A Brave new adventure

I've talked for a little while about wanting to get back into the null sec game, back to flying ships in space. Since the collapse of Pandemic Horde I've not had the opportunity, and even before that I didn't really take the opportunity that much. I've also found that often I'll log in, do my trade stuff, do some industry, then sit there not knowing what to do and log off.

Mixing things up should hopefully give me more motivation to try different things, and reasons to stay logged in once I've done my usual routine. There are a few different options when it comes to null blocs, but in the end there was one choice that made the most sense for me:

10 and a half years after I left, I am back in Brave Newbies! No longer such a newbie, even to null. But Brave has a great mix of being welcoming, expecting very little of its pilots other than having fun, and offers a lot of different opportunities. 

They're not as big as say Goonswarm, but being part of the Imperium gives access to a lot of space, and Allies should anyone mount a big invasion. Being an alliance of around 3000 rather than 12000 means people are quite likely to come to their space looking for a fight which is good too.

The experience of joining was quite different from last time though. The first time I joined I simply applied in game and when the hard working recruitment team got to my app I was accepted. This time though, I had to fill in a form explaining why I wanted to join, my experience in the game etc. I had to add all of my characters (all 21 of them) to an external auth service, then wait around 4 days for someone to review my application. I then had to answer some questions about my relation to some characters I had in high personal standings (my sister and IRL friends from our high sec mining corp days of 15 years ago!) and then a few days later I was accepted. After that I had to put in requests for various services, set up mumble, slack etc etc. 

It honestly reminded me of this old meme:

I gather this is how a lot of the big blocs are, guess I was lucky in my previous adventures!

But most importantly, I'm in. Even though I have a few capitals and some subcaps knocking around in low sec somewhere I decided to do a "fresh start" for this adventure. I left all my assets behind, barring the 2.1Bn in my wallet and my alt, and deathcloned to UALX-3 in tenerifis. Just next door to my original home in Catch. Maybe I should go visit GE- for old times sake...

While I waited for all my IT setup to be completed so I could join fleet comms I bought myself a ratting Gila, and jumped out into space to go do some anoms:

Space is scary.

Honestly, I'm quite excited to jump into this and see if a change is as good as a rest. And to try out some null industry again...but I'll fly in space for a bit first, promise.