Grand Theft Molok: Hudders Edition

** Feature image artist – Cymek of TEST Alliance (Printed with his permission)

Eve Online is a game filled with tales of daring do, intrigue, friendship, and betrayal.

These tales form a brilliant and varied tapestry that becomes the history and lore of New Eden. I have always loved the fact that in Eve history it is not just the ‘In-Game CCP’ added events that essentially become the canon and ‘official history’ of this game but also the actions of the players and our decisions that get recorded in the annals of Eve. What’s greater is that those actions don’t have to come from an Alliance Leader or Major Bloc Fleet Commander in some big war but can occur when a single person does something noteworthy thus recording and immortalizing his or her name and become part of our shared history.

It also helps if your actions are memorialized by the renowned New Eden artist, Cymek, generate multiple threads on ‘Reddit’ and spawn a fleet of memes.

Meme provided by HawaiiOn

On Friday one such event happened and Hudders of TEST Alliance Please Ignore (TEST) found himself involved in a series of events and decisions that put him at both the right and wrong place at the perfect and worst time. For Hudders it meant being in a big fight, flying a small Interceptor Class Frigate, and managing to get in the middle of the game’s most violent form of ‘hot-potato’. It is also significant that the ‘hot potato’ (The game’s first ever dropped Molok Blueprint) was itself likely worth in excess of 100 Billion ISK or 3500 Times the value of Hudder’s interceptor and was the most wanted blueprint copy in all of New Eden. I had the pleasure of sitting down with him to talk about that day.

Hudders’ Bio from CCP’s EVE Gate

Hudders had barely been in TEST a few hours when fate presented itself in the form of a ping for interceptors to go to Period Basis to take part in the final re-enforcement event/destruction of New Eden’s first Blood Raider Shipyard (Sotiyo):

“I had joined (TEST) the night before and had literally just finished taking my carrier through a wormhole when the fleet went up. I originally wasn’t even going to go, but thought, eh nothing better to do and quickly fit out a random claw.”

With little expectation but to maybe get some kills on his first day in his new alliance he joined the fleet and history followed:

“Well, one of the test FCs decided to form up and see if we could fuck with the goons. Our goal was to try farm some kills and try to snatch the BPC at the end. We showed up with maybe 40-50 claws and such and would warp-in on targets, kill a few and warp out before we’d get shot at or tackled. Goons formed up their own claw fleet and we duked it out a few times in the middle of the punisher ball, eventually calling for a reinforcement fleet of claws as our numbers dwindled. Once the structure hit 3% FC would have one of us go in every 30 seconds or so and check it to see if it was about to die. We weren’t sure if it was going to drop from a structure wreck or be in a separate can, so we had two teams. First team would warp in before the explosion, second team would search for a can and warp in.

I was on the second team.

I picked a warp-in that would land me right about zero on the center as it exploded thinking if it was a can it’d be there.

Turned out it was from the structure itself and it was picked up by the guy I had warped to. I warped to him at 20km to land center, by the time he called he had died I had about 15km to burn. I guessed which wreck (There were a LOT) and happened to get lucky. Pulled the BPC and tried to get out.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far. I got hit with some client lag that made the inventory window not close, which caused a delay in me trying to warp. By the time I selected something I was pointed and about 0.5 seconds from dead. Ironically, I think TIDI would have been favorable for me there.”

My understanding from talking to Karl is he was hit with a similar client lag issue when trying to loot and escape.

Hudders’ Famous Cargo. Image from zKill

“Correct. Karl Kox originally looted the BPC. He called out that he died on comms and in the chaos of trying to find his wreck I had already snatched it before goons could.

Yeah, something like 5-1 odds, we were heavily outnumbered.”

“Reception has been pretty wild. There has been more than one occasion where I would be greeted in local with ‘Hudders the molok slayer!’ or having a conversation in alliance chat with someone to be interrupted with ‘Is that Hudders the Hero?’

It’s been a bit of a shock to adjust to so much attention.”

“Uhh, I guess just this goes to show why it’s always been to join the fleet you were on the fence about. You never know what’ll happen! Also, DeadMan’s Squad is recruiting.”