Relishing the tranquility of w-space

It's another night of scanning. At least the probe's positional arrows shouldn't disappear any more, which removes an occasional frustration, although the returned signatures in the scanning frame are now selected arbitrarily and several at a time, creating a new frustration when trying to ignore or select a particular signature. It's a peculiarity but hardly breaks the scanning interface. I am still able to find our static wormhole soon enough and jump through to a system last visited about two months ago, which remains an unoccupied C4 system.

The system has lots of anomalies, which doesn't help when we don't have a fleet to exploit them, and only a few signatures, making the next wormhole easy enough to find. The static connection leads to another class 4 w-space system, again unoccupied. The clear result from the directional scanner lets me launch probes safely and continue scanning, but when I switch to the solar system map I find that I am in a peculiar system. The system only has a single planet, orbitting about 23 AU from the star. Whilst a single planet makes scanning easy and there are plenty of moons available I don't imagine this system being settled at any point, now that planetary interaction is available.

With such a localised search and only five signatures the static C3 connection is almost too easy to locate. I jump through to another clear d-scan result and warping to the outer planet shows that this system is as unoccupied as the previous two. Scanning finds the system's static wormhole, a weak trace leading me to an exit to null-sec space, and with no more wormholes to be found my exploration ends here. W-space is quiet tonight, with only unpopulated systems and no corporation fleet to exploit any sites for profit.

I poke my nose in to the null-sec system to get the red dot of exploration on my star map, and to see if there are any skill books available to buy locally, given that this is our only exit for today. There are no relevant books for twenty jumps, which is rather too far to travel. Whilst out here in null-sec I check my relative location using my atlas of New Eden, a book left largely unused since my permanent move in to w-space. Finding the Insmother regional map I am somewhat unnerved by the depth of null-sec space I find myself in, which is a curious reaction.

I suppose the isolation and anonymity that comes with living in w-space suits me much better than I realise, being disconnected and striving for independence. It is easier to cope with being insignificant when far removed from any significance than when lost amongst a crowd. I return to w-space, where I am significant to myself and can shape my destiny, whilst contributing and having to contribute to an overall survival effort.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, mmorpg, null-sec, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space