We can be immortal with out going 514. When the first gen of mercs came out they lost all of their memories of the past why can't that happen again. who is to say it hasn't happened us yet. All of us we are tools we know that. Expensive yes, loyal not always but tools. Just like tools we can be broken and fixed. We are more of a slave then one in the amarr empire. Yes we may fight for reason such as for state or honor but in the end those are just excuses made for mercs to fight the rich man's war. So i guess i can agree about there is a cost for immortality but not exactly for the same reasons.

When not properly calibrated our implants can do a number on us. The implants I started out with were prone to fits where they would randomly trigger rapid onset neural decay and dementia.

Everyone else in my unit could see what was happening but me. I was losing my mind and no one said a damn word.

Even after that experience I still encounter a few issues. It is almost like bits of me got... I don't know, corrupted. Out of no where I will become obsessed, though the object of my obsession always alludes me. I don't know if it is me trying to remember something important or if there is just a glitch in my memory. It eats away at you day after day after day until I eventually jump into another clone and the feeling is gone. All I can try to do is ride out the storm and hold back the tide of psychosis.

I'm not familiar with the Black though, and it makes me worried. A good friend of mine became a capsuleer. He was probably the most brilliant and kind person I had ever me. That said, I hate to think what he could be capable of without that compassion.

Unsettling details, Fae-haan. Perhaps things will settle out in time. In the meantime, it may be advisable to keep a journal, or otherwise track your state of mind.

It should not be too surprising that the complete replacement of certain portions of the brain with cybernetics should take a few sessions of debugging, of course, as cringe-worthy as the very concept may be.

Even theoretically civilized capsuleers allied to an empire, however, will commonly crack occupied habitats in hopes of finding even a few valuables within. If your friend would hesitate to dig up an anthill on the suspicion that it contained an antique coin, you may not have very much to worry about. Otherwise ... it is not a path I would recommend to anyone who desired to remain a functioning part of the human race.

DeadlyAztec11:

Soldier, get your blasted head checked. And I mean by a technician, not a shrink.

Most of us can't be "fixed" just by getting an upgrade; you likely can, if you are what you claim to be-- and you should. The first generation would cast a long enough shadow if it were properly extinct; having even a few of you still around is a substantial problem.

We crack plenty fast on our own without having artificial help. Get it cleared and lose your mind in your own way and on your own schedule.

This. I'm not sure everyone does, but a good number of mercs deal with side-effects from the implant, either right from the start or due to the lifestyle we all tend lead causing problems down the road. Mistakes happen. Sometimes....sometimes you screw up, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go seek out help. I've been seeing a therapist for the past few months about the **** I've been through. It doesn't cure everything, but I haven't gone cr-well, I haven't gone crazy enough in the head to do anything drastic. Again.

Personally, I just try and focus on the short term when it comes to my future. Wake up, get some food and coffee, sort out my contracts and dropsuits for the day, and get to it. Sometimes I'll chat with the friends I've made or go read about what everyone else is up to online, but for the most part it's a pretty simple enough existence. I can plan for the long-run when I've calmed down and my head is screwed on straight again.

the price we pay for immortality is the constant pain of death every time we get shot, stabbed or blown up..

there are other prices to pay including a never ending torture cycle of being expendable war puppets..

basically the price we pay for immortality is our very existence, we fight for those who pay us and for those who give us a reason to fight....

the immortal soldier is nothing more than a war puppet for the people in charge of this cluster ****

the immortal soldier is nothing more than a war puppet for the people in charge of this cluster ****

Have I fallen?

Are we lost?

There is only one possible end when you make those who are destined to Die, never able to. Endless War, Endless Death.

The Cost of Immortality Is Death.

Pure, Simple, and without End.

CONCORD Had no hand in our creation, They tried to prevent it. Every Breath you take is in violation of their laws. If they had the ability to end us, they would have used it long ago.

Spirits protect us from apocalyptic poetry.

We're still able to die, soldier. Just ask the vast majority of the first generation. If we run out of techs, bioengineers, miners, and all the rest of the support staff of our industry (and we are an industrial product), we'll get to fnd out what it's like.

And that's assuming that CONCORD hasn't done the smart thing and installed a killswitch that isn't shaped like an assault rifle.

While the poetry might have been unnecessary, I don't think he is necessarily talking about actual, physical death. A death could be spiritual or psychological, related to that cost we pay when we become immortal.

You speak of Immortality, yet I doubt you understand it in it's fullest. You speak of the first Empyreans, suggesting that the void changes them, that they become empty and cold like the vast emptiness of space they traverse. Suggesting they do not see the destruction they cause. You are wrong. They may be undying, but they fear death. The universe that spawned them has turned to hate them. The power that polices them sees them as a threat. They are hunted by their own for the slightest thing.

We are Empyrean also, but we know Death, we fear it not, we accept it. We are Death, We are what they feared the Empyreans would become

Have you seen the eyes in the darkness, the dark whispers in the back of your mind. Have you come to know you are the Death they all fear. They fear us not because of the power we have, or our numbers, nor even what we could do if the lesh slipped and we were given our full freedom. No they fear us because we are everything that they are not.

We are Death Given form, No Mortal can stand before us, No Empyrean can stand against us without facing that which they fear the most. The Unending Death of all things.

We are what Concord was meant to prevent, We exist in Defiance of their mandate.

"To Protect the right of civilizations to grow and prosper;
To preserve the surviving sovereignties of the Dark Ages;
To serve justice to those immortals who abuse the privildge of everlasting life;
To safeguard the mortals of the worlds from dangers which originate in space;
To prevent empyrean technology from causing the destruction of humanity."

We are their failure, We are their future, We are their Doom.

Pick sides where you will, Offer loyalty to those you think you trust, Kill those you think deserve death's warm embrace, but know this. While Mankind was born from dust and is destined to return to it. You are no longer counted among them.

You are destined to die a trillion deaths, and always arise again.

Welcome to Children to the ranks of the Empyrean, you are a Bunny. Bring their fears, Bring their end.

Most of us usually have some kind of military background, or at least had extensive training while participating in the clone soldier program. A part of that "immortality training" is dealing with the constant loss, pain and suffering we have to endure, and sometimes gone through mental conditioning to just, not care. In a way, a part of us dies when we go through that training, like with capsuleers who experience the Black. Death is nothing but a financial inconvenience, we become disconnected from the outside world, we simply, stop caring. ISK is all that matters.

Some of us have gone over that, found an ideal to hold on to to keep ourselves from going 514 entirely. But even then, me, you, all of us are a little dead from the inside, a hole in our hearts where nothing but darkness resides.

I might have agreed with you if that had been his first post, but...

...Our apocalyptic colleague may be suffering from spiritual harm, but the role he seems to see for us is as bringers of a very physical sort of destruction.

Perhaps that is so. It is not clear to me, however, that the experience is the same for us as it is for the capsuleers. The capsuleers seem to acquire the hole you describe. We might acquire something similar by some means, but it seems as though we more often get battered until we become ... numb, I suppose.

We might not experience it the same way a capsuleer would, but we experience the same coldness, numbness nevertheless.

Do we?

I hope we do not. My own pit of nothing is quite broad enough without further digging.

A primary trait of capuleerdom is one we lack: perception on a macrocosmic scale, a ship the size of an entire town as a single body that is nevertheless an infinitesimal speck lost in halls of emptiness.

We suffer, as human bodies suffer. We die, as human bodies die. The capsuleers are detached from the human condition. We, on the other hand, are violently subject to it, again, and again, and again.

If we as a whole come to the same murderous apathy as the capsuleers, it will be a strange and a sad thing.