The Defias Blog

¶ Alright, so… Readers of this blog already have an idea of how DFIAS has progressed, from High Security empire space, to Low Sec, to Zero Sec with alliances. Venom was established, but was very poorly run. Anthrax Death was a start-up outfit relying heavily on GoonSwarm to ensure its existence. But the fragile nature of such an existence is evidenced often by threads like this: Anthrax Death Eviction Notice by Zapawork, GoonSwarm diplomat.
¶ When we left ANTX to join DEFI4NT, it was with the understanding that DEFY was to be led by ms kypp and that it would be a PvP alliance working toward its own goals. In my last entry, Ambition, I explained why this did not work out. The alliance we joined, Code Red Alliance, didn’t work out much better…

¶ When Alor Avaran and I spoke at length with Wotsit, both in-game and on CODE’s Ventrilo, the state of the alliance was explained to us as a group that had been allied with BRUCE in Fountain and which had suffered greatly when BRUCE fell apart under the Pandemic Legion assault. Apparently, they’d lost member corporations and it was just an all-around bad time for them as an alliance. However, they had a new direction, new allies and a passable piece of space in NPC Sov 0.0 which they called their own. We could see for ourselves that there were 40 people on Ventrilo and a dozen or so in their public channel in-game (of course, not everyone will hang out in an extra chat window all day). They put themselves out to be an active alliance that had been in a better position and knew how to get back to where they had been before Pandemic Legion came to Fountain.
¶ We were given to believe that they held the Wield constellation in Outer Ring, which holds the NM-OEA outposts and the second-best mining systems in the entire region (the best being YVA and A2V, which have Arkonor and Mercoxit. We were given to believe that there was a non-aggression pact with Cosmic Anomalies in which they cooperatively defended against RZR’s roaming nano gangs from the north and other hostile entities from the south and east. We were given to believe that our Industrial Wing would have no problems. These things were not true. In reality, we found that CAN was merely tolerating them, that the terms of the NAP said that CODE could not rat or mine in ANY good systems in the region, making it impossible for the Industrial Wing to do anything at all while I worked on finding them a solution, and which made it impossible for anyone else to make any decent amount of ISK from ratting the terrible space that Cosmic Anomalies ‘allowed’ us to rat in.
¶ When I confronted Arbitos (CODE’s Executor) about this, he assured me there was no problem, everything was cool and that they’d talk to the CAN diplo and get the NAP re-worked. Okay, fair enough. Then the problem with DeaDSpace Coalition started.
¶ DeaDSpace Coalition is a GBC alliance - Greater BoB Community. DEAD was blue with CODE (might still be - don’t know, don’t care) but neutral/hostile with CAN. CAN was leaning on CODE to reset DEAD to act as leverage to force DEAD to get on CODE’s NAP-train. CODE’s position was that, since they’d been blue to DEAD longer, they wouldn’t reset them. Arbitos assured me that there was a plan to reset CAN and work with DEAD to push CAN out of Outer Ring. Now, I didn’t much like CAN anyway, so I was looking forward to this. I told my officers to be prepared and told the rest of my corp not to get too friendly with the CAN guys - as we all know after living in 0.0 for a while, blue does not mean ‘friendly,’ it just means ‘I won’t shoot you right now.’
¶ So, after being in CODE for a week, one night the levee breaks and CAN gets set red. DFIAS immediately gathers corpmates and alliance mates and goes hunting - tally ho! The first night goes well for CODE. Then, things got hairy… one of the CODE corporations, called Joint Ventures Limited (JVL) had a couple of towers get put into reinforced in CODE’s off-hours. One of the JVL directors started freaking out, no defense was organized by the leadership of the alliance… in fact, at this point, the leadership of the alliance was very difficult to contact. Wotsit was not logging on at all and Arbitos was on only for scant minutes at a time. The Ventrilo server that had 50-60 people, including 10-15 at any time from DFIAS, suddenly had only 20 people on it, 10-15 of which were DFIAS.
¶ And there was no support from DEAD. When I finally managed to corner Arbitos and ask him about it, I was informed that DEAD said they couldn’t help push CAN out of Outer Ring after all because they were all fighting the NC as part of BoB’s Maximum Damage campaign. CODE was alone. And more and more, DFIAS was alone. Our single corp fighting the whole of Cosmic Anomalies in a conflict started by an alliance leadership that had gone AWOL as soon as the shooting started.
So much for that idea.
¶ So, I decided that it was time for a change. DFIAS wasn’t a strong enough corporation to be accepted into one of the truly powerful alliances like RZR or IRON or U-NAT, so if we were to join another alliance, it would either be another pet/renter or another startup/groundfloor situation and that wouldn’t do. So, I held a corp meeting on the topic of what we should do next, giving my pilots a rare opportunity to voice their own individual desires in an effort to reconcile all of our personal needs with the needs of the corporation in order to determine the best possible course of action for DFIAS to take after this unexpected turn of events.
At length, it was decided that we would withdraw to empire, the Industry Wing would focus on Invention/T2 production and Capital production while the PvPers ran roaming gangs into various areas of 0.0 and, in lieu of ratting, would do exploration and L4 missions in empire. Being a 0.0 corporation, we decided that we know how to handle ourselves well enough to live in lowsec and benefit from the greater rewards from the higher quality L4 agents found there. Also, we have some outlaws in the corporation who would not be able to enter highsec space if we’d based there (including myself). We decided against joining Factional Warfare, as we still view ourselves as very much our own faction with our own needs and goals, and we don’t need a government sponsored wardec in order to feel safe PvPing.
¶ This is the point at which I had to take action as a CEO to ensure smooth operation - one of my pilots informed me that there was a respectably strong anti-pirate outfit living in what was to be our new home system - Kinetic Vector. Now DFIAS has never been, nor ever will be, an anti-pirate corporation. But it wouldn’t do to be constantly worried about the people living in the same station as you, so I approached the a KVEC director about our plans to move into Hedaleolfarber, explaining to them that we’re a 0.0 corporation pulling back to regroup and build up along a new series of goals before returning to the 0.0 political arena and that, while we are generally NBSI, for the sake of making our new lowsec home as safe for our members as 0.0 space, I was willing to offer the following compromise: DFIAS would operate NRDS rules of engagement within the confines of Molden Heath. When I explained that we also view the majority of the local pirates (BYDI, TWSTD, etc) as hostile due to their generally being douche bags, there was no further hesitation. So, we’ve formed the first Non-Aggression Pact as a corporation… there’s something comforting about controlling your own standings and not relying on an alliance diplomat to make friends or start fights that you youself aren’t signing off on.
¶ So, here we are. Where we once lived in Gelfiven in Molden Heath, we return to Hedaleolfarber in Molden Heath. From our Molden Heath home, we will stage roaming gangs into Etherium Reach, Great Wildlands and beyond. We will occassionally patrol our home region looking for known enemies who will be set red. We will sometimes go hunting in the neighboring regions of Metropolis, Heimatar and Derelik’s low-security space, but the bulk of our hunting will be done in 0.0 where there are no sentry guns to worry about. Living in 0.0 took our martial focus away from piracy per se, and more toward territorialism… but that doesn’t mean we won’t kill you for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or even just to piss you off.
¶ Since we’ve adopted the NRDS rules in Molden Heath, our standings list will be published on our killboard so that there is no confusion. If you find yourself on this list and think you shouldn’t be there, contact me in-game and explain why DFIAS should not see you as an enemy… but if you’ve pissed us off enough to get on the list, don’t expect it to be easy to get off the list.

-Havo out.

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