After Action Reports

“Good gods.”

I stumbled over to the wet bar in my quarters and drew myself a large glass of water, before collapsing on a nearby comfy couch. Already today’s roams were starting to blur together, aiming to join the muddled memories of the other roams this month.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a vague movement, heard a barely audible meow coming from the next room, but I was too tired to rise to the bait, tempting as it was. When the first weeks after The Conference had been rather slow, the previous weeks had dramatically picked up in pace.

It probably started with Redemption Road’s anniversary roam, where the doctrine was “anything armor goes”. And unsurprisingly we had ended up with an amazing kitchen-sink fleet of ships, including two carriers. Two? Three? It was already getting fuzzy. But I’d never forget the recon report “I have a Wyvern 12km off the gate. I think he’s going to crash the gate.” Unfortunately for us, there were more capitals on the other side of the gate. Not that it mattered - we had long lost our own capitals at that point.


A “Newbro roam”, as our intrepid leader called it, aimed at freshly licensed capsuleers. We even had two actual newbros with us on that roam, and not only did they hold up quite well, their enthusiasm was infectious.

A regular Redemption Road roam, which ended into the most epic extraction in my memory: we spent almost more time escorting the few remaining members of our fleet (all logistics, if my memory lie to me again) out of null-sec into the warm embrace of hi-sec, than on the roam itself.

A sight-seeing tour, which ended up me being jumped by a Rupture when I wasn’t paying attention. Ironically, the Rupture had been piloted by the same pilot who had pod-killed me just a few days before.

Another roam which had ended in a welp, and when on our way back home we attacked a local pirate with a fleet consisting mostly of pods and rookie ships, we got accused of “blobbing”.

Today’s Agony public roam. After all these years, it was good to see them trying to be that Agony again with whom I first dipped my toes into combat flying. Fleet was a bit rough around the edges at the beginning, partly due to the much higher than expected attendance, but eventually the FC handled the fleet with calm confidence. And after that roam…

I took another swallow of my water.

We had taken a short break to replenish our nutrients, when our intrepid leader came up with another idea: “Let’s go to the nearby rookie training system, and see if we can some of them to join us for some real flying.” Due to my current disagreements with CONCORD, I couldn’t be with the recruitment, but I followed their conversation over comms. And my heart sank when I heard no reply to their offers.

But then one of the rookies took a chance, and signed up. And another one.

And that’s all we needed - a fleet was quickly formed, and our intrepid leader took the rookies into a whirlwind tour of low- and null-sec, eventually ending up in RF-GGF and facing a gang from the Center of Advanced Studies. They had downshipped in sight of the purpose of this particular roam, but were not willing to hold any punches - not that we wanted them to. A short, but bloody fight erupted, and our rookies got to taste their first blood.

CAS graciously offered free passage for our survivors, but unfortunately there was also a FIGL cruiser gang roaming the area, and quickly the roam turned into another of our epic extractions.

The fleet split, John Hexis field-promoted from skirmisher to FC, in order to get one of our rookies out safely; myself heading towards John to scout, losing another Talwar to a gate camp; Greygal shepherding her half of the fleet out on a different route; orders on comms criss-crossing.

But we made it out, with the rookies all excited - less than a week on their licenses, and they had already experienced actual null-sec!

And even though we disbanded the fleet after docking, one of the rookies accepted the invitation to join us as we headed for the nearest watering hole on Stacmon V station, and hung out for hours with us.

I emptied my glass, my eyes falling shut.

Op success, as they say.