through the death, pain and discomfort, it has finally become my time to leave. That also means that this blog will be shut down. I won't divulge in the specifics or reasons of my leave, all you need to know is that this blog will no longer be updated because of it.
The first entry to this blog was written on the seventh of July YC 115, nearly a year now. It has come a long way since then, enlightening the clone soldier, capsuleer and baseliner communities with ponderings and analyzing of the life of a clone soldier throughout it all. A lot has changed over this year, my corporation, my agendas and myself as a person. I've questioned my sanity, doubted my own existence, relished the madness and thought a lot about it all.
It feels funny, thinking of how I was going to retire into Intaki V after a long and hard-earned career as a clone soldier, and turns out that dream was shattered long before I could reach it. Instead, I will be on the run, again. Running away from a past that keeps clinging onto me like a leech.
I don't really what to do now. I might disappear into the eather and start anew, maybe restart my old career and atone for my debts. Heck, I could just off myself and be reborn, going through yet another cycle as an entirely new person. Maybe then I could get peace for myself.
Sigh.
In retrospect, my career has been quite a lively one. I suffered through the brutal and rigorous training you take when you first become an immortal, I've survived a manhunt on our kind by Tibus Heth, I've went on a manhunt against our kind, I've participated in the great battle crucial to Tibus Heth's fall, I've suffered through madness, self-doubt and apathy and I've most importantly lived through them all, through countless deaths and rebirths. The endless cycle.
You will probably not hear from me again, at least not through the public channels. You might hear stories from my friends, tales of my adventures. But there will be no new stories, no new adventures to go onto, no new experiences, no new things to write about. Just, running away, and hiding.
I am sad to see it all come to this, to see all my efforts went to waste, my goal of helping the Intaki people secede will never be fulfilled. But there's no bad without good. Regardless of where I may end up, I'll do that knowing that I have left my mark in history. Maybe not as a significant individual, but as being a part of something greater, being one of the first few to have been achieved the closest thing to immortality one can achieve.
I hope all of you readers enjoyed my writings, and I thank you for having encouraged me to keep writing, it has been a blast.
Farewell.
Numbness
I just decided to check my statistics my Neocom has kept track of me, and they were quite interesting. I've died 10,610 times, and killed over 20,863 hostiles, and the tracker has calculated that I have a kill-to-death ratio of 1.96. Funny, I barely remember any of those 10,610 deaths. I've had a hard time remembering any of the battles I've fought recently, it's all been just one blur of gunfire, explosions and burning metal. This has been a problem with many older clone soldiers, who have fought for months, even years like me. Just, burning out.
When you're a clone soldier, you are often encouraged to be, careless in battle. You don't really think about the implications of charging into a heavily fortified position to your health and safety, you just do it. This is what every soldier is trained to do though, immortal or not, but with us, it's different.
With us, we are literally suicidal, mindlessly trying to achieve the impossible, only for the slight possibility of maybe getting that critical push, kill or uplink point. If you fail and get killed, it's just a brief flash of pain before waking up in a new clone to do it all again. This is what we do every day, how we sustain ourselves for battle after battle. This also bleeds into our lives when not in the battle. Slowly, you just become numb and uncaring of everything.
First there's the initial shock of actually being the closest thing one can get to immortality. You are confused, scared and very much aware of the pain you're experiencing when you die for the hundredth time. After that, you start getting used to it. You are serious about what you do, and you might find a side to fight for within the Empyrean War. Death is still very painful, but you started to be less and less aware of it as time goes on.
Then as the first few months have passed, a change happens. You start finding things, funny. The way that enemy you just filled with bullets did a cartwheel before collapsing dead on the ground may have made you chuckle, the sight of bodyparts and blood raining down like snowfall after you detonated your remote explosive may seem quite a comical side to you. You start losing your touch with the reality of the battle, it's all just good fun.
More time passes. Months, maybe years, until you start to get even more numb and disconnected of battle. Deaths have started to be just something that feels funny when they happen. Even the pain you feel from death has started to fade away, and you may start to question your own existence. You ask questions like: "Is this me? Am I in control of my body? Is all of this even real?".
And in the end comes apathy.
At one point you just, stop caring, about anything. Death isn't even discomforting anymore, it's merely a financial and tactical inconvenience, a number on a screen. Enemies could may as well be AI, or cardboard cutouts. You just point at the enemy you are paid to shoot at, no questions asked, without a thought on the implications it might have. The way you would see the world in this state would be pure gray. There's no white nor black, not even shades of it. Just dull and consistent gray, nothing more, nothing less.
Some say that at this point you reach the peak of your career. You become the ultimate soldier and mercenary, completely unaffected by pain and death. I agree. But is it a good thing? Not necessarily. Abandoning the very thing that defines a human being, death, can lead to bad consequences.
In the end, when your moral compass is guided by ISK, there is truly no limit to what you can do. And that is the scariest part of it all, and why capsuleers and clone soldiers are dangerous beyond their immorality.
When you're a clone soldier, you are often encouraged to be, careless in battle. You don't really think about the implications of charging into a heavily fortified position to your health and safety, you just do it. This is what every soldier is trained to do though, immortal or not, but with us, it's different.
With us, we are literally suicidal, mindlessly trying to achieve the impossible, only for the slight possibility of maybe getting that critical push, kill or uplink point. If you fail and get killed, it's just a brief flash of pain before waking up in a new clone to do it all again. This is what we do every day, how we sustain ourselves for battle after battle. This also bleeds into our lives when not in the battle. Slowly, you just become numb and uncaring of everything.
First there's the initial shock of actually being the closest thing one can get to immortality. You are confused, scared and very much aware of the pain you're experiencing when you die for the hundredth time. After that, you start getting used to it. You are serious about what you do, and you might find a side to fight for within the Empyrean War. Death is still very painful, but you started to be less and less aware of it as time goes on.
Then as the first few months have passed, a change happens. You start finding things, funny. The way that enemy you just filled with bullets did a cartwheel before collapsing dead on the ground may have made you chuckle, the sight of bodyparts and blood raining down like snowfall after you detonated your remote explosive may seem quite a comical side to you. You start losing your touch with the reality of the battle, it's all just good fun.
More time passes. Months, maybe years, until you start to get even more numb and disconnected of battle. Deaths have started to be just something that feels funny when they happen. Even the pain you feel from death has started to fade away, and you may start to question your own existence. You ask questions like: "Is this me? Am I in control of my body? Is all of this even real?".
And in the end comes apathy.
At one point you just, stop caring, about anything. Death isn't even discomforting anymore, it's merely a financial and tactical inconvenience, a number on a screen. Enemies could may as well be AI, or cardboard cutouts. You just point at the enemy you are paid to shoot at, no questions asked, without a thought on the implications it might have. The way you would see the world in this state would be pure gray. There's no white nor black, not even shades of it. Just dull and consistent gray, nothing more, nothing less.
Some say that at this point you reach the peak of your career. You become the ultimate soldier and mercenary, completely unaffected by pain and death. I agree. But is it a good thing? Not necessarily. Abandoning the very thing that defines a human being, death, can lead to bad consequences.
In the end, when your moral compass is guided by ISK, there is truly no limit to what you can do. And that is the scariest part of it all, and why capsuleers and clone soldiers are dangerous beyond their immorality.
DENAK KALAMARI, GRAHISHA OF THE INTAKI LIBERATION FRONT
Announcement of my Quintupling Service
I was contacted by an advocate of my very distant cousin of Brutor descent, who used to live in Molden Heath just recently, telling that I was on this now deceased cousin's only known relative, making me the inheritor of his wealth. And thus, I have found myself in the ownership of a large sum of ISK, several manors in Amarr Prime, a large armada of supercapital ships, and Quafe Company.
Unfortunately, I have no idea at all what to do with this large amount of wealth I had recently acquired, and my brand new lawyer advised me to liquify all my assets and convert them into ISK, which I did. Although it did not really solve the problem, as now I only have even more ISK, which I can never realistically spend myself. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have come up with a solution.
As the patron saint of the Idama and Intaki, I have set up an ISK quintupling service. The concept is simple, you transfer me a specific amount of ISK, which I will quintuple in size and transfer back to you. I only accept specific amounts, which are the following:
Give me one million ISK, and I give back five million ISK.
Give me five million ISK, and I give back 25 million ISK.
Give me 10 million ISK, and I give back 50 million ISK.
Give me 100 million ISK, and I give back 500 million ISK.
I have also set up a "Bonus Challenge" for those who wish to have their wealth decupled(ten times as much) and all your assets doubled! The only requirements is that you contract me all your assets and wealth, and you will be given a series of challenges. These challenges remain a secret until you enter the Bonus Round and change according to the contender. Losing the challenges means you lose all your assets and wealth.
For those wishing to enter the Bonus Round or have their ISK quintupled, please contact me through the Neocom to negotiate the contracts and have the transfers sorted out. All complaints regarding the service should be forwarded to my lawyer Aldant Nardieu.
I wish you a pleasant April 1st.
Unfortunately, I have no idea at all what to do with this large amount of wealth I had recently acquired, and my brand new lawyer advised me to liquify all my assets and convert them into ISK, which I did. Although it did not really solve the problem, as now I only have even more ISK, which I can never realistically spend myself. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have come up with a solution.
As the patron saint of the Idama and Intaki, I have set up an ISK quintupling service. The concept is simple, you transfer me a specific amount of ISK, which I will quintuple in size and transfer back to you. I only accept specific amounts, which are the following:
Give me one million ISK, and I give back five million ISK.
Give me five million ISK, and I give back 25 million ISK.
Give me 10 million ISK, and I give back 50 million ISK.
Give me 100 million ISK, and I give back 500 million ISK.
I have also set up a "Bonus Challenge" for those who wish to have their wealth decupled(ten times as much) and all your assets doubled! The only requirements is that you contract me all your assets and wealth, and you will be given a series of challenges. These challenges remain a secret until you enter the Bonus Round and change according to the contender. Losing the challenges means you lose all your assets and wealth.
For those wishing to enter the Bonus Round or have their ISK quintupled, please contact me through the Neocom to negotiate the contracts and have the transfers sorted out. All complaints regarding the service should be forwarded to my lawyer Aldant Nardieu.
I wish you a pleasant April 1st.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Discovering Humanity
Today, on the 22nd of March YC 116, marks the one year anniversary of the Battle for Caldari Prime, it marked a historic time in New Eden where the Gallente and Caldari signed a peace treaty over Caldari Prime. To honor the ones who fought there, both in stars and on the ground, and the ones who lost their lives during the conflict, an event has been set up which has already started. Sadly I will be unable to participate, but I will honor the day in my own way, by describing my own experiences of it. As the blog title explains, my story is mostly about discovering myself.
As you may remember from my previous entry, the first few months of my career as a clone soldier were quite hectic and careless. I burnt through bodies faster than I could count, and I was laughing maniacally throughout it all, thinking I was truly immortal. Tibus Heth's attack on our enclaves knocked some sense to me, but I was still not really taking my whole career as seriously as I feel I should have.
Back then I was also fiercely loyal to the Gallente, and when the call to fight on the ground came, I instantly supported the Gallente. Sometimes I even joined the Caldari side to deliberately sabotage their efforts and drain their clone counts(I doubt I was the only one, but despite all this they still managed to emerge victorious on the ground, all the credit to them). I'll describe a certain contract I was deploying on the Caldari side for:
It was just like any other sabotage deployment I did for the Gallente. Spawn at the MCC, get some locus grenades and cook them until I disintegrated, I didn't even care what part of Caldari Prime I was deployed on, I was only ever going to be at the MCC. It was kind of humorous to me in a way, when I saw the other mercenaries looking at me funny as I exploded before they just kept moving, leaving me to my sabotaging.
As I stood there with a grenade ticking away in my hand, I had my thoughts wander off slightly. I don't remember what I was thinking exactly, but it went along the lines of:
"Heh, this will show those Caldari bastards their place! The stupid facist pigs deserve what they got for attacking our land. Why are they attacking anyway? Why is Caldari Prime part of Federation territory? What started this entire conflict?"
I kept going down that train of though, until the point where I just stopped killing myself. I jumped down from the MCC and hung around our base, watching the others fight and thinking why they were doing it. I glanced up at the sky, the wreck of the CN Shiigeru was crashing down into the ground as a massive ball of fire. I could see massive explosions and massive hulks being torn into pieces through the cracks in the cloudy sky.
Right as the battles was going to be finished, the wreck made contact with the planet, sending massive shockwaves kilometers from the impact point and causing massive amounts of damage. Our clones were cut off before we could feel or observe all the effects of the crash, and by the time I got into the next contract the dust had already settled, with the wreck of the Shiigeru burning in the horizon. The civilian casualties caused by the crash were countless.
After that contract, I spent the next few hours on my Neocom, browsing through various articles about the Caldari and Gallente history, what started their hostilities and war, and information about the reasons of this current conflict. What I discovered, shook me quite a bit. Looking back at my fierce loyalty to the Gallente, I felt kind of embarrassed, I was so ignorant of what was actually happening behind the conflict.
Throughout the rest of the conflict, I stopped picking sides. I just went for whichever side the contract system would put me in, and do my best on that side. When the firing ceased and Caldari emerged victorious of the ground battle, I went upon the mercenary message boards as usual. There was a thread about Caldari Prime made by a Gallente loyalist, congratulating other Gallente for successfully beating the fascists.
I promptly began writing how the entire conflict was foolish, for both Gallente and the Caldari, and I spent the next few hours debating about it on that thread. For once, I cared about the humanitarian aspect of the conflict, about the lives lost, about the senseless hatred between both sides, the endless amounts of ignorance both sides showed towards the other. Throughout the next few months, I started to be more aware of the state my homeworld Intaki was in, which eventually led me to this moment, as part of the Intaki Liberation Front.
The Battle for Caldari Prime was a long and painful conflict for both sides, with many unnecessary lives lost and massive damage done to the planet's atmosphere, but in the end a truce was made, which made peaceful relations between Caldari and Gallente possible after centuries of hatred and distrust. While cooperation is most likely something that will never realistically happen due to how distinctly different both empires are in politics and culture, peaceful coexistence is something that I would be looking forward to.
To those who were there on the ground and in the stars during the battle, both military and civilian, I wish you the best of luck. I truly hope coexistence can happen on the planet.
As you may remember from my previous entry, the first few months of my career as a clone soldier were quite hectic and careless. I burnt through bodies faster than I could count, and I was laughing maniacally throughout it all, thinking I was truly immortal. Tibus Heth's attack on our enclaves knocked some sense to me, but I was still not really taking my whole career as seriously as I feel I should have.
Back then I was also fiercely loyal to the Gallente, and when the call to fight on the ground came, I instantly supported the Gallente. Sometimes I even joined the Caldari side to deliberately sabotage their efforts and drain their clone counts(I doubt I was the only one, but despite all this they still managed to emerge victorious on the ground, all the credit to them). I'll describe a certain contract I was deploying on the Caldari side for:
It was just like any other sabotage deployment I did for the Gallente. Spawn at the MCC, get some locus grenades and cook them until I disintegrated, I didn't even care what part of Caldari Prime I was deployed on, I was only ever going to be at the MCC. It was kind of humorous to me in a way, when I saw the other mercenaries looking at me funny as I exploded before they just kept moving, leaving me to my sabotaging.
As I stood there with a grenade ticking away in my hand, I had my thoughts wander off slightly. I don't remember what I was thinking exactly, but it went along the lines of:
"Heh, this will show those Caldari bastards their place! The stupid facist pigs deserve what they got for attacking our land. Why are they attacking anyway? Why is Caldari Prime part of Federation territory? What started this entire conflict?"
I kept going down that train of though, until the point where I just stopped killing myself. I jumped down from the MCC and hung around our base, watching the others fight and thinking why they were doing it. I glanced up at the sky, the wreck of the CN Shiigeru was crashing down into the ground as a massive ball of fire. I could see massive explosions and massive hulks being torn into pieces through the cracks in the cloudy sky.
Right as the battles was going to be finished, the wreck made contact with the planet, sending massive shockwaves kilometers from the impact point and causing massive amounts of damage. Our clones were cut off before we could feel or observe all the effects of the crash, and by the time I got into the next contract the dust had already settled, with the wreck of the Shiigeru burning in the horizon. The civilian casualties caused by the crash were countless.
 |
| This sight was quite shaking when you first saw it. |
After that contract, I spent the next few hours on my Neocom, browsing through various articles about the Caldari and Gallente history, what started their hostilities and war, and information about the reasons of this current conflict. What I discovered, shook me quite a bit. Looking back at my fierce loyalty to the Gallente, I felt kind of embarrassed, I was so ignorant of what was actually happening behind the conflict.
Throughout the rest of the conflict, I stopped picking sides. I just went for whichever side the contract system would put me in, and do my best on that side. When the firing ceased and Caldari emerged victorious of the ground battle, I went upon the mercenary message boards as usual. There was a thread about Caldari Prime made by a Gallente loyalist, congratulating other Gallente for successfully beating the fascists.
I promptly began writing how the entire conflict was foolish, for both Gallente and the Caldari, and I spent the next few hours debating about it on that thread. For once, I cared about the humanitarian aspect of the conflict, about the lives lost, about the senseless hatred between both sides, the endless amounts of ignorance both sides showed towards the other. Throughout the next few months, I started to be more aware of the state my homeworld Intaki was in, which eventually led me to this moment, as part of the Intaki Liberation Front.
The Battle for Caldari Prime was a long and painful conflict for both sides, with many unnecessary lives lost and massive damage done to the planet's atmosphere, but in the end a truce was made, which made peaceful relations between Caldari and Gallente possible after centuries of hatred and distrust. While cooperation is most likely something that will never realistically happen due to how distinctly different both empires are in politics and culture, peaceful coexistence is something that I would be looking forward to.
To those who were there on the ground and in the stars during the battle, both military and civilian, I wish you the best of luck. I truly hope coexistence can happen on the planet.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Beginnings
From the start of my blog to this point, I have focused on factual, essay-like writings analyzing the various different aspects of the life of a mercenary like me. However, I have kind of ran out of things to analyze for now, so after a suggestion from a friend, I have decided to switch to more personal entries, detailing my history as a mercenary. What better way there is to start this than to talk about my first weeks and months as a clone?
The first day I was officially a clone soldier was in December 1st YC 114, as a generation two clone. The weeks and months before that were spent training me to handle the mental strain of the implants installed on me. Like many other clone soldiers, I was confused and shoved roughly into the world of endless dying and war to figure things out by myself. Like many others, the first few contracts I did involved nothing but constant dying and discomfort. I already had training to cope with death and rapid transfers of clones, but no training could really prepare me for the real battle, and it was painful. I tried to utilize my previous experience as a sniper and marksman with the use of sniper rifles, but the device was so alien to me I had no clue how to operate it.
Fortunately I found a few people to help get me started,o ne of these mercenaries being Lorilai Libertas, a scout. He was ultimately my influence into focusing in Gallente scout suits, and he helped me decide what to use with the suit, but he did stress however that you can only get good with experience, which meant dying a lot still.
What happened the next following months are unclear in my memory, but reading the few records that were of me during that time, I seemed to have just, lost it. There was a story of me written in a fairly humorous format about me dodging my way towards a sniper, then jumping right on his face and blasting him full of shotgun pellets, and some, obscene things to the dead body. I also had several cases where I talked to enemy soldiers even though they could never hear me, just for the fun of it and a few cheap laughs from my squad mates.
The first three or so months I didn't at all about my deaths, talked to enemy soldiers even though they could never hear me and generally treating my career as a game, nothing real with no regard to the actual impact my actions had. However this started to change when a series of events happened, which were later collectively dubbed as The Uprising.
Before the Uprising, clone soldiers were still a small and relatively unknown force. After the Uprising however, we started gaining cluster-wide recognition, being involved in empire politics and being key to throw Tibus Heth out of power. It all started with the Templis Dragonaurs attack on Autama IV, Tibus Heth was targeting clone enclaves in an effort to wipe out the clone soldiers. Mordu's Legion came in to stop this, and contracts were opened for both sides of the conflict for us to join.
That was really the point when I started to really think about my life as a clone soldier, and what would happen if Tibus Heth succeeded in his goal. So with a still lighthearted mind and a huge load of locus grenades, I deployed into battle for the Templis Dragonaur side, and began killing myself in order to ensure they would lose. This was so widespread within the mercenary community that there were even competitions on who could kill themselves the most while fighting for the Dragonaurs. A few days later, the Dragonaurs retreated and Mordu's Legion extracted personnel from Autama IV, job well done.
Many more events where clone soldiers were significantly involved also happened afterwards, for instance the historic first gathering of the Tribal Council and damaging Intaki atmosphere in the Imperfects-run orbital strike tournament, and these all made me consider more and more about what my actions meant for the cluster at wide. This series of events eventually peaked at the Battle for Caldari Prime, which will have its one year anniversary coming next Saturday on 22nd of March.
What happened to me after the battle, I will discuss on the next entry. I hope you enjoyed this, and be sure to watch for another entry on the 22nd.
The first day I was officially a clone soldier was in December 1st YC 114, as a generation two clone. The weeks and months before that were spent training me to handle the mental strain of the implants installed on me. Like many other clone soldiers, I was confused and shoved roughly into the world of endless dying and war to figure things out by myself. Like many others, the first few contracts I did involved nothing but constant dying and discomfort. I already had training to cope with death and rapid transfers of clones, but no training could really prepare me for the real battle, and it was painful. I tried to utilize my previous experience as a sniper and marksman with the use of sniper rifles, but the device was so alien to me I had no clue how to operate it.
Fortunately I found a few people to help get me started,o ne of these mercenaries being Lorilai Libertas, a scout. He was ultimately my influence into focusing in Gallente scout suits, and he helped me decide what to use with the suit, but he did stress however that you can only get good with experience, which meant dying a lot still.
What happened the next following months are unclear in my memory, but reading the few records that were of me during that time, I seemed to have just, lost it. There was a story of me written in a fairly humorous format about me dodging my way towards a sniper, then jumping right on his face and blasting him full of shotgun pellets, and some, obscene things to the dead body. I also had several cases where I talked to enemy soldiers even though they could never hear me, just for the fun of it and a few cheap laughs from my squad mates.
The first three or so months I didn't at all about my deaths, talked to enemy soldiers even though they could never hear me and generally treating my career as a game, nothing real with no regard to the actual impact my actions had. However this started to change when a series of events happened, which were later collectively dubbed as The Uprising.
Before the Uprising, clone soldiers were still a small and relatively unknown force. After the Uprising however, we started gaining cluster-wide recognition, being involved in empire politics and being key to throw Tibus Heth out of power. It all started with the Templis Dragonaurs attack on Autama IV, Tibus Heth was targeting clone enclaves in an effort to wipe out the clone soldiers. Mordu's Legion came in to stop this, and contracts were opened for both sides of the conflict for us to join.
That was really the point when I started to really think about my life as a clone soldier, and what would happen if Tibus Heth succeeded in his goal. So with a still lighthearted mind and a huge load of locus grenades, I deployed into battle for the Templis Dragonaur side, and began killing myself in order to ensure they would lose. This was so widespread within the mercenary community that there were even competitions on who could kill themselves the most while fighting for the Dragonaurs. A few days later, the Dragonaurs retreated and Mordu's Legion extracted personnel from Autama IV, job well done.
Many more events where clone soldiers were significantly involved also happened afterwards, for instance the historic first gathering of the Tribal Council and damaging Intaki atmosphere in the Imperfects-run orbital strike tournament, and these all made me consider more and more about what my actions meant for the cluster at wide. This series of events eventually peaked at the Battle for Caldari Prime, which will have its one year anniversary coming next Saturday on 22nd of March.
What happened to me after the battle, I will discuss on the next entry. I hope you enjoyed this, and be sure to watch for another entry on the 22nd.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Silence
Been nearly a month from my latest entry, woah. I really apologize for the sudden silence and dropping off the radar, the mercenary front has been quiet and I've had a severe lack of ideas and inspiration to write anything. There has been some rumors about new equipment and weaponry being released in the upcoming weeks, which I will be following and hopefully can make an entry out of. The rumored cloaking device seems like something I can use as material for an entry.
I'll try to always have at least one entry out each month from now on, depending how much material I have to work on and how active the mercenary front is. Other than that, feel free to read my older entries in the meanwhile.
I'll try to always have at least one entry out each month from now on, depending how much material I have to work on and how active the mercenary front is. Other than that, feel free to read my older entries in the meanwhile.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Freedom
Freedom is often a concept that the Gallente use to describe the Gallente Federation. The Federation, land of the free, home of the oppressed. You are free to chase the wildest of goals, without being oppressed by your government and told what to do and not to do. Everyone is happy and well off. At least that's what 99% of the nonsense propaganda I see today claim. Today, I'm going to break down all these claims and clear up some of the ignorant views people have been showing in the Intergalactic Summit for the past few weeks.
Firstly, you aren't free to do absolutely anything you wish, that would be anarchy. In order there to be a civilized society, there needs to be laws, regulations and a governmental body to enforce these laws and regulations. If there were no repercussions to anything that you did, things would go very bad very fast.When people talk about freedom, they don't mean absolute freedom like in anarchy, but more often than not political and social freedom, where you are free to practice your own faiths, beliefs, practices and whatnot without fear of repercussions.
Herein lies the biggest problem of the Federation in my opinion.We may have the social, political and religious freedoms on paper, but the reality of things can be much different, especially in the land of politics. More often than not, Gallente show extreme amounts of hostility towards the Caldari, which is often shown in the media, entertainment and simple discussions. For instance, in media and in entertainment products like movies, games and literature, Caldari are often portrayed as the "bad guys", people who are truly bad with no redeeming factors to them at all. They're the greedy corporate bastards who care of nothing but ISK.
Reality however, is much different. While megacorporations are the core of the Caldari State, the finding principles of the State are not of ISK, but of hard work and patriotism. In Caldari society, an individual is born to a family who works for a megacorporation. When you grow up, you work for this megacorporation and when you have your own kids, they will also work for this megacorporation.
You, your corporation and the State are one and the same. Caldari society is close-knit, the needs of the community, aka. the corporation, are put ahead of the needs of the individual. The CEOs and other higher ranked members of the corporation may live better off than the average worker, but everyone's needs are taken care of to benefit the corporation. Even the lowliest of janitors has a home, food, education and everything needed to care of himself and his family sufficiently.
While Caldari can perform morally questionable acts in order to benefit their corporation, they are not doing for just ISK. ISK is merely the catalyst to benefit the corporation, not the end goal. The mindset of the need of the community outweighing the need of the individual, and the capitalism were significant factors in letting Caldari become the formidable empire it is right now. If you really wanted the "bad guy" image popular media has portrayed the Caldari to be, take a look at Gallentean corporations like Quafe.
Popular media often shapes what the general community thinks of a subject, and due to the huge amounts of media portraying the Caldari as bad, and the government propaganda that was rampant during the war has shaped the general Federation consensus to be that the Caldari are evil and need to be destroyed. Opinions that show the benefits of the State, or even support it, are often frowned upon, and at one time were punishable by exile.
Then there's the racism that is often discussed within the Federation, which includes not just the State, but everything not considered as "Gallente". Intaki and Jin-Mei families, or immigrants from other empires, are often pressured to meld into the mismatch of various different habits and cultures that is Gallente. Habits and people that are considered odd or unnatural, usually mark these foreign families as outsiders, shunning them sometimes publicly even. Minmatar have often complained about this, and if this is reported on such a large scale, there must be some truth to it at least. Don't even get me started on the state of the Intaki homeworld and their place within Gallente society, which largely goes unreported.
It is often said that democracy is the ultimate best way to run a government. People vote for representatives to represent their issues, and these representatives discuss among one another to decide what to do that benefits the majority of the people. The problem here lies, is that compromises aren't made that often, which only leaves the majority pleased and leave behind the minority, which might still have a valid opinion to how things should be run. And another problem with democratic elections is that they are often popularity contests than actual ways for people to represent the needs of the community they appeal to.
Politicians often make promises for what they are going to do when or if they get elected, which are often very grand and broad in descriptions. And when these politicians eventually get elected, they forget these promises completely, as they are often impractical to keep, or even impossible. They made those promises just to appeal to the community and help get votes.
This may not really be the fault of the politicians, as usually the common people are often ignorant of what is and is not possible to within a government. That is why people who promise them what they want, not what they actually need and is realistic to accomplish, get the votes of the majority and then cause all sorts of problems later down the line. I'm not saying that we should all suddenly convert into a monarchy or something like that, I'm merely pointing out that the democratic system isn't as good as many people portray it to be.
Freedom might be a nice concept that Gallente often use to promote their ideals, but more often than not they fail to see the issues that their empire has, instead remaining blind and continuing to spout their ignorant views of the evil Caldari State and the perfect Gallente Federation, electing corrupt politicans into important roles in elections that are essentially popularity contest. All this sums up to the statement that the Federation isn't perfect, nor the best government in New Eden.
Firstly, you aren't free to do absolutely anything you wish, that would be anarchy. In order there to be a civilized society, there needs to be laws, regulations and a governmental body to enforce these laws and regulations. If there were no repercussions to anything that you did, things would go very bad very fast.When people talk about freedom, they don't mean absolute freedom like in anarchy, but more often than not political and social freedom, where you are free to practice your own faiths, beliefs, practices and whatnot without fear of repercussions.
Herein lies the biggest problem of the Federation in my opinion.We may have the social, political and religious freedoms on paper, but the reality of things can be much different, especially in the land of politics. More often than not, Gallente show extreme amounts of hostility towards the Caldari, which is often shown in the media, entertainment and simple discussions. For instance, in media and in entertainment products like movies, games and literature, Caldari are often portrayed as the "bad guys", people who are truly bad with no redeeming factors to them at all. They're the greedy corporate bastards who care of nothing but ISK.
Reality however, is much different. While megacorporations are the core of the Caldari State, the finding principles of the State are not of ISK, but of hard work and patriotism. In Caldari society, an individual is born to a family who works for a megacorporation. When you grow up, you work for this megacorporation and when you have your own kids, they will also work for this megacorporation.
You, your corporation and the State are one and the same. Caldari society is close-knit, the needs of the community, aka. the corporation, are put ahead of the needs of the individual. The CEOs and other higher ranked members of the corporation may live better off than the average worker, but everyone's needs are taken care of to benefit the corporation. Even the lowliest of janitors has a home, food, education and everything needed to care of himself and his family sufficiently.
While Caldari can perform morally questionable acts in order to benefit their corporation, they are not doing for just ISK. ISK is merely the catalyst to benefit the corporation, not the end goal. The mindset of the need of the community outweighing the need of the individual, and the capitalism were significant factors in letting Caldari become the formidable empire it is right now. If you really wanted the "bad guy" image popular media has portrayed the Caldari to be, take a look at Gallentean corporations like Quafe.
Popular media often shapes what the general community thinks of a subject, and due to the huge amounts of media portraying the Caldari as bad, and the government propaganda that was rampant during the war has shaped the general Federation consensus to be that the Caldari are evil and need to be destroyed. Opinions that show the benefits of the State, or even support it, are often frowned upon, and at one time were punishable by exile.
Then there's the racism that is often discussed within the Federation, which includes not just the State, but everything not considered as "Gallente". Intaki and Jin-Mei families, or immigrants from other empires, are often pressured to meld into the mismatch of various different habits and cultures that is Gallente. Habits and people that are considered odd or unnatural, usually mark these foreign families as outsiders, shunning them sometimes publicly even. Minmatar have often complained about this, and if this is reported on such a large scale, there must be some truth to it at least. Don't even get me started on the state of the Intaki homeworld and their place within Gallente society, which largely goes unreported.
It is often said that democracy is the ultimate best way to run a government. People vote for representatives to represent their issues, and these representatives discuss among one another to decide what to do that benefits the majority of the people. The problem here lies, is that compromises aren't made that often, which only leaves the majority pleased and leave behind the minority, which might still have a valid opinion to how things should be run. And another problem with democratic elections is that they are often popularity contests than actual ways for people to represent the needs of the community they appeal to.
Politicians often make promises for what they are going to do when or if they get elected, which are often very grand and broad in descriptions. And when these politicians eventually get elected, they forget these promises completely, as they are often impractical to keep, or even impossible. They made those promises just to appeal to the community and help get votes.
This may not really be the fault of the politicians, as usually the common people are often ignorant of what is and is not possible to within a government. That is why people who promise them what they want, not what they actually need and is realistic to accomplish, get the votes of the majority and then cause all sorts of problems later down the line. I'm not saying that we should all suddenly convert into a monarchy or something like that, I'm merely pointing out that the democratic system isn't as good as many people portray it to be.
Freedom might be a nice concept that Gallente often use to promote their ideals, but more often than not they fail to see the issues that their empire has, instead remaining blind and continuing to spout their ignorant views of the evil Caldari State and the perfect Gallente Federation, electing corrupt politicans into important roles in elections that are essentially popularity contest. All this sums up to the statement that the Federation isn't perfect, nor the best government in New Eden.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
The Summit
Again, it has been quiet in the land of the clone soldiers, life goes on as usual completing contracts and making ISK with little interesting things happening. There has been rumors circulating about new dropsuits and pistols being released, but I won't touch on these until they are confirmed. So, to at least have something out, I will highlight a place I visit quite often. It is a ground facility on the planet of Yulai III, but we have dubbed it the Summit.
This facility is a hub for clone soldiers of all races, all affiliations and all corporations to come together and socialize as mere co-workers and not as enemies on the battlefield. It is a huge complex, originally designed as base of operations for CONCORD. But with a huge influx of clone soldiers emerging, CONCORD established a virtual message board for us to use, named the Intergalactic Summit, similar to the one capsuleers have. A few months later, they converted this facility on Yulai III as a hub area for clone soldiers, and after over half a year it has finally started gaining momentum and become very popular.
It houses several different venues varying from emissaries, clubs, restaurants, museums, places of worship and many more, while CONCORD security assures that everyone can interact peacefully there without a bloodbath. So, why would a place of this kind be important to me at all, or to the clone soldier community at large for that matter?
Well firstly, it just brings good-will among the soldiers when they can go to a place where there are no enemies or friends, just fellow soldiers in arms. In the Summit, we can gladly share our stories of that one battle that turned the tide of war within Molden Heath, or from that crazy stunt you performed with your LAV while being chased by two dropships, or that one kill that was so glorious that you died from epicness right on that spot.
It also does wonders to soldier morale. Life can be a little hectic for us at times, we constantly die brutal and painful deaths, only to wake up in a new clone, redeploy and do it all again. When you do this for hours upon hours a day, for weeks, months, even years. it can start taking a toll on you, and you start losing your grip on reality. This has happened to me too.
In the Summit, baseliners, capsuleers and clone soldiers are all free to walk around and socialize without constantly having to look behind your back. You can get a touch of normal life as well, outside of the tiny room that is your mercenary quarters. Overall, the Summit is a place where you can relax, recharge your batteries and gain new friends. There you can forget about the demands of your corporation for a while and just enjoy life as it is.
And that is why I like going to the Summit, and why others should also visit it(I'll also try to make a proper entry next time, promise!).
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
This facility is a hub for clone soldiers of all races, all affiliations and all corporations to come together and socialize as mere co-workers and not as enemies on the battlefield. It is a huge complex, originally designed as base of operations for CONCORD. But with a huge influx of clone soldiers emerging, CONCORD established a virtual message board for us to use, named the Intergalactic Summit, similar to the one capsuleers have. A few months later, they converted this facility on Yulai III as a hub area for clone soldiers, and after over half a year it has finally started gaining momentum and become very popular.
It houses several different venues varying from emissaries, clubs, restaurants, museums, places of worship and many more, while CONCORD security assures that everyone can interact peacefully there without a bloodbath. So, why would a place of this kind be important to me at all, or to the clone soldier community at large for that matter?
Well firstly, it just brings good-will among the soldiers when they can go to a place where there are no enemies or friends, just fellow soldiers in arms. In the Summit, we can gladly share our stories of that one battle that turned the tide of war within Molden Heath, or from that crazy stunt you performed with your LAV while being chased by two dropships, or that one kill that was so glorious that you died from epicness right on that spot.
It also does wonders to soldier morale. Life can be a little hectic for us at times, we constantly die brutal and painful deaths, only to wake up in a new clone, redeploy and do it all again. When you do this for hours upon hours a day, for weeks, months, even years. it can start taking a toll on you, and you start losing your grip on reality. This has happened to me too.
In the Summit, baseliners, capsuleers and clone soldiers are all free to walk around and socialize without constantly having to look behind your back. You can get a touch of normal life as well, outside of the tiny room that is your mercenary quarters. Overall, the Summit is a place where you can relax, recharge your batteries and gain new friends. There you can forget about the demands of your corporation for a while and just enjoy life as it is.
And that is why I like going to the Summit, and why others should also visit it(I'll also try to make a proper entry next time, promise!).
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
Metacombat
Okay, after a long holiday break(and a severe case of writer's block), I'm back to writing new entries, apologies for the long delay. Today's topic is actually quite a simple one, about the whole reward system we have while in battle, and how it enforces certain behaviors. I dubbed it metacombat, as it is basically using external factors not related to actual combat to influence combat.
For the non-dusters reading, how much we are paid from our contract depends on the Warpoint system. Basically, you are awarded points for performing various actions that benefit you and your team, which is then added to your total score for that battle.
When the battle ends, either the MCC was destroyed or the clones were depleted, you end up on a scoreboard which compares how many Warpoints you made in comparison to the rest of the team and your enemies, who are ranked from 1st to 16th on their side depending how many Warpoints they had accumulated. How this translates into ISK transferred to your account is a little more complicated.
Throughout the battle, the value of all the vehicles and infantry fits destroyed within the battle gets added into an invisible ISK pool that is shared between both sides of the battle. When the battle ends, a calculation starts immediately on how much ISK each soldier gets based on the total ISK pool and how many Warpoints they accumulated.
The ones with the most Warpoints get the most ISK paid obviously, but there is also the factor of how big of a difference your total Warpoints are in relation to others. If you have a greatly larger amount of Warpoints when compared to the rest of the team, you get a bigger percentage of the ISK pool, whereas you would get a smaller amount if your entire team scored roughly the same amount of Warpoints.
How this relates to the enforcement of certain behaviors? Simple, with you getting awarded different amounts of Warpoints for different kinds of actions, you are subconsciously guided to do certain things. A kill rewards you 50 Warpoints and a headshot 60, a successful hack gives you 100 Warpoints, and a counterhack 80 Warpoints.
There are plenty of other things that also give you Warpoints, but these are the biggest rewards. Because you get more ISK the more Warpoints you get, people naturally lean more towards hanging around objectives killing every enemy in sight. It is a lot easier to gain kills than to hack or counterhack, so you naturally want to kill more and give less attention to the objectives.
This whole scoring system also acts as a callous effect. You're just hunting for points, not really thinking of the real implications what your actions. You don't really think that you just shot straight through that person's head and now he completely misses one, it was just a 60+ Headshot kill for you. Yes, we might be only fighting clone soldiers where death has little meaning, but maybe you were fighting actual people with real families and responsibilities they have to do. It would be just another +60 notification and a one added to your total killcount.
Really, many people treat these battles we fight as matches, a competition to show our prowess in killing people. From the talks I've had with other people, most of them treat their careers as some sort of game, where your actions have no real implications and you just compete to have the highest kill-to-death ratio, the most warpoints and the like. At times it feels like every single mercenary has gone insane with how many crazy things that happens to us and we willingly do.
Heck, we may as well make our careers into a video game, dub it DUST 514 because we're always fighting in the dust and everyone seems to have gone 514.
For the non-dusters reading, how much we are paid from our contract depends on the Warpoint system. Basically, you are awarded points for performing various actions that benefit you and your team, which is then added to your total score for that battle.
When the battle ends, either the MCC was destroyed or the clones were depleted, you end up on a scoreboard which compares how many Warpoints you made in comparison to the rest of the team and your enemies, who are ranked from 1st to 16th on their side depending how many Warpoints they had accumulated. How this translates into ISK transferred to your account is a little more complicated.
Throughout the battle, the value of all the vehicles and infantry fits destroyed within the battle gets added into an invisible ISK pool that is shared between both sides of the battle. When the battle ends, a calculation starts immediately on how much ISK each soldier gets based on the total ISK pool and how many Warpoints they accumulated.
The ones with the most Warpoints get the most ISK paid obviously, but there is also the factor of how big of a difference your total Warpoints are in relation to others. If you have a greatly larger amount of Warpoints when compared to the rest of the team, you get a bigger percentage of the ISK pool, whereas you would get a smaller amount if your entire team scored roughly the same amount of Warpoints.
How this relates to the enforcement of certain behaviors? Simple, with you getting awarded different amounts of Warpoints for different kinds of actions, you are subconsciously guided to do certain things. A kill rewards you 50 Warpoints and a headshot 60, a successful hack gives you 100 Warpoints, and a counterhack 80 Warpoints.
There are plenty of other things that also give you Warpoints, but these are the biggest rewards. Because you get more ISK the more Warpoints you get, people naturally lean more towards hanging around objectives killing every enemy in sight. It is a lot easier to gain kills than to hack or counterhack, so you naturally want to kill more and give less attention to the objectives.
This whole scoring system also acts as a callous effect. You're just hunting for points, not really thinking of the real implications what your actions. You don't really think that you just shot straight through that person's head and now he completely misses one, it was just a 60+ Headshot kill for you. Yes, we might be only fighting clone soldiers where death has little meaning, but maybe you were fighting actual people with real families and responsibilities they have to do. It would be just another +60 notification and a one added to your total killcount.
Really, many people treat these battles we fight as matches, a competition to show our prowess in killing people. From the talks I've had with other people, most of them treat their careers as some sort of game, where your actions have no real implications and you just compete to have the highest kill-to-death ratio, the most warpoints and the like. At times it feels like every single mercenary has gone insane with how many crazy things that happens to us and we willingly do.
Heck, we may as well make our careers into a video game, dub it DUST 514 because we're always fighting in the dust and everyone seems to have gone 514.
ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ
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.
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.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Gallente Mercenary: "You Amarr are dirty slavers!"There are some merits to these statements, but most of it is just glaringly exaggerated stereotypes.
Amarr Mercenary: "All of you Gallente are corrupt hypocrites!"
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
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