Chocolate Heaven

The Misadventures of a Minmatart

Author Archives: Adri

Festive Fun?

10th Dec YC112

I wanted to do something like this last year, but there was little time for me to organise it.

Over the holidays I usually visit my folks in the land of no Internets for a week or more. I also go to see friends I haven’t seen for a year, and generally have a really nice, if technologically-limited time. I seem to recall last year spending some of that time clinging to my Interweb friends and gaming with the use of free (albeit terrible) puzzle games in social networking platforms. Desperation is a funny thing.

Anyway, this is besides the point.

I’m going to do one of those brilliantly popular seasonal competitions where you can win yourself some swag.

What You Have to Do

Make something! Something to do with Eve. Or alternatively, anything about Eve with a festive twist. Something submitted just about Eve can get you a maximum of 30 points, whereas something submitted that is about both Eve and something vaguely festive can get you a maximum of 100 points. More points mean bigger prizes!

An example:

  • A really stunning screenshot from the game might net you 20 points, but one that shows a formation of jet cans in a snowflake shape immediately opens up the possibility of getting more.

It doesn’t just have to be limited to screenshots and videos though. Bake a cake. Build something from Lego. Be adventurous! 😀

As a side-note, you don’t have to celebrate any particular religious thingy to take part in this. I myself am an atheist, and I love the Xmas period! 🙂

What You Can Win

Unlike some people that run competitions, I am quite strapped for RL cash currently, so I cannot subsidise such things as EON subscriptions or store vouchers and the like. I can offer up a shed load of ships though!

  • 50 Wolves
  • 20 Huginns
  • 10 Claymores
  • 80 Cheetahs
  • 20 Rapiers
  • 15 Muninns
  • 75 Claws
  • 90 Stilettos
  • 20 Scimitars
  • 70 Hounds
  • 10 Mastodons
  • 20 Prowlers

As well as a few billion isk for good measure, and a selection of t2 modules.

There’s no grand prize so-to-speak, because I want everyone that enters to win something.

The Rules

Now you know what to do and what you could win, you need to know the important stuff on submitting your creations.

  • The contest is open the moment this post is published
  • The contest ends 4th January 2011
  • Judges’ decision is final regarding points and prizes
  • Entries should be in some online-viewable format and viewable at the time of judging. If I can’t see the entry, I can’t award any points; sorry 🙁
  • Entries should have the words “I’m a Minmatart!” scrawled on there somewhere
    • A clear watermark in a screenshot
    • Scribbled on a piece of paper within the frame of a photo of your creation
    • In the description if its uploaded somewhere that allows such things
  • There’s a limit of one entry per character. I’d do per person, but there’s no way I can enforce it.
  • Links to entries should be evemailed to Adrielle Firewalker. Only mails sent to this character will be accepted.

Extra Stuff

If you want to donate some more prizes to the pot, please let me know by way of a comment here, or evemail.

If you’re insane and you want to help judge anyway… Probably not going to happen unless you donate something substantial or I’ve known you for a while. There needs to be some common ground anyway.

If you have any questions, leave a comment! 🙂

That’s a lot of ‘if’s right there!

Eve retrospective: Jovian go boom (part 2)

19th Sep YC112

So a Jovian walks into a bar…

And explodes!

A quick tl;dr recap, since its been a while: A Jovian named Misu Baniya was mucking about and ended up exploding himself all over the galaxy into pilots’ hangars.

Thanks to the Jove being gigantic veiny-headed science nerds, they determined that unlike his nursery rhyme compadre, Humpty Dumpty, all the king’s spaceships and all the king’s spud-faced mutants could put him back together again. Thus began the great body part harvest by representatives of the four races. Each were eager to earn favour from said spud-faced nerds, hoping for riches, technology and glory for their empire. Rawr!

And so we begin (or should that be continue?)…

Rounding up of parts began in earnest. Some beginning before there was any kind of announcement to do with Baniya’s reconstruction. For a while, collecting the parts was a simple task. A lot of pilots were young and naïve in those days and readily gave up their parts… Until they realised the parts may have value, of course.

Then began the brokering. Parts were exchanged for isk, for ships and modules, for promises of shares in whatever reward was forthcoming, and even for other body parts.

Since each represented faction was to collect a different body part, it made no sense to hold on to a Cerebral Slice if you were Minmatar and your Gallente buddies had some Bone Splinters just taking up space on the mantelpiece. So trades were not uncommon, though naturally for New Eden, each party would attempt to broker a better deal for themselves.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you would find old rivalries cropping up. For example, the Caldari – who were by far and away the most organised in this effort – which subsequently secured their victory – would purposefully horde Cerebral Slices (Gallente), unless they could trade for Liver Bile (Caldari) at a ratio greatly in their favour.

Omir Sarikusa

Omir Sarikusa: Do not piss in his cheerios!

And then there were the Blood Raiders, who also managed to secure a large collection of body parts – with particular focus Blood Drops, which makes sense really. Subsequently – for a time – The Bleak Lands were beset by capsuleers, descending upon the cultists like a nest of angry hornets. This lasted for a while until their beloved leader, Omir Sarikusa, proclaimed that the Blood Raiders had completed their collection. Whether this, or the overwhelming influx of capsuleers was the reason for their stopping we shall unlikely ever know.

Intergalactic body part amnesty day

Initially, the Empires were buying back the body parts through the open market. This soon took a downward turn as those ‘trusty’ scammers got in on the act and started to cause their usual hullabaloo.

An alternative was quickly instated. A particular day was set aside where all ‘batches’ of parts could be returned to a commissioner from your race. These were NPCs played by the then-active AURORA division of ISD (live events team, basically), and you could trade the parts with them throughout the day. As an incentive, 20mil isk was handed out for each complete batch.

An extra reward was implied from the start for those that donated full batches, but no word on what the reward was was forthcoming, only that the overall ‘winner’ of the collection would gain great favour from the Jove.

The batch-prize was BPCs of a prototype cloaking device, something that until that point was not available in-game. The more batches donated, the more runs you would have on your BPC/s. Each of the cloaking devices initially sold for 120-150mil, and stabilised at 100mil after a day or two. This was however, a massive amount of isk in the days before faction/officer mods and lvl4 missions.

What happened to the other collectors’ stash I have no idea, but personally I made a lot of donators very happily invisible.

Adrielle Firewalker > Commissioner, I do not wish for money.
Commissioner Yonel Saktar > Your nobility astounds me, Sister Adrielle.
* Commissioner Yonel Saktar bows deeply. *
* Adrielle Firewalker bows *
Adrielle Firewalker > It is an honour to serve our people.

Aww, all better

Upon revival, Baniya began his visits anew, but in addition to visiting heads of state, he visited heads of capsuleer alliances, much to the frustration and annoyance of the official government bodies:

If they’re trying to make a point, I don’t know what it is. Sure, since the ISD came about the eggers have spread all over the place, but putting those ‘societies’ of theirs up there in lawless space on the same pedestal as us? If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Jovians were deliberately trying to undermine the rich history and traditions of our civilizations. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that’s not what they’re trying to do. – anonymous Federation statesman

According to public records, Baniya visited the following deep-space alliances:

All of these entities were added to the Jovian Register of Sovereign Nation-states, to the further annoyance of politicians from the four CONCORD-sanctioned nation-states.

There is no society, no populace to speak of, no national customs, no real history, no common origin, no language. How, then, can these alliances be thought of as nations? What possible permutation of the definition can give rise to an initiative such as this? – Federation Senator Traude Bonailles

I guess some people are never happy…

Resources

Eve retrospective: Jovian go boom (part 1)

21st May YC112

In May of YC106 (2004), Misu Baniya – a Jovian diplomat – was on a tour; an anniversary visit celebrating the introduction of pod-and-clone technology to empires other than the Jove. He attempted to meet with the heads of state for all four empires within a day.

Speculation was rife as to how he would achieve this in a single day, with the rumour mill assuming some kind of advanced ‘jump drive’ device (when at the time there were no jump drive in Eve at all).

Jovian go boom!

When it came to the day in question, something went horribly wrong (as it so often does!) and Baniya got exploded into hundreds of thousands of pieces across the galaxy. Conveniently (?) these parts ended up ‘transported’ into pop pilots’ hangers, one per person.

There were five different parts – Bone Splinter, Blood Drop, Epidermis Sliver, Liver Bile, and Cerebral Slice. Additionally there were Complex Fullerenes, which were part of Baniya’s ship. These things (body parts inclusive) can still be found on contract for sometimes-extortionate prices, but to this day nobody knows what purpose the fullerene shards hold, if any. All of the parts were randomly spread across the galaxy, as one would expect.

Complex Fullerene Shard

Black-market trading of these parts began in earnest using the escrow system (a precursor to the contracts system we all use today), with many capsuleers assuming the body parts to be of some use in the future. The fullerenes in particular were of interest, due to being ship technology.

The fullerene casing of his vessel proved problematic in the cloning process, and the ambassador’s clone died shortly after being activated.

An alternative plan to ‘resurrect’ Baniya was drawn up by the Jovian Directorate, who made contact with the heads of state of the empires, and tasked each to gather the body parts. The idea being that with enough collected, the Jovians – with their vastly superior technology – would re-assemble Baniya from the collected parts. Kinda gross.

Each race had to collect a different piece, and hand them in in bulk lots of set amounts based on how common they were. The trouble was, each part had been ‘exploded’ across all the empires, so trading of tiny pieces of the diplomat was inevitable, and representatives of the capsuleer community from each race slowly began to form up and help coordinate.

The collection efforts, results and subsequent rewards will be covered in part 2.

Resources

Eve retrospective: Is Quafe a monopoly?

15th Apr YC112

To most the answer would probably be ‘yes’, but its not so clear-cut as that.

Its safe to say that Quafe has a strong grip on the soft drinks market. It is, after all the only soft drinks manufacturer to extend its reach beyond the plebeians planet-side. But the fact of the matter is that for a long time there was a capsuleer-founded alternative created by the Caldari.

Enter Starsi

Starsi - It tastes like revenge, apparently

"It tastes like revenge" may not be the best marketing. How does revenge taste anyway? Clearly limiting itself to the Caldari market with this one methinks.

Starsi is obviously harking back to the earlier days of the old Caladari-Gallente war (as opposed to the new one), and those that created the product were loyalists to the Caldari cause, wanting to see the State return to its former glory.

Whether or not Quafe felt the squeeze of this new upstart brand to rival its own, is impossible to know without insider information, but several capsuleers would champion the benefits of one over the other.

Shintoko Akahoshi > IforonewouldhavetoagreewithSarkosQuafe’POWER’isafine
finedrinkIdrinkitallthetimeIfindthatitreallyhelpswithmyreactiontimeswhen
pilotingmyshipaswellasimprovingmyshorttermmemoryallinallIfindabout
sixcansofitmakesagoodcombinationwithaninhalerfullofvassopressintheonly
sideeffectIcoulddowithoutisaslightshakinginmyhandsaswellasallthesegiant
furrybatsthatarecirclingmyheadalwayscirclingcirclingcirclingohGodthebats
thebatsgetthemoffameohmyGodtherecomingouttathewalls

I’m not entirely sure if this is a good or bad point for Quafe…

But when the question was raised about the Quafe company’s extensive buy orders for garbage, Voogru (who some my know from his guardianship of one of the very few Opux Luxury Yachts) stood up in their defence:

Quafe buys garbage and does the following with them:

– Plastic is recycled and used to create Quafe bottles.
– Paper is recycled and used to create labels.
– Metal scraps are recycled and used to create shuttles.
– Wood is used to create shipping crates.

Crazily addictive, and possibly made from reprocessed garbage. Lovely. One can see why such claims came about though. Following from the accusations levied at Quafe by Sukuuvestaa regarding the ‘industrial espionage’ of SuVee’s new Protein Delicacies line of foods – which were found to contain sewage and biomass – Caldari loyalists were eager to counter these claims (whether they were true or not).

But that’s not all

With the options being limited to what essentially could be drinking liquified garbage or drinking revenge, many other drinks began to be released to small fanfare. In spite of the potential appeal of ‘revenge’ from the Matari angle, new drinks from Republic space cropped up. Typically these were alcoholic – the hard-drinking badasses that we are *cough*.

  • PodBeer – a lager drink created by Freya Jones, who was at the time with Gradient, but later went on to be CEO of Wasteland Miners.
  • PodJuice – a very strong liquor, also by Freya Jones
  • Jug’ta ale – a dark ale created by the Nomads corporation. This came in two varieties: regular and the extremely rare ‘golden cask’
  • Amamake Suicide Dash – A cocktail devised by Caellach Marellus
  • Nakugard Ice-vodka – A cocktail devised by Evanda Char
  • Rimpon juice – a non-alcoholic mixer created by Matariki Rain and developed further by Ciarente Roth

As well as some from outside the Republic:

  • Samuel Rackham – Premium Caldari ale created by Kaleigh Doyle when she was heading up The Glamour Syndicate
  • Aqueus – Fruit flavoured water, also created by The Glamour Syndicate

There are most likely many more drinks created by capsuleers over the years. Do you know of any others? Perhaps a favourite cocktail?

So is Quafe a monopoly? It undoubtedly has a massive stranglehold on its chosen market, but it has never really interfered with the launch of competitors or made any attempts to rebuke claims of poisoning its own consumers or the questioning of the product’s content. Indeed, the Quafe company has never really engaged in any anti-competitive behaviour at all, it just happens that those that drink the stuff appear to be hopelessly addicted, and subsequently buy it by the freighter-load.

Resources

Eve retrospective: The Khumaak (part 2)

26th Feb YC112

This is a follow-on from the first part, From Proposal to Protest which you can find here: http://www.minmatart.com/2010/eve-retrospective-the-khumaak/

Gavel

Image courtesy of Joe Gratz, and can be found on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lambdachialpha/201970644/

Part 2: From Response to Revelation

The silence from Midular’s office in Eram was short lived. The following day a response was issued to the protesters:

The Sebiestor tribe regrets our fellow Minmatars’ lack of restraint in this matter, and wishes to let it be known that it has not, and will not, pander to the wishes of extremists who do not have the Republic’s best political interests at hand.  Today is a time of diplomacy, and relics of a bloody past do nothing to help our relations with the other empires, relations which we have built through the hard work of communication and mutual understanding.

Atbi Enonotur, Chief Coordinator of Public Relations for the Sebiestor

This statement – although sounding fairly standard for any government organisation – was the catalyst for the ‘us against them’ mentality that lead to the separatist movement from the Republic that later formed the People’s Republic of Minmatar.

The so-called ‘extremists’ were outraged at the mere suggestion that they did not have their people’s best interests at heart when they were so recently protesting – peacefully – to keep the very traditions that make them who they are: Matari. To the protesters there was no logical reason to abandon the symbol of their struggles to become free, and the move was seen as pandering to bureaucracy.

Ten days later, after an extended closed session, the Brutor tribe issued its own response, requesting “the Khumaak to be kept on the official list of sanctioned Minmatar state, military and fleet apparel”, along with a list of circumstances where it would not be allowed; such as meetings with Amarr delegates and other sensitive situations that could spark hostility. Sebiestor tribe was quiet on the issue while they reviewed the new proposal fully.

Motion Passed

Four days after the Brutor proposal, on 15th March 106 (2004), the motion was passed, with the changes suggested by the Brutor accepted unanimously amongst the tribal leaders.

Following the motion, one Sebiestor tribe official, Bolwin Amrisar, resigned his position, levying allegations at PM Midular’s respect, or lack thereof for due political process, along with allegations that “she had, prior to the motion, dealt with high-level officials within the Amarr government to secure the release and return of a large number of Minmatar slaves from still-active colonies in return for the Khumaak’s banning at occasions where Amarr emissaries would be present.” The accusations however, were quickly dismissed by the council, stating that such a deal could not have occurred without people knowing of it. This in turn spurred the now-famous quote from the PM herself:

I do what is best for my people, in any way I can.  That is all anyone should need concern themselves with.

Karin Midular, former Prime Minister of the Minmatar Republic

Scandal, or Political Power-play?

Only the hardline ‘extremists’ were outspoken in support of Bolwin Amrisar’s accusations, and as the motion carried forward essentially meant that Khumaaks could be worn to any occasion as long as they were covered in the presence of Amarr officials, it was seen as a peaceable compromise. Peaceable of course until fifteen thousand Matari slaves were released from the Amarr Empire, in an effort to “[promote] peace between our two nations and mending the rift caused by years of violence, our beloved Emperor wishes to extend this gesture of goodwill to the Minmatar Republic.” Rakman Kasha, spokesman for the Imperial Chancellor’s Office

Whether this was the under-the-table arrangement denied by Midular just days beforehand or clever political wrangling by the Amarr Empire to further incite rebellion against the current Republic government has never been discovered, but for many, Midular’s “in any way I can” attitude combined with the accusations that talks of such a deal had taken place was enough to cement their feelings that the current Republic regime was corrupt.

A month after the revelation of Midular’s possible pandering to the Amarr, the People’s Republic of Minmatar officially formed in the Tartatven constellation of Molden Heath.

References