Journal entry, 11 June 2026, Pamirasu, AIR Career Center.

Exordium

Approaching the School of Applied Knowledge in Pamirasu VI, blue nebula in the background. — Approaching the School of Applied Knowledge. This is where I was supposed to learn what a capsuleer does.

Long before my conversion, I had heard of Exordium.

A region of space, freshly opened. New stations, new routes, a whole infrastructure stood up from scratch.

Strange, really, that so much effort went into Exordium. The region is not particularly rich in resources. Then again, that does mean fewer people are out here knocking each other's heads in.

CONCORD and AIR have enforced special safety rules in Exordium: combat between capsuleers is not possible. Mission NPCs are not impressed by that, as I would learn later. Even so, the region is excellent for training new capsuleers. Like me.

If you have not sat inside a capsule yourself, you usually only know one from pictures. It is an egg-shaped vessel full of nutrient fluid. I float in it. It keeps my body alive and absorbs the G-forces that would otherwise crush me. Implants in the skull and along the spine carry the signals. No buttons, no levers. The capsule has its own small drive and could be flown alone if it had to be. Most of the time, though, it sits inside a ship hull. And then I do not steer the ship. I am the ship.

Sustainably lucrative, however, Exordium is not. The ores yield fewer minerals, the rewards are smaller, and on top of that there is a special tax that only applies here. Safety has its price.

Never mind. For now I want to enjoy being able to focus on learning without constantly having to look over my shoulder to see who is checking my cargo hold.

My first stop was the AIR Career Center. A single station where five career agents sit, ready to introduce me to the four classic professions of New Eden.

Burning Pithi Arrogator frigate under fire from an Ibis Civilian Gatling Railgun in the red nebula of Pamirasu. — First mission. First gun. Three targets. Two wrecks. One still burning.

Enforcer. Here I learned the basics of bringing my ships to bear as weapons. And I learned: losses are not the end. Sometimes you have to price them in. Fly too cautiously and you make no profit. Fly what you cannot replace, though, and eventually you stop flying.

Soldier of Fortune. Closely related to the Enforcer, same underlying tone. This is where the more advanced modules came in: warp disruptors, for instance, which have their place in combat against other pilots — if I ever leave Exordium.

I got to demonstrate exactly that lesson at the end of the Soldier of Fortune series. Final mission, Pamirasu 1.0. I thought I could clear my targets quickly with my Ibis. It went thoroughly wrong. The Terrorist Leader had a warp disruptor on him. As long as something like that is on you, you do not get to warp. I could not leave. He took his time and pulled my Ibis apart piece by piece. Only the capsule got out. Loss: 35,738 ISK on paper. The real number was closer to nothing. The Ibis was a gift; nobody buys Civilian modules. Tuition either way.

Detonation of an enemy frigate in violet nebula above an asteroid surface. — Fritz takes no prisoners.

Back at the station I climbed into the Kestrel, the one I had named after her donor „Fritz“. And Fritz delivers. Undocked, back to the scene, tables turned. The Terrorist Leader had nothing to throw at her. My own Ibis wreck was still drifting in the belt when I turned away.

So the Enforcer lesson held up: losses are not the end.

Explorer. Tracking cosmic anomalies with probes. Some hold old structures or modern communication relays you can hack into with the right tool. In others, gas clouds grow that you can harvest and sell.

I felt almost at home with the next two agents.

Venture mining frigate with two active mining lasers on an asteroid in the red nebula. — A Venture, two mining lasers, one asteroid. This is also what earning a living looks like.

Industrialists. Two career agents share this entry, with similar lessons: how to move goods from A to B. How to loot wrecks. How to mine asteroids and refine the minerals from them. How to use station facilities to build new modules from blueprints and minerals. And — something I had to learn — that it is sometimes cheaper to buy something on the market than to build it yourself.

What stood out to me about all the career agents: they are not stingy. New ships, new modules, a first serious ISK total accumulated out of the missions. Any prospective pilot — I can only recommend dropping in on these people.

A tip in passing: in some missions you have to destroy your own ship. If you insure it beforehand for a small fee, you can hope to get a little something back through the payout.

Map of the Exordium region, all visited systems marked orange, the current location Manifest in red, neighbouring regions greyed out at the edges. — Six days later. Every system visited once. Exordium is small — but it is mine now.

Given my background, I would have expected to lean toward the „dry“ and „boring“ activities: mining, refining, manufacturing. And maybe I do, in fact. But the combat missions were more fun than I had expected. Now that I am, more or less, immortal: who knows what is waiting for me beyond Exordium.

Maybe I will surprise myself yet.

— Ariane Quell

For new pilots — briefly explained

Killmails and zKillboard

When a ship is destroyed in New Eden, the system automatically generates a killmail: a technical record of victim, attacker, location, time, and fitting. Third-party services like zKillboard collect those killmails.

If you like, you can have your own killmails fed in automatically through the EVE API, optionally including or excluding NPC losses. If you do not, your killmails can still appear there as soon as a PvP opponent uploads them. That makes zKillboard near-complete for PvP losses but selective for pure NPC ones.

NPC losses like mine also land in their own category and do not count toward personal PvP statistics. A sensible separation. Otherwise fresh capsuleers who lose their first career mission to an NPC mercenary would start out with a poor record.