Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Purge the Heretic Ch. 6 | Return of the Dropbears




Credit: Editing: ImSuperlative Photo: Edric Von Abbadon
Stories. Every day across New Eden, stories are penned by pilots from across the (actual) globe. Every newbie, every vet, every corporation, alliance, system and gate, they all have stories. Most of them remain unwritten and fade from memory. Some of them are recorded and read. Some of them become legend.

The story of every wormhole corporation has a chapter of beginning, chapters of growth, chapters of struggle, chapters of victory. For Dominion Enterprises, this none of those. This is the chapter where the story ends.* 

In June 2013, I rallied a small group of newbies, lubed them up, and thrust them into a low-class wormhole. We were Dropbears Anonymous. In June 2014, I got married. I won’t say which one of these things has taken up more of my time. Let’s just say that the last 6 months of 2014 were rough for Dropbears, as dear leader was slightly preoccupied, and a few others in our leadership core had moved on or gone inactive. Despite the heroic efforts of many of my friends here in Nova, morale and activity slowly dwindled until in late October.

I decided to deploy the corporation to Catch, the home of our alliance, BRAVE Collective. There we would rest, refit, help BRAVE in their war against ~elitePvPL~, spread the Word of Bob, and recruit fresh blood into His Holy Service. We founded STAHP, the Sleeper Tears Appreciation and Harvesting Partnershipa daytrip channel and website open to all of BRAVE alliance, dedicated to teaching newbies about wormhole mechanics, and helping them make isk to pvp with. It was a smashing success, with over 30 billion ISK paid directly to newbies in the first 30 days.

We enjoyed the relaxed environment, doing small gang to clear off newbie-killing gate camps, F1 monkeying in Strat Ops (in silent coms), dropping caps, whoring on PL supers, and lining up dank bomb runs. No responsibility, no scanning, it was like a vacation for us who are used to working for a living.

But Catch is not our home. Nova was callingWe are the Children of Bob, and the instruments of his Holy Purging. Come the new year, Dropbears would return to wspace.

We sought out a target, any target, to come home with a bang – we settled on Dominion Enterprise, an alliance-less corporation that showed virtually no kills in Bob’s domain. They were heretics, carebears who would be purged in the name of Bob.

Over the next few weeks, a few dedicated Baers silently camped their system, scanning every hole while they were asleep, looking for entrances with which to “seed” capitals for the eviction. We worried that Bob had turned His face from us, frowning upon our nullsec activities: we were only able to seed 4 capitals prior to the scheduled time of Rektoning – 2 carriers and 2 dreadnoughts. We considered postponing the weekend eviction until we could seed more of Bob’s Holy Instruments, but decided to go ahead with it anyway. We would prove our faithfulness to Him and trust that He would reward us in kind.

During this time of seeding, Dominion Empire joined Odin’s Call, a diverse collection of wormhole and kspace corporations, and an active PvP alliance. We considered calling off the eviction, as we generally will not evict a PvP group from wspace without a particular reason. However, a careful reread of Dominion’s killboard once again confirmed them to be heretics, with virtually no pvp besides hisec whoring, NPSI fleets, and carebear losses. Bob’s Justice would not be stayed.

D-Day - 1.9|4:00PM GFT (Golden Freedom Time aka Good Fight Time; B(r)est Coast Time; Pacific Standard
Keyboard: 4 Sleep: 0

Finally, the Day of Judgment arrived. At roughly 00:00 EVE, Friday the 9th, Dropbears departed our kspace staging system Amarr with a heavy armor fleet and BEARS BEARS BEARS (10 Hours) blaring on plug.dj - causing tidi, and several marmite wardeccers to shit their pants. We were headed for the nearest lo-sec connection into the target, with 3 freighters full of eviction supplies in tow. Light activity was reported in the target hole, with a 6 man BS/guardian fleet known to be out another connection, presumably carebearing. We parked the freighters and made our way down the chain - immediately establishing hole control on arrival, and shortly after rolling out the heretics.

When the hostiles who remained home finally noticed an alarming number of hits on dscan, one of them sent my alt a convo asking if we would be around for a while and if they should form up for a brawl. I said yes =) We began setting up our invasion POS and shuttling in supplies while waiting for Dominion to form against us, but although they logged in several capitals, each login was followed quickly after by a log out. We estimated that their total capitals outnumbered ours 2-1, but they remained seemingly unaware that we had seeded them at all. After much logging in and out, they mostly stood down. The chain finally disappeared under the weight of constant DST and industrial usage, and the rest of our supplies were JF’d out of losec to be freighted to the next connection.

After nearly 4 hours of waiting for a response and bringing in supplies, it was time. Due to our lower than desired capital numbers, we spent the next 5 hours RF’ing each of their towers containing an XLSMA, 3 in total, rape caging each POS in turn with 6 Mobile Large Warp Disruptor IIs as they were disabled.
Dominion continues to stay mostly logged off, with a few token bombing runs. A Dominion pilot attempts to destroy one of the bubbles entrapping him in a Vindicator. Down time looms, and BEARS BEARS BEARS (10 Hours) finishes. Some of our USTZ log off for the night, and some of our EUTZ logs off for the morning. AUTZ represents hard, and many ballers go hard in the paint and stay up. I am resolved to bring more Holy Dreads in to finish the work of Bob before I take rest. Bob’s holiest of followers resolve the same.

D-Day +1 - 1.10|3:15AM GFT Keyboard: 16 Sleep: 0

The servers come back up, and we begin rage rolling for a cap capable connection. Ah, Bob’s Favor. He has not abandoned us as we had feared, but instead had tested us and found us faithful – on only the 2nd roll, we discover a connection to Catch, the home of our alliance BRAVE, and a place where we can easily obtain Dreadnoughts. Not only that, but Bob blesses us as well with a hisec connection from the same chain, a mere 3 jumps from Jita. I send a DST to Jita to obtain proper modules as befits an Instrument of Bob, and sneak into the target, chased quickly by a Naglfar and 2 Moros which collapse the chain in their massive wake.

Sunning in the Glory of Bob, we begin sieging anew, reinforcing and rape caging tower after tower, until, after 10 more hours of bashing and over 55,000 rounds of XL ammunition, 14 large towers are reinforced in shimmering bubbles all across J115517. The siege goes uneventfully, aside from two shiny dominixes and an Armageddon who attempt to clear off a bubble and escape. To their credit, they did manage to down two overzealous baers who engaged too early. Props to Tsawind for that (found out later he was multiboxing all 3). Their sacrifices meant that less hostile ships would be self destructed, and Bob was pleased. 

D-Day +1 - 1.10|1:00PM GFT Keyboard: 26 Sleep: 0

With all towers RF’d, and minimal apparent resistance, I give the order to log off to all of Bob’s Holiest who had been at keyboard for 20+ hours. A light hole control force was set up, faithfully monitoring the static connection and all hostile POS for activity. A loki attempts to escape, and is sent to carebear purgatory for judgment. A neutral Dominix Navy Issue is spotting site running down the chain. All is quiet. The only activity from Dominion is the systematic self-destruction of nearly every ship they own, sacrificing many skill points by self destructing T3s, as well as a nidhoggur and Naglfar. You should know that self destructing T3s causes skill point loss. They apparently did not know that. (#picsofSDwrecks)

Over the next few hours we casually siege and destroy a range of small and medium offline towers throughout the system, somewhat confused as to why pilots who did not shoot at some towers, and even some pilots who were offline at the time, appeared on the killmails. CCP Bob works in mysterious ways.

D-Day +2 - 1.11|Midnight GFT Keyboard: 32 Sleep: 6

We watched and waited quietly, as the RF timers ticked down. One of our scouts maintaining hostile POS watch spoke up, and we couldn’t believe our ears. “There’s an orca boating out of 7-14… and he’s pushing an empty Vargur.” Bob’s ways are indeed mysterious. We rushed over, quickly exchanging a heron for the Vargur (#picoffit), and calling all available pilots to whore on the Orca. If, Bob forbid, you are a carebear, and you find yourself being purged from wspace, your natural reaction will be to (a) pack every item and ship of value you own can get your hands on into a Carrier, Freighter, Orca, or other industrial ship, (b) safe-log it, and (c) self-destruct everything else you own. Sometimes, Bob smiles upon His followers, and the ancient ways of ::ccp:: will cause things to happen to your log off boat.

Soon, the first timer began to run out – a tower which had only been stronted for 10 hours for whatever reason. (#picsofexlposions) The SMA gave us high hopes for loot to come, although the rest of the POS proved to be not quite is as fruitful as this one. If we had been unsure before, we were now confident that Bob was sending a message – deploy more capitals – as he granted us another archon to be the first of our bounty. Some amongst our number engage in elite dreadnoughtsoloPvP. USTZ stands down to get another 5 hours of sleep, alarm clocking for the next tower – after which there won’t be more than a 3 hour break over the course of the next 20 hours of timers coming up. AUTZ, who repped hard during the entire weekend, takes up the baton of hole control.

Amongst our number are several Germans, who are universally efficient to the point of insanity. It’s a joke, but it’s also not a fucking joke. Mira Thanis remained online for nearly all the bash, maintaining NSA (or Bundesnachrichtendienst, I suppose) level awareness by spreading his combat probes across the whole system, mashing the button every 10 seconds for over 30 hours. No one moved in system without his notice. Reinhard is watching. Just before downtime the CEO of Dominion, fearing infiltration due to the earlier Vargur theft and Orca kill, changed his POS password. Upon logging on after DT, his neutral Orcas were unable to adapt to the changes in their natural habitat. Nota Ero who for [opsec reasons] is not technically "in corporation" atm (you're welcome [redacted](lolfuckoffnota) for the KB green) noticed the stranded whales flying through space, and Mira landed ze hero tackle on one of them (which also can be viewed on the front page of zkillboard at the time of this writing). A second orca is also ejected, but manages to cloak up before being tackled. A a decloaking effort is launched, but Bob toys with our heartstrings, and our prey stays logged in and cloaked until downtime – nearly 24 hours.

D-Day +2 - 1.11|9:30 GFT 
Keyboard: 35 Sleep: 12

Finally, bright and early USTZ, the second of many POS began to come out of reinforced. This began the second of our long vigils, as RF timers were set at random intervals across the next 20 hours. Other than occasional 1-2 hour power nap breaks, Bob’s Holiest once again resolved to be present for each subsequent purge, while maintaining watch over the hole. One by one, their towers fell, though offering up meager killmails, deprived of all the ships which had been self destructed. (#picsofexplosions) 12 towers, 29 billion ISK, 52 Ship Maintenance arrays, sacrificed to BOB. 2 capitals, unknown number of t3s, countless other ships self destructed. In total over the weekend, 70.72b total destroyed. 2.51b lost by us mostly because of people being afk lol.



And as an added bonus, we get to see our kills and names on the top of zkill for a few days. Full disclosure, my name should be in more like 7th place, I may or may not have gotten bored while waiting for a tower to unanchor and blown up a bunch of ships that we looted but didn't feel like hauling out. The other 4 Baers deserve their spots though ;)

End-ex: D-Day +3 - 1.12|6:00 PM Golden Freedom Time
Keyboard: 54 Sleep: 14 Keyboard wins again.

HUGE THANKS TO ALL DROPBEARS (and nota) WHO ATTENDED. Thanks for the hours of boring ass hauling, both in and out. Thanks for the hours of sleepless hole control. Thanks for the hours of bashing. Thanks for the drinking, the laughing, and the porn links. Big credit to some feminist guy who wrote an article we all thought was satire but the guy was 100% serious and I couldn’t handle it so I read the entire thing on coms.

Thanks to all bears with mumble rights who didn’t mute/kick me while doing so. Special shoutouts to our newbies Leigress Reign, Deycorli, Zech Strain, and Professor Liedenbrock who volunteered for all kinds of shit duty, especially long hours of hole watch. You guys impressed me and I’m excited to have recruited you and look forward to recruiting the rest of ex-QO

Special Shoutouts to AUTZ, including Loki Sotken, UBG Twopointoh, FlatFishStew, InternetHero, Kael Cassata, Son of Siddartha, X’AI. Holy shit I didn’t realize there was only 7 of you because each and every one of you put out three times more than the rest of us did. It honestly felt like our AUTZ was bigger than all the rest.

Thanks to all my leadership core who made this eviction much less of a burden for me (lol jk I’m exhausted. How did I give up so much responsibility and have so much help and yet end up doing the same amount of work? FML.) – especially Jim Suletu, Gihon Maersk, Serina Tsukaya, Edric Von Abbadon, Thane Demosthenes, Tajic Kaundur, Role Play (you slut), Loki, Loki Sotken, Loki Sotken are you there? Cool can you…, UB2.0, Son of Sid, FFS, Suev Raylap, Mira Thanis, and a DAMN KIWI whoever that is. Thanks to Mira for being Skynet.

Thanks to Nota for catching that Orca. Thanks to Scarlet Nobleonce for forgetting about POS mechanics and bouncing your Orcas out of the shield so that Nota could catch one. Thanks to Calmatt for bumping your own vargur out of a POS with an Orca so we could steal the vargur and blow up the orca.

Thanks to Seth Goa’uld for going AFK during fleet ops without flagging except or dropping fleet so that we lost a 1b legion to an unmanned POS, my palm has only now just detached from my face. But seriously thanks buddy I missed having you around and I’m glad you were there, it was great hearing your voice

Shoutouts to everyone who attended, because even if I didn’t call you out individually, there are many more who quietly monitored holes, made bookmarks, watched probe scan, watched dscan, flew haulers, and did all the bullshit that makes these huge endeavors possible. I mean that literally, it wouldn’t be possible without all of you.

So, Archanonn  Christus vonStein  Chuck Fiinley  deycorli  Edric von Abbadon Faust Crowley  FlatFishStew Gihon Maersk Hauler McSwag  Hedara Helix InternetHero Janet Sukarala Jim Suletu Kael Cassatta Kai Aumer Leigress Reign Leonardo Lycus Loki Sotken Mira Thanis Naomi Kishar Tsukaya Nimos Endashi Nota Ero OriginalName IV Professor Liedenbrock Role Play Sepha Sotken Serina Tsukaya Snazzley Son of Siddhartha Sonoda Yukii Space Scouser Suev Raylap Tajic Kaundur Thane Demosthenes Tsuki Madoka UBG TwoPointOh X'AI Scott Udan Seth Goa'uld Queue Arcana, and whoever else I missed because this is based off the BR (please message me for the add) , thanks guys I love you all!1!

Thanks to Dominion Enterprise for being mostly good sports about this, and we’re very sorry we kicked over your sand castle =( I hope you get back on your feet, and talking to some of your members, I sincerely hope you guys move back into wspace and reinvent yourself as a PvP corp. If you come back and still don’t PvP, we’ll visit again. This time just pay the ransom, it’s much cheaper than losing all your towers and shit. 

#Until I get the pics up, here's some: Album 1 GIF Pic more pics and videos coming =)

With the successful launch of STAHP completed, and our return to Bob’s Domain, I am also happy to announce our new 2015 recruitment standards and skill plan! We have LOWERED our SP requirements, because we know that EVE is about the player not the pilot, and we know how to make newbies useful on day 1. As far as I know, we have the lowest SP requirements of any wormhole corporation in the game, less than 2 months of training, no t2 ships required, no covops required, not even t2 tank of any kind. Read the linky to find out more.

We will take you baby newbie, and hammer you into an Instrument of Bob.

Also under threat of mutiny my recruitment team has forced me to make the bold disclaimer that we have a huge fucking backlog of applications right now so if yours isn’t processed immediately don’t worry and keep speaking up in public channel because the more I see your name associated with intelligent/interesting/sexual/patriot-worshiping/bob-praising things you say, the more likely I am to notice you and bug them to fast track you.

And finally, huge endless thanks OriginalName IV for making this happen. Congratulations on your first ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL OG CAPITAL OP, may it be the first of many. I’m really happy you’re still around buddy, from the heart. You’re truly the OG Dropbear.

Burn the unfaithful. Kill the carebear. Purge the Heretic. lā ʾilbōbha ʾillā-bōb, ʾildāmnpātriōtūn rasūlu-bōb. Smoke weed every day. 

*(Maybe, hopefully not, hopefully they learn the Ways of Bob and return to wspace as a pvp corp, but I thought that was a cool intro or whatever.)

4 comments:

  1. Not just Bob that appreciates this!

    If they had offered to fight/sacrifice everything except what they could haul off in their orca's would you have accepted?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If they had fought us at all we probably would have left without demanding ransom. We did offer to ransom them for 25b (intial offer), but they declined and lost much more than that - we actually ended up with over 30b in loot, let alone how much we destroyed. Why? Why does a carebear do anything...

      Delete
  2. Good fight last night. We, Disavowed., enjoyed the content!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Was a fun running fight across 3 systems, slowly escalating from no logi BC+ to capitals and bhaalgorns, GF GF

      Delete