180 Minutes

Let me tell you about a story of Devastation.

Last night, when I logged in I hunted down Vov to stalk as is my norm.

“I got into a wormhole corp," he told me.

“Oh really? Nice.” He had been working at it for a few weeks with one of his alts. He had standards. A C3 or higher. They had to have some stuff. Lax security measures were a must.

“Yeah They are in a C3. Looks like I can grab an Orca, 2 Legions, a hulk and a Tempest Fleet Issue. A few bill. Depending on how they are fit, maybe up to 10.”

“Tell me if you need help,” I told him.

It may not be the “I got into a corp” discussion some people have with their friends but it is par the normal for some of mine. See, I don’t have a moral problem with corp theft. I have a personal one in so far that I do not wish it to happen to me. I also want an Orca. What an Orca and not having Corp Theft happen to me both have in common is that I have set about a path to gain what I want to have.

Or, in regards to our corp, the boys have. I have access to some things and not others. Ender holds a tight hand over the Corporation hangers. Trust is slowly gained and easily lost. Plus, even if he was wrong and someone wiped out our hangers, they’d get a bunch of modules and our stash of T1 ships that the corp builds for the members. Nothing major. We don’t keep our bling or personal shinies in our corporation hangers. The module hanger is filled from looting people. It would be irritating but not devastating.

Things are done to ensure that our stuff stays our stuff. Corporations have many layers of trust. The Eve Corporation User Interface is terrible. It makes handing out trust harder when it needs to be easier. It is still doable even in a half broken terrible way. While work arounds are a common them in Eve the work around for corporate controls and access are terrible and tedious and often times stupid.

None of that means that they should be ignored. Ever.

“Where did you find them?”

“Recruitment channel. There is a Tempest Fleet Issue as well but its shit fit. It seems that they decided to create separate POSs for new people right after I joined. They are going into POS lockdown in twelve hours so I am freaking out like a noob that I won’t be able to access my ships. There is a Damnation as well. Plus I think they are all about the same time zone and will be heading out soon. Their low sec static is sitting open to a system with a station one jump outside of high sec.” He didn’t have access to all of the hangers. The ship hanger would have to do.

“Well they are going to be fit,” I pointed out.

“There is a Noctis here to.”

“Maybe they don’t clean it out?”

Time ticked down. Members started to log off one by one. To his irritation, when I logged off, he still had two members and the CEO logged in. I went and got my almost six hours of sleepies and returned to see that he was still on. Normally, he’s off by the time I get to work so I had a suspicion that the AWOX was going well.

“How goes it?”

“Cleaning them out. I killed and podded the CEO while he was AFK in a Noctis. I then loaded up the Orca and started to empty everything. But there was to much for just me so I got some help. Sard and Titus ran over and we are almost done.”

Almost done.

What had started as Grand Theft Orca mutated into “All the things.”

Vov returned from his afk to find the CEO afk in a Noctis and another cormate afk in a drake. He grabbed the Orca and shoveled it full of ships. He then bailed for the low sec exit. Sadly, it had closed. But, he had already moved a scanning alt into the hole earlier. He scanned down another exit into another low sec system.

The fully loaded Orca was dropped off there. Since everyone was still AFK he started clearing out ships. He grabbed two legions, a guardian, a hulk, three hurricanes, a harbinger, a drake, a cyclone, a pilgrim, a raven and a Apocalypse. Then he realized that he needed some help to fully clear out the rest of the wormhole.

Why not stop with what he could get? It's not his style. He was going to do his best to leave the wormhole as empty as the day CCP loaded them into the game. ISK with a side dish of tears. Faced with a lot of stuff that needed to be taken Vov did what any good low sec dweller with a good community did. He dropped into one of the public channels and asked, "Anyone that can fly a damnation or Abaddon?"

But of course. For the community of Molden Heath is tight with violent pirate love. Pirates first and such things. Titus and Sard rolled down to the low sec static and hopped in. Sard left a shuttle labeled, "Sard Caid was here". Then he and Titus got to work.

Vov ejected all of the ships from the maintenance array. He then pulled the fuel out of the tower so that it went offline. With the tower now offline he was able to blow up the corporate hanger. This allowed him to access the director only tabs of the hanger. That produced 3 unfit loki, multiple wolves, and a massive amount fo rigs/ammo/mods/random stuff. Vov, Titus and Sard each took a Loki. Sard and Titus then started scooping loot. Vov grabbed more ships. At this point, he decided to kill and pod the CEO in his afk Noctis.

After they packed up the wolves, Sard has to leave. His haul came to about 2 billion. He got a lot of faction and T2 mods, T3 subsystems and 9 exotic dancers. He got four Wolves, an Iskur, a Loki, an Abaddon with trimark rigs fitted and a Damnation with trimark rigs fitted.

Vov and Titus stayed and continued to pull things out of the wormhole. Tired of pulling ships he started to pop all of the low value T1 ships. Vov then hunted down the POS that was going to be the 'newbie to the corporation for safety sake' POS. It was set up as a reaction unit. Vov pulled the fuel to offline the tower and started to empty the silos.

The crucial mistake happened here. He had not learned anchor with his alt. If he had more time he would have waited and learned it. But the window was short and it had already been taken. Because of this, he was not able to offline everything and take the POS and modules as well. Wasted ISK for him. He resorted to the only tactic left to him in the situation. He destroyed them.

Titus was busy slurping up supplies. "These T1 drones will reprocess beautifully into minerals for capital ship components." He also got a Loki, Mastadon, Guardian, T2 rigs, T2 modules, lots of T1 stuff and some POS stuff as well.

Four hours later and about the time that I logged on, they were clearing out the last storage tower and popping the final three modules.

“Not sure how much I got,” I was told. “Five billion or so maybe all told. You have to ask the others what their haul is for the totals. Once this is done I’m going to bed. I’ll check for you later.” I had to head to work myself. I sent off some eve mails requesting information and went to grind out my 12 hours of real life.

This went from a simple theft to a pure clean out. The people involved all get to keep what they took as a thank you for participation.

This is a full fledged corporation gank. I don’t know if the members will be able to recover from it. The CEO is about six months old. The lesson of trust was already known and understood by the group. There was no reason to put in a 12 hour delay on the lockdown and restructure. It could have been done immediately. Nor was there any reason to begin recruiting strangers before safeguards were in place. This is Eve. This is the type of story that people read before they come into this game. For those looking for the darker side of gaming this is the type of thing that sends tingles down their spine. I won’t call it evil. I will call it dark.

I came back home and asked about the after effects. There was one that had raged and threatened and spewed all the hate. The CEO logged on with a "WTF" happened. Members kept logging in and asking where things were.

As to their response to Vov who they removed roles from and prepared to kick, they pulled the 'Didn't want that fully equipped POS and all of our stuff and ships and planning and ISK' anyway card. They were not angry and didn't even care.

Not Angry Wormhole Corp Member, "its okay man at the end of the day he has to get trusting people to accept him ingame cause out of game he has no money or friends :( im sorry .. maybe the internet will give you a hug when your down."

(I made sure to give him a hug at that time. I qualified as the internet I felt.)

Vov, "No actually I need trusting people to accept me in game because I'm lazy and it's easier to rob them than actually pve"

Not Angry Wormhole Corp Member "man you lucky im not a fan boy of this game and uber trained and shit cause i would be all over you day in and day out if i cared lol. and i see some random derp kid who 'robs' people in game with that face trolling some 15 year old to steal a group of friends stuff. which is you"

Vov, "For someone who doesn't care you seem to care quite a bit about what's happened"

Not Angry Wormhole Corp Member, "no i care that you are still appearing on my screen when I clearly just dont give two shits about what you have to say lol"

Not Angry Wormhole Corp Member did not quite seem to realize that he was there harvesting their tears for future spaceship fuel. They had removed his rolls but the 24 hour cool down was in progress before they could kick him.

They learned a lesson. However, they were not taught one. This was not done with the intent to teach a bunch of overly trusting C3 wormhole dwellers to have better security and recruitment practices. This was done to take someone’s stuff in a manner that the taker greatly enjoyed. The lesson is a side effect not a goal. And Vov's final comment?

"It's really not a bad haul for only being afk for a few hours"

Titus was kind enough to do a full write up for his side of the event. I'm quoting his summary with his permission so that it is not filtered through me.

My total haul is probably about 2b in real terms, especially after I reprocess the T1 shit. Sard estimated about 3b for his.

I alt+tabbed to RANSM public channel to see a Team Liquid player trying to find someone that could fly an Abaddon, Damnation and Mastodan. I naturally interject that I can fly Abaddons and Mastodans, much to Sard Caids greedy displeasure. Mwahahaha.

Sard beat me to the wormhole in Ofage and got the Abadon and Damnation. I took the Mastodan, and two Covetors. We then started looting containers dropped from structures to find 3 Lokis a guardian and a bunch of wolves packaged in a container along with several bill in BPCs, faction mods, t2 rigs, and t1 shit. Sard landed before I did again, jump in one of two now stolen Mammoths and cherry picked the prime faction mods and snatched the guardian and T3s. Fuck u Sard.

In total we probably made about 25+ mammoth trips in and out of the wormhole to empty everything worth taking..and a lot that probably wasn't.

Sard contracted a loki to each of us involved and gave me the Guardian since he doesn't really fly logistics anymore.

First Covetor evaded the Abbadon by the grace of god, second was not so lucky.

http://seventwo.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15208034

We were going to bump the CEO + noob who were AFK in Drake and Noctis out of the pos and kill them and pod them. I switched to multiple "combat" ships that were emptied from the ship maint array, and switched from cruiser to cruiser to destroyer to frigate trying to find one with weapons or combat drones to kill the AFK WHlers. NOT ONE WEAPON OR COMBAT DRONE. These guys really deserved to die; but I ejected and 10 seconds later the Corp Infiltrator/Sonabitch killed this empty thrasher and Eve decided to give me the loss mail.

The 4 istabbed Mammoth made all 25 jumps in and out of the wormhole into hisec (Inglorious Squirrels Abbadon forced me to take the shit to hisec) without the High Security Commanders getting a shot off until I undocked to move the Mammoth to a different station. AT that point the security forces decided to quit eating donuts and shoot my empty Mammoth. RIP stolen Mammoth.

Warning to other corps; check APIs, compartmentalize your assets, and restrict roles. Because you gave a new member full rights to everything in the first 12 hours wormhole children are now going to starve so that I can fund the 104th burning annual burn Providence to the ground campaign.

-Titus