The Trap
Several months ago, Verge of Collapse placed a spy, Bandwidthh, with an Aeon into Pandemic Legion. Pandemic Legion often ‘fishes’ for capital kills using small groups of 10-15 supercarriers, and the spy began leading successful fishing operations to build up a reputation of competence.
On Sunday night, that spy led a group of appoximately 15 Pandemic Legion supercarriers, including one of the three extant Revenants in the game, into an ambush. The spy/FC took the PL fleet to a midpoint, then jumped them into the middle of a Black Legion POS in Odamia system in Placid where a fleet of Black Legion dreadnaughts and supercarriers were set up, waiting.
The Execution
Bandwidthh claimed that he did not have enough cap to jump into Odamia from the midpoint, but sent the rest of the fleet into the trap. The Revenant was primaried first, and judging from the lossmail it was cap-fit when it jumped into Odamia, rendering it particularly vulnerable. Three of the PL supercarriers bounced upon being cyno’d into the ambush, and were able to extract. For some reason, the lowsec alliances’ heavy interdictors did not begin on the field of the ambush and had to be bridged in via a Titan, as can be seen in this video; had they begun on the field, it is possible that the entire PL group would have been tackled.
Pandemic Legion chose not to escalate or send in reinforcements; after the Revenant was destroyed, nine additional supercarriers were destroyed.
The Media
There has been a number of videos posted of this ambush, as well as soundclouds of Pandemic Legion comms during and after the event.
Download mumble-07-07-18-15-42-mumble-1 (0 bytes)
The Aftermath
Bandwidthh left the following message for Pandemic Legion, explaining himself:
PL Leadership,
Not really going to go in depth on today, for what is the point, but a few necessities to get off the burden.
1) I didn’t steal anything from assets or any of that shit so all this is safe. Didn’t invade your forums or jabber security (I know nothing of the tech sorts)
2) It was a creation between myself and an old 3-Gun member. The old boys of the nomads didn’t know anything about it (Gwhyte/Meat/Fear). I hope you guys don’t purge or attack them for any reason, they are good guys and knew nothing about it. Fear even gave me 5 bill to purchase my first Aeon, which I am still going to pay him back and very grateful for. They are some real cool bro’s and it would be an ultimate travesty to scew their fun over.
3) I will also be paying back the 5 bill some nice chap had given me for my aeon fit in PL. Since I was such a poor peasant prior, and PL apparently “ran out of super support money,” he was nice enough to help me out for free. Must find his name in wallet.
4) There is no reason for me to explain things of why/when/how. It was very much a spur of the moment thing. I never joined as a spy, this or that. Just ended up evolving into today towards the end.
5) I may also be returning some of the loot from the super kills to their original owners. Some of them were ship of the line bro’s.
6) I didn’t leak the sound cloud to the eve press. My laptop barely is able to run multiple Eve clients let alone fraps and record soundclouds are the like. So you had someoen else on comms with malicious intent.
From,
Band
Surinea, a source close to Bandwidthh, interviewed him for additional information about his motives. We recap here:
Bandwidthh didn’t originally join PL as a spy, never wanted it to start with. He was CEO right after Starconquer was, back when we were still with Lost Obsession, and when the corp voted to decide where we were going (that being C0nvicted) he left the CEO position and left the corp, because he wasn’t a fan of how the CFC does things.
From all the contact I had with him over his time in PL, he was having fun, but it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that he even got this idea in his head at all. He had been talking to Starconquer, who knew that Bandwidthh was getting bored, and also that he was irritated that PL reneged on their promise to subsidize his supercarrier, and started suggesting that he “go out with a bang”.
A couple weeks ago, they had an opportunity to get some of PL’s supercarriers, but Bandwidthh didn’t have a good feeling about the situation, and decided not to push it. At this point Elo was really pushing for them to get kills (as BL had been in on the planning as well) and was trying to bully Bandwidthh into lighting the cyno. Bandwidthh logged, and spent the next bit of time logging in and just thinking, and then the opportunity presented itself again yesterday.
He was able to sell the idea to some of the super pilots that there were a couple of carriers repping a tower, but that it appeared to be offline, so they would easily be able to drop in and pop them. They had a midpoint set up (which also was in on the awoxing) and the destination, and Bandwidthh waited in his super along with others in HABIT. They made the jump, but as Bandwidthh stated “I was so nervous about getting the final cyno, and getting this done, that I forgot to check that I hadn’t refit for cap, and when I lit the cyno, I was still at 40%”
Bandwidthh said he didn’t even realize it until the end that there was a Revenant that had even been in the fight, as he had been in the HABIT tower, and not with the pilot of the Revenant.
One of the first things that Bandwidthh said [during the interview], that was reiterated at this point was that “I joined this game on the story of the BoB collapse, and I always wanted to be known for something.”
Here’s the full version of the PL comms soundcloud, 23 minutes of reaction.
Download xxxgrath-ragexxx-full-version (0 bytes)
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by The Mittani.
