Our story

Six jumps from Auga, past Amamake and over the border into Metropolis, lies Aldodan, a constellation of eight systems. It had been somebody else's pocket before.

In late YC125 it belonged, briefly, to Empyrean Edict. The warzone map the alliance published that December came with a guide to its inhabitants, and the guide described EDICT strutting in, demanding tribute from the locals and inflating their numbers. It also explained why MINMIL never came to argue: no one could be bothered to make the six jumps from Auga to fight them there. The hold crumbled anyway. By the guide's account, EDICT blamed everyone else.

By the spring of YC127 the pocket belonged to the Fraternity (FRT), a nullsec alliance that had settled into Aldodan with no intention of leaving. Their method was an old one. They kept alts and corporations enrolled on both sides of the war, some in the Amarr militia and some in the Minmatar, and farmed loyalty points from every direction while the real combatants ground against each other.

Whoever won the war, the Fraternity got paid.

It was a good scheme, and they defended it like one. They had held the pocket for months, and every coalition push against it had broken.

In April, MINMIL came for it. Arnher, the first system of the constellation on the road in from Auga, went first. By the eighteenth, the Fraternity was where MINMIL wanted it:

EXTRA! MINMATAR MILITIA CORNERS FRAT IN TODIFRAUN! DEFENSE OF ARNSTUR MAX PRIORITY!

On the afternoon of the twenty-first, the Fraternity killed Vengo Rin's Vexor and propaganda broadcast structure in Todifrauan. Half an hour later, the rats brought a dreadnought.

Aria Jaine landed in a Phoenix Navy Issue, and the Fraternity kept feeding it Algos and Vexors. Four of the Vexors died in under a minute.

Then came the Fraternity's Brutix Navy Issues. Tempest Fleet Issues landed on them, and five Brutix Navy Issues and their Oneiros died inside a minute. Vengo Rin, two Vexors down and in a Scythe Fleet Issue by then, had the final blow on one of them.

The next day FL33T went after the Fraternity's broadcast structures. Sl1mJ1m lost five Imperial Navy Slicers in Todifrauan in half an hour, three of them to LiYuanJ's Tornado. The broadcast structures died over the next hour, the last two to a fleet of Nighthawks.

BearThatCares was there for every one of them.

The end came on the twenty-fourth, on the Akkio gate in Todifrauan. One Fraternity pilot, shaomaiOvo, was podded there by FL33T sixteen times in under an hour, three of them straight out of an Ibis.

By the end of the day the Fraternity had been evicted from Aldodan, and the killboard went quiet almost at once. The Fraternity lost thirteen ships in the constellation the next day, and two the day after.

Their bill for April came to nearly nineteen hundred losses, worth about eighty billion ISK.

Three hundred and ninety-one of them were Algos.

Six hundred and thirty-four of the losses were flown by seven pilots named LiYuan, lettered G, J, U, V, X, Y and Z. The broadcast structures had been theirs too. Almost every loss belonged to one Fraternity corporation, KHESH. The alliance's propaganda reported that MINMIL had dunked KHESH so hard the Fraternity was kicking them.

KHESH stayed in the Fraternity.

Aldodan had cost the Fraternity eighty billion ISK in a month. That same week, more than three hundred and fifty billion died in under an hour in Siseide, one jump from Vard, where the warzone flag was still Amarr and FL33T now had a Fortizar of its own.

The first quarter of an hour belonged to Sedition. Seven FL33T Scorpions died in under three minutes, most of them to Sedition, which then started on the Tempest Fleet Issues and the Bhaalgorns. Goonswarm Federation arrived in Nightmares and shot both sides, until FL33T caught four of them.

Then the dreadnoughts came out.

FL33T's dreadnoughts went onto Sedition's two Apostles, and both were dead within ninety seconds. FL33T's own Apostle died seconds after the first of them. After that everyone dropped. Deepwater Hooligans' Zirnitras landed on FL33T's Revelations, and Goonswarm's dreadnoughts landed on Deepwater's. One FL33T Revelation died with Sedition, Deepwater Hooligans and Goonswarm all on its killmail, a hundred and fifty-one pilots in all.

For a quarter of an hour the grid ran as a relay. Leopoulos, in a Deepwater Hooligans Zirnitra, killed both Goonswarm Moros Navy Issues inside a minute. Underlore, of Goonswarm, killed Leopoulos. FL33T's Acre Skor killed Underlore. Sedition killed Acre Skor. Goonswarm lost thirteen dreadnoughts, more than anyone, eleven of them to Deepwater Hooligans.

Most of FL33T's dreadnoughts got out. Jennifer Endashi, FL33T's Apostle pilot from the first exchange, came back in a second Apostle, and Sedition killed that one too.

The victory and the move were announced together:

EXTRA!!! FL33T MOVES STAGING TO VARD!!! ALDODAN VICTORY PARADE!!! FRT NEW PUSH AND MORE!!!

The Fraternity's new push made the same headline as the parade.

So did the move. FL33T was taking its staging out of Sosala and into Vard. It would later be called the Sosala Exodus. At the time it was logistics: jump freighters and doctrine hulls, moved from one home to the other.

Casper Sullivan counted the freighters. By then he was one of the alliance's primary logistics planners, and the voice in the channel calling the jump freighter runs.

The Watermelon stayed in Sosala. Ibn Khatab's Fortizar was still home, and still theirs; the fleet just no longer undocked from it every night.

From Sosala, Todifrauan was nine jumps and two regional borders away. From Vard, Todifrauan was twenty minutes away: six jumps, the same distance nobody in MINMIL had been bothered to cover for Empyrean Edict.

Snuffed Out had been turning up on FL33T's killmails all spring. On the seventeenth of May, in Istodard, FL33T killed a Snuffed Out Nestor worth five billion ISK.

The next evening, in Lamaa in the Bleak Lands, FL33T's dreadnoughts were already on grid against CVA and a fleet of OnlyFleets Megathrons. They had killed a CVA Astrahus, and lost an Apostle and four dreadnoughts. Then Snuffed Out's dreadnoughts landed.

Ten minutes later, FL33T had fifteen fewer.

The Snuffers were not particular. In the same ten minutes they killed eleven of CVA's dreadnoughts.

About four hundred and sixty billion ISK died in Lamaa, more than in Siseide, and the largest share of it was FL33T's.

BearThatCares wrote it up as an honest loss.

That same month, BearThatCares went after the mechanic that had let the farmers in. His piece on Direct Sovereignty opened:

Fresh off the wild success of Direct Enlistment, where nullsec blocs joined FW for some immersive gameplay like farming LP to death…

FL33T had spent April prying one loyalty point farm out of Aldodan the hard way.

Unlike the Fraternity, CCP could not be evicted.