Who Holds the Oldest Null Sec Sovereignty?

And other bits of sovereignty trivia that are on my mind.

December 2, 2009

We were chatting about the war and the shifting tides of color on the null sec sovereignty map, and the assertion was put forth that our alliance, TNT, has the longest continuous sovereignty claim in null sec.  Specifically, we have held the system K5F-Z2 since December 2009.

My thoughts, after some mild amazement, fell into the usual, “How do we know that is true?”  I have trained myself to be a bit of a skeptic, something I am trying to pass along to my daughter.

The first thing I did was look at the sovereignty maps for the December 2009 time frame.  That would show me large swaths of space that had changed hands when compared with the current map, thus eliminating those as possibilities.  The sov map archive is a treasure.

Sovereignty – December 3, 2009

You can see the mention of K5F in the change list at the top left.  TNT doesn’t hold enough sov to actually show up on the map until a few months later, when the purple dot begins to show up.

The map itself is quite different from today, with many names that no longer exist, as well as a fair number that are still around.  RAZOR is actually in the same place now as they were back then, though they had a hiatus away before they returned to Tenal in the north.  The east has some familiar players, but has changed hands so many times that I doubt there are any challenges to the record there.  The Goons are in Delve… because “Goons in Delve” has the solidity of “white on rice” in the context of EVE.  We’ll see what happens when TEST evacuates.  And the only other possible contender for duration held seems to be Curatores Veritatis Alliance down in Providence.

However, CVA has had its problems over the years, losing and regaining sovereignty.  It looks, in manually clicking through systems they currently hold, that their oldest system only goes back to 2010.

So my half-assed attempt to verify the assertions appears to show that TNT’s claim on K5F-Z2 may in fact be the longest one currently running in null sec.

Now is the point when somebody shows up and proves me wrong.

What About Delve?

The word went out a week ago or so that, in the wake of losing Fountain, TEST was going to evacuate Delve and move to low sec space to do… whatever they think they are going to do there.  This struck me as a bit odd.  Various alliances have their own metrics for what makes them what they are, and I had a sense that TEST was one of those that felt they were only really a player if they held sovereignty in null sec.  I guess I was wrong on that.

In the wake of this there have been attempts to write this chapter of EVE in the usual irreverent manner.  Endie is also a treasure.  Meanwhile TEST continues to break apart and attack itself as people pick apart what went wrong.

http://t.co/WimsgB7UKk You know you're in a bad place when Gevlon Goblin is shitting on you and he's right #tweetfleet

— mynnna (@mynnna_eve) August 14, 2013

I remain surprised at how space famous Gevlon has become in null sec.  You cannot fault him on the persistence front.  I think he has a home in EVE well beyond anything he had in WoW.

But, so far, nobody has really answered the question about what happens to Delve once TEST leaves.  The CFC has said they won’t let Northern Coalition take it, but that is a reactive position.  So who is going to be on the map in Delve come the end of the year?

More On Wallpapers

I wish I knew what was going on in the south of null sec.  I was happy in that sort of “Good for them, they deserve it” way when the Walltreipers Alliance, the one time shining stars of the fight in Delve last summer because of their Alamo-like stand in T-IPZB, showed up on the sovereignty map again as part of the tussle of alliances that took up holdings after the fall of Against All Authorities’ sov holdings.

Small Holdings

I have no idea how the ended up there or whether the deserved it at all, really.  But it was a name I knew from an alliance that showed fighting spirit in the face of adversity.  Only, in looking for system sovereignty dates over at DOTLAN, I noticed that Walltreipers dropped all of their sovereignty.  So add that to the list of things I have no clue about.  I don’t know how they got there and I couldn’t tell you why they left.  But another name dropped off the sov map as C0VEN moved in.

Oddly, C0VEN appears on that map up above from 2009 in about the same place.

Addendum – If this story is correct, Walltreipers might be planning a trip back to Delve, thus linking my second and third topics.