Early Saturday, September 21, Anomalous Existence [N0MEX] lost its Keepstar in J150869, a C2 wormhole they’ve called home since early 2013. The loss cost the corp and its alliance Spatial Instability [SPIN] an estimated 500b ISK, which included subcaps, caps and miscellaneous items dropped when the Keepstar was destroyed.
The attackers were able to overwhelm the defenders with a combination of timezone and hole control. “I was at work (Wednesday) when the ‘INVASION’ ping came through,” said Nash McAllister, CEO of Spatial Instability. “My gut sank. I knew exactly what that meant, but what we never expected was Inner Hell and their hole control machine,” he said laughing, “Because that ended the real fight before it ever really started. Next thing we knew, fifty-plus hostiles streamed through the high sec static in a timezone when we had little to no coverage.”
IH’s hole control meant SPIN couldn’t gather its own forces, nor could its allies enter. It wasn’t until responsibility for hole control shifted that SPIN’s allies could get some forces through. “Funny thing is,” McAllister said, “as soon as they turned over (hole control) to HK and Lazerhawks we started getting people in, but it was too little too late.” McAllister added that IH’s hole control tactic appeared to use two Macherials and a Higgs Panther. “They rolled the hole so fast it was amazing. Excellent scanning, two passes EVERY time. It was probably one guy multi-boxing for two days straight, kicking our asses with his precision.”
Keepstars in low-class wormholes aren’t that out of the ordinary, but N0MEX’s was anchored after the Inner Hell and Hard Knocks Keepstars were destroyed in July 2017 and December 2018 respectively, adding a layer of risk to an already risky venture. “Back in January 2018, a few of us in N0MEX decided that we wanted to build a Keepstar from scratch,” said Seraph Essael, a N0MEX fleet commander and member of a small group of corp members who built the citadel from scratch. “There were only about seven of us that were actually involved in the planning and building of all the bits and bobs. And keeping it quiet from the rest of the people in the corp to avoid a leak was actually done rather well.”
Despite the risk, N0MEX continued building its future home “because we could,” explained Essael. “We’re not about to allow others to dictate how we play our game. It was a gargantuan task and we wanted to see if we could do it. And here’s the thing, we had the balls to do it. So we did.” He added that after the Inner Hell Keepstar loss and the eviction of Hard Knocks, “a lot of groups who may have thought about getting (a Keepstar) decided against it, and other groups decided to take theirs down.”
“No regrets,” Mcallister said of the loss. “We dropped a Keepstar in C2 space, built almost all of it ourselves via wormhole materials, and we dropped it even after the HK Rage eviction.”
The Keepstar kill isn’t the end of N0MEX. “Our morale isn’t broken and it won’t be any time soon,” explained Essael. “We don’t just play Eve. We play a multitude of other games with each other. APEX. PUBG. Sea of Thieves. Forza on Xbox. We bullshit on comms about real life issues, politics and our better halves. And we meet up in real life to have food and drink.”
N0MEX is the executor of Spatial Instability. “It was formed by the merger of The Kairos Syndicate, and Clan Fiann, of Transmission Lost and Narwhals, two of the original heavy hitters in wormhole space back even prior to 2010 when I joined,” said McAllister. “We’ve always lived in C2 space, and been very successful there, even when it’s been touted as ‘beginner’ space. It’s the statics that make the experience in my opinion, not the class you actually live in.”
