The Mine Teck Negotiations, Part 1

Previously, on MinerBumping... Mine Teck, whose anti-Order rant on TeamSpeak captivated the EVE community, became fixated on having a conversation with the Father of the New Order himself. Unable to find me online, he began to question my existence.

I happened to be online at the same time as Mine Teck, so I offered him an invitation to a private convo. He immediately accepted.

Mine Teck was in roughly the same mood as he had been during the infamous TeamSpeak recording. He was also still willing to use his kill rights against our -10 sec status suicide gankers.

I attempted to find common ground with Mine Teck, searching for matters upon which we could both agree that he was wrong. But he was reluctant to speak about the precise amount of isk that he had paid to purchase his alleged mining permits.

Mine Teck was stuck on the idea of keeping his bio free of the pro-Order "bumper stickers" that have proliferated throughout highsec.

For some reason, Mine Teck had a series of random numbers in his bio, but these numbers were later removed. The mystery of their significance remained unsolved, like a dangling plot thread from "Lost".

Our negotiations deteriorated with alarming rapidity. Was Mine Teck even interested in peace?

Mine Teck had no regard for the Code, but he had never really tried to follow it. Still, he adamantly refused to pay the full 10 million per mining character.

The negative influence of Mine Teck's rebel friends made itself felt. He was unsure of whether CCP allowed the New Order to do its work.

At this point, I could only imagine Mine Teck running around Kino, trying to communicate--in his own inimitable way--with AFK miners about how to transfer kill rights on our ganker alts.

If something wasn't done quickly, war could break out at any moment. There had to be some way of repairing the broken trust between us.

At last, a breakthrough. Mine Teck was willing to admit that his conduct during the TeamSpeak rant was inappropriate and unbecoming of a gentleman miner.

Mine Teck confessed that he had lost his temper. Then he deftly changed the subject, arguing that the New Order should be more accommodating to miners who run several accounts at once.

I offered a potential solution, but Mine Teck remains a stubborn fellow.

In every negotiation, it's important to get the measure of the man you're dealing with. Little by little, we broke through the cultural and linguistic boundaries that separated us, and I began to understand what made him teck. Now it was time to ask the important question, the one that everyone has been wanting to ask Mine Teck for weeks:

To be continued...