For most pilots drawn into battle at Northern Coalition’s staging Keepstar in X47L-Q, the fight dragged on in soul-crushing time dilation for hours, waiting for targets to lock and modules to activate.
Those lucky few able to fire their guns might not have seen the fruits of their efforts aside from a reinforced citadel and a few extra killmarks. Likely none saw the kind of harrowing action and commendable bravery shown by Imperium Director and FC Jay Amazingness, whose conspicuous gallantry saved titans and triggered a meme of the week-style destruction of an NC Avatar.
While at the controls of Sir Edmund, a revered supercapital pilot of the Goonswarm Federation, Jay jumped into X47 with the first wave of attacking titans and was immediately disconnected from the game. Unfortunately for his Erebus, Sir Edmund had bumped far away from his fleet and found himself outside the protective warp disruption bubbles that prevent disconnected capitals from warping away to an emergency safe spot.
In this case, however, the spot wasn’t safe, as roving gangs of enemy pilots were counting on this game mechanic. They found Sir Edmund, tackled the expensive titan and began lobbing everything they had at its hull.
“Luckily I had logged back in at this point and wasn’t going down without fighting,”Jay said on August 3, as Imperium forces planned their final attack on the Keepstar’s hull timer early on August 8.
Pandemic Legion, an ally of Northern Coalition(dot), dropped dreadnoughts on the hapless titan, triggering flashbacks of another dreadbomb Jay experienced less than two years ago. Back then, Sir Edmund was inside a Revenant, the faction supercarrier that is as rare as its own death. Only 12 have ever been destroyed.
Unlike the Revenant’s shields, however, the titan’s massive armor tank held long enough for support to arrive. A friendly 60-man Jackdaw fleet cleared away interdictors, and Jay refit his Erebus from a focused doomsday weapon to a Bosonic Field Generator (BFG).
The BFG, or Boson as it’s more commonly known, fires a cone of hellfire that rips apart most ships in its path. Luckily for Jay, his first shot killed about half a dozen dreadnoughts in what he could only describe as a server error.
“(It) surprised me since one Boson isn’t enough to kill them normally, but after looking at their killmails it looks like none of their modules loaded so the server thought it was an empty hull,” he said.
As the Boson fired, even more dreads from Northern Coalition jumped onto his position.
In a video Jay recorded, he switches to another character that’s waiting in another system along with other response fleet dreads. He asked for 15 volunteers, including force auxiliary (FAX) logistics capitals, to jump into what could have been their own slaughter. These volunteers included members of Legacy Coalition, who were led by Progodlegend, one of Legacy Co.’s most well-known and storied fleet commanders. Unfortunately, Progodlegend was unavailable for comment regarding his part in this incredible story.
“By the time the friendly dreads and FAXes loaded I was down to 60 percent armor, but my Boson was ready again so I fired it off on the NC dreadgang, putting them into mid to low armor and shield. Our dreads then went to town on them and reps were holding me around 55 percent,” Jay said.
The server issues weren’t finished, however. He disconnected, and again warped to a “safe” spot. It was two hours before he could log in again, and found that his Erebus armor had dropped to 44 percent. He immediately jumped out to another system, fully repaired his ship and jumped back into X47 in time to see the Keepstar’s own armor tick down to 0.
That may have been enough action for most people, but Jay also used his personal FAX with amazing results. At one point, Northern Coalition titan pilot Sn8kez found himself drifting near the edge of the Keepstar’s protective tether. The only way for it to become vulnerable was for it to lock a target or be pushed from safety. Upon realizing this, Jay stepped into a Lif, the Minmitar FAX, and fit it purely for one mission.
“Once I had the target, I cynoed in ~70 km from him and overheat-MWDed towards him,” Jay said. “He took three bumps in total to get him out of tether.”
That interplay between two massive ships happened during a relatively functional period for Eve Online’s servers.
“I highly doubt I could have pulled it off an hour before,” Jay said.
ProGodLegend of the Legacy Coalition helped bump the titan out of tether range by coordinating a fleet of Munnins, calling when to approach and when to break off in time for Jay’s Lif to come screaming past.
That FAX was destroyed in the ensuing blast wave from the exploding titan and the odd misfired Imperium Doomsday, but he had another ready to go during The Imperium’s extraction. An Erebus belonging to Kelama of the Bastion Alliance had disconnected in the midpoint system of O-N8XZ. It was tackled by a Black Legion Munnin gang that was quickly followed by a squad of enemy dreadnoughts. Jay and five other force auxiliaries were the heroes, jumping in to save the titan while an Imperium subcap and dread fleet forced off the attackers.
The adventures of Jay Amazingness on Aug. 1-2 are something any pilot can look up to. Without regard for his own life and with a calm, steady hand, he showed what good can come from throwing oneself into a fight head first and eyes forward.
Bravo.
