Diplomacy, eh?

I'll say immediately that my first diplomatic efforts did not go so well.

A few hours ago, Ren undocked when a small gang of eight jumped into the system to see what was there. It was a mixture of cruisers and battlecruisers with a flycatcher. Maybe it was because he undocked. However, they paused in system and said hello in local. Unable to resist such things, I said hello back and started chatting with them a bit.

As this happened, we also mobilized a fleet. However, they stayed in system and we started getting bodies moving. Then we undocked and set up a neat pincer move to grab them on the gate as they jumped into the next system.

I recognized the corp. The Lost Minmatar Legion. I thought that they were in faction warfare but I did not see the badge anymore. It was an idle thought. I try to remember who hangs around the area. We landed on gate to find out that they were not there. We bounced to the other gate in system and they where not there either. A quick break and scatter to check the stations and they were docked up.

Unexpected.

We sat outside the station and decided what to do.

It took but a few minutes to decide that camping the station was not something that we wanted to do. It was also obvious that they didn't want to run around the system with us. We decided to run off and set up a litle trap and see if we could get a fight.

While this was happening, they posted some in local. One of their images was of Razor's character's face pasted on a man (I think) in red lingerie. Nice of them. They also posted the kill mail (report) of one of the people in our fleet. He got into a nasty situation with the wrong type of ships the other day and lost his ship for it. It was smack talk with links and pictures while they sat in a station hoping we'd go away.

Now we had a stale mate and they seemed fine with it. Eight of them, eight of us...

In local they asked, "can we be friends?" and offered us donuts. A comment was made about having seen our fleet. I blame Wolf for breaking out the Machariel. Its hard to do harmless and no ill intent with one of those lurking around.

Then, to my surprise one of them popped into our public channel and said, "yall seem like a fun bunch wanna diplo some? im sure we will have some common ground to discuss". Unexpected but okay. Ren immediately asked them how much they wanted to pay to pass through the system. The answer was "lol we aint payin shit to anyone".

The breakdown was this. They were heading through the area to go and 'settle a score' with some group in null sec. They know we live in the area and have tangled with us before. They didn't have any problems with us and wanted to see if there was some common ground we could reach that would involve us not shooting us.

The unanimous answer from the boys was, "No. We shoot people." To quote Razor, "nothing personal. we are like nymphomaniacs, except instead of wanting to screw everything that moves, we want to shoot everything that moves"

The response was that he knew that and that unfortunately someone from our alliance had exploded the night before. We immediately rushed to assure him that no offense was taken. People expect to lose ships. It is not taken personally.

There was also talk of seeing if they could help us reach our goals. Ender went into a snickering fit at this. He pointed out that he has been goalless for years. Razor said that not shooting people went directly against any goal we might have. I commented that goal is almost a bad word to THC2.

Then Ender started threatening Razor for some reason. It is what it is. So, the conversation kept flirting around what they wanted from us and I thought I'd try to bring it forward. I said, " it'd prob be best to lay it out on the table" and the response I received was, "what my cock?? how big is your table?"

Diplomatic fail. All of this was being relayed over coms. The boys did not respond to that comment overly well. What little bit of communication we had went 'poof'. Ender and Razor basically told them to bring it. They said they were going to hang out in the station for a bit longer. Ender then tells them he is going to go pee, so they can roll out of the system during that window. They decided not to.

About the time we got tired and collapsed our little trap, they bolted from the system. We were told in local that they would be coming back to visit us very soon and see how things went.

We're cool with that.

On the out gate, one of our eyes caught one of their drakes. He held the drake while the rest of us tried to catch up to their fleet. They all left the drake pilot behind. We then popped the drake pilot.

In local I asked, "Why did they leave you behind?". I was horrified.
Ender said, "coulda just fought us.. might have gotten some kills".
Mane's comment was, "nice buddies you have"
The drake pilot said, "We live for the one, we die for the one. see ya soon."

Our general consensus is that they are maybe to come in mass to pewpew us or something? We'll see.

One last thing, a quote from their corporation description, "The new legion doctrine focuses on professionalism, teamwork, pilot integrity, individual competence, and self sufficency."