I sit here now, thinking deep thoughts about my career.
When I first started, I was proud to follow my King's decree. I believed in my objectives. I believed in having a reason to fight.
The desire to do a duty, even to a figure I had never met, gave me the impetus to strike out beyond safer places of space. The Crusade forced me into danger. It forced me into combat with other capsuleers. Under my King's orders, I was prepared to carve a bloody swathe through the stars, leaving a rail of my own cloned corpses and wrecked ships.
I fooled myself into believing that King Khanid's ideals and goals aligned with my own. Independence from the Amarr Empire. Freedom from tradition. Defying God's law, as told by theocrats. These attributes made me proud to bear the Khanid badge, proud to declare myself a Khanid Kataphract.
But it is illusion.
King Khanid is simply another Empire ruler. He serves his own interests, and is willing to do anything to get what he wants. This makes him admirable. To not be constrained by tradition or others' laws is freedom for him.
But without guidance, without someone else's goal, you must have one of your own. The ship does not sail without a destination in mind. Even those ships have something to look for.
What is my purpose?
In the Crusade, I was a simple soldier. Learning how to fight was my goal. A simple life: follow orders, do as well as you can, and get rewarded.
So what now?
I have my oath, but an open ended 'Learn to fight' goal doesn't have any real conclusion to it. My current plan of arbitrary 'Get x kills' is hardly compelling. But what else is there for me to do? There's no great war for me to fight. The current Empire Wars are only the bizarre outcome of controlled self-interest, regulated to the point of irrelevance.
There is nothing to really fight over in the Crusade. There is a lot of money to be made, but my market slave is nearly producing a fully fitted cruiser a day for me, at no real effort on my part. So why fight at all?
And after a week of wrestling with the concept, I still have no definitive answer for what I want to do in the end. All I really know is that I want to get better. To what end, I don't know. Perhaps that will be my goal. A romanticized drift through New Eden searching for a new objective.
My family's oath is to walk in dark places. I think I have found a dark place to walk. There are shadows there, shadows with skill and experience beyond what any in the Crusade can teach me. I'd like to walk with them for a while.
I hope they accept my application.
I hope my family will understand.
When I first started, I was proud to follow my King's decree. I believed in my objectives. I believed in having a reason to fight.
The desire to do a duty, even to a figure I had never met, gave me the impetus to strike out beyond safer places of space. The Crusade forced me into danger. It forced me into combat with other capsuleers. Under my King's orders, I was prepared to carve a bloody swathe through the stars, leaving a rail of my own cloned corpses and wrecked ships.
I fooled myself into believing that King Khanid's ideals and goals aligned with my own. Independence from the Amarr Empire. Freedom from tradition. Defying God's law, as told by theocrats. These attributes made me proud to bear the Khanid badge, proud to declare myself a Khanid Kataphract.
But it is illusion.
King Khanid is simply another Empire ruler. He serves his own interests, and is willing to do anything to get what he wants. This makes him admirable. To not be constrained by tradition or others' laws is freedom for him.
But without guidance, without someone else's goal, you must have one of your own. The ship does not sail without a destination in mind. Even those ships have something to look for.
What is my purpose?
In the Crusade, I was a simple soldier. Learning how to fight was my goal. A simple life: follow orders, do as well as you can, and get rewarded.
So what now?
I have my oath, but an open ended 'Learn to fight' goal doesn't have any real conclusion to it. My current plan of arbitrary 'Get x kills' is hardly compelling. But what else is there for me to do? There's no great war for me to fight. The current Empire Wars are only the bizarre outcome of controlled self-interest, regulated to the point of irrelevance.
There is nothing to really fight over in the Crusade. There is a lot of money to be made, but my market slave is nearly producing a fully fitted cruiser a day for me, at no real effort on my part. So why fight at all?
And after a week of wrestling with the concept, I still have no definitive answer for what I want to do in the end. All I really know is that I want to get better. To what end, I don't know. Perhaps that will be my goal. A romanticized drift through New Eden searching for a new objective.
My family's oath is to walk in dark places. I think I have found a dark place to walk. There are shadows there, shadows with skill and experience beyond what any in the Crusade can teach me. I'd like to walk with them for a while.
I hope they accept my application.
I hope my family will understand.
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