[Jester's Trek] Dueling banjos
Dueling banjos
Just a quickie, but one I found kinda amusing.
One of the super-cap losses that I'm going to be covering next Monday is this Fatal Ascention Leviathan killed Monday night during USTZ.(1) Normally when I cover super losses, I like to tell a brief version of the story of how the super in question died, if I can find it. The super pilots involved are understandably reluctant to tell their stories, even if they are logging into the related EVE accounts. Sometimes, you just never learn what happened.
Even when you do learn, stories from those "who were there" nearly always conflict. Sometimes, TMC or EN24 covers the story and sometimes both. And there are usually differences in opinion about this or that point that change the narrative of how and more importantly why a super died.
But for the first time I can recall, on this particular Leviathan, there are more or less opposite stories dueling over why this Leviathan died. Everyone agrees on how: the CFC FC (Lazarus Telraven) -- on orders from CFC high command apparently going right up to The Mittani -- warped an interdictor to the titan, ordered his fleet to jump through to it and then ordered his fleet to turn their guns on the supposedly friendly Lev and destroy it before it could log out. Since its hardeners were down at the time, this blue-on-blue kill was executed quickly. There's a few more details -- off-lining a POS played a part -- but that's the gist.
The why is the subject of the dueling narratives. Mittens says that the titan pilot was identified as a long-time alt of Pandemic Legion's Manfred Sidious, known colloquially around New Eden and on Kugutsumen as Manny. Pandemic Legion denies it. Former PL member Phreeze says (kind of amusingly) that the titan and its pilot used to be a shared asset of Insidious Existence flown by he and another pilot. Apparently, the titan and the character have changed hands many times over the years since then, to the point where it would probably be difficult or impossible for anyone to prove exactly who was at the keyboard when this Lev was killed on Monday.
EVE Online's TOS aside, this kind of titan account sharing is common-place and it's typical for CCP to look the other way. A good bit of the evidence the Goons are using to show guilt here is based on IP addresses used by the titan pilot, presumably gathered from Goon comms. If the IP address of a titan pilot on comms matches the known address of known adversaries that have used Goon comms in the past, the Goons apparently aren't above using that as a data-point.
Meanwhile, EN24 has also covered the story and there, Manny has insisted that the titan was not his. EN24 also tries to raise the question how Black Legion's got involved -- they brought in a sub-cap fleet to likewise attack the helpless titan. EN24 seems to be trying to make the case that Black Legion trolled the CFC with false intel into destroying one of their own titans. The discussion of the loss on Kugu is likewise a bit crazed. Needless to say, Black Legion is more than happy to take credit whether they were involved or not, confusing matters further.
What you're left with is a pretty glorious charlie-foxtrot that's becoming rather fun to keep up with. My gut instinct is that Goons got their guy; there's been remarkably little blow-back from FA or even from the supposed FA titan pilot so far, including on comms when the titan went down. But what's the actual truth? Who knows? Who cares?
(1) For some reason, it appears on the FA kill-board and on the Goon kill-board, but not on eve-kill or zkillboard.
Source: Dueling banjos