The Ongoing War in Regions Which Rhyme with “Penal”

When you are building a throne out of the skulls of your enemies, you don’t stop when it is “pretty good.”

-Paraphrased from some forum posts somewhere

The conquest of Tenal by the CFC is complete.  Raiden is out and all systems in the region bar one belong to the RAZOR Alliance now.  And that one system, EOY-BG, is controlled by Goonswarm.

Over at EVE News 24, Riverini got back from vacation and finally posted the news that Tenal had changed hands.

Of course, the news of the fall of Tenal got the usual responses.  I was waiting for that post to hit just to read the comment thread.  Pro-Raiden comments tended to follow several of the responses I charted out last week, generally going with:

• #2 – Complain About Battle Conditions – Damn Goon blobs
• #3 – Reveal Your Foe as a Coward – Goons won’t fight unless the odds are good
• #5 – Blame CCP – Fighting in 10% TiDi sucks
• #9 – Claim the Battle Did Not Matter – Didn’t want that region anyway

Nothing unexpected there, just mildly amusing in a predictable sort of way.

Riverini also speculated as to where the barbarian hordes of the CFC might strike next.  The title of the EVE News 24 post specifically calls out the Tribute region as a possible CFC target.  This is where Northern Coalition (the alliance, not to be confused with The Northern Coalition, an old group of alliances in the north) lives, and they are a target because they threw in with Raiden during the FanFest drive on the CFC.  That certainly looks like a bad move, given how quickly Raiden gave up.  And now they are sitting there right on the southern flank of the CFC, probably feeling rather exposed, with Raiden behind them all the way I am sure.

CFC and Northern Coalition

But somebody sent Riverini some intel, an alleged CFC directive, that reveals a different plan for dealing with Northern Coalition.

Tenal down in a week. Now what?

Venal.

While we were at Fanfest, NCdot violated a six month+ treaty with us; they SBU’d BKG, dropped supercaps in Tenal, and promptly lost three Titans to us. We haven’t acted against NCdot despite them flinging our longstanding gentleman’s agreement in our faces, because our focus on Tenal required singlemindedness. Tenal is ours now – it is time for vengeance.

We will take NCdot’s Venal moons and distribute them among the coalition; there are 20+ on offer, a staggering amount of money (which is all the more reason why I’m surprised/amused that NCdot violated the agreement; we have only a handful of Venal techs, so they gained much more from the peace we did). While we do this, we remain in CS-. Once this act of retribution is completed, we will return to VFK and turn our focus towards Jita – no, we’re not invading Tribute.

CS-. One more week. 20+ tech moons. Let’s get paid.

Note for spergs: PL and GSF have had a completely successful agreement, and we will of course abide by it and not be hitting any PL moons in Venal, because you’d have to be retarded and/or NCdot to toss such a profitable arrangement out the window for nothing.

That certainly sounds like The Mittani.  So we’re not going to march into Tribute, but muck about in Venal.

Venal seems an odd region in terms of null sec, at least it did when I first noticed it was null sec.  It sits in the middle of several regions owned by warring alliances, yet appears unclaimed on the sovereignty maps.

Venal in the middle

It is actually owned, in terms of sovereignty, by the Guristas, and NPC organization.

NPC organizations owning chunks of null sec isn’t that unusual.  Bits of some other null sec regions, like Pure Blind, as well as other full regions, such as Curse and Stain, are controlled by NPCs.  But when you aren’t part of null sec, and only know what you see on things like the sovereignty maps, you might not get what is really going on.  I know I didn’t.  Now I do.  And so do you!

Anyway, this Gurista enclave in the midst of warring factions becomes something of a proxy battle ground.  It is the wild west in the midst of the wild west.  That little purple dot that represents my own little home in null sec is right near the border with Venal, and it is the place where enemy fleets often appear. (Though they seem to pass on by and head to VFK more often than not.)  So it is a place of conflict.

But it does have some valuable assets, such as moons to be mined for their valuable raw materials, including the ever popular technetium, the most valuable moon goo of all.

So it seems the fight will be on this week to take some of those moons away from Northern Coalition.