I am well informed of the tribulations a capsuleer must endure, though I dare say Soren, my patron, does not suffer in his service.

"The Lord's work is not something to shirk"

As the old adage goes

There do seem to be capsuleers who enjoy pursuing conventional spacecraft, the means by which many a combat pilot's bread is buttered. An experienced capsuleer becomes a weapon of mass destruction; there may be some satisfaction in this. But the difference in power makes it analogous to hunting sub-sapient species in a planetary wilderness.

A far greater joy-- and it is one more common, even inherent, to us than it is to them-- is the hunt for one's peers. There is something primal and addictive in the hunt and the kill, the test of skill and cunning. Experience that even once, and it is difficult to find much joy in hunting weaker victims. It makes the mere murder that is day-to-day capsuleer combat work seem ...

... downright herbivorous, really. Like grazing on grass, or mining.

Appalling or not, this sort of fratricidal bloodlust is a motivating force behind much of the capsuleer economy.


Prudent, perhaps. And ... sometimes I do try not to enjoy it-- not to ... smile, as I prepare to vent a knife's plasma charge through the spine of a fellow "immortal" soldier. Though, really, if I did not enjoy the work, I think I would have to retire.

I'm not sure you want someone like me on the loose in the civilian population.

Mr. Trifarn:

The Templar Crusader acts as he believes is right; so do many others, seemingly including yourself. Respectfully, does this grant you absolution for the harm you inflict? Perhaps time will tell. Certainly, you are stronger, more focused, than the lost, or those who so badly want us to believe they are lost that they throw boxes of kittens out of airlocks.

Really, I wonder how many of us are actually lost. We are capable of atrocity, certainly, but that is mostly a matter of frailties common to much of humanity.

For my own part, I am content to channel my damaged soul toward constructive ends. The question for me is not whether I am "noble," but whether I serve a purpose beyond my own fractured existence-- whether I am useful.

To return to the original topic of discussion: I'm sure many capsuleers could, briefly, do what we do. Some had background as ground soldiers before entering the academies, or come from elite backgrounds such as the Khanid cyberknights. Many of our weapons occupy the outer edges of what even enhanced soldiers might use, but, still, no doubt a few could still perform passably.

What they would not do, is survive the experience.

Capsuleer emergency cloning is dependant on the availability of a capsule and, more importantly, its onboard cloning rig. It is rare for the vast majority of us to walk away from a battle without at least one death. A capsuleer who walks into one of our conflicts is unlikely to walk away again.

Our humanity at this stage is debatable, Mr. Trifarn. We meet many definitions of it, but we have become detached from what's commonly known as the "human condition," notably the bits involving death.

Reversing that observation, it's unlikely that most of us will be able to enjoy that bounty of time. Capsuleers last six months on average-- scarcely an eternity. At a guess, our average careers will be much shorter; death for capsuleers is both less traumatic and less common.

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