The Daily Slasher #10 | 8-03
Okay, this one was fairly simple. The Daily Slasher No. 10 made some 20+ merry (if uneventful) hops around the Amarr lowsec and then there suddenly were 2 RLML fit Gnosises (or Gnosii?) remote sensor boosting a Navy Maulus.
Instant knowledge, a flash of insight, and I’m back to Jita.
Gnoses. It’s like ‘crisis’. The plural is ‘crises’. (cry-sees)
The Daily Slasher #11 | 8-17
…So I eventually got a Slasher intact to Delve and set up a clone there, still hoping to shoot Funk, but she apparently got better things to do than waste a day worth of jump clone timers on this. A mail promising a free pod if she defeats me didn’t help much either! Okay, this Slasher isn’t going anywhere.
Back to Jita, I chose Diana Kim as my next target and addressed the sleepy residents of the Intergalactic Summit channel with the following speech:
"Attention Caldari Citizens! A brave protector capable to fly a t1 frig is needed to defend Jita from a resident evil.
Matari scum and Sani Sabik sympathizers are stalking the trade routes! Be a hero today.
Shoot my Daily Slasher and get a honorable mention on IGS :P"
Alas! Diana remained silent, unmoved by this plea to save innocent scammers from the encroaching doom. However, Coulter Phelps of SFRIM was kind enough to offer herself for a frigate dance. Coulter is awesome, so I agreed immediately!
The fight happened in Huola, in orbit of Planet V; Phelps flew a rocket Kestrel. Afterwards, she even helped me to go back (by applying more rockets to my pod), despite the standing loss to Native Freshfood. And then she paid for the stuff she looted from the wreck (!). She’s too kind for her own good, really.
I still hope to shoot at Kim though.
And Funk.
And Vess!
9 more Slashers to go!
The Daily Slasher #12 | 8-18
Met Diana Kim today in a Gallente Novice Plex in Ikoskio. Kim flew a rail, dual web, armor tanked Merlin.
After the fight, there was sort of exchange of gifts - Diana contracted me her Merlin as a memento of this duel, complete with burned modules; and I gave her a box of Kaalakiota Peaks Vodka (that Arrendis paid for).
It starts to look like i’m conducting interviews with 150 mm autocannons, isn’t it?
Oh you better not conclude before my duel!
Or mine!
The Daily Slasher #13 | 8-24
The Slasher I had parked in Delve finally found its use. Caught up with Funk today in a mission site in I3Q-II.
It must be noted that the market in Delve outside of Goon citadels is non-existent now, so I wasn’t really surprised that Funk fits her ships with whatever can be looted or made locally. But I sorta expected her to be in a Cruor or something.
Instead, she was in a very kitey pure drone Magnate. It had all the chances to kite me to death or simply get away, but I scrambled its MWD in the first couple seconds of the fight and that was it.
The second encounter with Funk wasn’t exactly a duel, or even a 1v1 for that matter, because there was an entire fleet of Amarrian ships present. She continued her mission for the Covenant (our previous fight was at the entry gate) and I just barged in to mess with it.
Well, she was in a Gila this time so it was a quick and relatively painless end for the Daily Slasher with a very appropriate number 13.
By the way, despite the Friday evening, all the Goons just sat in their structures. Not a single bubble, or a camp, or a roaming gang or scout in 14 jumps back and forth between KFIE-Z and I3Q-II. I just wasted time bouncing off celestials.
I’m considering moving to nullsec for a prolonged time now so next Slasher or the one after that will probably be the last.
Actually, the ones you passed were probably mining or hunting Blood Raiders. Outside of staging, there isn’t a lot of ‘sitting in the citadel’ going on. Most folks are out making money.
The home defense group also isn’t going to waste time chasing a single frigate around. If you’re going to be a threat, you have to go to a target. At that point, the target can point you, or you’ll light a cyno to bring in bigger things. That’s when the titans drop to boson. Or they sit cloaked just off a gate, waiting for an enemy fleet to move down the pipe. When the fleet trips 10au on the d-scan, they decloak and begin spooling up the BFGs, so they’re discharging as the fleet lands.
Why bother chasing a frigate, when the frigate has to come and make itself easy to kill in order to cause trouble? The only folks you present any danger to are things like Funk’s Magnate. And good on you for killing it. 
To be fair, when I was mapping all of Querious and Delve, there were a lot of attempts to halt my progress. Of course, largely ineffectual and slapdash in Delve. Only got interesting once I got to Init’s pockets in Querious. They were… delightfully determined to track me.
The Daily Slasher #14 | 8-25
Maria Daphiti wished to fight me for a while now, so it would be a shame to close the Daily Slasher without her. We agreed to meet in Sifilar; the duel happened at planet V. Maria flew her usual beam Tormentor.
I must say that she’s the best combat pilot I encountered so far. She was masterfully maneuvering her heavy frigate around to “rubberband” and prevent me from getting under her beams, and her lasers did insane damage - both my ancillary reps couldn’t keep up with it, and the Daily Slasher went down still with one booster charge left, while she ended in half armor.
The Empire is lucky to have the ace like Maria on their side. Good fight. 
The Daily Slasher #15 | 8-28
This one was supposed to be Deitra’s, but I just somehow ended up in the pod and having a friendly chat with Aria Jenneth about the emptiness and shards of truth and the like last evening, and then a pilot named Avio Yaken challenged me, apparently because someone told him to.
I was a bit wasted, so some little details of both my fight with Avio and chat with Aria (that happened at the same time) still elude me.
But the killboards say it was in Murethand and Avio flew an armor, rocket, dual web Kestrel, so that’s probably what it was!
Also, I vaguely remember that Aria refused to fight me because she is not interested in engaging “something so empty”. Well, I can live without that pleasure. 
Hmm, that would explain why I didn’t see ya last night.
The Daily Slasher #16 | 9-02
It appears that Deitra is both busy planetside and has the opposite sleep cycle so catching her could take a long, long time. I decided not to do it and talked Isha Vuld of Ushra’Khan into a fight in Kamela instead.
Isha brought a MWD, AC, buffer shield Rifter, supposedly off Ushra’Khan corp contract. Her MWD was scrambled immediately, the rest was a matter of time. It took some! And a reload of MASB, but eventually, Isha’s Rifter went down. I was quite surprised that the Daily Slasher managed to kill something!
I sat in a safespot waiting out the countdowns when a cyno went up. Thinking that it’s on one of the nearby citadels, I swooped in it and opened fire before realizing that no, it was on the undock of an actual station, complete with sentry guns. That, naturally, vaporized the Slasher before it could align to warp out. Derp.
To be honest, it had little chances of getting out of Kamela intact anyway, because by that time there already was a smartbombing Machariel on the outgoing gate. At least that way I shot at something and made the locals laugh.
This ends the Daily Slasher, four short of 20.
I’m -2.2 now. I think it’s -10 time, so next comes a short run of the Surprise Thrasher! Won’t going to blog about that here, though.
Thanks everyone who participated! Voluntarily or not.
I thought you said you were done… Offers still up???
Yeah, sure. I just need to get a new Slasher. And bring it into Okkamon.
Awww, no reports on the Surprise Thrasher? That’s a shame.
That’d be pretty boring, Arrendis, don’t you think so? Like “a Brutor who works for me spotted a Leopard adrift at Perimeter gate, I undocked, warped to insta, warped to target, YES, flash… Second flash and I am free”? x10. Mostly pods or shuttles of no value.
At least the “interviews with 150 mms” are all different but known people and I’ve even won two of them!
Not to mention the times when I actually tried to roam lowsec and get real kills. Caught two people on the same derp that got the last slasher, by the way - they forgot about the sentry guns 
Yeah, but you could do that with the Surprise Thrashers, too. Go hunting low or null and jump T1 haulers (people do use them outside of HS. I don’t know why, except maybe for JB fatigue).
A Thrasher tanks sentry guns not that much better than a Slasher, but, unlike Jita, everything that comes through lowsec is likely to have at least some buffer and a DC fitted. So suprise point+alpha at a gate would almost always fail. This naturally leads to next step, fitting a proper tank, rigs, ACs and go catch plexers or frig-dessie level mission runners or anything else that’s not at a gate or station. Might as well just simply join the Republic militia. Been there.
A lone Thrasher hunting in nullsec, while safe from the gate guns, is also not a big improvement over a Slasher. On the other hand… If dual ancillary tanked it probably has a chance to kill one of those pesky Sabres that are, like, everywhere. If the Sabre doesn’t have a gang of friends on standby, of course.
An omega clone and an inty would be a better option for nullsec. Or, better, a base of ops with a supply of dozen fit inties and Sabres and a cloaky nullified Loki available for maximum fun with the locals.
But that’s not exactly a Surprise Thrasher. That’s… uhm… Operation Underbridge. 
I’m going to do that, eventually, but that’ll take time and ISK investment.
But it’d be funny!