In a hilarious turn of events, The Imperium broke out from their containment to kill a Legacy Astrahaus that dropped over 200bn ISK in loot. Broadcasted live on Merkelchen’s RampageInc Twitch, 19 pilots in bombers killed an uncontested abandoned citadel in 08S-39 – Period Basis. Intel had revealed that the station contained some assets, but as the looting began, the valiant Goonswarm pilots could not believe what they discovered.
As the fleet bounced around the wreck checking the dropped cans, it soon became clear that this was not just a collection of random items, but a real gold mine of assets. The Initiative. CSM member, Brisc Rubal was the first to discover treasure, stepping out of his bomber he took controls of a Nightmare only to see it was worth 2.9bn ISK plus Abyssal modules. But the excitement did not stop there. A number of other battleships started appearing: Praxes, Dominixes and a Paladin.
But the fun didn’t stop there. Shortly after finding the above ships, Brisc discovered the arkenstone at the centre of the treasure pile: a can containing 61bn ISK in assets, including three carriers, two jump freighters, six faction battleships, and billions more in ships and modules. Merkelchen jumped quickly into the Machariel to discover it was a 3.4 billion deadspace fit.
As the small fleet started assessing the real value of the drop, pilots ejected from their bombers to find that the carriers had their ship maintenance bays full as well; it was the drop that kept on dropping. Perhaps the most amusing part of the whole fleet was that the looting continued for over an hour, live on Twitch, and the fleet was totally left alone by PAPI.
As the true value of the haul became obvious, it was clear that the small fleet would need assistance to get it all back to the Imperial Palace. With almost all pilots having dropped their bombers to take on a larger ship, the fleet finished looting the field. With reinforcements on the way, plus all cargo bays and fleet hangars full, there was nothing left to do but destroy what remained. The “battle report” shows around 17bn ISK in assets destroyed, including three Apocalypse Navy Issue’s totaling 11.9bn ISK.
The unfortunate members of the Legacy Coalition belonged to Siberian Alpha Fleet. The two pilots who appear to have lost the majority of items appear to be on a break from EVE, with one being active in PvP since 2018. It will be uncomfortable reading to see their zkillboards in the morning (Finit / SOE Pashania). It is unclear whether the stolen items and ships belonged to the same individuals or whether they were spread out amongst other Legacy corporations. Those assets now belong to the Imperium. As Merk said live, “they’ve just given us a month worth of SRP.”
Newly re-elected CSM Member Brisc Rubal had this to say on the evenings events: “For a group that is completely contained and has no influence, we sure seem to be doing a lot of stuff to hit the bad guys in the crotch. Killing an abandoned loot pinata was one thing, but getting the vast majority of the loot back to 1DQ, including jump freighters, capitals and billions in modules and subcaps right under their noses was something else. It was especially sweet to make this happen live on camera. Never change, SAPI.”
However, the night was not over. As the “grand theft astra” continued, a small engagement ended in E-VJKV. Around two hours after the loot piñata dropped in Period Basis, PAPI pilots jumped onto Merkelchen’s twitch chat with their FC’s encouragement. In a clear act of brigading that would have brought the ban-hammer down upon them in other streams, they started spamming chat with a 17bn vs 3bn ISK battle report in PAPI’s favour. The attempt to derail the live stream was a complete failure, as no one from the PAPI Coalition had realised what was going on only a few systems away. The Imperium had stolen over ten times what was lost in that minor skirmish.
When he was approached for comment, Karmafleet CEO Merkelchen gave us a beautiful description of the night’s activities:
I was curled up in the fetal position on my bathroom floor repeating “but Mamma said I DO have influence” when my phone alarm went off. I stood up and saw my blurry reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror that had one word,”cOnTaInMeNt”, scribbled on it in bright red lip stick. It was time to fire up the Twitch stream and I was going to need to put on a brave face for the lads, lest they realize they too were contained without influence. I know Brisc and Nom have both been through a lot, and had thick skin to show for it, but an epiphany like this can break even the most seasoned Chads.
Everyone knows Tuesday night is the first night of our 5-day weekend we celebrate so I wanted to make the Rampage Inc stream special. After we had a good cry during our preproduction meeting and went around the room taking turns saying one thing we treasured about each other’s friendship we decided we were going to shift gears for the stream and try to make it fun. Knowing full well that we did not have permission to leave 1DQ we risked it all and snuck out the back door to see for ourselves what these chucklefucks had done to our space.
45 minutes and 200b in dropped loot later we were on our way back to Space Rome like conquering heroes. The memories of our futile influence a thing of a past. The real pisser was how excited we were that so many carriers dropped as surely they would be able to help us get all of our loot home right? Sadly we were wrong. They were already full of marauders and deadspace fit battleships already. Oh cruel fate! We had to scuttle tens of billions of isk in shit we couldn’t carry and try to decide which deadspace fit faction battleships we wanted to take home and which ones were going to die without ever being a part of a cleverly edited battle report pinged several times to the sheeple of Papi. A big thank you to the Black Order, the First Division, and Caish and the Hood Rats for executing the heist and getting the crew home safely.
At the time of the writing of this message I’m back on the bathroom floor trying to muster the will to face another day of containment, sans influence.
Merkelchen, Karmafleet CEO, CSM Member
