Today was pretty funny, VampireZim made several more efforts to get into my fleet while it was forming up, and even (briefly) got into the fleet before being summarily kicked by the fleet commander. Whereupon he began complaining about me in militia chat, to the general entertainment of all:
VampireZIM > Merlenus is a loot theif, hope you dont care about your loot fleet
Marlenus > LOL, the FC and I have an understanding
The reason I was LOL is that whatever grudge Zim has against me, thievery has played no part in it. Vandalism? Yes. Vandalism with intent to purloin? Also yes. But actual thievery? It never happened. As the lawyers put it, mine was a crime of intent.
Right then I had a computer crash, and when I got back on, one of the former AC-ME boys (one I always enjoyed flying against, and have happily flown with in FW) was saying in Militia:
Murdock Jones > uh oh ZIM! He’s back hide your POS :P
Marlenus > LOL
The LOL was real, and real loud. Murdock’s gibe (sheesh, there’s a word straight out of the old Hardy Boy books) told me Zim had been trying to impugn my sterling reputation (hence the LOL) while I was offline. Seriously, if I wasn’t proud of Ironfleet’s endeavors, would I publish this tell-all blog?
(Well, “tell-most” would probably be a better phrase. Ironfleet.com is of course the propaganda organ of Ironfleet, as if that weren’t obvious. If you see it here, it’s because I think it advances Ironfleet’s interests to have it here, or it amuses me sufficiently to outweigh any detriment to Ironfleet.)
Marlenus > x discoed
Threv Echandari > OMG Drama Detector peaking…….
Threv Echandari > wahts up this time guys?
VampireZIM > yea, hope you dont accidently disco when i am blowing up your ship :)
Marlenus > Murdock did he say mean things about me while I was gone?
VampireZIM > just the truth
Marlenus > Zim, in two years you’ve never managed to get weapons hot on my ship.
Murdock Jones > just the same old you stole and blew his stuff up
VampireZIM > yea, its easy to run and hide and you are good at it, so many people chasing you all the time, practice makes perfect
Threv Echandari > oh nvm Ironfleet/Zim Stuff….
Right about then, in fleet voice, somebody asked (for about the fifth time) “who is this VampireZIM at the rally point but not in the fleet?” And the FC said “Hey, he’s convo-ing me, I wonder what he wants?” And I said “He wants to tell you what a big old thief I am.”
… pause …
FC says “well, what do you know, that’s exactly what he’s telling me!”
A little more time passes, and Zim is back to smacking in militia chat:
Threv Echandari > Girls girls your both pretty now go and shoot some Gallente for a change
VampireZIM > I wanted to, but the FC would rather have a thief in fleet rather than an able pilot
Remember that “I wanted to” later when you see VampireZIM’s mail accusing me of lies. In two months of factional warfare based out of Nourvokaiken, I’ve seen the call go out to “x up” for hundreds of different fleets. Dozens of those fleet calls have happened when VampireZIM was present in the system. Out of all those dozens, the ONLY times he has ever attempted to x up for a fleet have been when I was in said fleet, and that has only happened … wait for it … twice. He wanted to go shoot Gallente, but only if I was going, too? How…flattering.
Not to mention, unlikely.
Anyway, I responded:
Marlenus > LOL, aggressive salvage is not *all* that I do
VampireZIM > merlenus, yes, you run like a little girl too
Of course I prefer to call it “sensible tactics and good business” — unless there’s some sekrit uber strat for taking on a heavy interdictor and two heavy assault cruisers in my Crane? Of course I run from that gate camp, and I always will. Any sensible solo pilot would. And anyway, until fleet warfare came along, I was never any kind of combat pilot, never wanted to be. Rallying to the defense of the Caldari State like all true patriots, I’ve been forced to learn a few modest skills, but I’m still pretty much in the “fly something simple, follow orders, and keep a deep hangar so you can be in a replacement ship instantly” school of PvP. Tangling with humorless smack-talking enemies offers no reward, so I’m not gonna bother. (Well, not unless they dangle Merlins and Kestrels in front of me like low-hanging fruit.)
So, yeah, Ironfleet is good at avoiding unwanted combat. We’re damned proud of it, too. Which makes it a great day when our enemies complain about how good we are at it.
While VampireZIM and his “buddy-who-often-logs-at-the-same-time” Max Threat were waiting for me at the fleet rally point, I was chillin’ in my undisclosed location, shootin’ quails and drinkin’ beers with my buddy Dick Cheney. (He’s there a lot.) Then the fleet scout reported a rare moment of clear space on the far side of the gate into Tama, so I took the opportunity to move out down the line of the fleet advance and get a few jumps ahead of the fleet. I am reliably informed that Zim/Threat followed the fleet as far as … the Nourv gate into Tama, where they set up camp for many more hours.
Fleet operations, until my dinnertime, were uneventful. At dinnertime, I docked in Tama to save drama at the Zimcamp, and went AFK. When I came back from my meal, I found somebody from Blood Raiders Dominion keeping me company in the station, plus EVEmail from VampireZIM, the first in two years. I’m sorry to report he still hasn’t had time to grow a sense of humor.
The mail — which I am going to go through line-by-line, just for fun, starts:
I have just read your blog, granted I had thoughts about burying my grudge, but in all honesty, Im bored.
First thought: Good. Boring the crap out of VampireZIM has been the main Ironfleet goal in all nine of the Zimwars. I’m delighted to learn that we have achieved our primary war aim.
Second thought: Wait a minnit. “Just” read my blog? All these wars, all this time, and VampireZim (an internet sort of guy — he publishes, or published, an internet video show about this online spaceship game fer chrissake!) has never bothered before now to type “Marlenus Ironfleet” into Google? It’s possible I suppose, but … wow.
The mail continues (we’ll be doing this for awhile):
I was happy to see that you agree that my grudge is justified, I kinda thought so myself.
It’s true that I did say, back on June 19, “to be fair, we did him an injury first, so he, too, would be justified in holding a grudge.” Of course, I was humorously attempting to mock him at the time; this was right after the part where I referred to him as “the notorious carrot juice drinker and wearer of feminine undergarments”.
The grudge is understandable. The passion with which it has been so unsuccessfully prosecuted? Not so much. Fairer minds than mine have considered the situation and said “he really ought to get over it, already.”
As for your childish names and lies, brings me back to the fact that you are a well spoken scumbag. First of all, it is untrue that I drink carrot juice, still not sure what insult that is supposed to bring against me. I do however enjoy V8 vegitable juice from time to time. Second, I do not wear womens garments, not sure where you came up with that.
I looked at that bit of the mail in astonishment. Could it be, could it genuinely be, that VampireZIM has no sense of humor at all?
Dude, those were jokes. You know, vampires, they drink, er, blood, right? Blood Raiders Initiates, Blood Raiders Dominion, the blood theme, it’s not exactly a new thing with you, right? Drinking the blood, it’s one of the things that makes a vampire scary, right? So what would be a fun thing to accuse a non-scary vampire of? Drinking carrot juice. It’s a gibe, it’s a joke.
Yeah, I know, when you explain a joke, all the funny falls out. Sorry ’bout that.
Anyway, it’s not a lie. A lie requires intent to deceive. If I said “VampireZIM drinks Quafe” that might be a lie, because — since the game mechanics allow it — it might be that I wanted someone to believe it. But unless there’s carrot juice somewhere in the EVE database, it was pretty obvious that “VampireZIM drinks carrot juice” was not believable, not intended to be believed. Not a lie.
Same pretty much goes for the “feminine undergarments” accusation. Joke. Mockery. Not capable of being a lie. Not a suggestion anybody was ever supposed to take seriously.
More from Zim:
I will go ahead and keep the war going, until I get bored of that.
Ironfleet shall continue endeavoring to hasten that day to the best of our ability.
To answer your question of why I camp the gate for hours on end, Im watching movies and doing other things, waiting for RED to show up and if you look at our killboard, you will see MILITIA KILLS IN TAMA, so we are doing our part, as well as several others in low sec. In fact CALDARI STATE MILITIA kills MORE THAN DOUBLE Ironfleet at the time of this writing.
No surprise there — as little joy as Ironfleet has given the CLDRI gate camps, it defied imagination to think the hours and hours of camping were solely for Ironfleet’s benefit.
I am laughing, however, at the proud assertion that Caldari State Militia, a shiny new FW corp with 18 members, has gotten on twice as many killmails as Ironfleet, which has seven pilots on its dusty rolls and only two pilots actually flying in factional warfare. Twice as many, in a corp that flies battleships and HACs and command ships. Jim Bridger’s T1 destroyers, and me in my cheap frigates, my Blackbird, my Drake, we’ve gotten on half as many killboards as CLDRI? I say in all sincerity: COOL.
So again, caught in lies. I am very sorry for an individual like yourself who preys on others, stealing and lying.
What is it with this repeated “lies” accusation? Hey wait a minute, does this sound familiar to anybody else?
Who here remembers Chebri? Yeah, that Chebri, the one who hated me with such an unreasoning passion, and always harped about “lies” when she couldn’t actually point to any.
Interesting.
Back to VampireZIM:
I just want to let you know, that I also have alot of ISK burning holes in my pockets, so I will be funding bounties on you and your corp mates, we will see how easy it is to fly in fleets when you dont see the shiny red star next to your enemies.
To which I can only say: “Good luck with that.”
I mostly fly fully insured T1 replaceable ships in fleet, usually ones I’ve got stacked four or five deep in my fitted ships hangar. I go out prepared to lose two or three a night. And if there isn’t a CLDRI tag on the killmail, I won’t even know who was the engine of my misfortune, so I won’t exactly be stewing in impotent rage about VampireZIM’s stealth victory for T1 manufacturers everywhere.
Not to mention the little detail that most FCs I have traveled with tend to primary anybody who shoots at a fleet member in low sec. So those “bounties” will be hard-earned by whomever collects them.
I rather enjoyed the recount of the initial attack, well done
Thank you!
But you failed to mention that shortly after we dec’d your corp, ALL your active members quit because we were chasing them around the verse. Leaving you, your alts and dead characters, for which I see you have never recovered from to this day.
I didn’t “mention” that because it’s not quite true, and the parts that are true contain false assumptions about Ironfleet’s goals and motives. Actually, several of my members did not quit, and some of the originals who moved to other corps during Zimwar I (that part is true enough) made new Ironfleet alts who still play from time to time. (Torpedo Ted, for instance, took out an AC-ME hauler during the INDY war, all by himself in a rocket kestrel.)
But the real fail in that view of the world is that Ironfleet was never intended to be anything but a way for me to get more hangar space, with tabs, and for me to easily give free frigates to some real world friends who joined the game a couple of months after me. Ironfleet has never “recovered” because growth was never an Ironfleet goal. Ironfleet does not recruit, we (politely) reject several applications a month, and I still don’t want anybody in the corporation whose neck I cannot get my physical fingers around if they jack up the stuff in the hangars.
BTW, do not incinuate that the war from BLOOD had anything to do with the drop in members, I pruned the dead beats to raise our CALDARI STATE to join the MILITIA, then decided it would be easier to start CLDRI. BLOOD is growing again.
I’m glad that’s cleared up.
Whew, long blog. My fingers will be glad when this war is over!
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