The Safe Spot — Episode 10: "Black Rise Regional News"

Ten episodes! 10!!

I honestly can't believe we've hit double digits. Most podcast series — EVE or otherwise — never make it past the first handful before fading out, so the fact that Rixx and I are still here, still recording, and still having an absolute blast feels like a milestone worth celebrating. 

And we're not slowing down. No siree, Bob! 

We've got so much more in store.

So, in this episode we welcome Black Rise Regional News — let's call him "Burn" short for BRRN — to The Safe Spot. Burn is a Caldari faction warfare pilot, UCN director, and the creator behind one of EVE's most unique written content projects: a regional newspaper covering the wars, politics, and shenanigans of Black Rise and surrounding space. 

Rixx and I dig into how Burn went from flu-ridden backlog gamer to militia diplomat and propagandist-in-chief, and we swap faction warfare war stories along the way. 

I mostly listened and took notes on this one — these two had a lot to talk about!

Show Notes / Table of Contents

1. Meet our guest, Black Rise Regional News — Burn is a Caldari militia pilot flying with UCN who got nominated for a Creator Award in the written category. We introduce him and settle on his nickname for the show — Burn, it'll be!
   
   
2. Burn's EVE origin story — Started in February of last year after getting the flu, loaded up the backlog, remembered reading about massive space battles and heists, and gave EVE a shot. Spent two weeks gas huffing solo in wormhole space, got recruited into a bad corp that stuck him on moon mining, then found UCN through the EVE Discord and joined Caldari faction warfare.
   
   
3. The speedrun to leadership — Burn went from recruit to recruiter to trainer to director within six months of joining UCN, not because of fitting theory or FC skills, but because he's the morale guy — the Neelix of the corporation, as I put it. Finding the right corp and your people is job number one in EVE.
   
   
4. Suspect mechanics and expensive cynos — Burn shares a story about blowing up a suspect miner who didn't even know what suspect status meant, then reimbursing the hull. Rixx and Burn swap tales about a Rapier used to light a cyno and mention that eternal lesson of never flying what you can't replace.
   
   
5. Gate camps and the Tama shortcut — The Onnamon-Kinakka gate camp, fat haulers dying on the regular, and a top-five kill list featuring a 7 billion ISK Mastodon. People still take the shortcut through Tama from Jita, and we still appreciate them for it.
   
   
6. The Griffin Navy leaderboard challenge — Burn took on a personal challenge to climb the Griffin Navy Issue leaderboard using ECM and two blasters, punching up into Algoses and Coraxes. ECM is divisive, but the stories are great.
   
   
7. How Black Rise Regional News got started — After UCN lost 80% of its active FCs and roster to a corp departure, Burn needed something to boost morale. The militia took a surprise command op system, and that victory became the first edition of BRRN. It started circulating in Caldari militia Discord servers before eventually hitting Reddit.
   
   
8. The Caldari militia's insular comms problem — Unlike the Minmatar with Minmatar Fleet Alliance, the Caldari don't have a single unified militia Discord. There are four or five to choose from. The guys from Sheriff built caldarifw.com to help centralize guides, after-action reports, and a large-print version of BRRN.
   
   
9. Burn's editorial process — He runs a private Discord server as his newsroom, uses Dotlan's faction warfare filter to track system flips, and collects funny comms moments and militia chat snippets to turn into headlines. The "news in short" section comes from copy-pasting those little notes and distilling them. No strict schedule — sometimes one edition every three or four days, sometimes longer gaps depending on how busy work is.
   
   
10. Shouting out the small corps — Burn makes a point of crediting smaller groups that show up to bashes and system captures, like Hisera Kab Delivery, Stone Warriors, and Private Security Squad with Eve Dest. Those shoutouts mean a lot to small corps trying to make their mark in faction warfare.
    
    
11. Advice for aspiring EVE regional journalists — Don't take yourself too seriously, keep your eyes and ears open, and don't cut off communication with the other side. Burn is also a diplo for UCSC and keeps open lines with Gallente and Guristas groups — you'd be surprised how much people tell you if you just ask and don't start drama.
    
    
12. Notoras News nostalgia — Rixx brings up the old YouTube series Notoras News, set in a dead-end system near Kedama where nothing ever happened. Burn had seen it too. We briefly mourn its passing and celebrate the tradition of weird EVE content.
    
    
13. Burn's move into video content — His first video edition of BRRN took two weeks to edit, but now he has a framework to reuse. He also speed-edited a video about clearing the Historic Wanderer achievement in two days after the Cradle of War expansion dropped.
    
    
14. Rixx's early take on Cradle of War — Rixx is cautiously optimistic but wants to give it another week before forming a real opinion. New plex types — moderate, interceptor, elite chaos plexes — and environmental effects inside them are creating a lot of unpredictability.
    
    
15. The Caldari campaign goals and the Syndicate gate — The Caldari are the only faction to have completed three campaign objectives. Their reward: a stargate from Ienakkamon to Syndicate, with the Intaki Syndicate dissolving and its corps folding into the Caldari State, plus some Syndicate LP store modules moving to State Protectorate.
    
    
16. I confess to being the sponge in the room — I admit I spent most of this episode absorbing everything like a junior leaguer sitting between two vets. I'm flying with Jaeger Inc, dabbling with faction warfare, some corp mates are coming through Jaeger Academy in Exordium, and looking forward to eventually holding my own in conversations like this one.
    
    
17. The Oz got podded — Burn reveals that the Oz, yes yes, our previous guest who said he'd go Gallente, got podded in Piak in Black Rise. Burn arranged to procure his frozen corpse and added it to his favorites on Frozen Crypt, a tool that scans your assets and displays your corpse collection. New Safe Spot tradition: every guest must eliminate the previous one. Station containers have a 2,000 item limit, which one of Burn's corpmates discovered by filling one with corpses. One of the new Cradle of War achievements requires losing 500 ships to earn the title "Meat Popsicle.
    
    
18. Wrap-up and the Black Rise song — We close out the episode and the outro song is, impossibly, actually called "Black Rise." Sometimes the universe just lines up.

Where to find us! 

If you enjoyed this episode, you can catch The Safe Spot wherever you get your podcasts — find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Past episodes and full show notes are up on the blog at CrazyKinux's Musings. 

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