THE STAGE
On January 3 at 11:19 EVE time, in the system of S1-XTL in Scalding Pass, Anasasis Daphiti of Triumvirate lost his Erebus (worth an estimated 108B ISK) to Pandemic Legion and Purple Helmeted Warriors. Trickery and betrayal play a big part in some of the best scams and kills in EVE Online, and this titan kill was no different.
PERSONAL ACCOUNT
TMC reached out to several sources for comment on the kill, and was lucky enough to get ahold of RoCkEt X of PHEW.
TMC: Rocket, Pandemic Legion and friends have a solid system for tracking down and killing titans. Was there anything different about this Erebus?
RoCkEt X: It’s a pretty simple one really, but it was a good set up. So, a dude in Tri. (I’m told his main is Lord Zero) approached a member of PL and enquired about what he need to do to join PL. The PL dude told him that, if he wanted in, he’d have to earn a vouch if he didn’t already have one.
TMC: Oh. I see where this is going. What happened next?
RX: The proposition was that he awoxxes some Tri. supers. The (titan) pilot said he didn’t particularly want to do that, so he went to NC. NC rejected him right off the bat and informed Tri. leadership that the pilot was leaving. Somewhere in there he got drunk, and while he was on their comms, told his corpmates that he’d been told he needed to awox to get into PL.
TMC: Wait.. so the dude got drunk, Tri knows he is leaving and then he was talking about awoxxing for PL. That couldn’t have been the best idea.
RX: Yeah. They knew he’d been rejected from NC. So this dude goes nuts and thinks that, because Tri know’s he is leaving, that they are going to try and kill him. Unfortunately, he had gone full tin-foil hat mode by that point. He comes back to his “friend” in PL and the PL dude then comes to me to ask me how he should play it. He tells me he could get the guy vouched in for 10B ISK and just scam him. Up to this point, we still had no idea he had a titan.
TMC: Oh! So you still didn’t know at all? You just thought it was a normal subcap pilot trying to join?
RX: Yeah. He kind of casually threw that in like, “Oh by the way, I have a titan.” So we did the whole rekkinglegion stalking thing, worked out who his pilot was, located it and found it in space, so it all looked legit. We figured out he bought it recently and it was definitely a titan pilot (the character/titan used to belong to a member of Goonswarm Federation). So I told this to PL members. The guy’s ‘friend’ says, “if I think it’s a viable kill, he’s happy to kill it and doesn’t care about the 10B.” I point out to Jake (the PL dude) that if we go through with it, I was happy to execute the kill, but it’s him screwing the guy over. He promptly said that he was cool with it and I told him to get the Erebus pilot within range of Utopia – our staging area.
TMC: Seems like it was set up and good to go! Was he reluctant to jump in?
RX: Yes. The target was skeptical, but agreed to go to a POS two cynos from Curse. So, we gave Jack a system to move him to, which wasn’t in range of caps, but was in range for BLOPS. We set him up with a safespot and logged out of rekkinglegion dictors/hictors there. Jake lit the cyno for the guy. When we jumped in, we verified it was the Erebus, and safed him up. He linked us his fit. It showed no smartbombs, so Jake lit the second cyno in a Sabre, and launched a bubble. The Erebus jumped in, unable to smartbomb the bubbles, and at the same time, we logged the dictors/hictors in and secured tackle.
TMC: He had to have known it was all over at that point.
RX: Yeah. We pinged for the BLOPS fleet, lit the cyno for them, and all they had to do was undock, jump, and shoot him until the Erebus died. He immediately knew what was going on when he jumped into the bubble. Knowing he was screwed, he unplugged his slave set and logged off.
TMC: Yes, we noticed his pod had nothing in it.
RX: Apparently he went ballistic on Skype. SASH (his corp) was in the process of kicking him because of the whole “I’m leaving” drama, anyway. He was three hours from the end of stasis before they could kick him. Several SASH members called the kill before it even happened on tweetfleet slack. If feel sorry for the guy to be honest. He ended up in a real crappy position, got desperate and then got screwed over.
TMC: Well, that is EVE for you. The first thing most of us learn in EVE is to never trust anyone. Do you have anything else you would like to add to the article?
RX: I’d like to thank Jakemiester for being a slimey git and providing me with an Erebus kill for sunday lunch 🙂
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by Lemba.
