Disclaimer: The article below is written by Angelica Everstar. Please be aware that all statements made are Angelica Everstar‘s and do not reflect EN24’s
This Year we made our trip to FanFest extra special and this gave us a deep insight into Icelandic thinking, a way of thinking you very much find back in EVE itself…
Some background information:
This isn’t our first trip to Iceland or Fanfest, it was respectively 4th, 3rd and first time, this averages to 2.66 trips per person as there were three of us, plenty of experience and wisdom to go around. But experience craves company so we needed a new one and in one swoop we combined several kinds of foolishness into one and decided to hire a camper (combining travel, sightseeing and accommodations which is smart) and drive around Iceland in three days (less smart).
On a side note, it worked! We saw amazing sights; northern lights, fjords, ice volcanoes, glaciers and more waterfalls than one can reasonably count. People were also suitably impressed by our performance, 1560 Icelandic kilometers, apparently not many, if any, people do this (maybe for good reasons) although we met a taxi driver who did it in 19 hours and 11 minutes on a motorbike. But he did admit that we probably outcrazied him since we did it in winter during a storm season. Oh yeah forgot to mention that, the few days before FanFest there was this nice North Atlantic storm blowing, 20+ m/s winds while we hit the ice covered mountain passes in something that from certain angles can be best described as 4 wheels and a sail.
All in all an absolutely great experience, one which we can highly recommend to anybody, small shout out to the rental company, KuKu Campers, who took a shine to our crazy nature and rented us their prized possession, if you have the time check out their Sex Outdoors Map, needless to say we didn’t put it to use; being not of that disposition (three guys) and frostbite being a factor.
But back to the nature of time, the universe and Icelandic philosophy. We can all agree that EVE is a hard and harsh place (which is why we love it) and anybody who went up to Iceland and left comfy Reykjavik behind realizes where CCP got its inspiration from; and this Icelandic landscape shaped EVE’s philosophy.
Drop into EVE as a newbie and, well, we have all been there. It’s a bit like getting to a crossroad in western Iceland, there is maybe 10 signs written in what presumably is a mix of Klingon and Amarrian indicating villages (1 house and up) and things (1 house and down) and one small sign pointing RIGHT that just says Reykjavik 557 km to the LEFT. The names might change (possibly, it could have been Gallente script mixed with ancient Sumerian) and the numbers change, but this sight you can find all over.
Anyway, at some point we encountered this sign; in retrospect it should have seriously reminded us also of these signs
Now we are all geeks, nerds, techies and lazy people, we don’t read manuals, we press escape, skip the intro and click okay. Much like your first experience with lowsec, we wished we had read it properly and acknowledged the understatement of said signs. Incidentally the road also shifted from asphalt to packed dirt; truly from high-sec to low, again it should have been a massive hint, but much like autopilot guiding you, this was the main highway around the island.
Just like the first few jumps into low usually go quite well, we passed the first few obstacles with little to no issue. In retrospect the car wreck we passed that was some distance from the road with a severely dented front should have been yet another hint, and in another time and place so was that Gallente frigate wreck floating near the gate.
And this was the result…
And this is where Iceland and EVE begin to differ, in Iceland you need to use a road sign as a snow shovel, gather road gravel and arctic tundra shrubs for grip, some engine heat, and a lot of grunting to merely get unstuck and then you still have to drive 700 kilometers. (It took us three and half hours and an entire night, we slept there … very peacefull, no wind, no traffic)
In EVE you have a slightly confused moment, a small cinematic and you wake up at home ready to go out again… strangely enough that is then kinder then the Icelandic version.
The point is the following, much like the Icelandic weather service warning us about storm winds (another story that was) and the road signs indicating that there was risk ahead, the signs in EVE indicating that Concord will not help you in lower sec status space and that wormhole space is truly no no space are quite terse and to the point. We discard them because they aren’t flashing red with flags, twenty pages long or just plain shiny. These signs however serve their function quite well, Danger Ahead! they say, and in true Icelandic minimalist fashion risk can mean anything from no road, pirates, deep snow drifts, hostile capsuleers or even mountain trolls duking it out with boulders while the Isengard party heads back to Moria.
Maybe EVE isn’t so much hard, harsh, and fun as just Icelandic.
