01.6
I'm no longer a 17m sp toon, rather I'm just about to break 30 on my main, and 25 with my alt. Ive crossed the main into caldari, and the alt flies a carrier as of the SP refund to get things down to my main character in nullsec. Just about the perfect setup, with a neutral alt in an orca for getting things done when wardecs abound. (generously donated by my friend Sacha for 0.01'isk; Not bad for a 2004 toon with 20m sp)
I'm still with SS.E and they in turn are still with -A-. Despite a few close calls, our corp was pretty consistent about not wanting to be a group that dropped an alliance just cause the alliance took a hit at the end of last year. We joined up to fight with -A-, and getting to fight for our space back is the best way we could have gotten to show our mates that.
-A-, by the way did take a bit of a hit in october. The TLDR version is; we lost our space and Initiative moved in. The long version starts back when IT alliance decided it would be a good idea to invade the north. So good in fact that they were able to convince Atlas and -A- to take part in it as well. Atlas was up there sooner than -A- (because AAA was in the process of evicting CVA at the time). The campaign didnt go so well, with systems lagging out to unplayability, and all the psrticipants bored to death. It wasn't long before -A- and Atlas decided to pull out of thr invasion. -A- decided it would be a good time to get some small scale pvp, so they reset nearly everyone, including IT. In the end AAA is about PVP, and keeping the Standings we had before the reset would have meant going 40+ jumps before we got to some gankable space.
While we were busy dreaming of good times, Atlas was struck hard by the russians that live above them in the drone regions (there was some bad blood there, but thats not my story to tell). Withdrawl from the northern campaign must have been the sign of weakness that those russians needed to justify an attack.
As per the norm, Atlas had set up its space so that they were surrounded entirely by renters, pets and allies. When the Russians arrived in force, Atlas presented a weak show of support for their pets. The Drone Russians (with the support of mercenaries that they'd hired) quickly dispatched the buffer alliances and set to work agaisnt Atlas. It didnt take very long for atlas to bite the bullet in turn; and rather than fight months of drawn out sov warfare; they cut a deal with the russians from the drone regions to evac thier motherships safely (the ones that were under construction at that time that is). Part of that deal was to hand over some of the supers to the invaders and another part was an obligation to immediately reset -A-. Suffice to say -A- was at that point upset they'd bothered to deploy in defence of Atlas space and we went to work on them now that they were neutral.
Together Atlas and AAA where a major bloc in the eve polical spectra. They'd been much bigger than us, but -A- has just about always punched well above its weight class. Now -A-'s only remaining allies were the stainwagon coalition.
[backstory]
The Stainwagon coalition a short time ago consisted of Systematic Chaos, Coven, Ligiua Roamana, Stain Empire and when the times called for it AAA. SE and c0ven had not long ago evicted Sys-k for not being able to fight hostile neighbours of any size without calling heavy support. ( http://www.eve-search.com/thread/1418363/page/1 See this page for some trolling of sys-k by burn eden; They deployed to Sys-k home space and decimated any defence fleets using unprobeable Snipe fit macharials just for fun). IIRC, the only victory sys-k can put THEIR (read not their master alliances) name on in almost two years was when gonswarm made a pass at esoteria; and sys-k called in Stain Empire, Coven, Liguia Romana (sp?) and -A- to help with it. I was there for that campaign, and listening to speaches on TS about how 'we pride ourselfs on friendship and duty' was a poor cover for only wearing the pvp alliance hat, and not having the game to back it up. Its a wonder the stain Coalition didnt boot sys-k sooner than it did.
[/backstory]
It didnt take long for wolves to start hovering around -A-, and not long after that for everyone else to show up to knock sand into our faces either. Understand, thats not a rant about being blobbed. Being blobbed and gang raped is what Null sec large scale politics is all about! Not a rant or a complaimt, but them's the breaks. More people showed up to pick a fight with -A- than we were ready/able to fight. Initiative arrived to take space (fat with allot of the same people who jumped the burning ship from atlas), they rented PL, brought a sister alliance, coordinated with LegionXX, and IT showed up for good measure to look for 'GFs' amongst the gang rape.
Despite how fat AAA'd gotten with bears, the core was still hard and seedy with pvp; so rather than surrender when Init came we fought for long enough to make some choices, long enough to shed some of the people who weren't neccisarrily in it for the long haul and long enough to lose those bears that were easier to scare off than others. SS.E had a bit of a hub-bub internally about whether to fracture from alliance or not, but in the end we decided that it'd be best not to show up just in time for a bit of a setback and leave the people we'd come to be with to whatever cascades may or may not have come. Thankfully, the cascade didnt come and without too much setback we consolidated in NPC stain (and a brief stint in Esoteria). We didn't look to build numbers as much as we wanted to get a feel for the numbers that stuck it out. SS.E was in it to make mates, and AAA was in it to settle grudges. If my corp or alliance was guilty of anything before, it wasnt lack of PVP drive, It was a lack of vendetta. Thanks for that guys :)
From then on, the only real fight was the one to weather the smack from Init and the rest of the IT pets. We deployed when we could, footworked around some of the bigger punches that came at us and played eve the way you have to when you wanna win.
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