Over the past week, NPC Venal residents Out of Sight. (OOS) have been attacking various CFC-held towers in the region. Yesterday CFC alliance Circle-of-Two (CO2) caught them sieging a tower in 6W-HRH and dropped by to introduce themselves. Today a similar incident erupted into a brawl in HBD-CC between Black Legion. (BL) and CFC forces which incurred an estimated 26 billion ISK in losses among the involved parties.
Prior to the battle OOS dreads were spotted jumping out of their staging system by CO2 scouts and soon after attacking a RAZOR Alliance tower in HBD-CC. CO2 and CFC military leadership were made aware of the situation, and separate broadcasts went out to CO2 and to the greater CFC to form fleets at 17:53 EVE Time. While the CFC formed up a large Harpy fleet in its military capital YA0-XJ under Reagalan, CO2 assembled a dedicated tackling fleet of approximately 20-30 pilots, of whom only one got through the first bridge before the insertion cyno ship was destroyed.
While another CO2 cyno ship was en route to HBD-CC, the CFC Harpy fleet got set up on a titan in YA0-XJ and began moving its own cyno to D-SKWC – one jump out of HBD-CC, which itself was outside of titan range from YA0-XJ. Known to the CFC, but deemed irrelevant to the situation at hand, BL was in the middle of a planned State of the Alliance meeting with approximately 250 pilots logged into their staging system of Tartoken.
Cyno ships for both CO2 and the CFC eventually reached their target systems and at 18:02 EVE Time tackle was confirmed; CO2 interdictor pilot Zuquar Bonaparte had single handedly held down the OOS dreadnoughts for the better part of five minutes while evading hostile fire. The rest of the CO2 tackle fleet bridged in and promptly littered the field with interdiction spheres, guaranteeing the dreadnoughts would not escape. The CFC Harpy fleet, by now numbering approximately 180 pilots, arrived at 18:10 and began focus fire on the dreadnoughts one at a time. Reagalan directed fire first onto the two Moroses, which each took several minutes of sustained fire to kill. During that time CO2 members Sebastian Saintfruqsuin and gigX prepared their titan characters to execute drive-by doomsdays.
Sebastian jumped his Ragnarok in first at 18:22 and instantly destroyed a Naglfar before warping off to a safe spot. gigX followed two minutes later, also obliterating a Naglfar, but there were now combat probes on directional scan and BL cyno characters had entered local. In the time it had taken the CFC forces to kill the OOS dreadnoughts, BL had formed up a Tengu fleet led by Elo Knight and arrived to pounce on gigX’s exposed Avatar.
The CFC Harpy fleet immediately engaged the BL Tengu fleet, focusing fire on their Scimitars, while the Tengu fleet promptly headshot Reagalan’s FC character. Lyris Nairn took over the CFC Harpy fleet, contiuning to focus on BL support ships while sirens started blaring on CFC jabber and mumble services reporting the tackled titan. BL was reported to be forming a capital fleet and supercapital forces from Northern Coalition(dot) and Pandemic Legion were reported logging in. BL lit a cyno on grid and a single triage carrier made it on grid before the cyno ship was destroyed; meanwhile, heavy TiDi was reported in YA0 due to the number of pilots logging in. The CFC was marshaling its own capital and supercapital forces as well as forming up additional subcapital fleets: a Baltec fleet under Dabigredboat and a Celestis fleet under Reagalan, who had been podded during the fight.
BL and CFC subcapital forces continued to brawl near the tackled titan over the next several minutes while pilots all across EVE were being urged to pile into fleets in preparation for what might have easily escalated into a huge supercapital slugfest. Whether due to temperance or lack of confidence, that fight never came. Instead, the CFC capital fleet led by kcolor arrived on grid to engage the BL tengus and the tackled titan’s doomsday timer came off cooldown whereupon the BL triage Chimera was promptly destroyed. Having lost most of its logistics and its second FC during the brawl, as well as suffering from an AFK fleet member having errantly received fleet boss, the CFC Harpy fleet disengaged and fled the field to regroup while the CFC capital fleet cleaned up. In the time it took for the CFC Harpy fleet to warp off, reassemble in a safe spot, and arrive back on grid – with Lyris Nairn now in a fleet member’s borrowed Harpy – the BL tengus had also fled the field and were reported to be going home. The CFC Harpy fleet remained on grid to cover the extraction of the titan, then of the capital fleet, before also heading home via the CFC jump bridge network.
