A dream I want to share

Had a weird dream about eve last night. I extrapolated and this came out.

For reasons lost to the passage of time, Concord & Empires are defeated by a full scale drifter and triglav invasion. Settlements destroyed, npc stations in shamble, asteroid belts spent, Stargates lost, and morale hit rock bottom.

Today is a special day to all capsuleers. It is the hull timer for jita 4-4. It is also the 3rd anniversary of the full scale Drifter and Triglav “invasion” on new eden. While most refer to this as an “invasion”, technically it isn’t one. It is simply a full scale warfare between the Drifters and the Triglav in new eden - we are simply the humans caught between the aliens and the predators.

It all started on a innocuous Friday night, 2200 eve time, three years ago. The triglav declared a full scale war against the drifters after hijacking a The Scope broadcast. Within a year, null blocs are slowly pushed to low sec after losing every single skirmish to the invasion forces. Seeing imminent danger, empire and concord lifted the capital ban in high sec, hoping that will stop the invasion in its track before it starts to infringe on the empires’ interest. On the same day the ban was lifted, the Coalition of capsuleer was formed. COC, a name that pays its homage to BOB, was the biggest resistant effort we have mounted against the invasion. It have the combined super capital fleet of all major alliances, the brilliant minds of hundreds of fleet commanders, and most importantly the 24-7 timezone coverage from over 100,000 unique players around the world united under one banner.

With only the empire space to defend, COC was able to stall the invasion. At the finger tip of commanders, a single discord ping will fill full fleets numbering in the double digits. The battle of Tama gate was the first skirmish that Capsuleers won since the invasion started. 20 fleets full of supers were dropped on invasion forces with sub-capital support. With that victory, Capsuleers successfully reclaimed control of the dodixie <-> jita stargate trade route and established our forward staging in dodixie.

On the other hand, COC’s grip on empire space east of jita was a hot mess. After a massive slaughter of COC’s HAC fleet in Ojianen, we were ambushed in the process of moving back to our secondary staging in Obanen by a supercapital fleet of their own - that was the first time that any capsuleer laid eyes on a drifter supercapital hull. What happened next was two years of hard fought battles, 3am CTA alarms, and trillions of ships lost. Normally, these types of losses are easily absorbed by the massive economies of null sec powers, but with COC’s dwindling territory in high sec, minerals prices shot up after astroid belts are strip down and supply drops.

Those who chose to hide in wormholes are snuffed out by the invasion. Being a larger target, Laserhawks and Hard Knock Citizens are amongst the first to fall. With guns that ignores structure damage cap, probes that scans near instantly, and perfectly flown fleets that easily overwhelm the largest capital fleet wormholers can muster, the prideful hawks are shot down one by one and fleets of HK citizens are pulverized by the invasion. What followed was an “ethic cleansing” of every capsuleer in WH. Since then the phase “Wormholer btw” only lived in bedtime stories that parents told. Stories that became legends, and legends became myths, and myths... lost to the wheel of time.

And this is what led us to today-

In jita 4-4, the Coalition of Capsuleers, which consist all of the surviving “null blocs”, is busy coordinating logistics for our last stand.

Every combat-capable ship is rigged with weapons. Every non combat-capable ship is striped down and reprocessed to squeeze out whatever left of the minerals we still possess after astroid fields in system have been deprecated.

The remaining star-gates that previously led to Jita, if they are not already destroyed, are hell camped by the invasion forces, - forces that don’t get tired, don’t feel hungry, and don’t need to work irl to pay for their monthly sub.

Two weeks ago, due to shortage of radioactive fuel rods to power the station reactor, it is decided that the cloning bay is forced to be offline to re-route energy to keep jita 4-4 station life support online.

This means if you die in your pod, you just die forever.

We initially trained our skillfarm alts, PI alts, and cyno alts into combat pilots and threw them at the invasion forces. We will throw a few fleets worth of T1 battleships to the void, warping to old bookmarks where former stargates/ other stations used to exist. The plan was to repair them once we gain grid control.... Well, at least that was the plan.

During the armor timer for 4-4 last week, we pinged for every super carrier we had in station. It was a glorious slight to behold - tens of thousands of supercapitals gently bumping into each other as they undocked from 4-4.


Today—

“Subcaps take warp”

“Supers and caps stand by”

The subcapital fight for the hull timer has started and I was in a links loki. I, Alexander Lai, my sub capital main, in the last ship that I own. Like the other 255 Capsuleers in my fleet I was worried. Worried not because of losing a Lv 5 T3C skill, but losing my pod. The countless stories resides inside Alexander Lai, countless tears of happiness, countless killmail worth of rage, and countless friendships forged throughout Alex’s life will soon all be for nothing.

From afar, we look like fireflies in the dark, little fluorescent dots dancing around the drifter fleet.

“Logi are we holding?” A young commander’s voice mumbled.

“Fc we are barely holding, except for those who didn’t broadcast early”

“Good! Logi make sure you prelock each other and ... Holy shit!”

A blob of triglav carriers jumped onto grid, interrupting the FC’s order for logi to prelock links as well.

And thats was the end of Alexander Lai, instantly podded by drifter smartbomb exactly a second after he was rejected by his ship when it exploded into rust shards.

“Supers get ready and align to broadcast”

My super toon was sitting in a nyx, perfectly the same like the nyx next to it, and the nyx next to the nyx next to it. It is pride of the COC - a doctrine fit nyx. Ever since we lost half of empire space to the invasion, all the deadspace modules that survived was conscripted by COC for supercapital use only.  It is actually quite funny if you take a moment to consider that we probably have 95% of all deadspace/named modules that still remain in front of me in that giant ball of death. And of course, the other 5% is probably currently sitting in some delivery hanger limbo - somehow i am quite sure even the drifters/trigav will have a hard time finding it.

“Supers take warp, we are going in”

Besides the occasional “Leeroy Jenkinsssss!” joke, Comms are silent, no one dares to speak a single word, as all we know this is the last hope - the best chance we capsuleers will ever have - to turn the tide in our favor.

In slow motion, slow as in 1.5 au/ second, the mightly ball of amalgamation that carries capsuleers’ last hope accelerated into the fog of war.

Aftermath—

When a piece of molten lava is cast into the sea, it boils the water, but on the same note the sea also chills the lava so a massive amount of smoke is created from the process. The details of the fight is still fuzzy to me from the dream - full of smoke like when a ball of lava meets the sea, but I vaguely remember someone shouting something about Jon Hun still have yet to pay his super’s subsidy as his Avatar exploded.