Meet the Buggers #2 - Erik Bear Man

The second in my random series of biopics about my corp members is about Erik Mercade.

He started playing EVE  in February, and did a bit of research on how to make money, what ships to fly, what he wanted to do. He came into the game with a pretty good vision of how he wanted to play it, which is always a good thing, considering EVE is such a gritty sandbox. Often newbros can get woefully distracted by the plethora of options, then get confused, then get disillusioned as they waste time and skill training doing things which they never really get good at or complete.

Erik came to BUGRY with basic frig skills, barely any cruiser skills, and we got him straight into the Newbro Experience - flying Mauluses into battle, trying not to die, and got him straightened up on a path toward the Gila, Execquror and Enyo.

Within the first week, he was involved in a capital gank in nullsec, flying his maulus into battle and not even knowing what a sensor damp really did, or how to pilot the ship. Going from a couple of weeks of hisec exploration to 80 people on grid and 100km of bubbles in one go was it; he was hooked.

The thing about EVE, being an MMO, is that it occurs in the real world. The real world is as full of surreal tales as EVE.

Yesterday on comms, Erik suddenly pipes up "Holy shit, there's a brown bear looking in my window."
"What?"
"No shit. There's a young bear looking in my window. it's like, 5 feet away."
"Holy shit!"
"I'm just...going to...close the window...with my foot."

I started recording, cheerfully advising him that at least we'd have his death screams on comms as the bear ate his legs off. We're tight like that in BUGRY.

The next night, the guys from Animal Control in the town where he lives in north-western United States come around to ask questions. They apparently then drank some beer. And then one of them tried to sign Erik up to life insurance via his brother's insurance company.

I guess this makes sense. If you are being stalked by bears, it's probably worth at least considering life insurance.