On March 6, 2019, Hole Control lost a “Horizon” faction Fortizar in the system of J115031, along with other structures, during a large battle over this main staging citadel.
The Russian wormhole group known as Inner Hell attacked Hole Control’s C4 system starting on March 3, and Inner Hell was met with little resistance until a battle on March 6. Inner Hell went through the shield and armor timers easily, then on the 6th, they finished off the system’s structures, including the two Fortizars, one of which was an extremely rare “Horizon” faction Fortizar.
According to sources on reddit, the station was owned by a Russian-speaking corp in Hole Control, known as “Beyond The Last Horizon”. The leadership of BLTH and Inner Hell have clashed many times, and apparently some real-life threats were made, along with rude comments by the system’s defenders to Inner Hell leadership, with these conflicts seeding a personal rivalry. The last straw was broken when a small peaceful research corporation known as “Duckling Union” was evicted by BTLH, and Inner Hell proceeded to plan BLTH’s eviction. BTLH started to unanchor expensive structures, such as the Horizon Fortizar, and due to a pre-existing spy network, Inner Hell was seeded the same nightbefore they reinforced the BLTH structures, and killed the structures shortly after.
According to multiple witnesses, Hole Control gave up on, well, hole control; they put up a small defense of the structures, but the attackers only lost less around twelve billion ISK. The “Horizon” Fortizar died, and every ship that was inside was ejected, along with any personal belongings of Hole Control’s members. The attackers, along with anyone looking for content, then shot the ships inside and proceeded to loot the field. The official amount of ISK lost by Hole Control is unknown at this point, but it can be expected to be in the hundreds of billions, as personal assets are not accounted for on battle reports. At the time of writing, the number of ships lost has surpassed 1000, and is expected to climb a little beyond that. The official isk total as it stands is around 60 billion isk.
The system’s killboard: https://zkillboard.com/location/40445237/
Battle Report: https://zkillboard.com/related/31001824/201903062200/
Faction Fortizar: https://zkillboard.com/kill/75550962/
The curious aspect to this fight is that ever since the Rage invasion by INIT, there has been an increase in overall wormhole activity. At the same time, there is more activity in wormholes by nullsec and lowsec groups than in the previous months. The amount of holes owned by HK, LZHKS, and NVCA have stayed roughly the same, though, so there has not been a visible shift in power between the larger and smaller groups. We will continue to track occasional evictions like this in low class space, and keep bringing you reports of interesting low-class wormhole conflicts.
