April 21, UAxDeath called a coalition meeting of the Drone Region Federation to discuss their current situation and their future moves.
The background for this meeting is the ongoing incursion into their space by Skill Urself (including a Keepstar kill in Perrigen Falls on April 20) and the recent collapse of DCU.
Two versions of this meeting are out; a 20-minute video in Russian (below), and a shorter soundcloud in English. The Russian video has both UAxDeath and Karer speaking, and they have very different views on the situation.
The Russian term (or possibly a DRF in-joke) for State of The Coalition is hypnotoad, and so UAxDeath opens the meeting by saying he is going to do the hypnotoad in Russian first, then move onto an English summary. After introducing himself, he dives into the history of Legion of xXDEATHXx [X.I.X], as it is important for people to know this in order to understand the current situation.
He says that they have a long history of getting their butts handed to them. It is a cyclical thing when they inconvenience a lot of people, bands of small forces group together against them. This happened for the first time in 2006 when NC wrecked them. They recovered and defeated their enemies in 2007 and the cycle continues since then. Legion of xXDEATHXx was created from this. He reassures members that what they are seeing now is nothing new, it has all been seen before. DRF are now in the part of the cycle where they get their asses kicked.
This time, it seems that the problems they are having were caused by a certain English speaking diplomat that UAxDeath had trusted. UAx was busy, so he hired this now notorious diplomat. He tells the members that if they have not yet encountered this person, they should consider it a blessing. He says that this diplomat was a spy, and ‘fucked everything up’ for them. While DRF were fighting, this diplomat hired VOLTA and some others to do some harassing of some groups, and he used UAxDeath’s name. He then ripped these groups off and now they are understandably angry. Northern Coalition have renters (Brothers of Tangra and Rate My Ticks) who were initially impacted by the war against DRF, but, according to UAx, NCdot has taken the simplest option of paying off these attackers. This has been done to protect NCdot’s main income source. VOLTA and their allies have used these funds to sustain their aggressive efforts.
UAxDeath then moves onto explaining that in war, when a warrior has nothing, he can keep fighting indefinitely. Once he has a house to maintain, fields to farm on, he loses interest in fighting. This means (from UAxDeath perspective), that losing Drone Regions is probably a good thing for DRF. According to UAxDeath, XIX is primarily a PvP alliance, so losing their krab breeding grounds is not a bad thing for them at all.
The focus of their push-back will be against TRI. Garst Tyrell (leader of TRI) has been on a break, but is now refreshed and returned to Eve. A well-rested leader can do things that a tired leader will not do. UAx feels that Garst has to continue with the war against DRF or it will be the end of TRI. Therefore, the priority for XIX is the war against TRI. The other wars are less important.
UAx finishes up his section by telling the members that he has told them all of this so they do not rely on rumours for information.
Karer then takes the floor. He is not as optimistic as UAx, and he wants members to face the truth that they have lost the Drone Regions. This also means they have lost the war in that area. Their allies have lost territories or flipped. The picture is not looking particularly bright. He says there are a number of reasons for this, but the primary factor is tiredness. He says this war has been going on for 9 months, which is the duration of a pregnancy. He says they were close to victory at one point, but IRL leadership problems and widespread tiredness got to them in the end. He says that he is very sorry that they were unable to rectify the situation. He wants members to know that the coalition did an amazing amount of work, and that there are very few groups who could have done the same. Unfortunately, everything has its limits, and they have reached theirs. He poses the question “Is this our end?”, and replies to it by quoting Churchill “Blood, toil, tears and sweat”. He says “You ask what we are going to do? I’ll tell you, we will have a war, a total war, with all our might, victory or death.”
He tells members that their objective is to win at any cost and that if they do not win they will not survive. The most precious thing for them is at stake: their Drone Region identity. He has spoken with various key members in the alliance and coalition, and he now has hope. He wants them to march together and invites everyone who wishes to stay with them to move to Insmother. They will bet on consolidating their forces in one region like Goonswarm did.
The Takeaway
The tone of the meeting was combative from both Karer and UAx, although Karer is perhaps being more of a realist about the situation. It is clear that DRF is facing some tough times ahead. This is not the first time they have faced an existential crisis though, so it is likely that in some form, they will come out the other side. It will be interesting to see if DRF can replicate the success of the Imperium by withdrawing to a single region.
One lesson to take away from this is to take care with who you give responsibility to, as, according to UAx, a lone diplomat can cause your coalition to be drawn into a war it cannot win. There are other alliances in the area too, with Pandemic Horde recently having moved to Geminate. There is no love lost between Horde and Tri, and in their move announcement, it was stated that they may join in with DRF to fight TRI. With XIX now stating that they intend to go all-in against TRI, Horde may become a deciding factor in the war.
