Dramatis Personae: RPS Holdings (Gesadt, Nimloth Valinor, Captain Beardface, Zekk Pacus, Mezgorod, Stoffl, M Piquet, TehMuffinMan, ry ry, Alim Thek, Eben Rochelle, Duckslayer, Han Chang), Huzzah Federation (Eaglecrys, Sashenka, Tiberius Funk, ihisly, rhialto, Laurea, Soraji, Meshfori) Gunshi Kuroi Doragon (Sprinkles, Bashius), Mustache Twirling Space Cads (Jim DiGriz), Solar Revenue Service (April7, Renegade, Tin Tong, Keanez)
PROLOGUE
Drunkfleet is something I used to do semi-regularly with Huzzah - to be honest it's really no different from any other long roam, it's just that we call it drunkfleet and expect everyone to get drunk, rather than wondering why, an hour into the roam, everyone has to safe up at a planet for their third pee in four jumps. You're forewarned when the fleet is called Drunkfleet.
PART 1
I'd set the form up time ridiculously early because I wanted people to start thinking about being available earlier than usual; I knew for a fact we wouldn't have a gang ready for 7.30pm on a Friday night, but at least they would be getting ready to get ready. So bang on time, 8pm, we were good to go. And lo! it was with a glad heart and a full beer that we set off on our quest to rid EVE of stupid by getting pished up and entering consensual PvP. Our destination: Pure Blind, then Tribute, or an early fiery death.
The first part of the night was a bit, well, boring. No kills, barely even a target between 2X- and our first pit stop in A-S, but that wasn't the problem. Boring I could have dealt with.
We knew through channels that the typical Rooks & Kings 20-man T3/logistics gang (with cyno-bridge backup) was floating about, and we were fully intending on staying the fuck away, but they managed to flush out a Soldiers of Thunderstorm sniping-gang that was death incarnate to our frigate blob. As we tried to probe out some NPCers in QXW SoT came in, closely followed by R&K. We got our first kill of the night - an Imicus - and then we hid, to give them some space to go at it. They were both on our direct route for the roam, but in our ships we, theoretically, could just have ran right through them and then detoured past for the win.
Our next port of call was XZH, one of the most lucrative NPCing systems in all EVE. As we burst through the system's belts, looking for a tasty ratter, intel came of a Controlled Chaos fleet entering 9-4, the system next door. 100 of them. Shitting myself, I quickly ordered a fast retreat. Manoeuvring around 2 cruiser heavy fleets we could manage, but this was ridiculous. We burned back to A-S for a quick break and I had a good hard think about where to go next.
INTERLUDE: SOME MUSIC PLAYS
PART 2
So then I thought, "Sod it, we can make Pure Blind". Yeah, so the SoT gang was still in the vicinity, yeah so the Controlled Chaos gang was still there too. Intel filtered in to say R&K had pulled out after suffering a beating at the hands of Soldiers of Thunderstorm, but we soldiered on. Our excellent scout squad, already depleted after the loss of Duckslayer (poor Duck) got eyes on the Controlled Chaos as they faced off against SoT on different sides of the same stargate. We burned past them, losing another scout, Eben, in the process, and ran through another couple of intervening systems before brutally violating an unsuspecting Myrmidon pilot who obviously wasn't watching his intel channels.
While we finished him off our local began to rise dramatically. It was the CC enormo-gang. We couldn't jump through as we had aggression timers so I made the call to warp off and then back in, jump through and run another couple of systems down. Amazingly we managed get out without losing any more ships. Things calmed down a little after this and we caught our breaths and moved back towards our ultimate destination. The next hurdle was always going to be P-2, a busy outpost system. Our scouts, once again moving ahead of us, spotted some battlecruisers on the in-gate to P-2, which turned out to be... Controlled Chaos. They'd used a jump bridge network to get ahead of us, which Soraji found out by jumping into them and then exploding. Abandoning all hope, we again found a side route and ran, we ran as only frigate pilots with a great big gang o'doom chasing us can run. And then we stopped, reapproached the gate and killed a Taranis. This proved to be something of a bad call, however, as the main body of their fleet moved a lot fast than I had anticipated and caught up with us, taking out Jim DiGriz, Renegade, TehMuffinMan and Alim.
We got away, again, and docked up in ROIR. Phew. That was close.
INTERLUDE 2: INTERLUDE HARDER
PART THE THIRD
Things soon began to brighten up. From ROIR we moved to 5ZXX whereupon the locals undocked seven battleships and a carrier to chase us of. This is, historically, how every corp who has ever lived in this system has always reacted to intruders. Like a little prickly hedgehog making itself look big to scare away maruading foxes. And, like a space fox, we took our spaceships and flew away.
In EC-P8R we didn't find any hedgehogs, but we did find kills. Lots of them. In a spectacular display of sheer, unadulterated fail, two covert ops ships managed to decloak each other, and die while two other stealth bombers managed to do no damage to us and die. Much drinking and celebrating did commence.
Since high-sec space was next door several pilots took the opportunity to leave the fleet and go home. Do not consider these people cowards, for they have lived to run away another day. We, The Few, The Strong, The Incredibly Masculine And Brave moved on regardless. The fleet was depleted, but not dead.
Moving back through Pure Blind and towards Tribute, heavily infested Morsus Mihi space, we heard a strange croaking on comms. It was Zekk, our scout, reporting something that hadn't been seen in EVE since at least 2007. An unscouted, ratting Raven. It was with tears of joy in my eyes that I called to kill that silly fucker in the face. When would we next see something so rare and special? It was a wonderful moment, and I gave the order for all fleet members to quickly interfere with their bikini regions.
Morsus Mihi space would prove to be rich with idiots, it seemed, and idiots who did not share intel about us, as we quickly cooked and ate an Ishtar a few jumps later. I had planned our next break to be in H-W (mistaking it for H-P which was only 15 more jumps away, rather than two) and as we burned, Sashenka told us he had managed to tackle a Helios pilot. We quickly turned back and I ordered Sash to stop shooting so that we could all whore the killmail, like the proper gentlemen were were. We also killed a Prophecy and then, in a moment of sheer magic, we saw and destroyed a second ratting Raven. Two in one night? It was like finally seeing your mating pair of Giant Pandas screw all night long and then shooting them in the head with a high powered rifle.
Things went a bit hairy at this point, as a Morsus gang arrived and killed Zekk and Meshfori. We ran away again and then, in a moment of classy FCing, went to a safe spot so that I could pee.
INTERLUDE 3: INTERLUDE WITH A RETRIBUTION (cos they're better than the Vengeance)
PART THE FINAL
Things began to wind down as we got drunker. Our last kill of the night came when a Helios jumped into us and then complained that it was his first flight in the ship and we shouldn't kill him. Lrn2cloak fule.
We eventually reached Empire some jumps later, having killed our final scout - Sashenka's alt - in a hilarious Broadsword related incident.
EPILOGUE
And they all lived happily ever after...
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