Greetings gentle readers, I hope this message finds you all in good health, if it manages to find you at all.  The last few days I’ve found myself deep in various wormholes, exploring and familiarizing myself with just how such things function.  It started as any other adventure generally does, scanning around for interesting things in my Cheetah.  I picked up the signature of an unstable wormhole in Ammold and decided to investigate since I had nothing better to do at the time.  I found myself in a Class 2 occupied by a tiny Alliance of around 35 pilots in 3 Corporations (2 of which only boasted 2 members each).

I viewed this as an excellent opportunity to not only learn more about wormholes, but to practice my scanning and exploration skills as well.  Marking a few safer looking places via the navcom, I then deployed my scanner probes to see what other signatures I might find.  In short order I had uncovered 10 or so signatures in the system, and set about identifying each of them.  Most turned out to be gas clouds or asteroid belts, but one resolved into another wormhole entering onto a Class 4!  Bear in mind that this is exciting for me, as I’ve previously barely scraped the surface of wormhole exploration.  Jumping through into the Class 4, I find it empty of inhabitants but having a mass of signatures and anomalies.  I spent the next several hours painstakingly identifying and documenting each location, discovering another wormhole in the process.

Jumping through once more, I discover this wormhole to be a tiny Class 1 with not much to offer but an exit to an unknown low security solar system, and another to a Class 3 wormhole.  Choosing to continue exploring this wormhole chain I jump into the Class 3 and find it heavily fortified, yet sparsely populated.  The lone occupant other than myself is an unmanned Archon class Carrier sitting inside the force field of one of the structures.  Having never seen an actual Carrier before I decided to take a look, though unfortunately the force field prevented my getting too close. After this I took the time to scan down any signatures in the system and located a hisec exit that put me out a mere 13 systems from where I began, but something in the back of my mind told me that I wasn’t quite done with this wormhole yet.

Hopping back in, I waited… and waited… and… waited some more.  Finally my patience was rewarded as the Carrier left the station it was floating outside and I began to notice Sleeper wrecks appearing on my scanner display along with a Tengu.  There only being 2 anomalies in this Class 3, I proceeded with caution in the hopes of seeing the Carrier in action (just not involving myself).  Entering at range and well cloaked, I notice the last few Sleepers falling to the Carrier’s fighters and the accompanying Tengu.  The Tengu pilot then stored his ship in the Carriers maintenance bay and sat idly in his capsule for a few minutes before warping himself back to the station, presumably to get a loot and salvage ship as none of the wrecks have been touched at this point.

I decide to do something about that.  Quickly bookmarking the only 3 Large Sleeper wrecks, I warp out to a nearby moon, then warp in on top of each Large wreck in turn, quickly gathering the surviving cargo in the wreckage into my hold before warping back to the moon and then back in on top of the next wreck.  I did this primarily in the hopes of preventing the Carrier from having enough time to target me and dispatch his fighters if he was paying attention.   After securing the large cargo containers I decided to save some time and risk staying in the area to gather up Medium and Small wrecks, activating my cloaking device while I travel any distance between them.  In the end I collected all of the cargo from the 10 to 12 wrecks and decided that was not enough.  Knowing that salvaging these wrecks would be a time consuming affair, I decided to wait and see what the Carrier pilot would do, and whether the other pilot would be returning (all the while I was collecting cargo from their wrecks, the other pilot was sitting inside the force field in his capsule.).

Within 10 minutes the Carrier recalled his fighters that had been orbiting his ship, and engaged his jump drive, so I sprang into action!  Wielding the lone Salvager I module on my Cheetah with a passion, I spent near 40 module cycles just getting the salvage from the 3 Large wrecks, though the Mediums and Smalls went much faster with a few exceptions.  In the end I made off with about 40 million isk worth of salvage and cargo for the 15 to 20 minutes or so I invested.  Not bad at all in my opinion.

By this time, a day had passed and the previous signatures had all expired, so back to scanning I went.  After locating the new high security system exit I decided to take a look and see if I was near a station worth selling my ill-gotten gains at.  I popped out a mere 7 systems from Jita and quickly headed that direction.

In all, I learned much about wormholes and turned a small profit.  Who could ask for more?