Battling Mordu's Legion

For some reason people like reading about mining in low sec.  I haven't written too much about the subject lately because following the changes to the Procurer in Kronos, I felt the rugged little mining barge with the big tank was kind of obsolete.  So after a few close calls, I put the ship in the hanger and started training for the Prospect.

Then a funny thing happened.  I discovered mining missions.  If I wanted to fly the Prospect, I figured I needed to do everything possible to squeeze mining yield from the hull.  So while researching mining skill implants, I discovered that they were only found, at least locally, from the NPC mining corporations.  Mining corporations, I discovered, only have level 4 agents that give out mining missions.  But with Mining Connections V and faction standings of 9.9, the payouts aren't too bad for the ice mining and gas harvesting missions.

I had a pretty good thing going.  Because I was operating in mission space, I had plenty of warning of anyone trying to probe me down.  I thought nothing could touch me as long as I paid attention.  Then Mordu's Legion showed up.


I was under the impression that the Mordu's Legion ships that drop the blueprints would not spawn in missions.  But the Saturday before Phoebe launched a wave of four ships approached Wandering Rose's Procurer and hidden in the back was a Mordu's Legion cruiser.  I didn't grow concerned until both the drones from the Procurer and the torpedoes from Rosewalker's Hound I was dual-boxing barely put a scratch in the NPC's shields.  Needless to say, the Procurer died.  A long, slow, lingering death, but the ship exploded all the same.

Wandering Rose returned to the scene in a Prospect to scoop up what remained.  Fortunately, the 6 units of mission ice in the ore hold dropped, meaning I still had a chance to complete the mission.  The Mordu's Legion ship was gone, so Wandering Rose reshipped to another Procurer and returned to the mission space.  As soon as she started mining, the rat would reappear.  I respawned the rat three more times before giving up on the rat going away on its own.  I guess once Mordu's Legion wins the field, they don't give it back without a fight.

Mordu's Legion In My Mission

I decided I couldn't let Mordu's Legion just come in and kill my ship.  I had to get payback.  So I came up with a plan.  I'd re-ship Wandering Rose into a Jaguar, web and scram the rat and let Rosewalker kill the rat from range in his Hound.  I was in Sugar Kyle's in-game chat channel, told her what happened, and asked for advice on how to fit a Jaguar.  She gave me some examples and I modified one of them in Pyfa real quick and then went to get my Jaguar.  The only problem was, I couldn't find the ship in my inventory.  Turns out the ship was in a cargo container in high sec.  Remember, this occurred before Phoebe and the search function would search all containers.  I had to search each one individually in order to find the assault frigate.  But that took valuable time.  By the time I arrived back in the system, the rat was gone and would not respawn.  I finished the mission, but not in time to get the mission bonus.

Yesterday, I had a chance for a rematch.  Wandering Rose was mining in a small spodumain, crokite, and dark ochre site dual-boxed with Rosewalker flying a Hound acting as a mobile bookmark when another Mordu's Legion cruiser landed 24 km away from my Procurer.  I was mining while aligned to the mission station, so I immediately warped off-grid and docked up.

Here was my chance to get even.  Despite the presence of neutrals in system, Wandering Rose re-shipped into her Jaguar and proceeded to go back to the belt to take care of the rat.  I knew that the rat would point and web her assault frigate, making her easy prey for anyone who wandered by, but I didn't care.  I wanted that rat dead!

This time, Wandering Rose landed on grid 24 km from the Mordus cruiser and wasted no time spiraling in to grab tackle.  The Jaguar and rat both tackled each other, although Wandering Rose's ship was fit with a scram as well as a web to turn off any MWD the rat might have.  I wanted that ship moving as slowly as possible in space.  With the Jaguar drawing the rat's full attention, Rosewalker's Hound warped to within 50km of the fight, decloaked, fired up the target painter, and started pouring torpedoes into the cruiser.

The torpedo fire drew the rat's attention away from Wandering Rose, who's ship at this point was at half-shields.  The Hound started taking some damage to the shields, but a direction change reduced the damage to a manageable amount.  The NPC, however, was not faring so well.  With Wandering Rose pouring Barrage into the cruiser from 1600 meters and Rosewalker lobbing torpedoes from 47 km, the Mordus ship soon exploded.

I was reasonably calm until I looted the wreck.  Inside was a 1-run Orthrus blueprint copy.  I quickly scooped up the loot and got back to the station, where I quickly unloaded the BPC into my inventory.

One of these things doesn't belong

Once I was in the station, my hands started shaking.  I had just managed to get the biggest single drop I had ever gotten in my five years of playing the game.  As of 7 am EVE time this morning, only 17 Orthrus BPCs were in public contracts in New Eden, with the asking price ranging from 350-400 million ISK.

More importantly, I got the drop in a low sec system with neutrals in system and the threat of PvP types roaming through the system at any moment.  Indeed, a couple of pilots with negative security standings (one was -8) entered the system less than 5 minutes after I docked up.  Now, for most people who fly in low sec, that's just a normal everyday event.  But I'm a pretty risk-adverse type and I'd normally stay away from that type of situation.  In this case, however, I really wanted to kill that NPC and loot that BPC.  As much as I hate losing ships, I really hate losing them for no gain.  Having a second chance to get a big drop to make up for losing a Procurer was too much to pass up.

I do have to admit that the addition of Mordus Legion NPCs to the belts in low sec did raise some concerns.  I usually set up to do explosive damage due the weakness of the Angel rats plus the 60% explosive damage bonus I get for having Covert Ops trained to 4.  The weakness of the Mordus rats, on the other hand, is to thermal and kinetic damage.  Looking back, Wandering Rose probably should have used Phased Plasma instead of Barrage, but everything worked out in the end.  But perhaps more importantly, I'm winning the ISK war against Mordus Legion.