World War Bee has been in the past for months now, but that doesn’t mean null sec space is quiet. Nobody is assaulting Delve at the moment, but there are still many stories unfolding in the space noir epic that is the wilds of null sec as we settle into the post war reality. Brave has been trying to establish a home, TEST has been falling apart in Outer Passage, and for some reason we’re fighting with Triumvirate in Cloud Ring.
It has all been relatively low key, at least when compared to the war, and out away from Delve, which means I haven’t seen much of it in person.
And then this past weekend The Army of Mango Alliance got caught trying to reverse merge themselves into the Imperium and… well… I’ve read the reporting over at the New Eden Post and have heard The Mittani try to explain it twice, once on the Meta Show and once at our weekly fireside and I am not sure I understand how the plan was supposed to work or who exactly they thought it was going to fool.
But let me reel that back in for a minute to set up the situation. One of the post war events that had comes to pass recently was a war breaking out between Fraternity and Army of Mango.
This was not a huge surprise to anybody paying attention… or even people like me who were simply not asleep that day in class.
Faternity and Army of Mango are, along with a few other corps and alliances, part of the great exodus from Serenity, the mainland Chinese EVE Online server, which occurred when one group, the Pan-Intergalactic Business Community, won the game by becoming the single unassailable dominate power in null sec. The influence map was them and those who paid tribute to them.
Some of life on the Serenity server was covered by the Rooks & Kings videos Message in a Bottle and First Light on the Fifth Day, the latter covering a final battle in wormhole space. But the end of the war led many to exit the server… though, as I understand it, the Chinese company that had been running it at the time wasn’t helping much.
And many pilots who liked the game on Serenity came here, where there was not a single dominant power. (So, among other things, the player count on Tranquility was boosted by players from Serenity.)
Those players brought with them the grudges from Serenity and can generally be sorted out into the winners and losers camp if you know who is who. Fraternity and Army of Mango have generally been the two groups most at odds, and while they managed to cooperate during World War Bee, joining the PAPI coalition against the Imperium, things have been tense and some wondered if they might start fighting each other there on the front lines.
But at week seventeen of the war Army of Mango stepped back from the front lines to assume stewardship of the Legacy Coalition’s backfield, trying to tamp down the then incipient harassment as The Bastion rolled into Esoteria to take a few systems and be an annoyance.
When PAPI gave up the invasion and turned for home, Army of Mango managed to scoop up much of the territory TEST left behind as Vily and PGL sought shelter as far away from angry Goons as they could. There AOM began to form a new coalition with some remnants of Legacy, bringing back the Pan-Intergalactic Business Community name from the Serenity server, which was pretty much the same as waving a red flag and shouting “come get me” at Fraternity.
Once alliances were settled and rested, Fraternity went straight for Army of Mango and, though they were rebuffed on their first assault, the writing seemed to be on the wall that Frat was going to win over time.
Army of Mango decided they needed an out and sought to sneak into the Imperium. They transferred some structures, including their main staging Keepstar, to GSF and told their members that they were going to disband the alliance and fold themselves into Ranger Regiment, another of the Chinese diaspora groups from the Serenity server.
Ranger Regiment, which joined the Imperium as a candidate member back in February of 2020 when they were driven out of their space by Fraternity, was already in a bad odor in the Imperium for low participation in the war. To hear the leadership of Army of Mango go on about it to their members, it seems that Ranger Regiment was at least aligned with, and possibly being run by, Army of Mango. Kind of a bit of interesting post war news.
So the plan, as explained by the leadership of Army of Mango, was to ditch their alliance and move their existing structure, including their leadership, into Ranger Regiment, taking over the alliance and carrying on from there, safe from Fraternity. How very sneaky.
Unfortunately for Army of Mango, the leadership of the Imperium did not just fall off the back of a turnip truck, so this did not go unnoticed as the structure transfers were noticed and spies reported back with with what was going on and, soon enough, full translations of what was said.
Pancake Wolf got a medal for work on intel
Once the attention of the Imperium was focused on what was happening, updates began flowing back in near real time as Army of Mango tried to carry on, then found themselves in a bind as the Imperium wasn’t having it. We were not going to be a patsy for Army of Mango or allow ourselves to be dragged into the middle of their war with Fraternity.
The Imperium honored a short period that had been negotiated to allow Army of Mango line members to evacuate from their staging, and then the hammer fell, zapping the clones left in the Keepstar.
3,277 clones about to be destroyed
(image courtesy of The Mittani, who pressed the “yes” button.)
Meanwhile, Ranger Regiment is being kicked from the Imperium for their part in this. They were already in trouble, but being involved in this scheme was too much. This has led to a scramble for homes for a large number of players from both alliances.
Army of Mango down 3,800 and counting
Dracarys, another Chinese alliance in the Imperium, has picked up quite a few new members due to this shift. They put in a strong performance in World War Bee and hold some former Legacy Coalition space in Catch along with connecting space in Querious. However, the word is that groups coming into the Imperium must be vetted thoroughly and nobody in the Army of Mango or Ranger Regiment leadership team is welcome.
So there looks to be a shake up coming on who owns what in the south end of null sec as it does not seem like Army of Mango and Ranger Regiment are going to be able to hold onto that space.
South null sec – Jan 10, 2022
Ranger Regiment is set to disband and Army of Mango, which now has no place to land so has to carry on existing, is planning to head to low sec space for now. The Pan-Intergalactic Business Community coalition has effectively been destroyed. Fraternity wins this round.
This has also led to what is set to be a major null sec event.
The Imperium pulled the fuel from the Keepstar in R-ARKN so it will go into an abandoned state and will be blowing it up this coming weekend. Unlike an normal Keepstar destruction in null sec, this will lead to everything left in people’s hangars being ejected into space when the structure blows up.
This could turn out to be the ultimate New Eden loot pinata. Every player’s stuff gets launched into space in a station hangar and people will be rummaging through them looking for ships and modules and anything of value.
I’ve seen something like this before in wormhole space when we got to go along with The Initiative to blow up a couple Hard Knocks Keepstars back in 2018. There, in the J115405 wormhole, sometimes known as Rage, we first blew up Fort Knocks.
The loot ball with markers on
Then we blew up Unassailable Wealth.
The Initiative showing off with their logo in spaceships
That was a huge amount of loot on the field, and it was a crazy time.
I suspect that the Keepstar in R-ARKN will throw a few times as many station containers into space when it blows. It seems likely that the server will just crash when it happens. But if the server holds, we’ll be out there scooping loot for a long time. Imperium leadership is already planning out how to deal with it.
Of course, other groups might want some of that loot as well, so the whole thing could simply devolve into an ongoing slap fight over who gets what.
I wonder if CCP should contact Guinness Book for this. Is there a world record category for most loot on the field in a video game?
Related:
- NEP – Army of Mango Alliance Disbands…
- The Meta Show – Doctor Who and Army of Mango S3 Ep5
- Imperium Fireside – January 9, 2022
- Reddit – AOM leadership after Imperium cans their plan
- TAGN – The Loot Pinata Fight Results
The Ancient Gaming Noob 