Drama on EVE Radio

Well, this was an interesting afternoon! As I do most of the time when I play EVE I was listening to EVE Radio, and of course participating in the very active channel in-game, when someone by the name of Cutter Isaacson pipes up saying "I just found my first wormhole!", so of course, everyone is giving him the gratz and throwing tons of information and questions about what his situation: "What's the system?", "Are there any people in there?", "What ship are you in?", etc. But the first thing that popped in my mind from past experiences was "BOOKMARK BOTH SIDES OF THE HOLE!". Cutter said OK and then we told him how to find the cosmic anomalies; since he was in his Zephyr he would be able to warp into the sites without waking up the big bad Sleepers. All this is great but then Cutter asked "Now, how do I get back to the wormhole?"... dread lands in the channel and everyone is asking "You did bookmark it, right?". He thought he had bookmarked it but he only did so at the entrance; he had warped off the wormhole before doing the second side. The drama begins.

Now we all try to help him scanning down the wormhole again from the other side; it does help that in the system map there is an arrow saying "unstable wormhole" so scanning it down shouldn't be too hard, but Cutter has only minimal astrometric skills and he can only scan it down to 99% so he can't warp to anything. Just as panic is starting to set in, I give him the options he has: he can keep scanning until he finds either his wormhole or another one (hopefully leading out of W-space), he can self-destruct himself, losing both the ship and the set of +4 implants in his head, or we can scan the wormhole from the outside once we know his entrance system. I was the first to volunteer for the rescue mission (Kalcharr and some others, I salute you!) and as luck has it, his entrance was Eystur, 4 jumps away from my location. As soon as I have the system's name I undock my Vagabond and make best speed to it and then to one of the planets. The news isn't good though: there aren't any more wormholes in Eystur. The hole either died of old age or collapsed under the weight of a passing ship, which I find hard to believe because a Zephyr is tiny. What then followed was a frantic effort to find system J134323, a Class 2 Wolf-Rayet system with apparently nothing in it but a lost capsuleer. As 3 or 4 of us started looking for wormholes on the outside, on the off chance the hole had moved somewhere near, Cutter was doing his best to find a hole from inside the system, but I also know from experience how hard that can be when your astro skills are low, and when there's dozens of cosmic signatures cluttering up the scanner, not to mention double and triple hits.

As it is right now as I'm writing this Cutter has logged off at a safespot, and he's to try again with the scanning when he gets back on. I personnally have things to do tonight but when I get back I will try looking for wormholes now that I have the system to look for. I'll do what I can to help him with what has been a pretty traumatic first experience of W-space. Let's hope he can find his way intact.

This is the wonder of EVE. in a galaxy full of people ready to gank the next ship, there's always people ready to go through the trouble of helping out another capsuleer. I mean, one day I'm podding a newbie for being afk in W-space, and 2 days later I'm scanning down entire constellations in search of one wormhole, the proverbial "needle in a haystack", just to save a not-so newbie who just learned a very hard lesson: never forget to leave bread crumbs when flying off into the unknown!

Fly safer than he did

o7