As the war between the Imperium and PAPI, and their attendant media voices, cast a shadow over southern New Eden, smaller groups have taken advantage of the sunlight elsewhere and prospered.
Null blocs are used to their actions being memed and spun, and line members are asked to believe that one thing happened when, in fact, another thing happened. Large blocs present themselves to the public through live streams, talk shows and propaganda arms, but the day-to-day machinations of smaller alliances go largely unnoticed.
The demise of Intergalactic Space Hobos, a thorn in the side of The Initiative, detailed in an article earlier this year, set off a cascade of new corps and new alliances. One such was the alliance Sedition, and its rise was not without struggle, even though the alliance came out of the fracas that was Hobos demise.
Hobos’ fall contained lessons for aspiring alliance leaders, and Sedition’s leadership team took what they learned from it and carved out their own moon empire through Syndicate, Solitude, and Cloud Ring, finally settling in Fade. To get a clearer picture of what occurred, we spoke to two current members of Sedition’s leadership, one of whom wished to remain anonymous.
Cato: What would you say the reason was behind forming Sedition?
Jetsurf: While I didn’t really found Sedition, the goal was to break away from having a mass amount of blues and do our own thing. It’s varied a bit the time we’ve been around, but I’d still say that holds true. Starting out in Sing Liason low sec, to then Syndicate/Solitude, and now Fade. Wherever we do go, though, people seem to get their eyes on us and give us fights.
Anonymous: After the dumpster fire that Space Hobos ended up being, we wanted to hit the reset button and start fresh. Syndicate and Solitude seemed like solid places, but we quickly attracted attention there as well.
Cato: How was your experience in Syndicate/Solitude? Was anything particularly challenging?
Jetsurf: Biggest challenge was the amount of space we tried holding. Holding two regions and a system in Cloud Ring at our size spreads you pretty thin. Deepwater Hooligans and Pirate Lords of War absolutely put pressure on us, but in the end gave great fights. Some are up there in my personal favorite EVE moments. E-Uni was also fun to fight as well as Vega. There is a reason people say they enjoyed their time in Syndicate and I think we can say we did too.
Anonymous: Probably having to deal with the blob that was Deepwater Hooligans, Pirate Lords of War, and Vega, at least as far as military issues go. We strategically chose to use cheaper doctrines that allowed us to focus on maintaining our strategic objective. When not completely blobbed we ended up beating those groups more often than not. The harder part was the internal drama of recruiting new corps that whined too much or old directors who were up to their old behaviors.
Cato: How do you transcend those – internal drama – sorts of issues?
Jetsurf: A big part of that was leadership shake ups. The biggest blow I’ll mention was having the founder go on a hiatus, and when you go from one/two people running the show to more people with specific things to do, it’s bound to annoy some people. As of the move to Fade, things are on track and the way we’re running the everything now is working well. It’s always nice to have that person come back and see the alliance they founded still running
Anonymous: One issue was a newbie corp we had brought on called Deplorables. They had come fresh from Caldari Militia, most pilots probably under 10 million SP, yet they were trying to dictate how we do things in our alliance. They wanted sov space to make money and we provided XZH for them. It’s the best ratting system in Cloud Ring, but that wasn’t enough. So we even uprooted our entire alliance to go to Fade. Before we even moved in properly they jumped ship, which left a sour taste in our mouths. Besides that we had an older corp called Embark. Their CEO did a similar thing. He dragged his feet for us to move to sov saying his corp hated the idea of sov, and then next thing we knew he joined Triumvirate in sov space. Before that he was trying to hold onto personal moons in Syndicate and doing shady stuff like mess with some third party applications. Guess being called out on that kind of crap miffed him. And nothing of value was lost.
Cato: What brought you guys into Fade? What are the main challenges in establishing yourself in sov?
Jetsurf: The biggest reason to go to Fade was the opportunity that was presented to pick up, consolidate, and get a change of pace. A good amount of us saw the writing on the wall holding all the space we did in Solitude/Syndicate would burn us out if we stayed. Depending on who you ask before the move, it may have been a fantastic idea or the worst one we could have done. Time will tell on that front. The biggest challenge was getting everyone and everything into where we are now and coordinating it all.
Anonymous: Well aside from the noob corp’s constant whining about wanting sov, Volta reached out to us saying they needed our help in the north. They ran train on UFC pretty quickly but they realized they needed more muscle in their US TZ and asked to partner with us. Some of us were reluctant but eventually we obliged. The biggest challenge was probably just moving and getting our stuff safe out XZH. Pen Is Out reinforced everything but eased off when we offered to sell them the structures there instead. In the meantime Triumvirate evicted them from Cloud Ring so whatever. They’re upset we didn’t give them the structures but they can go cry in Tama about it.
Cato: Where do you hope to see yourself in six months, and what kind of corporations are you looking to recruit to help you get there?
Jetsurf: We’ve got plans for the space around us. So in six months I see us still being where we are now but going to a more offensive role than in our past. We still have our eyes on some indy dudes, but corps around the size of 20-50 who know the game and aren’t dead serious with everything that happens have been the best fit so far.
Anonymous: We’d welcome any high talent corporations that don’t bring in any more drama. We’re managing 30 and 40 man fleets these days and providing the main thrust of evicting Ferrymen of Hades alliance in Cloud Ring. The region is definitely looking to be ripe for content as we continue to grow with our Volta partners.
“Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.” – Unknown Author
Of course, there’s always two sides to a story. Sedition’s leadership told an intriguing story, but their comments prompted more questions. We spoke to the CEOs of Embark and Deplorables to get their side.
Cato: What was meant [by Sedition] by you ‘messing with third party software’?
Embark CEO Phil: One of our enemies/frenemies is Vega. We have spies. Vega pinged a capital survey to their alliance. So I pinged it to Sedition and we trolled the survey. Either Deplorables or Unqualified threw a hissy fit over it. That I would dare troll the Vega cap survey. Meanwhile, I know the alliance leader of Vega and he even joked about it.
Cato: And the moon?
Embark CEO Phil: The moon in question was one that an older member had owned for a long time and I ended up buying off of him. No profit on it was made, as the alliance ended up moving to sov.
Cato: What was the move to sov null like?
Embark CEO Phil: The main leadership in Sedition are my best bros. We all built Sedition.
Cato: I understand that you and Sedition are working together to hit an alliance in Cloud Ring named The Ferrymen of Hades. What brought that on?
Embark CEO Phil: I started that lol. STYX moved in next door, didn’t give a shit about them. Then Deplorables left Sedition, and joined STYX. I saw them on a POCO killmail. So I killed the POCO and started cloaky camping them. Told them they were harboring fugitives, literal deplorables. Then they started cloaky camping us back. Last night we reffed their sov, and today Sedition reffed their fort or something. I took three POCOs they tried taking so far for themselves and put them to 100% tax.
Cato: What happened with Sedition?
Deplorables CEO justsharkbait: We were attracted to Sedition because they were getting fights and good numbers in PvP, and we appreciated their help in Faction Warfare a couple times so we thought we could benefit each other. The leaders of Sedition at the time were youngpuke2 and Rhoenin. Once we joined, the PvP was great, but we discovered they were spread out in three regions-Solitude, Syndicate, and Cloud Ring. We were told by multiple people in leadership they didn’t want more SOV and didn’t care about Cloud Ring, but it seemed each main corp ran their own areas and didn’t really help the others too much.
Cato: And the moons?
Deplorables CEO justsharkbait: We also found out they had WAY less R64’s than the 16 [they claimed to have had], by about half. It was at that point we asked where the SRP came from if they did not have as many moons as they claimed. We were told they were completely broke and had to take loans from another alliance. There was virtually no SRP. We [had been] told 100% SRP, it ended up being only like 30% and 40% for logi. This was after several CEO’s got upset, including us, at the talks of having 0% SRP.
Cato: How was it left?
Deplorables CEO justsharkbait: If I would have known there was hard feelings … I would not have joined Hades and drug them into this…whatever this is.
Triumvirate and Sedition fleets recently attacked a Ferrymen of Hades Fortizar in Cloud Ring and lost some 40 billion ISK to the defender’s 17 billion. Allies of the Ferrymen of Hades include Deepwater Hooligans, United Federation of Conifers and Rote Kappelle. Ironically Deplorables had already departed Ferrymen of Hades, not wishing to harm the alliance due to previous disputes, and have merged into lowsec power house Pen Is Out.
