PL is well known as a capable heavyweight in the NullSec space. They’re also known for a few other things, like “fishing” for high-end kills. This is typically a tactic where a Heavy Interdiction ship will be sent into a system that has been pre-scouted to contain some high-value target. Once the HIC locks the Super or other target on a grid, the full might of a Supercapital fleet will drop on the target and then exfiltrate. Under nominal conditions, this goes off without a hitch and PL can secure their quarry without loss. That assumes there’s not a spy involved, enter Bandwidthh.
Here’s What Happened
Verge of Collapse placed the spy, Bandwidthh, with an Aeon Supercarrier into Pandemic Legion. He laid low for some time, before springing a trap on the fishing fleet. He saw the opportunity to use the complaceny of Pandemic Legion against them, and concocted a plan with Black Legion. This involved setting up a Black Legion ambush in a remote LowSec system, and driving their long-time enemy right into it.
The ping, or general call on comms, went out and the fishing fleet was formed by PL super pilots to go hunting. The fleet included 15 Pandemic Legion Supercarriers, including one of the three extant Revenants in the game, and they began to make preparations to move on a target that Bandwidthh had provided.
Only the target was never there, and after a couple of jumps, Pandemic Legion found themselves staring down a manned Black Legion. POS (Player Owned Starbase) and a large fleet enemy intent on blowing them out of the sky. The fleet was formed out of Black Legion. and various LowSec entities and they had one mission, kill everything in sight. And as the Revenant was cap fit—meaning it was fit to maximize capacitor recharge time to minimize time between jumps—it had no serious tanking potential beyond the hull, and melted quickly.
There was one saving grace though, as the LowSec alliances working with Black Legion. had to jump in extra support mid fight, rather than having the support already on standby to pounce on the Pandemic Legion fleet. This meant that once the tackle was cleared using fighters, Pandemic Legion had a window to escape and took it.
The Fallout
So this is the first ever Revenant to be lost in EVE Online while piloted by a player. It is only available from very rare BPC drops from Sansha’s Nation motherships in incursions in low security space. This, combined the material components to produce a ship of this scale, makes it very expensive. It’s a status symbol, and now Black Legion. killed it.
Bandwidthh left the following message for Pandemic Legion, explaining himself:
PL Leadership,
Not really going to go in depth on today, for what is the point, but a few necessities to get off the burden.
1) I didn’t steal anything from assets or any of that shit so all this is safe. Didn’t invade your forums or jabber security (I know nothing of the tech sorts)
2) It was a creation between myself and an old 3-Gun member. The old boys of the nomads didn’t know anything about it (Gwhyte/Meat/Fear). I hope you guys don’t purge or attack them for any reason, they are good guys and knew nothing about it. Fear even gave me 5 bill to purchase my first Aeon, which I am still going to pay him back and very grateful for. They are some real cool bro’s and it would be an ultimate travesty to scew their fun over.
3) I will also be paying back the 5 bill some nice chap had given me for my aeon fit in PL. Since I was such a poor peasant prior, and PL apparently “ran out of super support money,” he was nice enough to help me out for free. Must find his name in wallet.
4) There is no reason for me to explain things of why/when/how. It was very much a spur of the moment thing. I never joined as a spy, this or that. Just ended up evolving into today towards the end.
5) I may also be returning some of the loot from the super kills to their original owners. Some of them were ship of the line bro’s.
6) I didn’t leak the sound cloud to the eve press. My laptop barely is able to run multiple Eve clients let alone fraps and record soundclouds are the like. So you had someoen else on comms with malicious intent.
From,
Band
Surinea, a source close to Bandwidthh, interviewed him for additional information about his motives. Here are the details:
Bandwidthh didn’t originally join PL as a spy, never wanted it to start with. He was CEO right after Starconquer was, back when we were still with Lost Obsession, and when the corp voted to decide where we were going (that being C0nvicted) he left the CEO position and left the corp, because he wasn’t a fan of how the CFC does things.
From all the contact I had with him over his time in PL, he was having fun, but it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that he even got this idea in his head at all. He had been talking to Starconquer, who knew that Bandwidthh was getting bored, and also that he was irritated that PL reneged on their promise to subsidize his supercarrier, and started suggesting that he “go out with a bang”.
A couple weeks ago, they had an opportunity to get some of PL’s supercarriers, but Bandwidthh didn’t have a good feeling about the situation, and decided not to push it. At this point Elo was really pushing for them to get kills (as BL had been in on the planning as well) and was trying to bully Bandwidthh into lighting the cyno. Bandwidthh logged, and spent the next bit of time logging in and just thinking, and then the opportunity presented itself again yesterday.
He was able to sell the idea to some of the super pilots that there were a couple of carriers repping a tower, but that it appeared to be offline, so they would easily be able to drop in and pop them. They had a midpoint set up (which also was in on the awoxing) and the destination, and Bandwidthh waited in his super along with others in HABIT. They made the jump, but as Bandwidthh stated “I was so nervous about getting the final cyno, and getting this done, that I forgot to check that I hadn’t refit for cap, and when I lit the cyno, I was still at 40%”
Bandwidthh said he didn’t even realize it until the end that there was a Revenant that had even been in the fight, as he had been in the HABIT tower, and not with the pilot of the Revenant.
One of the first things that Bandwidthh said [during the interview], that was reiterated at this point was that “I joined this game on the story of the BoB collapse, and I always wanted to be known for something.”
Being such a historic moment in EVE Online, there’s plenty of videos of the event.
And of course, there’s a major amount of salt to be mined here. The video below contains the immediate aftermath on Pandemic Legion comms from the Revenant loss. Fair warning though, this contains a fair amount of vulgar language and rage.
