The Power of Vengeance

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. - Jules, Pulp Fiction (1994)


After the super alliance formed by the combined forces of Goonswarm, IRON, Razor, RA, Tortuga (debatable), and miscellaneous other alliances who attacked BoB's fortress in Delve and nearly killed them, it wasn't hard to imagine the simmering thoughts of death the bobbits harbored for their northern brethern. In recent months, the GBC has been conducting massive campaigns in Tribute, Vale of The Silent, Deklein, and surrounding areas. The dark horse Triumvirate has been working with BoB, leaving their own trail of destruction by eradicating Hydra. IRON and Pure were the latest casualties in the so-called napfest to fall to GBC advances.

Just yesterday, the GBC scored another impressive feat in the Tribute pipe: the systematic slaughtering of some 50 NC capitals and innumerable support ships. A battle report is given by both SirMolle of BoB and KIAEddz of KIA Alliance from opposing points of view (with propaganda thrown in for good measure). What was supposed to be an ambush on the part of NC backfired badly; they were supposed to gate jump their support and battleships into M-O, cyno the capitals in at the gate (??!) and titan bridge the rest in at the same time. The last time the NC tried to pull this on Insurgency, the same thing happened: the node crashed, NC pilots lacked the discipline to log on at the same time, and the result was a turkey shoot that yielded some 60+ kills for me over a period of 2 hours. This was no different except that the NC had capital ships that crashed at the gate in M-O, with predictably disastrous results as they all logged in one by one. It made me wonder if the NC fleet commanders ever learn from their experience, and if they knew how to play chess.

Battlefield in M-O from a bobbit's point of view. Red ships and yellow wrecks belong to the Coalition.

One by one, the segments of the train has disintegrated. It will only be a matter of time until all the best PVP corps are consolidated into Morsus Mihi as BoB and Tri continue their rampage through the North. Then and only then will we know if MM can survive an onslaught on the scale of the Delve invasion that Bob successfully withstood.

My only qualm is that I couldn't be there to watch the NC die, for Insurgency.

A Prophecy Fulfilled

Remember that many months ago, when I was still in Insurgency, that I made a prophecy about the combination of the four pvp alliances MC, BoB, Tri, and Insurgency into one superpower that can steamroll the NAPland that is the new North? Well, part of it is coming into fruition with the latest MAX campaign kills. As it stands, the Northern Coalition and Band of Brothers are traditional enemies from the war in the South about 8 months ago.


BoB Loses 12 Dreads

The exact title on our alliance forums. By the way, they also took down 3 Morsus Mihi motherships (an Aeon and two nyxes), 13 dreads, 2 carriers, and more than half of the Coalition's support and battleship fleet. You can view the details of the battle on BoB's killboard; while the GBC fleet far outnumbers the NC fleet, the irony of a Coalition member's comment in local cannot be disregarded:

"There s [sic] no need for smack. It is natural for weaker entities to group up in order to try and defeat a stronger, more powerful enemy. It's flattering really."

As an ex-Insurgency member, I cannot help but chuckle.


The Death of IRON's Flagship

Insurgency, as they were ousted out of Branch, held a big grudge for IRON - an alliance whom Insurgency helped defend and had blue standings with, who caved under the pressure of the Northern Coalition to aid in their quest to remove the Insurgency threat from Branch, sending in huge fleets on the second wave and helped push the momentum of the war against us after the death of Razor's Erebus. IRON even helped camp Insurgency into the Venal Guristas station after we were removed forcibly from Branch.

As with wars in the real world, one can be friends with someone while their countries are hostile to each other; simply look at the stories of friendship between individuals living in Israel and Palestine, Georgia and Russia, the United States and China. I still have many friends in IRON, one of the pillars of the North, from my times living in the Drone Regions. And yet one can sometimes be easily swept into the shifting sands that represent politics. While I cannot blame any of my IRON buddies, for all's fair in love and war, I also cannot help but smile at the Band of Brother's success in Deklein, home of IRON.

The result of the skirmish? A dead Macabre Votum titan, flown by Lord2evil. A summary of the battle, presented from BoB's point of view, can be found on CAOD and is surprisingly good and free from smack.


Touché, Razor alliance. Better be careful with Intensity Green's Erebus - Eve has not yet seen a titan pilot losing 2 titans!

The Defining of A Phoenix

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them."

[OOC] To my dear readers: the lack of update was due to a sudden influx of actual work at work, resulting in a mad scramble to finish a technical presentation and report... But of course it all went well... A most satisfying big bang to end my internship on, despite some moments of dullness in between. Blog updates will be sporadic in the months of July and August due to travel and relocation, but expect another post to come in a few days - a rather opinionated topic that I've been wanting to write about for ages but just did not have the time for. [/OOC]

Aye, a lot has happened over the past few weeks in Curse indeed. First of all, The Requiem alliance has formed with the following corps: Game-Over, Corp 1 Allstars, Celestial Apocalypse (ex-Insurgency), Body Count Inc. (ex-Mercernary Coalition), D00M, Rionnag Alba, and Coracao Ardente (ex-Triumvirate). Greetings to Mr Winterblink of Warp Drive Active (update your podcast pls), bloggers, reporters like Yalson, and Seleene of BDCI, who has a lovely magnetic radio voice!

Anyone not unfamiliar with alliance politics can easily see that these are the cream of the crop from powerful alliances that had fallen to hard times - entities that once ruled over large swathes of Eve: INSRG in Branch against the Northern Coalition, MC in Branch vs the NC and forming Tortuga in Period Basis, and Tri in Deklein steamrolling everything in their nano ships of doom. Acceptances to these corps are by invitation only, and most of them can field more capitals than a small alliance. I feel honored to be flying with all of them.

A ferocious war machine when you combine the power of all these pvpers, more powerful than all three ex-alliances combined... The potential to become the next fearsome superpower...

Except that thus far, the road has been a rocky and expensive one. Just yesterday Game-Over lost her titan to Tau Ceti Federation and Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate, the one that I so proudly pictured in my previous post. I was there on the battlefield when the Ragnarok went down to TCF capitals sieging a POS due to a borked cyno and good baiting on their part. A very sad day for the alliance, but it has only served to deepen my commitment to Game-Over. And just a few days before this, I got my first carrier kill on F0undation alliance, except that an argument between fleet commanders and overzealous hotdrops resulted in 4 friendly carriers being lost. Despite these losses, the Triumvirate presence is significant and I've already gotten over 50 kills in this alliance, which pales in comparison to the daily diet of some other more active players. And organization is starting to get better within leadership, which as we all know is the basis on which a solid alliance is based.

But this is just the beginning. Who knows what the future will bring? How long will we remain in Curse, the home of the ArchAngels? Will we implode from a clash of egos? How many warzones will our campaigns create on the sovereignty map? The phoenix has risen and you can be certain that it does not have peace on its mind...

Taxi Service

I mentioned last time that INSRG is folding its banner and moving out of the North. I had taken a brief hiatus this past week and ran Level 4 missions for Caldari agents. It brought in a steady stream of income, but the pay was meagre compared to what I earned from ratting in 0.0, so I did not do those missions with a great deal of gusto.

When the time came to move our assets to the South, I was more than ready. I hauled all my luggage and toys into the designated low sec system that we were jumping out of, and hollered for corpmates to be my bellboy (since I don't own a capital ship). The actual moving op happened on a weeknight, was as chaotic and raucous as any form of moving can be, but we finally sorted everyone out. The system was clear of nosy pirates for the whole duration of the move, and anyone who came in were either awed or scared off by the Ragnarok-class titan and her capital escorts on scan.

I was flying about in my crow, safe in the knowledge that all my baggage were secured for the move, when I discovered that flying into a moon's center produced some rather odd visual disturbances:

When the order finally came to start the op, I took many pictures of the titan, like any proper tourist would do, and almost missed the actual jump like a complete fool. After all, this was the very first time I had been in the vicinity of a titan, and so my distraction was understandable. This one here shows the titan activating a jump portal, which allowed us to "teleport" into another system far away:

A close-up of the Ragnarok with its hull gleaming in the sunlight:

After a grueling hour or so, we finally arrived at our new home. A big thank you to the titan, supercapital, and capital pilots!

The naughtiness started just a day after the move, and this was the result of a doomsday device activated on an unsuspecting IAC fleet. Game over! About 30 enemy ships were destroyed, most of them being Tech II ships. Some 4 to 5 of us perished when we could not warp off from the grid or got desynced. (The rest of the white wrecks were NPC rats.)

All in all, a fairly warm welcome for us into our home in the South. This is starting to turn into one of the best corporations I have ever been in, and I think I'll fit in just perfectly. Keep checking here for more shenanigans that are sure to come!