A Pilot's Descent into Evil... OR... Was Adolph Hitler Just Bored?

This is a chronicle that relates how a good guy pilot (me) eventually turned to evil. It is rather long. It is all true (well - there may be some exageration - literary license and all) and it is Role Play (which is how I play ED).

ENJOY!

[RP]

It's been a long day; a long, long, boring day. It's turning into a long, long night. I'm lying here on my fancy silk sheet covered bed in my luxury apartment up on the 5th deck of Home Station, tryin' to sleep. It isn't going well. Been lying here for hours. And it's dark; really dark. Not as dark as it gets in the black in some places at some times but pretty damned dark and the dark has a way of driving a man's thoughts to places best not gone to. Or at least for me anyway.

Bored silly. Cr 350M, total assets almost 1.7B, 7 ships parked on station and all A rated, well at least where it counts anyways and nuthin' to do with 'em. Nuthin'! At least not anything I haven't done before. Gawd I'm bored. There's got to be something to do with all these credits, and all those ships; something?

But WHAT? As I lie here I turn over on my side and glance out the 10X20 transparent steel window I paid so much for and I watch a T-7 with its bright blue blazing exhaust shoot by - probably headed for the slot and a landing pad to drop off his cargo. I think back to when I was doing the same, the thrill, the satisfaction and the grind when I dropped off a load and collected a profit from the master merchant running the commodities market or got paid by the guy who hired me to bring it in. And I remember the T-6 with it's tiny - didn't seem so tiny at the time - cargo holds tradin' rares and usin' a map I bought off an old trader drinkin' buddy to do it. Those were the days, a poor trader just barely scraping by. Wonderin' if I'd get away the next time some scumbag pirate piece of rotten fecal matter tried to interdict me. But always runnin' just isn't my style and it wore me down. If only I had a real combat ship - I'd show 'em. And I did.

Q'Ship (20th Century 2nd World War - armed ship made up to look like a merchant vessel) city. Loaded up 4T of some thing or other in my first real combat ship - an AspX named Dark Star (some would argue that an AspX isn't a real combat ship at all but it worked for me and worked well) . Take 'er out and troll for the greedy, stupid b.astards; usually at a Nav Beacon, RES or occasionally just flyin' around waitin' to be interdicted. And they always came, too dumb to count what I had on board, thinkin' I was gonna be easy pickins. All they cared about was that there was something I had that they wanted and always jabberin' on about how their kids wouldn't go hungry that night. Well - they were usually, almost always, wrong. Most of their kids not only went hungry that night they never got to see their lovin' daddy again.

Which is what lead me to Bounty Hunting. It was a real high ridding the Galaxy of evil one scumbag at a time. Back then, when someone asked me what I did for a livin' that's what I told 'em; I rid the galaxy of evil one scumbag at a time - sounds good don't it? Then again sometimes I rid the galaxy of 3 or 4 scumbags at a time. And as time went on and I progressed into a python the numbers grew and so did my bank account and so I bought and engineered The Point of the Spear, an Anaconda and continued my course of riddin'.

Until - one day - it dawned on me that no matter how hard I tried, no matter how gud I got it wouldn't be enough and worse - no one cared anyway. Typical station rat looked down on us bounty hunters - In their eyes we were murderers no better than the scum we took down and we got paid for doin' it. So to hell with 'em - there were easier ways to make a credit, safer ways and those ways would cost some of those station rats money, some their jobs and maybe even some their lives.

And that's when I became a smuggler. Carryin' contraband around that some lousy politician needed to move from where he or she was to somewhere it needed to be to pad their bank account. Didn't take long to wise up to that racket. Makes me ill even to think about it. So I became a scavenger. A thousand years ago what I did would be called grave robbin'. You see I dropped in on USS' with destroyed ships in 'em and scooped up what ever cargo canisters happened to be there. Didn't take long 'till every two bit hood runnin' a station Black Market knew my name. Pay wasn't bad but it wasn't anything like the money I earned trading either.

So I bought a T-9. Engineered it up for speed and jump range. Got a decent shield and set everything else up with cargo racks; 720T of cargo per trip. Unloaded it could jump almost 30LY and fully loaded just 18LY but that was enough. And then - while getting the Lumbering Toad setup I stumbled into a station with some type of plague going on. I forget what I was there to buy but I won't forget the price they were paying for basic and advanced medicines. It was a lot.

So I went where medicines were sellin' cheap (usually High Tech stations) and filled my holds up. Hunted up the closest station where there was an outbreak goin' on and headed to it. Typical profit was betwee 3.5 to 6 million credits a trip - even better if the place I sold the medicine to had something I could sell to the station I was headin' back to but - that was rare as usually outbreak sites are too busy dying to make anything to sell. I always found it kind'a ironic that here I was making big money off of station rat misery and the poor sods thought I was a freakin' hero for bringin' 'em the meds. All I wanted was the profit. There was more than once when I only sold 'em half of what I brought 'cuz I could see their market was getting loaded up and the price was going down.

Made a lot of money - enough that it started not making any difference anymore. So it was back to combat but not Bounty Hunting this time. Assassination became my thing. And I was pretty good at it. I used Steel Wolf (a Phantom) and Iron Wolf to take out my targets. Deserter's, Pirates, Politicians didn't matter. Though I did draw the line at taking out civilian ships and once a slime ball offered me 20+ million to take out passenger liners in some empire system. Needless to say he didn't get the opportunity to offer that type of mission to any one else. I still lived by my motto - ridding the galaxy of evil one scumbag at a time. Thinkin' back on it I began to realize that maybe I was becoming something I used to hate.

OH... The other line I have - I won't haul slaves that's just wrong. I will however haul Imperial Slaves - those dumb s.hits signed on for that. They chose their lot. Who am I to say they're wrong. At least if I haul 'em they know they're gonna get where their masters are sending them in one piece. And I won't sell out passengers to those scumbags offering me money to drop 'em off where ever. (and if I can tell what faction the offer is from I go to their home system and spend a few days killing every ship of theirs I can find until they hate me more than life itself - and then I leave which gives me an idea).

And I've hauled passengers too. Lots and LOTS. That can be fun - especially when they're female and single and the destination to their vacation site seeing spot is a long long way away. Even when they're old (experience has it's benefits) yep - fun.

Which is where I'm at now. Been there - done that - at least everything I've wanted to do. I'm at a great place. Home Station has taken real good care of me (well - except that one time when they blew me up when I landed with a shot out canopy, no sensors and no permission to enter the station - HEY! I was allied with every single faction - figured the station flight control weenies would recognize Point of the Spear and cut me some slack - NOT! - woke up on a prison planet. 25M buy back - 1st time my annie ever got killed).

Anyway I'm starting to get an idea. Home Station really needs to pay for that incident now that I think about it. But how? Ahhhh... I know what I can do. Since I don't really need the money what I could do is run influence missions to build up the faction influence of the weaker factions. Get 'em up high enough to set off a war - lots of money in a war - yeah... that's it!

But that would be wrong wouldn't it? Evil in fact. Think of the lives lost, the ships destroyed, the needed cargos that will not ever be delivered? Think about it. On the other hand; I won't be bored any more.

Who knows(?) maybe some young'un will try to rid the Galaxy of me. And so I've made the final descent into evil.

And as I drift off to sleep I wonder to myself if that 20th Century tyrant Adolph Hitler turned evil just because - like me - he was bored?
[/RP]
 
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Like they say, the devil makes work for idle hands. Git gud at getting good and run some station evacuation missions, your virtue will return cmdr ... the light is still within you!
 
Thargoids are missed in the story.

As long as they don't bother me I won't bother them.
Like they say, the devil makes work for idle hands. Git gud at getting good and run some station evacuation missions, your virtue will return cmdr ... the light is still within you!

[RP OFF]
Good point about the evacuation missions. I have done a number of them - great way to increase rep real fast and some of the most fun missions I've done in the 4 years I've been playing ED. Which makes me wonder why did I leave them out of the story. Wierd...
 
Good point about the evacuation missions. I have done a number of them - great way to increase rep real fast and some of the most fun missions I've done in the 4 years I've been playing ED. Which makes me wonder why did I leave them out of the story. Wierd...
Yes, I enjoy them too. Although once I've filled up my cabins and have launched and I'm hovering over my pad popping heatsinks while my limpets collect up all the goodies flying around ... I kind of feel a bit sorry for those passengers and imagine them looking out the windows thinking "what is he doing, we're all gonna die"!
 
I assume this is all PvE? There seems to be a similar progression toward evil in PvP, which might also be based on boredom. Been there done that, what else can I do? It takes a strong discipline to stay on track with your backstory and not stray to the dark side.
 
I assume this is all PvE? There seems to be a similar progression toward evil in PvP...

Yes - 75% PVE and - to the best of my recollection - only 2 active encounters that have led to combat while in open. Been playing open 95% of the time in the last year.

...which might also be based on boredom. Been there done that, what else can I do? It takes a strong discipline to stay on track with your backstory and not stray to the dark side.

Yes it does. I know exactly what you mean.

If history is an indicator my venture into the dark side probably won't last long. Even being a role player it is sometimes difficult for me to not bring real life ideals over to the role play (which one supposes makes me not a terribly good role player/actor). In school I did a lot of acting, stand up comedy etc. I could never play the bad guy well - after a while the teacher that cast the plays we did stopped trying to cast me as the bad guy. So - Eventually I'll get to feeling badly about my actions in ED and the consequences and revert back to good guy. Never fails, pen and paper or PC, it never fails.
 
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