Happy Third Birthday, Signal Cartel!

Signal Cartel turns three years old in a few days. To my delight and amazement, we are not just surviving but thriving despite playing EVE in a very different way from most everyone else.

A Brief History. Johnny Splunk and G8keeper, who co-founded the EvE-Scout corp when Thera was introduced to the game, approached me about serving as CEO for an exploration corp based on the principles of peaceful exploration and what is now our Credo. Looking for something different to do in New Eden and knowing them from having worked as a Thera scout for a short time, I said yes. After a lot of intense preliminary work to get our ducks in a row, Signal Cartel was founded on 2015.01.20 and officially open for business on 2015.01.31. Our alliance, EvE-Scout Enclave, was formed on 2015.01.23 to house the two corps and our logistics corp, EvE-Scout Logistics. In the interest of administrative simplicity, we are a closed alliance which does not accept other corps.

This past weekend, we enjoyed our Third Birthday Fleet, planned and FC’d by the remarkable Johnny Splunk (watch his Twitch channel for exploration adventures, quirky humor, and a great community) on his well known alt Carrie Frog. About 50 of us formed up in Thera, then departed in our signature swarm of Griffins, fitted with hugs (festival launchers and fireworks/snowballs) and ECM (for self defense). Destination: Lanngisi, with the FC expertly guiding our new players about fleet protocols and mechanics along the way.

Photo by Lucas Ballard

Of course, we announced ourselves and our birthday messages in Local at every jump, and when we could, “hugged” folks on the gate with our fireworks and snowballs. I was kept busy during the entire fleet doing random draws of fleet member names to give away many excellent items donated by our members. Among the items were Asteros, implants, Geckos, ISK, Stratioses, Spectral Shift and other SKINs, exploration modules, a fitted Tengu, and even a fully fitted Chimera!!!

Once in Lanngisi, we were instructed to entosis the new Project Discovery monument there. This yielded various items and our FC assisted folks as they puzzled out what the information we gleaned from these items could mean. (Some of us already knew what this was about, but no spoilers ruined it for those who didn’t.)

Photo by Lucas Ballard

Eventually the puzzle revealed our next destination. Being in low sec and requiring a route of several low sec systems, scouts were deployed and travel was much more tightly managed by our FC to ensure that everyone arrived safely. As  often happens to our fleets, it appeared we were being tailed by someone, presumably to inform a gate camp further along our route. We did encounter a few gate camps, but our FC provided calm guidance to our nervous newer players. We arrived at our destination relatively intact (I think we lost one or two people to campers but those folks soon reshipped and caught back up with us).

Upon our arrival, the FC warped us to a landmark and directed us to entosis the structure there. As we landed on grid, we were delighted to see an Astrahus bearing our alliance logo, which factored into a strategy for entosising relatively safely in this low sec system. Those who could not entosis spent the time regaling us with fireworks and snowballs,  checking out our Astrahus, and taking pictures.

Photo by Razorien

But our FC had something even more exciting planned. When our entosising tasks were done, he hinted at next steps in solving the puzzle we were working on. Then everyone’s attention was directed to our freeported Astrahus, where Johnny Splunk himself undocked in an Erebus, a Titan class ship. There was shock and awe on comms, especially among our many new players who’d never seen such a thing in game before. The Erebus had been donated by our long-time member Dinic, who amazingly revealed later that he had earned the entire cost of the ship from exploration activities! Such beautiful synergy!

Photo by Aamish MacTavish

Our FC informed us we would be bridged to another system, then explained how bridging works and instructed everyone in what to do when the bridge went up. The bridging went fairly smoothly, with most of the fleet getting through on the first go. One or two people had glitches but finally made it through subsequent bridges. Once we were all in the destination system — at yet another EvE-Scout Enclave Astrahus! — our FC provided more hints and guidance for solving the next step in the puzzle. At that point the fleet had been going for about three hours so it was decided to call it and leave everyone to finish up the rest of the puzzle on their own. If they manage to do so, they will be have everything they need to build their own Neural Lace ‘Blackglass’ Net Intrusion 920-40 implant (spoiler alert; don’t click the link if you want to solve the puzzle for yourself!), which offers substantial buffs when used in conjunction with a ‘Zeugma’ Integrated Analyzer.

We celebrated with a mass display of hugs on the Astrahus, while several of us shared on comms their feelings about the day’s fleet experience and their experience in Signal Cartel. For myself and Johnny as leaders of Signal Cartel, these comments were so heart-warming. It is extremely fulfilling to make an idea real in EVE and to grow a community of like-minded pilots who have both a sustaining mission and a cultural focus. As I tell my members, though: we are all torchbearers for the Signal Cartel way of life. Our light is burning brighter than ever and I am humbled and honored every day by the good work and solidarity of our dedicated pilots. So, to them I say thank you and here’s to another three years!

Enjoy more fabulous fleet pictures captured by Aamish MacTavish,  Lucas Ballard, Razorien, and Tamayo.