There's quite a long story behind this picture. For those of you who might actually read the whole description, I hope the story is at least entertaining, if nothing else.

This commission was done by: zaezar
The original can be found: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12629640/

Seriously, take a look at his prices next time you're thinking about getting something. The guy's awesome.

Lets start at the beginning with this picture. Here we have a piece that's roughly based on EVE Online. Most of you probably know that it's a MMO I've played for a few years now. This picture is a follow-up to this image http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12035252/ . Because there really isn't much of an established lore on what characters in that game wear day-to-day there were a few liberties taken as to what a character in that universe would look like. (It's a spaceship game, who cares what your shirt looks like?) So, the clothing was done up to look like someone who's the captain of a ship. It's also meant to look sort of appropriate for someone who occasionally leads fleets. I digress though. The colors were borrowed from a group I run with known as the Brave Collective, more specifically the SergailJerk corporation.

As some of you might know, EVE Online really prides itself in being a sandbox game and strives to be as true to that term as possible. Stories that emerge in gameplay are such a core feature that most people are able to completely ignore the game's lore because stories about different players and groups are just that much more interesting. The game developers, CCP, have developed that to a point where they were actually able to run a marketing campaign based entirely on the stories that players tell. For those of you who are interested, here's the link to the youtube video they made for that marketing campaign. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSxSyv4LC1c As a side note, when you see the ships, yes the graphics do look like that (granted you usually have the HUD up and it's zoomed out a little bit). Also yes, the comms chatter you hear throughout the video is pretty accurate to what it sounds like. Granted that marketing campaign happened a while and a half back, but it's better that inspiration come late than never right?

So, you've heard why this picture exists and what the inspiration was. I'm sure you're probably wondering, "Ok, so what's your story? What nerdy rambling about a video game is worth reading?" Well, how's about one that involves a person who's had his hand in espionage, assassination, politics, planning wars, mercenary work, building communities, and fighting in several sides of a number of major conflicts? Oh yeah, there was also that time the guys I used to play with voted on how many times I should get drunk and tell this jackass just how much of a jackass he was. (They called for a recount a couple times. It went from three times to once, to twice, to one and a half with the provision that I record the incident for prosperity.) But that's a different story for a different time.

Depending on the response that people have, I might make this into a series. Bear in mind these events all happened over the course of the last four years. This is not a work of fiction. Names have not been changed to protect anyone because they're already screen-names so it wouldn't help anything anyways. So, I guess I'll put the first chapter up here.

Here's the story of how I Was There

A month or so into playing, things really started to kick off. I was in this corp (this game's version of a clan or guild) called Carbine Empire with a few guys and we were lead by this kid that went by the name Admiral Nexus. This kid had a habit of getting us into fights that we couldn't win. And by "We" I mean he expected me and one other dude named Kakodaimonon to fight off everything that came our way. Eventually, we got sick of this and split off to form our own group called Hydra Directorate. Kako took up the CEO position and made me a Director (This game's version of a president and vice-president. Basically the only difference between us was that he could disband the group and I couldn't.) We pulled most of the guys from Carbine Empire over with us because they had the same issues with Nexus's leadership that we did. Somewhere along the line we brought in Vagyrgr and Zeek Muaka who I made fast friends with. If memory serves right, Vagyrgr was a Greek guy who had fled to London when Greece's economy collapsed to become a student so that he wouldn't have to serve in the army and deal with the turmoil. Zeek was a highschool guy who was working on joining the ROTC. Kako, well he's this Canadian guy. Nobody was really sure what he did in real life. Eventually we formed an alliance with a couple other corporations. (Footnote, this game allows Corporations, which are the rough equivalent of guilds or clans to band together and form an Alliance. Alliances are meant to be a form of super-group.) From our days with Admiral Nexus we knew Fournone, who lead Gallente Trade Union and Traveler Luiz who lead Independent Miners Co. For those of you who remember Gallente Trade Union, it's the same group I uploaded the logo for a while back. Link can be found here http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10805668/ Together we formed Aftermath Coalition and started to expand. Sense most of us were still new, there wasn't really much noteworthy until Traveler Luiz decided that we needed to make a loan to our old friend Nexus. By this point Nexus had changed to a new character named Subach Fenris, so if I use the names interchangeably it's because they're the same guy. Anyways, Subach had taken out a loan from Luiz so that he could build a starbase and the general agreement was that this thing would make a profit and Subach would pay Luiz back from that profit. Well, as you can probably guess, that didn't happen. The guy didn't even make the first payment and went dark on us. Wouldn't respond to chats, mails, anything. So when Luiz brought this news to everyone on the teamspeak server, it was decided pretty quickly that we needed to do a spy-op with the goal of repossessing the thing. My name was chosen to be the guy who did the actual infiltrating and it was decided that Zeek would be my handler for this little operation.

I should probably make a footnote here, everything that follows is actively encouraged by EVE's developers and is WELL WITHIN the established norms and practices that people expect in this game. That being said, next time you find yourself recruiting for a guild, please don't pick up random strangers without checking out their background first.

So, that day I put in an application with another character to join Subach's corporation. He did a fairly quick background check, but sense it was a new group they weren't really being picky or asking a lot of questions. The hope was that I would rise high enough in the ranks to be granted rolls to offline the Starbase and then hand it off to Luiz. Essentially, I was an "undercover repo-man in space". Well, once I got in it was pretty late so I logged off. The next day I notice that the base has run out of the fuel that it needs to operate and think, "This is my chance to move. I can tell Subach that I can run the thing properly and he'll give me the roles I need." Well, I tried and he said that he'd think about it. So, with that, I work on developing my cover, helping people out and generally being a model corp member. Eventually I logged back on later that evening and Subach's decided that he wants to do a bit of a role-play event with the corp and his "friends" outside the corp. Hoping to further my goals, I play along. Unfortunately, this is where things start to go wrong. After dropping the ball and referring to him as "Admiral Nexus", I had to make up a story about how I knew the name of his former character. After that, I found out that this guy was really bad at roleplaying. I mean REALLY bad at roleplay. He kept bouncing between different chat channels and unless you were monitoring a half-dozen different chats, the whole event came off as an incoherent mess based loosely on Halo, Homeworld 2, and a few other things.

Eventually it becomes apparent that Subach's just aggravating everyone with his farce of a roleplay session, so I hop on the Teamspeak server and get Traveler Luiz on the line. It turns out we were both kinda peeved at the whole thing. Don't ask me how it came up in conversation, but at some point I asked Luiz if I could just kill Subach instead of taking the starbase back. (Footnote, people in the same corporation are allowed to freely engage in PVP anywhere with absolutely no conditions. This is an often used mechanic that allows for assassinations to take place. Also, props to CCP for making assassins a meaningful character style. A lot of MMOs just leave the "assassin" character as nothing more than a modified warrior character with a sneak and range stat bonus.) Luiz gives the go-ahead for me to assassinate Subach instead of repossessing the lost assets. Before I do though, we have Zeek apply to join Subach's corporation on an alt, just in case we decide on some after-action work. At this point my heart's racing a mile a minute. While I had the element of surprise, my opponent had a better equipped and better leveled character. Furthermore I was going solo because Zeek forgot he would need to bring weapons if he hopes to help assassinate someone. (Originally he was going to help, then he just forgot weapons.)

So, sense the roleplay event is still going on, there's about six or seven of us there doing stuff so I've still got a chance to line up the shot. I maneuver to an optimal range, turn on all the buffs I'm going to need and start shooting. Much to his credit, Subach stayed in character thought the fight. I can still remember him yelling "Burn the heretic!" and "Help me kill him you fools!". Now, the part that makes this story worth telling happens right about here. Remember how I said there were six or seven guys there? Yeah, well everyone except Subach, Zeek, and myself were AFK, so nobody acutally helped him out when he called for it. Naturally, Subach thought that everyone was in on the assassination attempt, but more on that later. We trade blows for a while, the fight is pretty evenly matched. For a couple minutes we just chase each other around this derelict monument. Neither one of us really was able to get an edge. Eventually I started to get low on health and abandoned field, intending to return. Subach takes the opportunity to kick me from the corporation and its public chat channel. After that he rage-quits for the night.

Now, it's at this point that most people would have given up and called the entire thing a failure. Some might have said, "Well, Zeek still has his cover in tact. Maybe they could just take a second try with him. It's unlikely that he'll get the roles he needs to steal the tower though, with this being so recent." We weren't most people though. Subach made one critical error when he kicked me out of the public channel. He only gave me a five minute ban. Once that was over, Kako Zeek, and myself entered the chat. Once we were there we told the truth about what just happened. We told the whole truth to anyone who asked. We didn't embellish anything and provided chat logs to back up our stories when asked. Now, I know this seems like a strange move, but bear with me. Reality is stranger than fiction after all. Once we're done telling the guys in Subach's new corporation everything about our history with the guy, the starbase, the default on the loan, and the foiled assassination attempt, something wonderful happened. They thanked us for it. As it turned out, the rank-and-file members of Subach's new group were having the same problems with him that we had not too long ago. Not only did they thank us, but they left Subach's corporation, started their own, and joined our alliance.

That brings us to the end of the first chapter. It was a slow start and a long read I know, but it all gets better from here. Like I said at the start, I might make this a series depending on how people respond to this. Thanks again to those of you who took the time to read this whole thing.