Aberrant: 200X - Einherjar's Journal

[Eingar]

July 25, 2008

Well, I thought about it, and here it is. Fianna's request to tell you all about Africa is primarily responsible for this journal, so if you hate it, blame her! This journal is just for the novas-only portion of the OpNet, so feel free to comment if you want to. I don't mind.

On a serious note, I just want to lay down what this journal is not. It won't be the chest-beating memoirs of my roles in nova-scale conflicts. If you're looking for play-by-play gory battle scenes depicted in Howard-esque fashion, you'd be better off watching Gaal And Najaran's documentaries. That said, I'll probably be discussing my thoughts and feelings about some of the situations I find myself in. Names and places will usually be omitted to protect the guilty. Naturally, I also won't be releasing any information on DeVries that isn't already public knowledge. So, now that the boring stuff is out of the way, let's get started.

I'm currently training out of the DeVries National Tactical Solutions base near Windhoek, Namibia. It's good to be training for something again, though battlefield drills are different from my previous conflict training in some notable ways. They really push us here (which is a good thing, to my mind). There's a couple of other trainees, and they pit us against one another in exercises as well as have us work together in group coordination. Teamwork with novas is a different kettle of fish: the usual disparity in powers and abilities encourages flexibility of thought. In short, I'm loving it.

Another thing I'm loving is the scenery:

I'm no hippy, but there are times when it's impossible to look at something like that and not feel alive again, no matter how dog-tired I am.

So, now I'm in my second week of training, and D.V. has got me running patrols on parks. That's right: I fly (and walk) patrols over the Namibian national park areas. There's 4 of them, and a lot of wildlife starting to make a comeback there, but people from over the border as well as some native Namibians feel that lion testicles and elephant tusks are worth breaking poaching laws for, and also worth murdering the park wardens over. So as part of the arrangement between DeVries and the Namibian government, Elites do patrol sweeps through poaching hotspots as part of their training. We act with the authority of the Namibian park wardens, so if we collar poachers and they attempt to resist arrest using violence, we're entitled to use lethal force. That tends to put a damper on the spirits of any but the most well-armed and well-organised poaching rings, and even they tend to go elsewhere when there's Elites around.

So this week I'm patrolling Etosha National Park. Nice place, lots of life, and a fair few tourists. Apparently it's one of Count Orzaiz's favorite places to come and photo-safari, or so they claim. I'm inclined to believe it, too:

An Etosha sunset near the lake. Not bad, huh? And as if that weren't enough, there's this little guy for the ladies. He was watching his mum hunt, and was sufficiently distracted for me to grab a pic:

Well, that's all for this time. I might have some more to share later; I'll try and post once a week or so if people are interested. Otherwise, it's no skin off my nose. Take care all.

[Caitlin Kieran]

Those are gorgeous, like something straight out of a naturalist's magazine. I can't say I envy the prep work you guys must have to do, and all the training, but nabbing poachers? That's fantastic. I know that most of you guys aren't doing what you do out of some sense of moral obligation, but this- protecting the wildlife, making sure that people's own stupidity doesn't damn these other creatures to oblivion via starvation, disease, or wanton slaughter- is something that actually needs to be done. (Well, more than just protecting some jerk in a suit.)

Also, I'm curious.

A lot of people have called Africa the "cradle of life," and gone there on pilgrimages and whatnot to find themselves or get away from the world, and I was wondering if you'd experienced any epiphanies, or realizations, or anything like that.

I plan on going one day, so I'm relying on you to be my inside man!

[Eingar]

Interesting question, Fianna. I'm not usually given to waving my introspection around for others to see, but you asked honestly and openly, so I'll answer. And I'd have to say yes, I do think I've found myself here.

Life here is simpler; not easier, but simpler. You get the feeling here that you're not so cut off from the natural world. I can be hunting for poachers, or playing seek and destroy exercises in the desert, with radio signals in my ears and airburst shells going off around me, and I still feel more connected to the world than I did elsewhere.

It makes sense that this is the cradle of life. There's a quality to the air here, a feeling that this place isn't like any other. Maybe that's why Africa always inspired fantastic tales. Maybe that's why to this day there's a wild romance to the place that can't be matched elsewhere. And maybe that's why so much blood has been shed over this land. It casts a spell over people with it's wealth and it's wide open spaces and the potential of violence around every corner, every bend in the trail.

I think here you can find out just how much you rely on police and courts, OpPhones and air conditioning, and civilisation's other comforts to be a moral and ethical person. Africa puts that to the test.

[Eingar]

December 10th, 2008

Well, it's been a busy half-year.

Three successful stand-alone missions, six weeks in Kashmir for fun and profit, and one steel armani job for a Bollywood starlet who needed an Elite bodyguard about as much as I need pink hair extensions.

Not a bad start to my Elite life though, all things considered. They tell me I could shoot higher in the rankings if I killed more (nova) opponents, but to be honest I'm not all that interested in a death-rep. I'd rather be known for solidly getting the job done than having notches in my sword. Most Elites, even the ones on the other side, are just doing their jobs. There's some who are flat out arseholes, though. Desperate for a kill, they'll pick on a newbie right out of training (and in the case of some other Elite firms, not trained at all), and take the poor little sod apart. 'Cherry-pickers', is what they're called, and most real Elites despise the schmucks. Met one in Kashmir, called himself Warbow.

He was my second nova kill.

It didn't touch me like I thought it would, killing another Elite. Warbow was younger than me, had done nothing in the professionally-applied violence field before erupting. He was a street thug from Naples, with few redeeming features. And he died 30 seconds into our dust-up. Some part of me wishes there was more I could say about him, something positive. Did he die bravely? Hard to say: from where I was standing he didn't even know he was about to die. I suppose that's something positive:

Warbow was lucky. We should all be that lucky.

I felt more sorry for the regular troops out there. Insurgents, Pakistani, Indian, they're all fighting for something they believe in, something they've been told is right. They're not ready to come up against someone like me, or Vile Bill. Or even Warbow.

Am I going soft? Good question. No, I don't think so. My sentiment doesn't stop me or slow me down. But after the fighting's done and the zone is secured, I call in the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders folks. Those guys have serious brass neck doing that job. Good on them.

I just got done with 1 week's R&R. Saw Bangkok, Bali, Havana and Rio. I drank (I would say too much, but meh, nova metabolism), went sightseeing, tried out some illicit substances and generally wallowed in debauchery. It was an interesting experience. Amoral hedonism was never really my bag before. I'm still not sure that it is. But it was liberating.

I'm still currently at leisure, so if anyone has some ideas for things to do, go ahead and throw them at me. I'm also trying to decide if I should buy a home somewhere nice, or just live on-base. Decisions, decisions.

Hope everyone elses year has been full and profitable.

[Eingar]

February 18th, 2009

A belated Happy New Year to you all. Been busy working and busy playing, so haven't had much time to post here. Huge apologies to Fianna for not splurging wildlife and scenery all over my last post. I was feeling a little introspective that day.

So let's start as we mean to continue here. I told you in my last post that I'd been to Kashmir, and most of you have probably seen all the 'important' bits on the OpNet already. By important, I naturally mean those bits that people are always fighting over. But I did manage to see some of the, umm, less-toured places during my stay.

During one of my earlier assignments in my tour of duty I happened to find myself in Concordia, which is a lovely little spot where two glaciers meet in the Karakorum mountain range on the border of Kashmir and Pakistan. Don't ask what I was doing there But the scenery was absolutely bloody mind-staggering. Here's a shot of K2 from a convenient spot.

And of course, being me, I had to fly up and get a view of the top.

Next stop was the Siachen Glacier. That's technically a no-fly zone, yadda-yadda-blah. But I wasn't flying, so the letter of international law was obeyed. While I was laid up during the daylight hours, waiting for night to come so I could do something best described as dangerous and well-paid, I managed to snap this beauty. Don't mind the Chinese troop choppers, they were just out snooping around. They tend to use those relics for patrols up there because they're easier to maintain and less expensive than modern ones. That right there beyond them is millions of tons of slow-moving ice, potted with holes and crevasses, and at night time it gets cold enough to freeze 'em off. Not much wildlife I'm afraid, Caitlin, sorry. Nice views though.

Here's one of those aforementioned holes. No, I didn't go in there looking for a Wampa snow monster. Some of these holes in the ice go down forever, and they can be pretty unstable as the glacier shifts.

So, after suffering serious frostbite in places I feel will never be warm again, I was headed back to Africa. Feeling in urgent need of warming, I stopped off in the Virunga Mountains, a chain of volcanoes with one or two of the eight major ones still active.

Here's one of the active beasts, Mount Nyiragongo. Last erupted in 2006 along with his brother, Mount Nyamuragira. First shot is one of the western slope headed up...

And then, because I can fly, I got this one of the inside of the crater at dusk. The fumes coming out of there were nasty, though. For those of you who like breathing, like me, I'd recommend approaching the lip of the crater on foot or else hold your breath good and tight. I got a whiff of something nasty and nearly fell in flying over that bastard.

After recovering, I headed to Virunga National Park. Lovely place, stuffed with hippos, gorillas, and poachers just like Namibia. Considered offering my services, but the local park wardens are kitted out for Desert Storms I, II, and III. They don't really need an Elite at the moment. So, off I went to do a different kind of shooting. Got this little guy from a fair way off with a telephoto lens. According to the wardens, he's about 3 years old.

Then there was this nasty bunch. Oh, they look all placid and peaceful, but trust me, bloody hippopotami are anything but! About 3 seconds after I took this picture from twenty feet away I had to get airborne because the bulls decided that they didn't like my face. I've been outside Glaswegian pubs at closing time wearing an England rugby shirt and received less aggro.

That's pretty much all my wild and wonderful. Did a job in Mumbai guarding a producer for a little while, but that kind of wildlife isn't fit for all eyes.