Last night I went on my first official roam with HellFleet, and it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. Not to do with the people on the roam, no. I can already tell that these are a great bunch of people and that I’ll enjoy flying with them time and time again. No, the surprise came with the actual roam itself.

With the starting point in Vitrauze, we made a quick stop off in Lisbaetanne to pick up a couple of people there before setting our destination for Amamake. That’s right, the system where you’re guarenteed to get a fight one way or another. Knowing full well that we would most likely die in an exploding fireball, Ga’len suggested that we all fly T1 hulls. Once the fleet was fully formed (there was 7 of us), we started on our way. Although there were a few jumps where we had to wait for a few gate-camps to disperse, the journey to Amamake was relatively quiet with all of us getting there intact.

Now in Amamake itself, we warped to a safe spot while Cyber tried looking for something that we could shoot at. After a few fruitless minutes, he warped to a belt and sat there waiting to see if anyone would come say ‘Hello’ to him. Then Ga’len warped to a belt and sat there, as did Lakasha. Nothing. After 20 minutes, no one had felt the need to welcome us.

Needless to say, we eventually turned around and headed back towards Vitrauze, and then on again to Lisbaetanne. And would you believe it? Within about 10 minutes, 4 destroyers had been… well, destroyed. Unbelievable. Ga’len summed it up perfectly when he said “Next time we go on a roam, let’s just go to Lis and shoot stuff.”

After this, Cyber and Ga’len said their goodbyes, and the rest of us eventually made our way to Old Man Star, which is where things started going bad for us. Eviwyn lost two Rifters, Lakasha lost her Merlin, von Diel lost a number of Ishkurs, and I lost my Manticore that I had jumped into to provide a warp-in point to people that may have been sitting 70k off from a belt, or even in a safe spot. Although I did manage to help bring down a Rifter before I lost it.

All in all, it was a fun night, and I’m already looking forward to the next one. Next time though, we’ll probably pick a system closer to home to look for fights in. :P