A Grifflin in King Arthur's Court

I can't believe I'm going to admit this story in public.

I'm not sure if it was a result of extreme exaustion, or if it was simply due to the fact that I was alt tabbed out of game last night reading novels (ie: not paying attention) that this hilarious mistake happened.

After listening off and on to coms, I finally decided to pay attention to game and jump into a fast ship to join some Late Night Alliance friends out in 0.0. Being a pirate, and having to go through highsec to get there, I chose a tech 1 frigate -- an lol Griffin that I often fit up for such occasions.

On my way there, I had to skirt around a few hostile local systems -- one of which had a bubbler and a Hurricane on the gate. I held cloak for a minute as they initiated the interdictor bubble, then scrolled out to see how close I was to the edge. I was very close, so I set my ship to aligning to a planet in that direction and easily warped away when they failed to point me otherwise.



While I was enroute, my fleet engaged a neutral gang in the area. I'm not sure the details as I was busy working my way out of bubbles and tip toeing across systems full of neutrals at the time, but they killed them all--except for an assault frigate that got away. In all they had downed an arazu, cane, myrmidon, as well as some various tech 1 and tech 2 frigates. We only lost our Ares, who was probably trying to maintain a point on one of the faster, shinier targets, but it seemed like an okay trade.

Finally, as things calmed down, I arrived in system with the fleet and warped to where they were camping a gate. "Griffin of doom is here!" I announced on coms. A few of them snorted at me.

"Uh, Susan..." I'm pretty sure it was Gritz1 who spoke up. "That looks like a Merlin to me."

Panic!

I quickly open the info on the ship to see if it was true. Sometimes they all look the same to me. Sure enough, I was in a Merlin...fit like a Griffin.

A brief moment of ::facepalming:: ensued, and when the rest of fleet realized what had happened, I figured some of them would hyperventilate they were laughing at me so hard.

There was no turning around now, having narrowly escaped an interdictor bubble a few jumps back, so I sucked it up and prayed I wouldn't get killed -- or I would never live down the trolling by my own corpmates when they logged on later in the evening and saw the loss mail.

We buzzed around for quite a while, jumping back and forth between a few systems in the Providence region. Whenever something 'large' was reported, I noted in coms not to worry. I would jam it with my merlin--after which you could hear some strangled laughter from various fleet members.

At one point a Goonswarm Cerberus arrived on a tactical nearby, locking some of us and trying to take pop shots. He was obviously very sure of himself considering how much ammo he had in his cargo hold. (And of course, we know how much he had due to his later loss mail.) He tried to snatch our rapier, Bahamut420, who was semi AFK. Bahamut managed to tackle him, and x in fleet (though he wasn't on coms, and was dealing with something else at the time) and the rest of the gang popped him before I could even get close enough.

The guy was obviously surprised we caught him and killed him so easily, judging from his comments in local. "This is not going to be good..."

Later, a large gang of rifters was spotted and we we started to prepare for another engagement. Also, I had spotted a Cynabal from a system I was scouting nearby who was following me into the fray. If these guys were any good, they'd probably eat us for supper, but it had been the fleet's experience so far that the people out here weren't that good...so no worries.

As we jumped into system to grab a rifter or two that seemed to be leaving gate, the rest of the rifter gang landed on us. There were probably 8-10 of them, and other stuff was also arriving, such as a Rapier and the Cynabal.

Bahamut420, our FC, started calling primaries in his Rapier, and we started to down rifters, one and two at a time. I started jamming some of them, and chaos ensued. Several of them locked me, a few took a few shots at me, before I grabbed a jamming cycle on them. They didn't seem to know what to do, who to shoot, etc. Like a herd of deer in the headlights.

A hostile Hurricane arrived, and I put both my jammers on him, nearly perma jamming him. (I think I lost it for one cycle.) I would pay to have been a fly on the wall of his coms. "That bloody merlin is jamming me!"

When the rifters saw what was becoming of their comrads, many of them ran away. We managed to kill 5 of them, the Cynabal, and the hostile Rapier while losing nothing of our own.

Later, as we were slowly roaming back down the pipe to KBP, I arrived on a gate with two hostiles. I quickly let my fleet know, though one of the targets ran away as I was talking. (I can see how my Grifflin is rather scary...;) The Inquisitor, however, apparently thought I was a juicy looking target and started pointing me. I quickly shot back, getting off a couple ecm jams, and made space goo of him before he broke into my armor.

We both gfed in local, though he added "but you jammed me and ruined me!" To which my fleet members (who were now arriving in local) wrote back, "I know, right? A jamming Merlin. What's this world coming to?"