War Hugs :P

It's now about five weeks since public launch of Signal Cartel. Corp life is bubbling along delightfully with over 170 members active all across New Eden, mostly in wormholes, null and low sec. Which makes it kind of funny to get war decced...we are already mostly in places where we could be shot at without the need to pay for it! Still, a war dec provides an excellent opportunity to field a Hugs Fleet as we did in response to the first war declared against us. That war ended with a pleasant conversation with our war targets who said we were "so nice and polite" that they just didn't have the spirit to continue in a war with us. :P Our credo in action!

Hot on the heels of that came a new war dec, this time by The Pursuit of Happiness alliance. With considerable intel in hand, a Hugs Fleet op was called and FC'd yet again by the venerable Carrie Frog. Having run locators on our war targets, we headed to their last reported location. No dice, but within a couple of jumps, we got reports that several were in the adjacent system and heading our way. We sat excitedly at a gate tactical waiting for them to jump in but darn if they didn't choose to go somewhere else. In the end, we were briefly in the same system with a one war target a couple of times. They did not respond to our cheerful greetings in Local and soon left system.

To assuage our disappointment, Carrie made the call to take the fleet to the Jita 4-4 undock to deliver hugs to deserving pilots there. We felt a little better after this charitable action--giving hugs is just as nice for the giver as getting is for the recipient!

Delivering hugs to a suspect pilot at the Jita undock

We hoped that our few war targets still online might come looking for us. Unfortunately, the last one logged off as we were about our business in Jita Local so the FC called the op and led the fleet home to Thera. I stopped in Amarr to leave some hugs for our war targets, then meandered into low sec (where I still feel most comfortable) and called it a night. Better luck next time!

A gift left in Amarr for our war targets after we couldn't deliver in person

At The Quafe Rack

CCP announced a contest the other day for EVE-related artwork submissions. Two winners will be selected whose work will be enlarged, printed on canvas, and displayed on a blank wall at CCP HQ. Not gonna lie, I would love to see my work hanging on that wall!

For my entry, I repurposed my ink and watercolor portrait of Niraia into a Quafe ad poster, with a little play on words:

I'm looking forward to see which submissions the CCP judges choose as winners and hope we will get to see all the entries in some online format. There's a lot of talent in the EVE community...it would be very cool if CCP designated to target blank wall as a curated "gallery wall" of fan art in the office. The pieces selected for large format canvas printing could be supplemented with framed paper prints of other fan art that could be swapped out from time to time to keep the exhibit interesting.