I have been trying to get a feel for who my character is, in game, and have written a couple short "journal entries" which I will post here. I am new to this forum, so if this is in the wrong place or formatted incorrectly, please let me know.

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Planet Envy

There is a container in an industrial ship I own. I have affectionately named this container "Planet Envy." I have also assigned it a gender, and she is a female, like the ship she resides within. She comes with me when I make the short, but not always safe, trip to Lamadent. Two jumps from home, through Otou.

Her name reflects not a quality she has, or a feeling. For she is a container, which I have, perhaps selfishly, assigned human-like attributes. She isn't really even a she... But I digress... I fill her to the brim with all sorts of planet-side goods. She collects them and holds them dutifully. She never questions, never complains (though she does sometimes implode temporarily). She does not feel envy. The envy I feel for a former life planet side. For the hundreds of workers who fill her hold, who produce the things which will fill her hold.

I slip past Lamadent III, the lights from the cities can be seen even from space. I value the moments in which my approach occurs on the dark side. I think about cool nights and real air. Wind in my overgrown hair (pod goo has made it almost imperative to keep it short now. I don't know how some pilots keep it long...)

I have never been to the surface of Lamadent III. I wonder if I would have been welcomed, in my former life, as an Intaki. Some true Gallenteans do not trust us. For good reason, I imagine.

These thoughts are folly. I am capsuleer now, universally hated and envied by people with finite lifespans. Interesting then how I envy them. Their fleeting moments sweetened by the inevitability of the end. Oh, what I would give to swim in the ocean again.

I am reduced to staring at the dark side of the planet from space. Issuing soulless commands to my employees below. They will never know me, only the idea of me, enclosed in my "egg," paying for the food that feeds their families. Families I would like to meet. I imagine they are pleasant people.

My thoughts wander. Too long. Something blinks on my overview. Red. Snapped back to the reality of my current life, I cloak just in time. Not like it would have mattered, my clone is paid in full, waiting...

Invisible to the countless masses, cloaked or not, I slink to the Otou gate.

- I. Niteblade

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Sleeping In Pods

Have you ever tried sleeping in a pod? Let your guard down and tried to fall into the ethereal world beyond consciousness? It's tough, I know. The ship is always awake, trying to tell you something. Not audible, not visual. In your brain, the ship whispers her words, flashes her lights. To say dreaming about directional scan results or jump routes is unsettling, when you do it constantly while conscious, is an understatement.

But I can't sleep in beds anymore. My dreams are quiet and yet filled with a most subtle terror. I die and have no clone, dream there is nothing postmortem, no brutal jump to a new body (I have become so used to this that my mind thinks that's how death really is). I stalk a field of wheat on some distant world, cannot feel the ground or touch the biomass, cannot smell the air, nor hear the birds. I meet an attractive Gallentean woman and I'm covered in pod goo. She leaves. Self destruct activated.

So I sleep in my pod. I think to the ship that it should shut the hell up and it tries to do it's best. I ask my station crew to override the alert system so I can find some peace. And I dream of star fields and silence.

- I. Niteblad