Cup of Tea

“Where is Tea?”

“We want Tea!”

“TEEEEEAAAAAA”

There’s nothing like being fashionably late to your own birthday roam.

Late Night never plans much of anything, but for the birthday of one of our FCs, Tea EarlyGreyHOT, we had something very special planned. For over a week, we planned the remote rep vengeance roam to null-sec. Around thirty people showed up, which is quite a lot of Late Nighters in one spot.

This time, they weren’t just any vengeances. Many had dead space reppers, and Navy hardeners--A shiny birthday fleet with almost everyone fully aware that we’d probably all die.

And all die we did, shortly after bus riding it out to XHQ. A group of sev3rance tackled our bonus Loki, and we all warped to the gate and jumped through to see if we could save it. It died before most of us loaded grid, and as we all poured into local, a fight broke out with the sev3rance BCs and cruisers on gate.

Being a bit spread out from jumping into them, and being significantly out shipped, we didn’t stand much of a chance. Their DPS plowed through our light reps, sometimes before we could even lock the fleet member taking damage. We managed to hold up a few people, but as they carved away at our fleet, we quickly ended up with too few people to set up a sturdy enough spider tank.

We took a few with us, before most of our fleet died.

It was only about fifteen minutes into the roam, so the fight merely wet our appetites. Everyone charged back to low-sec to reship.

We took a quick detour to kill a trio of Prophecies on the Huola gate, who had ganked one of our guys attempting to reship. And then, a second detour to bridge on a lone maller who had aggressed on the Kamela station. We left local with the Amarrian Maller pilot spouting and spewing in local. I’m not sure I’ve seen a Maller die so fast, and he was very, very angry about it.

“More remote rep vengeances!”

It was Tea’s birthday, and he wanted to try the fight again –hopefully this time with us better set up and organized.

“I don’t have another vengeance.”

“Yeah, I only had the one set up specifically for the birthday roam…”

I had toyed around with providing the vengeances for the roam for free –but almost everyone was already set up for the first wave. I still had at least a dozen sitting on my alt –ready to be thrown up on contract for the alliance store.

What the heck. It IS a birthday party after all…

“I’m giving out reships for free. Anyone who needs a vengeance, open up a trade window with my alt.”

There was a happy noise on coms, and I quickly had a bunch of trade windows. Goodby vengeances. It was nice knowing you.

I knew that if any of them lived for longer than a half hour, it would be a miracle.

We died to sev3rence a second time. They knew exactly what we were bringing, as we sat waiting for them for at least fifteen minutes. What did they bring? Battlecruisers and at least one Battleship. Not exactly what I would have chosen to take on assault frigates, but not entirely unexpected. We don’t exactly go to null-sec to get fair fights.

They had a huge fleet, and a pile of battlecruisers, but we fought them anyway. We held reps for a little while, but under the battleship neuts and heavy BC DPS, we broke. But not without taking down a bunchr of them with us.

We scurried away in pods, back to low-sec just as our scout announced that Pandemic Legion had arrived on the scene with a crap load of caracals and shield logi, doing quite a number on the sev3rence fleet and forcing them off field. Some of us giggled a little to hear that.

It was getting late at this point. We had lost billions worth in ships, a tier 3 cruiser, and at least one slave clone. So we did what any LNA drunken fleet of birthday rousers would do –we reshipped and went back!

This time, we ditched the remote rep vengeance idea, and jumped into kitey, range ships. It’s another favorite comp of Teas –sometimes five or so of us will harass a large Amarr fleet with a few kitey ships. It’s often worth it just to see the Amarr rage, though now they seem more inclined just to run away, knowing that several of them will die, and they probably won’t catch us.

We bridged back to Providence, but ended up in a situation where we’d need to jump into them. Not exactly a good thing for tier 3 BCs, and rangey ships.

But, we did it anyway. We uncloaked a drake first, hoping to distract them. Most of us got to range, and grouped up, and we started picking off their lighter targets that burned out to try to catch us.

We fought quite a bit that way, taking out any tackle that got in range, and some of their larger ships. We had been fighting them for ten minutes or so, and were doing pretty well, when the cyno lit, and Pandemic Legion once again started piling into local.

Sev3rence fled almost immediately. There was no way they were going to fight LNA and PL.

Our FC also called a bail. “A large fleet of caracals could volley some of us before we even lock with our own logistics.”

I personally think we could have easily taken PL. They only had a dozen or so…but I think people automatically assumed they had the huge fleet of 20 caracals from earlier. By the time we gained more intel on exactly how many they had, most of us were back in low-sec.

It was also kind of sad sev3rence ran away so fast. It could have been a very interesting three-way, though playing with two fleets of kitey stuff was probably not on their docket for fun.

Oh well. Next time, PL. Next time.

By then most of us were whipped and called it a night. We had blown up enough. (And died enough) for one day. But we all had a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday, Tea.