Friday 20 April 2012

Naglfari - boat of the dead.


In Norse mythology, Naglfar or Naglfari (Old Norse "nail ship") is a boat made 
entirely from the fingernails and toenails of the dead

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Six months ago I wouldn't have even thought about owning a dreadnought or let alone even use one in actual combat.

With [-KBG-] having firmly settled into Shadow Cartel my views on that changed, from a mainly solo and small gang pvp'er with a hate for anything bigger than Battlecruisers I now own an entire fleet of T1, T2 and faction Battleships, two Dreads and a Thanatos. Funny how desires change.

Naglfari I named her on delivery. Certainly the most interesting looking Dread out of the 4 races. It's split weapon system certainly not making it the most desirable.



Eager to take her out and fire a few rounds Naglfari spend a further 2 weeks without appropriate shield modules. Poco bashing and even a Nyx kill under her belt she got worn in and suited me better by the day. Better modules and improving skills slowly pulling her from worst scoring Dread in the alliance to one of the competitors for top spot.


Last week in a scrap with Ares Protectiva she showed her worth, firing round after round into many vessels of the opposing party, scoring high in the damage points across the board. A great fight, safely lit in, superior tactics and preparation leading to a victorious battle and then safely slipping out, like ninja's with sledgehammers.

For a sweet vid of that fight check out this one made by a fleet member;


A different op was organized yesterday; a hot-drop on some poor super somewhere. Mainly Dreads where wanted to ensure a quick in/out, but there a side note, the response fleet may cause for some of us not getting out.

Naglfari on a one-way trip? No way, she is special, sacred...right?

Instead I jumped into my newly acquired Phobos and intended to provide critical infini-pointage instead. The op got cancelled last minute and we sulked our way home.

News arrived of a Raiden fleet lighting a cyno and dropping triage in Old Man Star and we quickly set off to intercept them. Moros pilots where to remain available the rest shipped into Battleships and raced off.

Battle was forced upon us sooner than intended by a pilot coming from a different direction getting caught in his Vindicator and another prematurely lighting his cyno.

Battle raged, Aeschee was set alight. Raiden lit cyno's of their own, bringing in their own triage. A momentary deadlock where neither side could break the others armour-reps needed escalating...

... so we did.

Several giant balls of red, electric smoke lit up the field. From it emerged the bubbly hulls of doom; the Shadow Cartel Moros fleet. Dual targets being called; sub-cap and cap- targets with even more red clouds filling up our overviews. Raidens first response team arrived in the form of an Aeon and a Nyx, supported by 2 more carriers.

With excellent repping by our triage-pilots the battle seemed to go in slow-motion, plenty of time to follow orders and watch the battlefield increase in size, despite several explosions.

'Aeon going down! Heat on the Aeon! Secondary Nyx! subcaps get that carrier’

Moros or not; our entire Dread-fleet was out on the field. A surprised Raiden desperately tried to save their supers and the tide of the battle lay in the balance. On both sides capital ships burst out into bright blue balls before fading forever. The Aeon was downed and the Nyx was sure to be second and with it in low armour victory felt like ours already, regardless of us losing our entire fleet.

'More supers!' the warning was pointless, we could all see it. One, two, four, eight...

For Yaseman it was too late, his Nyx buckled inwards before breaking and expelling it's insides. An unspoken feeling of pure win for all in our gang.

'Siege red, siege red, cap up!' the command followed as even more supers now entered the field. More than 200 fighter bombers now flooded out from their hangars and insta-popped several friendly Dreadnoughts. Raiden now fielded more super-carriers than we had Dreads.

Lacking Heavy Interdictors to pin down our capitals, our self-capping dreads managed to time their jump-drives to near perfection and as by pure magic managed to save themselves from certain doom.

Check out this video made by one of the guys in fleet;


From 25 dreads fielded, one managed to self-destruct, 11 never made it out. And what a glorious way to lose them. The most accurate battle report can be found on EVEkill here.

Some of us fielded multiple dreads and saved them, some fielded multiple and lost them all.

Still sweaty-palmed I docked up my heavily damaged nuet Phoon a few hours later. Browsing through my ships I stopped to look at her... Naglfari.

I looked at her in disgust. The boat of the death shouldn't have been here. It should have been a smouldering wreck back in Aeschee. It should have died a glorious death there, a chance like that will not come around again...



3 comments:

  1. There is always plenty of time left to derp :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ninja's with sledgehammers. I like that description.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, who are you again?

    Lol, sounds like a blast. And don't worry, you'll get more chances.

    ReplyDelete