Persephone Astrid's YarrJournal

Most people have an internal set of principles that they live by. Whether these rules are well thought-out and clearly articulated or simply a set of loose guidelines that are applied situationally, they are always there in the background, guiding their actions.

Persephone lives by the philosophy of the fifteen Ps: Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor pirate performance, protects Persephone’s pod, provides plunder, and pays for PLEXes.

This seemingly-silly alliterative phrase contains the foundation of her approach to the business of piracy. In order to profit, ISK received has to exceed ISK expended. Recklessness wastes hulls, fittings, ammunition, implants, clone upgrades, and most importantly, time. Economists have a term for the cost of time: opportunity cost. Simply put, it means that while you do one thing, you cannot also do another, so when you choose to to one thing, you are losing the other. In this case, time spent being blown up in an ambush is time not spent out hunting for prey and making money, time fitting new ships to replace the ones discarded foolishly is time not spent out hunting for prey and making money, time moving more hulls and modules and ammunition from the market to lowsec is time not spent out hunting for prey and making money, and so on.

Admittedly, adherence to this philosophy makes Persephone seem like something of a boring stick in the mud when she’s on the prowl. She’s unwilling to take reckless risks or to engage in random PvP fights for their own sake. To Persephone, a thrilling fight is one in which everything goes as planned and results in a ransom payment or a cargo hold full of loot. Defeating other pilots in spaceship battles is a means to an end, not the end itself. In other words, she shoots at spaceships to prove a point about the viability of piracy, not to prove she is the greater spaceship fighter.

Most guides to piracy instruct the would-be pirate to maintain some kind of money-making alt: a mission runner, researcher, market PvPer, macro miner, or the like. They say this is because it is impossible to make a living solely as a pirate, that ISK lost will always exceed ISK earned.

Persephone derives immense satisfaction from the knowledge that every day she’s out there proving this conventional wisdom to be dead wrong.

—————

What principles guide your actions? Do you have a motto, or code of ethics, or (if you’re Caldari, I suppose) a Mission Statement, or even a loose set of guidelines? I’d like to know. How and why do you do the things that you do?

Persephone used this:

—————
(killmail here)

From the hydrostatic capsule fitted inside her Tristan Pew Pew Pew!, Persephone Astrid radioed ahead to her dock crew in Evati once more.

“Chief, get the fire suppression team ready,” she asked. “I’m coming in on fire. And once you put the fire out, paint a Punisher on the armor plating, please.”

“Roger that, Boss,” replied the chief, springing from his grimy office chair. He’d have to scramble the fire crew in haste.

“Oh, and get my Drake ready for a hot swap,” Persephone added as an afterthought. “I think I see something interesting out here.”

Persephone wouldn’t be able to unplug from her interface and relax just yet– a Dominix on directional scan had aroused her curiosity and she wanted a closer look. She fought to calm her nerves–the fight with the Punisher had been harrowingly close–and get back to work.

15 minutes later:

“Chief, did you get the Tristan put out?” Persephone asked from the same capsule, this time anchored on the bridge of her Drake, cheekily named Lady Shaniqua’s Enyo.

“Yes Ma’am,” the chief replied using his headset. His crew were still working on the battered frigate, cutting away the remains of the all-but-destroyed armor plating and spraying hot spots with coolant. Wrecked internal structure, charred and blackened, lurked in the gaping holes beneath the twisted armor. “It’s a mess, though, she needs a lot of work.”

“Do whatever it takes,” Persephone ordered. “Pew Pew Pew! is special to me. And tell the paint crew to report to the battlecruiser bay instead. They’ll be adding a Dominix silhouette tonight.”

“Aye aye Boss,” replied the chief. “And congratulations.”

“Cheers,” Persephone replied. “Docking now. Out.”

—————

(Tristan vs. Punisher in Frerstorn, followed by Drake vs. Dominix in Evati.)

As was her habit, Persephone Astrid drifted slowly through the Evati solar system in her Helios covops frigate. She enjoyed lurking in space while cloaked, making periodic checks of space via directional scanner and scanner probes. She liked the feeling of being an unseen predator, and the insights she gained into the comings and goings of traffic often proved valuable. It also gave her ample opportunity to think in the privacy of her capsule. This evening, her thoughts were on recruiting. As one of the recruiters for The Bastards, she helped to bring talented pirates to the corporation, and even more importantly, prevented flakes and dramatic narcissists from infecting the group.

Persephone kept tabs on who entered and left the star system via the data feed from the stargates, and she saw that Warezmy Carr had just entered the system. Persephone remembered him well. He’d been a recent recruit candidate to The Bastards, but for a number of reasons he had not been considered closely. Instead of returning to wherever it was he had come from after the nascent relationship was severed, though, he’d set up shop in the local constellation and had become something of a fixture in the local population of capsule pilots.

Why does he hang around? Persephone wondered. Maybe he’s doing that monk thing where an aspirant sleeps on the front doorstep of the master until the master takes him in and trains him. Meh.

A new contact from one of her combat scanner probes got her attention– a Loki strategic cruiser had been detected.

Oh please let that be Warezmy, she thought. Acting quickly, Persephone redeployed the other probes into the formation of a tetrahedron around the initial contact to triangulate the position of the half-billion ISK ship. After another scan to finely tune the position of the fix, she had the location down to the meter. Persephone recovered the probes and warped her frigate–still cloaked invisibly–to a landing within a few kilometers of the Loki’s location.

“Hey guys,” Persephone called out on the all-hands channel as her ship crossed the system. “I’ve got a warpable hit on a Loki, checking it out cloaked now. What have we got available?”

“Do we have the firepower to take down a Loki?” asked Naughty Spawn from his hangar.

Persephone chuckled and grinned.

“We dragged down a Loki with four frigates and a destroyer,” Persephone said, remembering a memorable encounter she’d commanded. “They’re not so bad.”

“I’ll stand by in a Vagabond,” Naughty Spawn replied with enthusiasm. In the background, the scramble klaxon was already blaring the call to arms.

“I’ll bring something,” added Raelyf, a Senior Bastard, employing his usual understated confidence. Persephone trusted that something probably meant something horribly devastating. “Let us know when you’re ready,” Raelyf continued.

“Emerging from warp in a moment,” Persephone said as her ship slowed from warp drive and re-emerged into regular space. Before her in space hung the Loki, an angular marvel of ultra-modern engineering, the secrets to its construction pried from the clutching hands of the mysterious Sleepers who inhabited wormhole space. The ship represented the pinnacle of Minmatar starship engineering. Resources had been culled from a hundred star systems and fetched from countless bloody wormhole expeditions into uncharted space to harvest the ultra-rare technology needed to produce it. Armies of researchers had pored over the ancient datacores to reverse-engineer the forgotten techniques which transmogrified ordinary ore into a starship whose peer had not been seen in this region for untold thousands of years.

Of course they had to attack it.

“Confirming the pilot’s Warezmy Carr. He’s totally sitting stationary in a safe spot in a Loki.” Even though as a capsule pilot Persephone was technically immortal, the one thing she despised was having her time wasted, as Warezmy had done when he’d half-heartedly applied to join The Bastards, then applied to a half-dozen other pirate corporations, then changed his mind about the whole mess and simply incorporated his own company.

“We’ve got to get this guy. I’m sitting ten kay-em from the Loki,” Persephone said, running through the combat checklist. Ordinarily a covert-ops frigate would not engage in direct combat, but Persephone was a pirate, and pirates were required to do the unexpected as part of their job. “Undock and warp to Persephone.”

“On my way,” replied Raelyf and Naughty Spawn as one. Raelyf’s ship–another Loki of his own–was the first to arrive, gliding into position twenty kilometers from the target.

“Got point,” Raelyf called out as his ship’s warp disruptor prevented Warezmy from immediately escaping. In the next moment the two tech-three ships were exchanging withering salvoes of autocannon fire and their light drones swarmed around each other both like angry insects, adding their own gunfire to the fracas.

Certain that Warezmy’s attention was fixed on Raelyf’s Loki, Persephone dropped her ship’s cloak and targeted the Loki, adding her own warp disruptor to Raelyf’s. Her frigate’s sole weapon, a Hobgoblin II drone, joined the swarm around their victim, taking potshots at the cruiser. It didn’t do much damage, but every little bit helped.

Warezmy angled his Loki away from Raelyf’s and activated the microwarpdrive, hoping to fly beyond the range of Raelyf’s warp disruptor and so make his escape.

“I’ve lost point,” Raelyf called out, as the sudden change of direction and burst of speed had carried the ship beyond his reach. He heeled his ship through a hard turn, setting in a pursuit course. Nearby, Naughty Spawn’s Vagabond heavy assault cruiser joined the fray and joined the chase.

“Not a problem,” Persephone replied. “I have point. It’s passively targeted so he probably doesn’t even know I’m doing it.”

“That’s pretty damn sneaky,” Raelyf laughed as he pursued Warezmy, autocannon tracer rounds leading the way. Naughty Spawn’s Vagabond, the fastest ship in the dogfight, quickly caught up and then easily overtook the target. Bright orange blooms spread across the Loki’s hull where Naughty Spawn’s autocannon raked it with explosive ammunition, shredding the armor.

“I’ve got point too,” Naughty Spawn added. “He’s going down fast.” The strategic cruiser now trailed fire in its wake and was clearly doomed.

“Cease fire,” Persephone ordered. “Let’s get a ransom.”

Naughty Spawn’s 220 mm autocannon cycled one last time before the chambers emptied, and the Loki exploded in a half-billion ISK fireball.

“Oh,” Naughty said sheepishly. “Oh damn.”

“Eh. It happens,” Persephone said dismissively, making the spoken equivalent of a shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get the loot and get out of here.” The ship had been precariously close to exploding when she’d made the order, she realized. I guess I should have said something sooner, she thought, making a mental note to do better the next time.

“Good job guys,” she said. “Let’s go celebrate.”

“Hey, wasn’t this guy a recruit?” Raelyf asked as he pointed his ship towards home.

“Yeah, we didn’t like him.” Persephone replied.

“Fair enough.”

(Bastards killboard link)

On Tuesday The Bastards went out looking for trouble. During a quiet moment, I snagged this photo:

(Click for 1680×1050 glory)

I’m more of a frigate gal myself, but there is a certain beauty to a fleet of Hurricanes and Drakes moving in unison.