MuffinsRevenger (taken from failheap)

The cold metaphorical wind was blowing through the vastness of space, swirling around imaginary dust-particles and tumbleweed as we floated in our POS-forcefield, staring down the titan as it floated next to us
It was Sunday evening, and the dark gray space around us seemed at least twice as menacing as it usual, closing in on us and attempting to breach through the hulls and tear down friendships and tolerance keeping us safe from the stars malice
You could sense it on the celestial winds, tonight someone was going to get royally fucked

And if we did not play our cards right, it might be us


A few nights before, Nashh had been sitting with the barrel of his finely crafted colt .45 in his mouth, tired of existence and contemplating ragequtting once and for all
Fingering the trigger, he had smiled and realized that simply shooting himself and ending it all in the quietness of his captains quarters would not cut it, no, that would be too much like surrendering
Instead, he began drafting a plan of a public spectacle to rock the stars, and announce his end for the world to see

This took shape of a declaration, he would undock in expensive spaceships and whoever destroyed him and took his worldly assets would be welcome to keep them

So, just like the days of old where fortune finders rushed out into the wasteland to claim the riches awaiting those who dared, people flocked to the system of Goinard to prove who was the boldest

In good time before the fight the followers of captain Mangala Solaris, a bandit gang known as RVB Ganked, announced their intent to grab the riches from the corpse of Nashh, and with the promise of at least a hundred pilots in attendance the system and its potential rewards, be it in money or potential for fighting started to lure hostiles in, like an open flames to us poor moths


With Nashh’s industrial ship containing the riches symbolizing the means for him to end himself tackled and attacked, the first greedy profiteers started showing up on grid, first destroying the industrial and then turning on one another
This squandering rabble was an opportunity to cause havoc too juicy for the commanders of Shadowcartel to miss, and they made the call to jump six archons and a thanatos in together with a scattering of battleships and support to destroy some of the eager pilots and prepare for the Mangala Solaris onslaught

As sure as we all turn to dust in the end, the attack came, and a fierce firefight broke out around the still burning wreak of Nashh, smiling to himself from inside his capsule as It was targeted, almost as an afterthought, and obliterated and he finally found the oblivion he longed for, his part in this story now finally over
The fight in its early stages was frightfully one-sided, and the carriers and battleships of ShadowCartel held the field admirably, keeping up their merciless fire against the foaming rabble of the Ganknight hoard


That cold contempt could not be allowed to stand, and we made the call to come through and reinforce the valiant tribal attackers with golden hulls of justice and promises of deliverance from the pains of existence

We flash into existence in a glorious series of red lightning bolts, a fleet of roughly seventeen absolution, pregnant pigeons of lightning-fast death and hatred, seven lokis armed with advanced immobilizing technologies and a scattering of zealots and guardians to keep us alive as well as one retarded gypsie-hurricane brought along for good fortune
Leading us is the iron will of Hunlight, guiding us towards the enemy fleet with a vengeance only rivaled by the intense plasma furnace of a dying star, ruling the fleet with an iron fist
Together with us a complement of BALEX ships with murder in their minds come through, and together we set upon the 25 Shadowfed and 90 Ganknighthists still alive on grid


The system at this point is at 311 souls, and the lag is fucking atrocious (time-dialation at 85%)
Our movements are delayed, and it is as if we are watching a disaster in slow-motion, the missiles and beams streaking through space between the hostile forces and explosions tearing ships apart with sickening slowness, revealing all the gloriously hideous detail of deep space combat for our eyes to see

We immediately start taking on the ShadowCartel battleships, and though their armor repairs initially hold up we are able to burn through some of the less well-build Minmatar vessels
In the meantime a lot of us are taking opportunistic shoots at the wild hoards following Mangala Solaris, destroying many of the desperately firing but fragile frigates and cruisers who stray too close to the maelstrom of energy discharge that is the central field of battle

The call from Hunlught to “stop blapping the frigs and they won’t bother you” is made, and most of our pilots reply with a guilty “oops” and we concentrate back on the hostile carriers

This however proves fruitless, as eventually both sides stabilize and a mind game begins, a game of swapping targets and trying to split apart the close-knit group of hostile carriers who valiantly shrug off any attempts of our forces to break through their armor-tanks
In parallel to the Snuff/Swear and BALEX attempts to break through the carriers, several valiant skirmishing attacks from the ShadowCartel attempt to break through and disrupt our friendly formations are made, primarily using long range battlecrusiers, but they are forced off with catastrophic losses of their own for no damage inflicted

The fight has been going on for about half an hour in real time, but only like ten minutes or so have passed in game due to the massive time-dilation effects

Suddenly space is torn open in a vast display of tortured laws of physics as yet another fleet jumps through, forty battleships from Drunk and Disorderly, yet another group of privateers fighting for the Caldari state and their own profits arrive to shift the balance of the battle raging before them
They immediately set upon trying to break through the BALEX formation, but the time dilation and superior skill of the Balkan pilots make this an impossible task

A deadlock is now in place, four or five different groups of pilots are fighting one another and unable to dislodge the other grip


So a call is made
A call to ignore old wounds and damaged pride in order to avenge even older crimes, to disregard principle in order to avenge those stab wounds in our backs

A quick non-aggression pact between BALEX, Snuff, Swear and Drunk and Disorderly is formed, and we focus on trying to break through the ShadowCartel Carriers tanks as the random fleet of gank’ed mills around trying to find something weak enough to destroy, firing madly at anything and everything they can
We keep up our fire for a five or so minutes of in game time, something that feels like (and is) closer to twenty minutes of time passed on the outside

Realizing we can’t break through or disrupt them with what they have, drunk and disorderly arranges for a squadron of six dreadnoughts to be brought on field to end the carriers one and for all

After the dreadnoughts have been brought in the hostile carriers start slowly dipping downwards, and ShadowCartel, despite their best efforts, realize that the end is slowly creeping up on them from the weight of numbers
However, the end comes from an unexpected direction


A lone carrier warps into the middle of the maelstrom of destruction, and is called out as “uh-oh, PL carrier on grid” followed by a cheerful “well fuck” from Hunlight

The carrier lights up a cyno, and suddenly it’s surrounded by another twenty or so of its brethren, who deploy sentry drones and proceed to lay waste to whatever they can target

This is the signal to retreat for the friendly forces that are still able to do so, and even thought a fair number of people stay on the field holding their ground the carriers of the pandemic legion eventually overwhelms the support and start working on destroying the hostile carriers

Much to everyone’s surprise however, the ShadowCartel carriers are able to outlast the combined sentry gun damage from the hostile slowcat-formation
A tiny ember of hope starts to glow within the collective minds of the tackled ShadowCartel carriers and still immobilized Drunk and Disorderly dreadnoughts
Maybe there is still hope of deliverance?

The hope however is not long lived, but is crushed as 20 Pandemic Legion super carriers jump in and laugh fight bombers, finally ending the surviving capitals run for glory through the conflagration of massed compact torpedoes

In the end, the dust settles on a Goinard with over four hundred and thirty ships destroyed, massive values turned to ash over a pointless conflict ignited by a lone man’s desperation to not die alone

And those of us who fought and bleed on those fields of desolation, we would not have had it any other way