Feelings of Being an Outsider

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of War and Passion

One year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retirement and Uncertainties

Gallenteans,

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

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

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

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

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

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