Space Skilling Saturday 24 (and thence Toulan)

Location:- Arkadia Space.
Time:- 1800 MA.
Present:- Wolta, Nocturaline & Myself

All were present and correct at the appointed time. Nocturaline was already aboard, I had to leave the Arkadian surface and once aboard summoned Wolta who kindly added some oil to the vessel. We were slightly early but waited until 1800 before leaving as none of us had heard from Vinge for a couple of days.

As has become most usual I took the first shift at the helm, the Cosmic Horrors were easy to find and I soon amassed quite a large collection, unfortunately it did not take long before they stopped giving any skills, so I had to turret them, luckily we were still close to the station so it did not take long. On the next foray it took considerably longer to find the Horrors and by the third they were very sparse but my hour was up and I handed over to Wolta. We have started to change pilot by having the next pilot stand right behind the chair and watch for it to be vacated, when it is the old pilot emerges behind the new and the new can enter the chair very swiftly.

Wolta seemed to do better at finding the Horrors than I did, certainly Nocturaline and I were kept busy with the RK-20s very soon after Wolta took the chair, I swear I could feel the heat from mine. When Wolta handed over to Nocturaline, she crashed to desktop at the same time I had a lock-up and thought I was going to crash but survived.

Nocturaline reported that there were plenty of mobs around, she also spotted a blue marker but lost it before getting an identity. My RK-20 did not get the opportunity to cool so clearly there were many Horrors in the zone.

To begin with Space chat was very quiet, I did say good evening but got no reply, I suspect most were on the surfaces of various planets taking advantage of the extra skills available this weekend. Toward the end it got very busy with a new repairer trying to board the ship, unfortunately he got killed by some of the mobs that were following us, twice I think. It seems he was unaware that he needed to request access first. By the time we had sorted it out it we had only about 10 minutes of scheduled time left. Fortunately SC was just firing up Kronan so he joined there. I have now added him to my FL and the ship’s guest list, I have also given the address of this site, hopefully he will be able to join us for future sessions.

We departed for Toulan about 10 minutes behind schedule as Nocturaline turreted the Horrors that were no longer giving skill, by this time Wolta was falling asleep so she logged. Nocturaline still had the helm and set a course while I sat in the lower right turret and caught up with writing this log entry whilst watching Toulan get bigger at full magnification. I do like these lower turrets, the gun barrels are very slim and a better view is available. Calculated travel time was about 2 hours and 10 minutes which turned out to be correct. It was a nice journey during which I chatted with a few people, at the end Nocturaline took me to the surface in her quad, piloted all the way.

My entertainment for the evening started with BBC Radio 3, Jazz Record Requests and Jazz Line up, both of which were broadcast later than normal but still ended at the same time as the Skilling session.