Mine were a bit how do you say strange ,most of the provost some were great annoyed When I started using these songs https://youtu.be/C_LoEFBKzm4 https://youtu.be/1AeHUZWSqEk as well as my use of Achura and Napanii why do I I’m relatively pro state. Also I am anti-provost
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RMS was all inter-fleet rivalries, running laps along battleships, planet-ops, station-ops, boarding action, breaking arms, breaking arms, breaking arms and moonshining under the XO’s nose.
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I learned a lot of things in the Storm Wind Strikeforce. Like how to sneak around with a Nova Knife and stab people. Or how to sneak around with a charged Bolt Pistol and stab people. Or how to sneak around with a Mass Driver and stab people.
Then of course I moved on to better and greater things and joined the State War Academy. Before I settled down with this identity though, I took classes in the Republic University and in the Federal Navy Academy.
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… odd would probably be the word.
You have to understand who exactly was attending that educational edifice to understand why, I suppose.
Imagine this really angry and drugged out young girl who had slipped the webs of the myriad social services set up to handle freed slaves - because why would she trust anyone but herself after the endless bundles of proof that authority figures all want to ■■■■ you over - finally ending up in a hospital bed after religious extremists tries to blow up part of the station she’s lived as a rat in… already missing an arm and a leg, and now blind as well.
She’s not in the best state of mind, nor in exactly peak physical condition which exacerbates things as well. Incapable of putting her trust in someone else, incapable of functioning on her own and now dealing with a massive withdrawal on top of the physical trauma.
I have since tracked down and shown my appreciation to both the station security and the hospital staff in question, because I’m sure I caused them both endless amounts of grief. In spite of that, they discovered to their surprise that even after that many generations of slavery this wreck of a human being was still about as pure blooded Gripdjur as could be, capsule compatible to boot, and contacted said clan. Now, these are insular creatures. The northern reaches tends to foster a slightly grimmer outlook on things and the priorities lie on internal bonds, not external relations.
In spite of this, and perhaps because of it at the same time, someone of their blood had been found and they sent a Volur, a Shaman and a clan Elder to handle the matter. These three I have not apologized to nor expressed appreciation to. They’re clever enough to know both are implied, and also find the same amusement I do in the very much open displays of ill intent that will of course never materialize.
The story is long, but this girl eventually mostly recovers physically. She learns to become Gripdjur in spirit as well as blood and over the course of the next seven and a half years, she alternates between living with the clan and learning her trade as a capsuleer.
To this day, the memories of that time are a mix of familiarity, comfort, distress and mad longing for understanding. This girl, this woman, is now very slowly forming bonds with her clan and learning the ways of the Gripdjur. She’s learning the sheer depth of the relationships up north, where calling someone “friend” implies a bond tighter and stronger than that of most lovers and some marriages elsewhere. She’s learning what home means to her. She’s experiencing a true home for the first time. She’s learning the value of the lives around her, as she’s learning the value of her own, after a lifetime of slavery and drug addiction where her worth was near nothing.
And all the while, she’s going away to learn how to run away from home. To soar throughout New Eden and anywhere else except the hearth and warmth of the cold north. She’s learning not to trust those who call her friend or ally. She’s learning how little life is worth and how little other people are worth.
She’s learning how to see. She’s learning how to listen. She’s learning how to feel. She’s learning how to laugh. She’s learning how to kill. She’s learning how to control. She’s learning how to die. She’s learning how to fail. She’s learning how to succeed. She’s learning how to be human. She’s learning how to be a demi-god. She’s learning how to be Gripdjur. She’s learning how to be everything but Gripdjur. She’s learning to be a Horned Mask. She’s learning how to be a Volur. She’s learning how to be a student. She’s learning how to be a teacher. A follower. A leader. An antagonist and peacemaker.
She’s learning what and who she is, as she’s shedding the illusions of inferiority imposed on her first by the Amarr and then by her own addictions.
There is no way to properly describe my time becoming a capsuleer. The only word that encapsulates the entire experience is simply “odd”, because all the other words have their opposite and equally accurate example. Wondrous, terrible, joyous, painful, heartbreakingly soothing and infuriatingly terrifying. You compress the five-six years of capsuleer training as well as all the things that should have been part of the preceeding twenty years into a very small time-frame like that, in what is for all intents and purposes an alien existence and that is what my “time at the academies” was like.
I think only two lessons from before that time proved to hold true. Giving trust before it is well and truly earned is the greatest foolishness you can engage in, and debts will always be paid even if you have to take it by force.
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Honestly sometimes I miss my days in the CAS. It was a bit of a culture shock matriculating into such a diverse student body after growing up on an isolated backwater Intaki colony, and I found some of the more extroverted Gallente students somewhat grating (no sense of personal space . . .), but the teaching staff and facilities were top notch and I appreciated the culture of creativity and experimentation that was promoted.
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Honestly, I was only really there for about half the time. Being in an orchestra meant I got shipped around Gallente space a bunch, so I had to cram hard when I got back. Still, it was a great time and I look back on it fondly.
People at Caille Bourynes were annoying busybody do-gooders of the worst sort, and quite overzealous. I spent about half of my time figuring out ways to send them to the hospital for emotional distress.
“Thus I speak to you in a parable—you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality. To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful. But I shall bring your secrets to light; therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights. Therefore I tear at your webs, that your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes and your revenge may leap out from behind your word justice. For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise. “What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge“—thus they speak to each other. “We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not“—thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. “And ‘will to equality’ shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy—perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers—erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge.”
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I attended the Republic Military School at the Ammold V station studying astrometrics and archaeology when my potential for being a Capsuleer was discovered.
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Quite stressful, actually! I was constantly late for classes and I almost failed several times but luckily, my instructors saw my potential. I’m glad it’s over!
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I missed out the part where I was permitted to handle heavy machinery and high explosives. I was also required to make things go boom.
Quarter of my job in the RMS was making things go boom. Squad leader used to give me a bucket of ceramics and cleaning material and say, “Egivand! IEDs! Now!”
The other quarter was making sure the enemy’s things that are supposed to go boom…don’t. And make their machines go crazy on them. Half was maintenance of machines, vehicles, mechanical systems and filling up mags.
Of course, there’s also the usual running, gunning, and getting shot at.
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Well It was pretty easy for me at the Federal Naval Academy because I already had the skill set to be very successful there. When I started self-defense training I beat the instructor on the first day and on the first day of marksmanship training I got the best score in the school. After that I was recommended for cloned soldier training and after the TACNET shut down I became a capsuleer.
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A lot of times of hurry up and wait, sprinkeld with lectures on amarri tactics and space combat in general. Oh and getting really really drunk for the first time and suffering thru low G exercises the day after…
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Mostly it was a lot of learning - learning that I could excel outside of the role that I was essentially crafted for. I learned that there were cadets who could be fitted into footlockers - although I never learned why those cadets needed to be put into those lockers.
The SWA taught me a lot - but it has never taught me the answer to that question, and yet as long as there are cadets and there are footlockers, the one will be put inside the other and I think everyone is happy that it’s THIS way around.
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I found that I usually enjoyed the sensory deprivation tanks. It might just be because they were calm spots in the otherwise un-calm capsuleer training, but I found myself incredibly calm while in them. I was never very spiritual, my father was a Wayist but I never particularly put much stock in it, he kept a shrine to his ancestors and I’d sometimes burn the incense there but honestly I just liked the smell, but I found myself meditating in them, I thought about my ancestors a lot. It was incredibly relaxing and easily the most vivid memory of my time there I have.
I’d just focus on random lines of thought-- Is that meditation? I think it’s close enough. And just follow it until something interrupted me, sometimes it’d be something silly like thinking about food, sometimes it’d be a slightly less pointless stream of consciousness. It was nice to just think without any outside interruption, until they’d take me out for some more running, zero-g tests, general pain or food, none of which were pleasant but that is the point of them.
Or maybe you meant the academic part, to which the answer is that it is incredibly uninteresting to describe but was a very important time in my life.
This post is fairly stream of consciousness, which technically makes it self-demonstrating so I’m not going to fix it.
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