The Shakes

This is my blog banter entry for this month.

EVE Online can be a game of heart-pounding, palm-sweating, adrenaline-fuelled ecstasy or agony. Sometimes over the years those reactions dim and what was once a panic inducing situation becomes commonplace routine. For some, the shakes never go away.
From Druur Monakh (Twitter: @DruurMonakh) we get the topic of this banter: what was your most nail-biting experience in EVE Online so far? It could be PvP in a 1v1 or 1000v1000, your first fight or your latest one, a scam so close to being uncovered too soon, a trap almost sprung on an unsuspecting victim or the roles reversed and you desperately try to escape.

* * * * *

Dear god, do I get the shakes!

Its gotten a lot better these days as I get more and more PvP experience and more FC experience, such that the shakes come less often and with less intensity, but in those early days after a fight I would need to get up and walk around to let the adrenaline flow out of the system.

The first bad case of the shakes for me didn't even come in a PvP experience. Back in April of 2007 I was running missions and had started running level four missions in my brand new Rokh (with inadequate skills I might add as my character was barely 6 months old):

Damn, more reinforcements including some BS class drones. Time to get some range. Call in the drones, click warp button.
Um... why does my speed not say warping?
Click warp button. Being damage messages I see the dreaded "you may not warp as you are being scrambled..."
OH F*CK!
The next ten minutes are filled with cap boosting my shields and desperately attempting to nuke the drones nearest but I don't have the drone skills to do it and my long range rails are completely useless. With twenty drones drilling me and no escape, I could only watch in despair as my pride and joy was chewed up and spit out like yesterday's trash.

I was so shaky after that encounter that I couldn't even move my mouse right for a long time afterwards.

The next big shakes episode was when I first started to solo pirate in low sec in Placid, back when Strife Mercenaries fell apart and I was left to my own devices in October 2007. I decided to use a Thorax as my roaming boat and went hunting in my ancestral home of Placid:

After that I undocked and began the hunt! I quickly scanned down a two year old character ratting in a belt in a Tristan, a gallente frig. I sped in, locked, and engaged. In seconds he was dead and I had my first kill! As I scooped the loot my heart was POUNDING in my chest and my hands were shaking from adrenaline. I warped to safe spot to wait out the timer and checked my loot: T2 blaster and afterburner, and some other miscellaneous stuff.
Kirith the pirate is born!

I've come a long way since then. I'd barely break a sweat ganking a Tristan these days. But there are still occasions that panic and the shakes come hand in hand...

Like last month. I was on my alt in his Rhea Jump Freighter in the low sec border system of Yvangier. I undocked like I have hundreds of times before and set destination for Jita and hit warp to gate, the high sec gate of Charmerout, ... and forgot to turn on autopilot.

THIRTY MINUTES later I come back and see my freighter, my multi-billion ISK freighter is not moving. In fact, its not moving at all... and its still in low sec. OH SHIT! And there is a neutral there. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

I quickly try to warp away and the pilot points me. I see he's part of the militia so I open convo and tell him I'm an alt of an allied corp, and he tells me to log the main in and prove it. With hands so shaky I can barely type I manage to get Kirith logged in and yell in local, "It's me, its my alt!".

To his eternal credit, the pilot let the freighter go and I docked up in half armour. I sent him 100 million ISK for his trouble as a sign of gratitude. Then I logged off and went to lay down while the shakes ran their course.