In Memoral

On Friday, the Lazerhawks hosted a memorial roam/fleet welping in honor of DJ Destruction, one of their pilots who recently passed away.  All interested wormholers were invited, and told to bring battleships with lasers.  Lots of lasers.

All of the lasers.

By the time we left the staging system there were a hundred some pilots in fleet, and we paused on the first out gate for some words in memory of DJ.  He sounded like a great guy to fly with, and I am very sorry for his loss.

In proper wake fashion, shots were called for, and then the fleet started went up on Twitch and we set destination for a known low sec staging system, ready for a brawl.  It didn't take long for the targets to become aware of the Twitch stream - after only a few systems, one of their guys was spectating our fleet as we hopped gate to gate in a controlled, stately manner.  It was no surprise that, by the time we were ready to enter our target system, a fleet had formed up to greet us - Ninja Unicorns With Huge Horns, Psychotic Tendencies, and assorted other allies.

We had a fleet of brawling Abbadons, Armageddons, and Random Laser Shit.  We jumped into a fleet of Navy Apocs with some miscellaneous support (a smattering of pirate battleships, a few dreads, and some carriers).  They were just far enough off the gate that we had to switch from the close range ammo, so we dropped cloak, reloaded, and engaged.  The FC (ForgetMyFace) began calling targets, and our cynos went up; a team of five triage archons, a moros, and a revelation landed on our side.

The battle was ridiculously fun.  The Psychotic logi carriers did a great job of keeping their ships up when they could catch them, but the combined fire from our lasers melted through quite a few battleships throughout the fight, while our dreads worked on chewing down the opposing seige dreads (we killed a moros!) and then got to work on their carriers.  The fight took a dive though when Psychotic Tendancies called in supercarrier support; three Nyxs and a Wyvern dropped on field (escalation!) and it was pretty much game over at that point; the dreads exploded, the archons began going down one after another, and after the last capital on our side was dead we got the order to warp out to a station in system.

'Good fights' were exchanged in local, and it had been an excellent fight; many things exploded in fond memory of a fallen pilot, and we explained the purpose of the roam in local.  The brawlees commiserated, and we were informed that the battleships left in the fleet were free to go without being camped.  The fleet extracted to our staging system, our hosts thanked us, and most of the fleet began heading for their home holes.

However.  There were a few of us that decided we had signed up to welp our battleships, and we weren't going home until the insurance had been paid out.  A new (and quite drunk) FC was appointed, our fleet was marshaled, and the FC announced our desto.  "Fuck it.  Desto is VFK.  YOLO.  Holy jesus.  Come on, scrubs, move out!"

The trip to VFK was chaotic, messy, drunken, and highly amusing.  We barely saw anyone on the way, but there were about fifty to sixty other pilots (compared to our dozenish leftover battleships) online in VFK itself.  We all warped to the station and, lacking other targets, opened fire; then our scout found an offline POS in system, so we all warped to that instead and began bashing it.  We chatted amicably in /Local with the Goons that were on hand, and watched as the local pilot count spiked, and spiked again.

Eventually, they jumped on us, and I could hear many of the guys in fleet giggling - a swarm of sabres, flycatchers, and other small stuff landed on us and space was filled with warp bubbles and disco lights.  We began popping them, but within thirty seconds a giant fleet of capitals dropped on us; we laughed on coms and continued free-firing on the smaller targets.  The thirty-ish slowcat archons and two dozen naglfars ripped our fleet to pieces, but we actually came very close to breaking even on isk lost.

So, as we were getting blobbed off the field, we waved to the Goons and offered 'gf's in local, then took the high sec express.  It was a night that will be remembered.