Intergalactic Summit

I'm a little surprised this hasn't exploded into a bickering contest... Either way its been interesting so far. Thanks to all of you who have already replied!

Former kirjuun, you have missed the essential thing that keeps.us human and same. You should continue to fight for a cause and make sure that all the killing has some worthy end. The ends justify the means - just ask any of the people you save and serve through the means that we both know and love.

The unfortunate truth is that we become somewhat indistinguishable from each other if one analyses those means. It's only the ends that truly separate us. I fight for the glorious State. The State really don't care about the means. If I were to be nothing more than a pirate, they'd disown me. If the pirate kills me then I am a hero. If I kill the pirate, well, I'm a hero.

It's nice to be a hero.

But it remains most important, psychologically, that you have one. Exchanging body count for pay is alright as far as performance metrics within a wider picture go, but it is a poor reason for being.

Hate to point this out, but you're a merc. You fight for pay. The State isn't your cause, it's just your alliance's employer. Six months ago, you fought for the Empire. It wasn't some great ideological change that prompted your alliance to move from one warzone to another, it was the prospects of more money.

And when the people above you decide to go back to Amarr space, you'll go with them. A cause is something you believe in - something you commit to, not just something you're paid to advance.

Right, but that was you changing employers to pursue your goals. He's flying for his employer, and shooting who his employer tells him to shoot, even when it means completely leaving the Caldari warzone. That's not 'flying for the State' any more than it's 'flying for the Empire'.

It's 'flying for the guy who signs my check'.

And there's a difference between having a cause, and actively pursuing that cause. If fighting for the Republic is your cause, if that's what you're after and that's what you want to dedicate yourself to, then that's great. And building up a pile of ISK in null is a great way to prepare for that, but while you're building up that ISK, you're not flying for the Republic. You didn't go to H-W to fight for the Republic. You went there to do what you needed to do in order to make money so you could later fight for the Republic.

Goals, motivations and strategies are rarely summed up within a timeframe of six months or with simple platitudes such as this. Nor are reasons to stay with a group as one-dimensional as you make it seem. There is more than one way to come closer to one's goals and sometimes you may even have to tread off the beaten path.

What makes you think that ISK and ISK alone is what drives professional mercenaries? Ever heard of the concept that one can afford choice?

Considering the profession is defined as fighting for money, not causes?

Gee, I don't know.

There's a difference between 'mercenaries' and 'irregulars'. When I've spoken with those representing PYRE's leadership via holo-channels, they made it clear that the alliance is mercenaries, and will change allegiances when they feel the money warrants it.

This is something that I have been thinking about lately, why do I fight?

I didn't consider myself a combat pilot until fairly recently. I was raised in the Ida faith and taught the importance of tolerance, wisdom and peace. I graduated from the Center for Advanced Studies with a Master's degree in Astroarchaeology and set about trying to make a peaceful living collecting artifacts and salvaging the wreckage that litter the spaceways. It did not take me long in my journeys through New Eden to realize that peace is fleeting in open space. In the vast ocean of stars the big fish will feed on the little fish, simply because they can. I have died and been reborn more times than I can remember (a luxury our baseliner crews do not share), but I am no Idama. The wisdom I have gained from the rebirth offered through clone and capsule does not lead to enlightenment, but rather, it seems, to a hardening of the heart. The sad reality is that to be respected as a capsuleer one must attain power and prove oneself in combat. One must become the big fish. This is the path we walk if we wish to have the respect of our peers.

My interests in Sleeper and Talocan technology led me to apply to a corporation based in remote unknown space. Out here the only rule is might makes right. Weakness is quickly discovered and exploited. I still remember my early days as a CAS grad student exploring wormhole space, the feeling of being watched, the fear and the panic as a ship de-cloaks a couple kilometres off your bow. I also remember my first podkill, an explorer just like me flying a Buzzard, my own ship of choice in my early days of exploration, collecting artifacts from a ruined Sansha temple. I can't say I felt good about it, the only thing they had done wrong was to attempt to loot relics from a location in our wormhole chain, but it definitely flipped a switch for me. I had crossed the boundary and now I was the one lurking in the darkness, waiting to prey on those ventured out into the unknown.

My encounters with other capsuleer corporations in wormhole space have highlighted a need to improve and sharpen my combat skills. Combat against capsuleers offers quite a lot more challenge than fighting baseliner pirates or even Sleepers. In order to train my combat skills I've taken to roaming around warzones looking for opponents against whom I could prove myself, with my security status dropping all the while. Then just last night I found myself leading some of my corpmates in an unprovoked attack on a miner in Ouelletta. A Kestral rushed to the miner's defense and we destroyed that ship as well. In the aftermath I realized that the pilot of the Kestral was a member of the Intaki Liberation Front, an organization which has done much for the Intaki people and for which I have a lot of respect, who was fulfilling their anti-piracy duties in Intaki space. Sometimes I wonder if I am becoming one of the pirates I maligned years ago when I was starting out as a capsuleer, and I worry about how natural it feels.

Well That's my story. So why do I fight? If you want to get to the quick of it I'd say I fight because it's my destiny as a capsuleer. We have achieved virtual immortality but it seems were still caught up in games of power and violence, each of us with blood on our hands. I can only hope that the coming decades or centuries will quell our lust for carnage and we can begin to use our power for the advancement of humanity, but until then it seems the path I walk is one stained in blood.

Praavat.

First off, I haven't called anyone a perfect anything, so let's not put words in my mouth, hmmm?

I said you're a merc. And you are. Now, if the CEO of MF1B's executor corp there would like to revise and/or correct the statements made by others in her employ, and establish that MF1B will only work for the State, or even provide access to an abridged form of MF1B's balance sheets that demonstrates that during the time when the Alliance was employed by the Amarr, moneys were in fact flowing back to the Caldari Megacorp, then I'll be happy to revise my own statement.

Until then? Merc, and you fly for the cash in your pocket.