Roaming Placid, Cloud Ring and Black Rise

Scalding Pass and Curse are very quiet in the AU TZ. So I've been hanging out in FW space around Placid and Essence. The rebalanced Navy BCs are proving to be a joy to fly. Me and Diz had a great brawl Vs Pandemic Horde with double Navy Canes. They had some more random DPS and a Falcon who was a massive pain. We bailed once Diz ran out of cap charges (he got 3 reloads off on the XLASB) and a suspicous looking PL Prophecy showed up at a pounce. Very fun engagement (I was being a special snowflake flying a dual rep MJD Fleet Cane).

Cruising into Blackrise we start playing with a 6000 m/s Garmur near a gate. One thing leads to another and the FW guys steadily pile up. I manage to snag a Slicer, take sentries and MJD to freedom in structure. Diz almost gets out but get snagged and popped.

Diz heads for a reship as I flee the FW Garmurs. But they give up after I MJD away the second time. I love that module. Then I attract the attention of a linked Orthrus....le sigh. Even with my own links the Fleet Cane can't match the speed of Mr Orthrus. I sing out on comms and Diz reships his alt and heads back. I act coy on station before warping to a gate. The Orthrus follows, I engage and get grabbed with a 21KM scram, Diz jumps in and the Orthrus gets a Navy Vexor to the face. After scooping the loot I get ready to jump out and a Curse shows up on field. Quick hop through the gate to check for backup...nothing...ok then. I jump back in, burn for the Curse and manage to land a scram before getting capped out. Heat the injector and micro that scram. Diz jumps back in and we secure another kill. Dude was going full tilt I think.

Down time rolls around and I find a Cruisers Crew gate camp in Osti on the Stacmon gate. I fucking hate these guys, shit talking big mouthed cowards just like Dead Terrorists. Ahem, sorry got sidetracked there. Their camp had two Svipuls, Vexor, Rail Talos (lol) and Exeq. A quick combat probe lands me on the Exeq. 5 min countdown to DT starts, Svipuls and Vexor only have long points + webs so I align, MJD towards the Talos....but he warps :(  I pull my drones in and warp as DT hits.


Next day we head out again with three extra fleet mates. Dave is coming through highsec in a Drake. So we do a quick run up to W-4 and gank a Procurer before swining back into lowsec to pick up Dave. In Vlillirererererererere (spelling?) we find an Exodus Brutix Navy and start a game of gate ping pong. Orthrus shows up and starts kiting....then gets scrammed and killed. Barghest jumps in and burns away. Navy Brutix shows up on gate again and redboxes. We light him up, more shit piles in and I go down. RHML Barghest hits like a fucking truck! Everyone else extracts without issue. I reship into a Confessor and we head back to W-4. On the way we drop a Exodus Malediction, I get the feeling its not an approved Exodus fit since it only has 4 speed mods instead of the usual 5.

W-4 yields no kills and a fair bit of posturing on station. Onto BNI staging in Kehjari...nada. Shadow Fleet rolls by but its out of our league. Aivonen is showing 45 kills in the past 3 hours on Dotlan. On the way we play another round of gate ping pong with a pair of vanilla canes. One dies, we lose Allo and the other MJDs to freedom.

We reach Aivonen, Brawl calls point on a Brutix Navy in a large plex. We all pile in and shit goes south rapidly. Brawl and Dave go down, Diz manages to warp out leaving me alone on the field. Only problem is I've got a Keres glued to my ass long pointing + damping me. My 10MN AB Confessor can do 3041 m/s in speed mode with links. But the Keres is pulling an easy 4000m/s and damping me down to 30KM lock range. All his buddies are in hot pursuit so I heat the AB to try and pull some range. Still can't shoot anything. Ummmmmm ok, lets try and break the grid. The chase continues, I burn all my SAAR charges before pulling range and getting off a SAAR reload. Their dps pulls in close again, I get dropped into about 30% structure before managin to claw back some armor. At this point my SAAR charges are depleted and juggling cap between trying to get reps and taking shots at frigs in range. A beam Slicer starts laying some serious hurt on me. I start doing small course adjustments to try and mitigate dps (also doing my best not to shed to much speed). The Slicer drops back, a Tristan takes his place, I start trying to pop drones...suddenly the Keres point drops and I warp out. 1200KM burn!. I breakdown and start screaming about "mother effing Keres pilots" on TS. Gotta bleed of that tension lol, I did manage to kill a single Slasher.

Those are some toasty midslots!

I know thats a pretty big wall of text just to describe an escape. But it was one of those rare moments where I actually made good piloting choices instead of freaking out. Also the amount of overheating the T3 dessies can handle is amazing!

Of course, good piloting is always followed by dying in a really dumb fashion.
Diz arrives on field just as I pop. He then proceded to kill all of them lol.
Defo buying a Navy Harb soon :)