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Monday, March 30, 2009

A toast to the disolution of BoB

This month’s topic comes to us from Quintrala of Speed Fairy . She suggests to ”write a short fiction story about the dissolution of the BoB alliance. It could be from BoB’s point of view, the Goons’, by neutrals in 0.0, civilians in Empire, NPCs or even rats. Write about before, during or after the coup; give us stories of market, war, people or love. In-character or roleplay. We want to know what happened, from those fictional characters that, in your mind, were part of it.

(OOC: Well I'm not much of a role player but I'll give a more in character view of what was going on when I first heard the news)

The Electrolux II had just docked up in the K25 station, and I was busy dealing with the usual minutia of the capsuler's life. Sorting through the meager remnants of the Gurristas pirates my Battleship had dispatched. I will never understand what goes thru the minds of the crews and captains of those ships. The level of violence that a Capsuler vessel can put out is an order of magnitude greater than the piddling offense that can be generated by a normal vessel. I've lost count of the number of pirate vessels my various ships have blown to scrap. And it's not like the they can't know that there's a Capsuler alliance claiming this space...

I mentaly shrug and continue working with my cargo crew to sort the various pieces we've picked up. Most of it is destined for the recycling plant in station, but some of it might be worth saving to put up on the market or keep for my future needs. I let the crew know that we'll probably be docked for the rest of the evening and that non-critical shore parties were released for liberty in the crew section of the station with instructions not to get into too much trouble. Although the risks to a capsuleer vessel are lower than for the those poor damned souls flying for the Gurristas, there are still various other alliances who would like nothing better than to disrupt our control of this constellation. The same is not true of other capsuleer vessels. So the smart capsuleer allows his crews the chance to blow off steam from time to time.

While this is going I have my neocom continue scanning communications of interest. Even with my current allegience of convinience withing the Mobile Alchool Processing Units corporation, I keep my electronic ears peeled for interesting chatter in many areas of space. Even though I was at one time the leader of an empire based alliance myself, I was still more pugged into the more unconventional news sources than the usual capsuleer. Contacts in distant space kept me up to date on various comings and goings of the larger alliances of New Eden. Living out here in space that is un-claimed by any of the larger empires, you learn to keep your fingers on the electronic pulse of the neocom.

Suddenly I did a doubletake. A small news item communicated by an acquantance over in some undisclosed area of space flickered over the necom. My surprise was such that I initialy disguarded the information as the usual crazed rumor going over the communications grid. The communiction was short:

> BoB has disbanded.

With a level of incomprehension I contemplated this rediculous statement. A capsuleer alliance with the strenght and sophistication of Band of Brothers would not just up and disolve. Corporations, leave and join yes. Disolve no. I could not conceive of an entity with the strenght to rival the established factional empires. I remember seeing the coronation ceromony for the Amarr empress and counting the number of Titans on display and thinking:

*The known count of Band of Brothers Titans stands at 20 or so. And although there are more Titans on display during the ceremony there are not that many more. And I'd have to give the edge in combat experience to the null sec residents.*

It's a good thing for all empire residents that the empire cyno jammers are so well defended. With that cold analysis I could not conceive of a reason for the alliance to disband. Not after surviving against the combined might of most of the null sec alliances but a few months ago. So Initially dismissed the concept as rediculous. Especially something so easily disproved.

With that thought I sent a query thru my neocom to the Yulai databases of current corporations and alliances and pulled up the public information on the Reikoku Corporation. Initial unease set in as I noted that there was no current allegiance indicated. This means that the corporation was currently un-affeliated with a capsuleer alliance. I quickly flicked to the section dealing with corporation alliance histories and my mind froze up in shock. The last entry read:

> Band of Brothers [Closed]

My mind reeled. This news was too stupendous to take in. I immediately got in touch with my CEO and passed on the information including a direct link to the data proving that for once the rumor under stated the degree of impact of this event. The implications for null sec politics was enormous. The subsequent economic impact uncalculable. I could hear the stunned shock of my CEO as he contemplated the changes that were sure to come.

All I knew for certain was that this left the Delve region of space effectively defenseless. The comming weeks would be crutial to see what would happen to that area of space now that it was un-controled. Sure enough calling up the strategic map I could see the tracings of what was going on as hour by hour the cyno count in certain systems climbed and the number of gate traversals in certain areas went up in barely visible paterns.

This was too much to take in. By now my crew had heard the rumors as well. I called down to my officers and told them that 24h leave was authorized for the entire crew as we would not be moving the ship until I had gauged the impact of this news. I had my pod transfered to my captains quarters and proceeded to head to an upscale bar frequented by fellow capsuleers I felt in need of some light stimulents and fellow pilots to talk over the implications of this change of fate and to analyze if these events would have any effect on my future plans.

An hour later I was at the bar lifting a shot of Aged Patorian whiskey (Mechanics swear by it as a paint remover) and toasting to the new galactic order, whatever it may be. There is profit to be made in change.