Groen - Empires of EVE : a history of the great wars of EVE Online

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note for ebook readers: This story benefits greatly from the inclusion of maps displaying the geography of the EVE Online universe which cannot properly be displayed in some ebook formats. They're not required to understand the story, but may help to enhance the experience. You can view these maps at: EveHistory.imgur.com.

FOREWORD

"Eve is real.

That single statement has embroiled the EVE Online community in disagreement for years. That sentence sums up everything that makes EVE special, and every player has an opinion on it.

For some people the notion that EVE is real is absurd, a way of placing false importance on a silly spaceship game, and a byproduct of people taking the game too seriously.

For others the idea is more meaningful. For themfor usits very much a philosophical statement. For us, its about expanding the definition of what constitutes a real space.

The building blocks of EVE Onlines universecalled New Edenare ones and zeroes rather than ordinary Earth elements, but what Earth and New Eden have in common is humanity. Jealousy, ambition, revenge, greed, hatred, and friendship are at the core of EVE Online. Human emotions and work make up the soul of New Eden, and youll find every emotion there that you would in the traditional world.

In that sense, New Eden is very much a new province of humanity, and its history is worth preserving. Its a place where a single leader can inspire dozens of Russian pilots to defend their last starbase for two and a half days straight without sleep. Its a place where ideological differences can spark years-long conflicts involving tens of thousands of real humans. The full range of human potential is on display in EVE. Its a virtual space, but its a virtual space where causation and human ambition matter, and that makes it a space that matters to history.

As a journalist, chronicling the history of EVE Online is an incredibly exciting opportunity. Scholars have been studying the actions of players in virtual worlds for decades, but never beforeto the best of my knowledgehas anyone worked to document the stories and the struggles of the people who inhabit one of these virtual places.

There are certainly many people who think spending your time in a virtual world is a waste of energy, but I hope to convince you in these pages that its not. The stories from EVE are no different from those that occur in the real world. They inspire and bring meaning to peoples lives, and they show us the very best and worst in ourselves.

EVE is real.

Andrew Groen

The following is based on true events...

CHAPTER ONE:

THE WAR FOR INSMOTHER
AND THE SIEGE OF C - J6MT

On May 25, 2006, 70 Russian pilots sat tired and bleary-eyed in their battleships near the first moon of the fourth planet in a star system so remote it was known only by the obscure designation C-J6MT. They had dug in their heels, huddled around their last strongholda defensive starbaseand were preparing for the fight of their lives. Their fleet commander, a Russian-born New Yorker known to his compatriots as Death, spoke to his friends and fellow pilots, rallying the troops for one last stand.

You have to be able to show people that there is a hope, he later said. Even a fucking tiny one. Just show the people that there is a little tiny hope that exists.

A fleet of over 400 Coalition of the South shipsthe enemies of the Russianswarped in on the position of the 70 defenders. Among the massive fleet were 15 state-of-the-art, siege-capable dreadnoughts designed to rip the entrenched Russian position to shreds. As the Coalition dreadnoughts aimed their huge guns at the starbase and fired the opening volley, the Russian fleet commander gave the order to retaliate. They were outnumbered almost six to one, but they were prepared.

When youre going up against those kind of odds youd better have some great fucking idea about how youre going to beat their asses, Death told me in a thick Russian accent.

The siege of C-J6MT had begun.

ALAMO

The Russian pilots were all that remained of the former powerhouse Red Alliance, a group whose holdings had once spanned across 450 star systems, making it the dominant power in the southeast of New Eden.

The Coalition of the South was comprised of several smaller alliances which each had an ancestral claim to the territory Red Alliance conquered (some very old groups in EVE occasionally claim ancestral rights to certain territories if they were among the first to settle there when the game launched in 2003).

Before they joined forces and became the Coalition of the South, the smaller groups each individually asked Red Alliance for their territory back, but each request was denied by Red Alliance at the height of its power and its hubris. Real world relationships can heavily influence politics in EVE, and in this case the path to a peaceful resolution was being obstructed because some Coalition of the South pilots thought it was funny to mock the Russians for their nationality.

They really bore grudges, the Russians, said Lallante, a former fleet commander in the Coalition of the South. We tried diplomacy initially to say were happy leaving you in the East, you can keep your old regions. Lets just be friends. And they said, No. We remember all those vodka jokes. This is gonna go down.

Not content to take no for an answer, those alliances came together to remove Red Alliance from its enormous empire in the southeast. Individually, the alliances that made up the Coalition of the South were no match for the Russians, but as a combined unit it was the dominant force in the southeast of New Eden. And so the fingers (Lotka Volterra, Knights of the Southern Cross, Chimaera Pact, and Veritas Immortalis) formed a fist: the Coalition of the South. Its ranks numbered in the thousands. It was wealthy. And it was capable of fielding fleets bigger and better equipped than any in the region. The ranks of Red Alliance had swelled too. The Russian alliance now recruited American and French wings among other nationalities.

As Red Alliance accepted more and more partner groups into its alliance, the Coalition of the South prepared for a massive invasion of Red Alliance territory.

ENCROACHING DARK IN A GOLDEN AGE

The stage was set for an epic war between the two giants of the southeast, but it didnt pan out that way. The initial invasion of Red Alliance territory went unopposed. Two whole regions, 180 star systems, were lost for the most mundane of reasons: Red Alliances leadership couldnt convince its pilots to make the long trip out for the battle from their headquarters. The regions of Detorid and Immensea were lost and Red Alliance defense fleets were nowhere to be found.

The newfound girth of Red Alliance was working against it. In the words of a former leader, Mactep, (a Russian word both pronounced and meaning Master) it had too many language barriers and was weakly organized.

These are two terrible qualities for an organization trying to field an army in EVE Online. Loyalty takes time to develop, and Red Alliances constituent corporations were like newly absorbed independent states, still more loyal to themselves than to the alliance as a whole. Beyond that, its difficult to form camaraderie between soldiers who speak different languages, and its also difficult to ask new alliance members to spend their time and risk their ships to defend territory they played no role in conquering. Not to mention the difficulty of leading a fleet under the guiding voice of a single commander when many of your pilots dont speak that commanders language.

In the region of Wicked Creek, Red Alliance finally stood its ground and mounted a defense on March 8, 2006. It fielded its largest capital ships, dreadnoughts, and made a stand.