Incarnate!

I have legs!



Right now I'm still giddy about the fact that I finally have legs! I remember going to Fanfest in '07 and being floored by the idea of a full-body experience in Eve, but the bright-eyed noob soon turned into a bitter vet whose words at the mention of Ambulation became "That's all very pretty, but I'm not holding my breath."

I've been waiting so long for this that I don't much care by this point if our quarters are somewhat small and there isn't much to do but walk from couch to balcony and back. I know more will follow, and now this particular snowball is rolling, it'll follow soon.

The sight of my ships at the balcony is impressive, and I don't even fly any big ones. I can only imagine what it's like to walk over there and have a glorious Machariel filling your vision. It's funny to realise for real how tiny my racing interceptors are, compared even to my other frigates. But old habits die hard: I keep trying to spin the ship to see the turrets from the other side ;)

Ship spinning replaced by vegetating in front of a TV screen. I'm not yet quite sure what to think of that, but I have to admit the screen is rather hypnotic, even if it keeps trying to sell me Rifters, of which I already have tons.

I have to say, however, I'm not impressed with the Noble Exchange. Yes, I want extra goodies, but I took one look at the prices and reeled back. Let me quote someone who was involved in a discussion about aurum and prices last night on the DUST514 ingame channel:

[ 2011.06.22 01:58:38 ] Alextrovarius > but i am not shelling out 45 euro's for a stupid eye piece that no one gets to see...

I am going to second that. The prices going on in there for ridiculously small things (like the eye implant) are through the roof. And to top that, these are things which, in good Eve tradition, you can lose if you get podded. So let me see, a month of gameplay or a new skirt: that's not a difficult choice. I'm not even tempted to buy any of the NeX items at those prices, which I imagine defeats the purpose. Perhaps I'm wrong but I assumed these were to be micro-transactions? They look rather macro to me.

So... back to my ship, undock, zoom in really really really close and drool at the new turret goodness. Giddy! :D

Now, if only my Tech 3s would stop flying backwards...

Season 1.0 - Race 2 - Placid

Sixth to dock. Again. And this time none of the Re-Aw members of her roster had shown up. Not a single one.

So she had fleeted with reds, in one of her flashes of temper. She did seem to have a quicker temper whenever she was in her racing clone. But this time she didn't regret it one bit. She'd be damned if she was going to toss aside her personal beliefs plus her racing family and then be made to race alone.

Facing Ciarente wasn't going to be pleasant, but right now it didn't matter one bit how much she liked her CEO. Kayleigh Jamieson-Read was feeling both angry and betrayed, and not one bit repentant.

Season 1.0, Race 1 - Derelik - DSR Race Report

The official results aren't in, yet, but I managed to jot down my impressions of this race soon after, while things were still fresh in my mind. Follow the link and I hope you find it interesting reading.

http://www.pleasure-hub.com/nera/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=51

Season 1.0 - Race 1 - Derelik

The jin-mei groaned. Sixth place. Sixth. She probably hadn't had a result this bad since Season 1 of the previous league. Sixth overall, sixth in her class - barring any time penalties the official results might uncover.

Embarrassing.

The Night Before

The night before was always one for fretting, worrying about all the tiny details. Spare parts placement, ship tuning, clone jumping... But this time around she had an added worry. She had had to let go of her old team and her new one was apparently leaving her hanging.

None of her pilots had confirmed they would be in Derelik tomorrow. Not a single one of them.

Kayleigh took a deep breath and rubbed her face. Right. It wouldn't be the first time she raced alone. But it would be the first time she felt angry and betrayed while doing so. Bugger the lot of them. She was a big girl. She'd pay for her mistakes - even if that meant an entire season thrown in the garbage - and then in the end no one ever again would tell her who she could race with or not.

Free Time

Apparently Kay had too much of it. Free time. The sort you spend idly at some bar, sipping the same old drink and dwelling on the past instead of looking toward the future. People were starting to notice.

Hikari had challenged her to find something that would get her blood pumping again. As it turned out, it seemed going planetside and hopping onto unstable two-wheeled vehicles to go really really fast around a track was just the thing. In all fairness, her old friend made it sound exciting. Perhaps it would bring back a fraction of the excitement of epic races long gone. She had agreed to try.

And then there was this amarrian... Nicoletta. Kay remembered her from years ago, back at a time when she actually bothered to chime in on the Summit from time to time. Ms. Mithra had, at the time, invited a group of anti-slavery people to visit her estates and see how things weren't as propaganda painted Amarr slavery to be. Kay hadn't been terribly impressed.

Now here was this woman again, turning up at Daredevil's Lounge, of all places, and reading her well enough to suggest ways to occupy her free time. A visit to her estates had been out of the question - even though the races were on indefinite hold, Kay still had fans and followers and principles to maintain, not to mention she was now a member of Electus Matari, with all that entailed. She would not endorse slavery by doing tourism at a place she knew ran on slavery.

An invitation to go riding horses? Insanity. There was no disputing the fact that Kayleigh was of small stature. To perch a tiny jin-mei on top of a big beast with a mind of its own? It sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, of the kind with the potential to break a neck.

But an invite to dinner? Somewhere a little more neutral? Why not? One could have a civilised talk, perhaps a meaningful discussion with an opponent, yes? There would be no harm in it. And the alternative was to sip the same old drink, at the same old place, missing her wife...

Spark

Often, of late, Kayleigh felt she'd lost her spark.

It was the sort of thing she was becoming more aware of in the company of younger pilots, such as Laria, who still had such enthusiasm for just about anything out there in space.

Kayleigh was finding it increasingly difficult to muster a whole lot of verve for the act of undocking. There was no challenge keeping her mind occupied, no excitement keeping her blood pumping, no overarching achievement to aim for.

So when Hikari mentioned learning how to ride a bike and race planetside, the jin-mei instantly took to the idea. Learning a new thing - driving on two weels? Sounded like a challenge! - getting back that rush which came from raw speed, from trying to outrun an opponent... it sounded like just the thing to get her blood racing once again.