I made a lot of isk by accident today.
Playing EVE today. Winding down for the day. I was just mining Veldspar on a month old alt in a 0.5 hisec belt while I ran security missions on my main. I hear lock sounds and look over to my second monitor expecting to see the normal 2-4 lowly belt rats. Instead I see what looks like about 8-10 frigate and destroyer belt rats along with one named NPC locking my Pioneer. Wtf.exe. Start rapidly taking damage, but manage to warp off.
Decide to hop on my other account that is in that system with OK combat stats and investigate. (~37m SP, but mostly industry focused) .Hop in my trusty Phantasm. Surely this will be more than capable of the task. Warp to the belt at 50km, hoping they are still there and I can snipe them one by one for some nice bounties. Sure enough, there they are. And theres that named NPC...
Yellow box.
Red box.
I get two shots off with my lasers before it's on my Phantasm and under my guns, orbiting fast. Switch to t2 close range ammo. Still cant track. Script my tracking enhancer. Still not tracking. Toss my two Hornet IIs out as I begin to accept I have fucked up.
"WHY DONT I HAVE A WEB?".
I am now damped. Warp disrupted. Webbed. ECM from the support wing breaks my lock. Im being neuted on an active shield fit. Great. Im beginning to DEEPLY regret my curiosity. This Phantasm is the most expensive ship I own. Only blessing is I have a faction battery fit to make it BARELY cap stable and those bonuses against neuts give me some comfort, but Im now on the clock. My Pithum B-type shield booster is slowly being overwhelmed. I overheat my hardeners and my belief.
Time to feed this 750m Phantasm because I cant track this guy, and the drones arent doing enough.
The rest of the rats are within damage range now and things are looking bad for me.
Hail Mary: I un-dock in my t1 fit Vexor on the month old miner alt. Fleet myself. Warp to myself at 50k. Launch my lowly Caldari Navy Hornets, mostly hoping it would switch aggro and kill my Vexor. IT WORKS. The NPC aggros the Vexor and takes off to attack it, and for the first time I see its name: Panola Pataama. Now I am sure this is something different. Something special. I have never seen that name before.
My lasers start tracking.
Panola Paatama is in half armor. My shields on the Phantasm are recovering from about 20% without that dps. Turn off the heat on the hardeners. Im still panicking and trying to multibox (which im new to) and engage the other ewar threats that are part of the entourage with my Vexor, while keeping as much damage on Panola as I can. Good news is I am actually hitting with the Phantasm now. Suddenly, it disappears. Last I saw, it was about 10% hull but 40% shields.
Ok whatever I think. Maybe it warped off when i lost track of it for a minute. Ive seen rats do that on occasion. Lets focus on whats left on the field. Start popping the rest of the frigates and destroyers to break the other tackle. Get finished with that and add wrecks to my overview. "Oh shit there it is, it died"! I imediately burn over to check the wreck. Its an officer wreck. In high sec. I always thought that officers only spawned in 0.0 space.
I open it.
One beautiful purple rocket launcher and several other Dread Guristas modules, as well as a worm BPC. Total loot says 152m. Im like hey thats awesome! Maybe wasnt really worth risking my Phantasm for but hey, it was a cool experience. Loot and salvage the wrecks and dock up both characters while I let the adrenaline wear off. I inspect the loot now. Theres no price shown for the officer launcher. Ok, that makes sense, im in BFE, where theres obviously no local buy orders. Hop over to my jita alt.
Its 7.5 billion.
More isk than either of these characters have ever made combined.
I still cant believe A) I happened to be in the right place at the right time to see an officer spawn. B) RETURN with the second character to still find them in the belt. And C) survive to reap the rewards in two, unoptomized cheapish ships with mediocre combat skills.
Without a doubt one of the coolest experiences I've ever had in EVE.
Thanks for reading. Fly safe!
o7