Hey all,
StupidGenius here. I am pleased to announce a new weekly Eve fiction piece by friend of the podcast, Flow Nelg. They have graciously offered to write a segment for the CapStable blog on a regular basis. Without further ado, here is the first installment:
Mining Tales or How I learned to stop worrying and love mining
By
Flow Nelg
It has been years since we broke out of pods and were free to walk around the stations. There were many bumps in the process and Jita burned about a dozen times, but who’s counting. Thus I am sitting in this Caldari …ummm…hmmm. Well it has folks dancing without clothes, games of chance and liquor. The best translation for this place is space church. Since there is much praying on one’s knees for many different reasons. The name that is spelled out in laser light is “Friendship is Fucking Magic”.
In a corner of this place, I sit in a spot that is about as far away from all the retching locals, bad clone jobs and Dust merc’s as I can get. Slowly I sip my ice cold heavy water, while waiting for one of the young miners to get the nerve up to ask me a question. After about ten minutes a fearless soul struts over. I can tell he has been dared by his fellow clones to come over and “poke the badger”. Thus I hear “Hey old man can you tell us about the time in the belt with the stuff?”
Laughing to myself I raise my eye and focus on this 6 monther. After swirling my drink for a moment I grunt and saw there was this time….
The wars have been going on for 3 years and there is no sign of them stopping. Folks had talked about the blue donut but that seems tragically funny at this time. Over 500 trillion isk had been lost in this quest for living space. Things had changed so much that solo mining fleets were as valuable to an alliance as a titan. Long ago mining of ice or ore had been brought under the alliance in the form of the mining pass. The Gods of the New Eden had dreamed up a way to tax the process of mining.
They call it a mining ticket. The amount of ore or ice that goes into ones hold is counted. You can either buy a pass that lets you mine a certain amount or you get a golden ticket from your alliance. This ticket allows you to mine unlimited amount however you can only sell the ore or ice to the alliance at a predetermined rate. Thus the rule of 20 was created for selling at Jita less twenty percent.
With this the age old battle of ratters and miners had ended. There was a gnashing of teeth for it seemed that the ratters had been correct and many of the miners had gotten use to tax free profits. Quickly the battle over protecting miners ended. A new form of mining ship was created by ORE. A new form of capital Exhumers was created. Thus the mining Titians were born. They could mine at the rate of 10 exhumers and could tank as if they were a planet. It was a ship that had no fear but cost 300 billion to make and fit. These became the industrial engines of alliances and all was right with the world. That is until the Dust merc’s gained a new skill….
Swirling my drink again I look into the youth’s eyes. Slowly and with a changed expression on his face he asks in a reverent tone “Were you there when the walls fell?”
Smiling I just nod and order another drink. That is another tale for another day and I hope to see you again.