Curiosity killed the Rax

I know I'm late to the news on this one, but the addition of Tags4Sec has definitely improved the lowsec roaming experience.  You can go looking for tags and targets in the same roam - as some have discussed even at the same time.  The tags can nicely pay for the losses eventually to be incurred in the roam... which is pretty much what happened this time.

The Roam

So we spun through lowsec near my usual home.  We found an Imicus who wasn't paying much attention in an asteroid belt and popped him.  Thanks for the loot.  We've gotten pretty good at swinging by and checking out belts by splitting up, warping to each other if we find a player target or a clone-NPC that is bigger than we might want to take in our cheap T1 PVP fit cruisers.  It makes it much more entertaining that most of our roams, which involve a lot of nothing and then a big boom at a null sec gate camp or the like.

We picked up a variety of tags, blew up some NPC battleships to offset some of our sec status loss.  Positive sec status is actually within range for me now, which I find rather undesirable actually.  I think I like being on the negative side, while still able to enter all systems, perhaps because I don't want to think of myself as a carebear.  Maybe I should consider myself some newb shadow of Sugar's yarrbear.  But seeing as I don't have too much outside of my main, I still want to have that access to 1.0 space.

Having completed a loop through low we paused to drop off some tags at a highsec station.  I was starting to get itchy about it since the tags in my hold were greater than the value of my ship (granted, not hard to do in a Thorax).  That done, we pushed down into a new stretch of low.

Ooh, I said, a cyno!  (is my newb showing?)

The Cyno

What the heck, maybe it's a jump freighter.  I've never tried to kill a jump freighter. But no, it's an Ibis sitting next to a station.  Whatever has happened is gone.  The pilot of the Ibis asks me to pop him in local, says I've already missed the fun.  I'm suspicious.  As I'm typing in local some dialog box pops up and is dismissed and I get worried.  Did I happen to hit a key agreeing to something while I was trying to type in local?  Apparently not - thank CCP for reasonable defaults on the Enter key.

Not wanting to get station gunned to death I head out.  Only as I hit warp to the next system do I realize he probably was offering me a duel, which would then take care of the station gun part.  Ah well.

Next system.  Flashy in system.  It's a name that I just saw appear in the previous system.  Hey, maybe that's who cyno'd in.  Oh wait, there is a lot of flashies.  And they're all in the same alliance.  Something is going down.  My friend and I confer briefly and we decide to try to see if we can find out what.  We start warping around, d-scans running.

I drop into a belt and am quickly joined by a flashy Tristan.  Right, I'll take a Tristan... my friend starts warping to me for the fight.  Everything happens fast.  Oh crap.  Domi warping in.  I tell my friend not to come, I'm pointed by the Tristan already.  I burn for the frigate with my Valkyries out and going, but I don't know how long my buffer will stand up to whatever that Domi can throw.  If it's normal drones at least they'll have to travel to me.  A second Domi drops in.  Crap, I'm melting.  Align, align, align.  Ship blows and my pod is in warp.  Fortunately my buddy gets away.

Ganked.  Now I don't want to act like "gank" here is a pejorative.  I was actively looking for trouble.  It's just that is was overwhelming firepower and hey, that's what happens.  I actually got a convo from a representative of the guys who popped me.  He says they say they're on a POS bash and they thought I might be an enemy cyno, and offer to let me loot my own wreck.  No thanks, my pod is already three systems away.  My friend just laughs when I pass on their offer.  Trust them not to pop him too, no thanks.

I feel a bit bad about that later.  We go on to chat more, my killer and I, and he's very friendly and suggest I look him up if I want a PVP alliance spot working on small gang stuff.  We chat drones for a while, as he's clearly an enthusiast on the damage a set of sentries can do.  My Thorax sure didn't last long under the fire of 5x Garde I, 5x Garde II, and a Tristan-load of Hobs.  I wish them luck with their POS bash and settle in.

My friend and I agree it was a good roam.  Killed someone (even if it was a cheap kill) and found some trouble (even if it was way out of our league).  It may have even been hypothetically profitable.  And there's a reason I have a small pile of Thoraxes waiting to be fit - these things are meant to be lost.

Lessons Learned

Curiosity kills.  Yeah, if there is a cyno that goes off and there are 8-9 flashy pilots suddenly in system, you probably need to very carefully consider your next step.  Now, if my mission was to find out what was happening, I was successful.  Just not in a way many people would consider success.