Rend

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I lost my Abaddon after many glorious battles and purchased a new one, calling it Rend after someone suggested it in the comments for that blogpost.

Rend, my new flagship

Eager to test it out in battle, I threw it into many situations where a simple Battlecruiser would not suffice. Unfortunately, most people are intimidated by its mere presence and decided to either dock up or leave the field once it arrived.

However, I finally found an opportunity to use it in glorious combat. Late at night on a weekday, just before turning in, on a whim I decided to scan down any wormholes near Hevrice to see if there was anything to kill. Joking around with corpmates on Ventrilo, someone mentioned that knowing my luck, I would find 4 Tengus running Sleeper sites whilst I was in the midst of jumping into a wormhole. Pulsing the directional scanner as I was about to retort, I spied 3 Nighthawks and a Drake on scan, but with no POS on scan meaning they were running sleeper sites!

A Nighthawk, Caldari Command Ship

Mentioning this over comms, my corpmates started asking whether I was kidding or not. Assuring them I was not, we quickly assembled a fleet together after gathering further intel, such as the fact that the wormhole system was a Class 3 Wolf-Rayat system, giving moderate bonuses to armor resists whilst giving moderate penalties to shield resists. All in all, we rallied together 3 Amarr Battleships along with our own Drake, as well as a Heavy Interdictor for initial tackle on the wormhole entrance.

As my alt reported that they were warping to the next site, our Broadsword jumped into the wormhole and was warped to the next site courtesy of a second scouting alt. Moments later, "Bubble up" was heard and the rest of the fleet warped in. They all fell, despite them scattering in different directions in an attempt to pull away.

With the Heavy Interdictor preventing their pods warping off, we grabed individual points, in several cases chasing pods down with the Battleships. A hefty ransom of 500M was paid for the pods. All in all, we made a quick ~750M once the Nighthawks as well as the Sleeper wrecks were salvaged. After insurance, this would almost pay for the price of Rend, a good start! But I wanted more, and did I get it!

To be continued...