Disclaimer 1: It’s a fucking long one; if you don’t care you should find your friendly neighborhood autist to tldr it for you.

Disclaimer 2: My native language is Dutch, so write off any typos to that, fat fingers (I’m not fat I promise) or me being very angry.

Opgaan, Blinken en Verzinken: From a former TRI CO-CEO.

Opgaan, Blinken en Verzinken. The Dutch saying which translates to something like “Rise, shine and fall”.* I guess it applies to both me, QUAM and TRI. Time will tell.

To the many beautiful QUAM members and the best alliance mates in the game

When I found QUAM many years ago, it was a dead corp with some NC mission alts in it, and Mikeh86. The guy with a Titan and many supers, he had seen it all. I decided to join and put in a lot of my time, nearly instantly becoming leadership. By the time we reached TRI I was a director, and Mike started to go AFK more and more, due to real life issues, as things go. About 6 months ago I was worried Mike would not come back, so I poked him on whatsapp numerous times. Asking him to log on and hand me CEO. He ignored me, didn’t notice or whatever.

After two weeks of trying, I decided to create new shares and start the process of removing him that way. When the vote ended, I forgot to check for it for a couple days, then logged in and found the newly created shares in Mikeh’s wallet. I assumed it was bugged game mechanics or my lack of understanding them properly. Since Mike never poked me and didn’t bring it up after I asked for CEO again. During the 2-3 times he briefly logged on between those 6 months ago and now, he never brought this up.

I have recently found a very rewarding but time consuming job, am buying a house and am looking at starting my own business. So I had less time to log on to Eve, which ment I couldn’t carry QUAM solo. I gave Afrohorse director roles (the ones I could give, not real director but just all possible roles, because only a CEO can do that) and logged back off. Dropping him the line of, don’t steal my stuff, stuff in xyz corphanger is owned by me personally.

A week after that I told him that I was considering quitting Eve, since real life left me with little time to play. He told me to take it slow and don’t do anything I was going to regret. I also told frsd, who is my buddy in Eve and part of the two-man fc-dream-team CPA/FRSD. Within 2 hours they convinced me to not quit and stay. Though I didn’t tell them for a couple days that this had worked, since I wanted time to think. And I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that I am as addicted as a 35 year old crack junkie.

Yet another couple of days later, I came back after a long work-week and moved all my stuff to our new staging, the Keepstar in A24 as we were getting “invaded” by XIX again. While checking to see if any corp stuff needed moving, I noticed that my roles were removed on all QUAM characters. I didn’t think much of it, Afro probably randomly met Mike online and told him I was leaving and Mike hadn’t logged back in to give them back after Afro learned this wasn’t the case.

I then learned that Kodiz was now a full director, this was someone who I brought up to Afro during my initial convo when I said I was leaving. A potential candidate for helping out to run the corp, since he had been stepping up in running TRI’s rental program as well. So no surprise he had roles. I asked him to give me fake director roles (which was all he could give, cause yet again CEO position required) and he did. I moved all my own shit and some corp assets back to the Keepstar.

Meanwhile I poked Mike on Whatsapp, asking him to give my roles back and instructed Kodiz to do the same. Which to my knowledge he did. He didn’t respond.

It was a chill Friday or Saturdaynight, I can’t remember. I wasn’t going out and decided to drink rum while talking shit about XIX with about 20 other dudes from different corps in TRI. Suddenly Kodiz joins the channel and asks me something like “where has all the corp ISK gone huh, how about you give that back?” At the time I thought he was joking, since I had no reason to believe he was actually doubting the person that ran the corp and part of the alliance for 3 years. As we were all laughing at random internet videos at that time, the mood was set. And I trolled him, said I would trade for my roles back, which Mike still hadn’t given back and was actively ignoring me. Later I learned this put Kodiz into overdrive, confirming his beliefs that I was robbing the corp, my corp, blind for the last 3 years.

Obviously I can understand his point of view at that time. He got put “in charge” of a nullsec corp that has been one of the biggest contributors of one of the more wealthy nullsec alliances for 3 years. And there was 15 bil in the wallet, with no explanation but “I will trade it for roles”. At the time QUAM still owned the TRI Keepstar, which I figured afterwards, could potentially be seen as an extra motivator for me to get my roles back.

Now I get to the reasons behind the ISK not being in the master wallet, since it sure starts to look like a very poorly executed Judge 2.0. When Mike started going more and more AFK, about 2 years ago, we had an API tracking tool called SeAT or something like that. We used it to track member APIs and it had my personal alt corp’s API in it, the one I use to keep my ISK separate because I’m anal like that (CCP WTB PERSONAL WALLET DIVISIONS ALREADY!). I started moving corp income to one of those wallets, marked QUAM savings to ensure when Mike got back, or someone else got give roles, they couldn’t take the money. Since QUAM is a 2003 corp, you can imagine what the shares look like. It’s a mess, spread over at least 20 toons, some of which were still in corp and some of which weren’t. The fear of me not understanding the mechanic properly, contributed to me moving ISK to separate wallets only accessible to me. Over time this amount grow quite a bit, with a decent amount being invested in corp FAX, dreads, free topes for all members, almost 100b in super subsidies, the Keepstar and probably some things I am forgetting.

That is enough history for now, let’s get back to the here and now. Afro didn’t know what to think, but kept saying there is an explanation. Kodiz went full Trump on the situation and started talking to himself, Mike and Afro, which turned spiraled into some wild theory of me being a master thief. While this was going on I had no idea they were talking about this, I was still busy poking Mike for roles. At which point he finally brought up the “where did all the corp ISK go?!” And then it hit me, Kodiz was serious that evening and they have gone insane. I was furious, so I poked Afro, who I had left in charge originally to ask him what the fuck was going on. He brought me up to speed, said he was trying to defend me where he could, but was starting to doubt himself and had enough. I poked the three of em for a leadership meeting on comms that night (now 2 or 3 nights ago). Sadly Mike couldn’t make it (classic) due to some real life traffic jam whatever. I was beyond outraged that they were even considering that 1) I did that and 2) felt they were in any position to remove my roles for it. As they had been put in charge not even 2 weeks ago, and Mike does not deserve the CEO spot one bit. (Check his killboard, seriously). As far as I could tell Afro started to realize that maybe it wasn’t as black and white as it appeared to be. Kodiz however channeled his inner murican and got mad as well. Saying it was his corp, and Mikes corp. (Since he used to be a director back in 2007, but took years of breaks). This did not concern me, since it would be the same as Wargod coming back, or an earlier iteration of TRI’s leadership. Somehow managing to remove Garst, Warran and me from command and then demand all the alliance ISK to be returned. This is never going to happen.

Kodiz poked me in anger, which made me tell Afro to transfer the Keepstar to the TRI holding corp, which he did. Afterwards I talked to Kodiz and I thought we straightened things out. He seemed calm after our chat on Discord, and even said that I would be the person to run QUAM, since he too agreed that Mike should never be in the CEO position. We even talked about possible ways to vote him out of command, using shares of all the old quam members. From my understanding Afro had already agreed that my story was actually the truth.

This morning I woke up and decided I did not want to make that play. I didn’t want to live in the uncertainty of Mike logging on and voting down the shareholder vote. At this point I instructed Afro to take all corp assets and ISK and get his toons into position to simultaneously transfer all strategic Fortizars to either The Blue Donut (TRI holding corp) or NM/SASH. All of which I don’t think he ever did. I created a new corp and applied it to TRI. The knife was in my back, coming from the people calling themselves my friends. But now the sword was on its way to land right next to it, firmly in my back as well.

I logged on my holding char to accept my newly created corp, having some trouble navigating the window to find the accept button, I went to get a drink. When I came back I realized that Garst had removed me as a director. Garst Tyrell; who is currently deployed in some faraway desert country, fighting people that fuck goats as their favorite past-time. He has internet and is able to talk on discord usually an hour a day. I found later that the last few days he had been talking for more than an hour a day. He had been talking with Warran, the second pillar of the Triumvirate to Kodiz and Mike. Who at that point apparently even dreamed up proof of me embezzling fake super subsidies for months, from the alliance wallet. I’m not sure what proof they found for this, since this never happened. Without knowing what Warran/Garst were told by an AFK dude who they don’t even know, and a loud American who had just recently started doing stuff. I can see why they were concerned, this needed a follow-up.

They removed the roles from my holding character and were apparently planning “to come talk to me”.

As there are two of them, and with desert country internet logging on to remove roles takes at least 5 minutes. This time could be used by Warran to type something along the lines of: “Hey Pat, we just heard some very disturbing news. We felt like we had to remove your roles until this was figured out, as it was multiple people telling us the same thing. I hope you will understand that. When you wake up tomorrow, we have to chat. Don’t panic, it’s just a precaution.”

Instead they both decided to not tell me anything, and let me find out on my own. After running TRI for about 3 years, as a team, literally the triumvirate, they removed my roles at the blink of an eye. Without a heads-up whatsoever.

Warran has started talking to me tonight, telling him they are sorry about the way they did it. And they want me to stay. I can make a corp and put it in TRI, fc for TRI etc. The same thing he said earlier today. However roles were a different discussion, to which I replied that I would be leaving entirely if that were the case. Yet now I am wanted back, like it was before. However, it cannot go back to the way it was before.

I have spent 3 years of my life building this alliance from a failed drone pet under XIX, to one of the strongest alliances in the game, if not the strongest for its size. 2 of those years were pretty much a fulltime job. Obviously it wasn’t a one-man job, but no one can deny I was a big part of it. After all that, they just removed me, listend to some no-name and some afk dude. That trust is broken, and it cannot be repaired. So at that point what is it all worth if I do stay around? Knowing the Sword of Damocles is literally swinging there, every time some guy pokes Warran and Garst with a somewhat reasonable story.

There it is, a short story long. I have made up my mind, I am leaving TRI effective immediately. My new home will be Northern Coalition. After 3 years I do not have the energy to build a new corp again, especially with my real life so busy. Obviously my passion for FCing and playing to win will not fade. I will FC in NC and hopefully have many drunk nights talking on TS, although I think they use mumble which almost makes me puke.

Now I can see you think, where will the ISK go Pat. Are you stealing it in the end after all? While I’m very aware this is the most Judge way of saying this, but I promise you it is the truth. The ISK belongs to the members, the people that put in effort to build the corp to what it is and fought all those years to keep it. Not some AFK retirement club or some overly eager new guy. So the way I will give back to the people that deserve it, is as follows: Everyone that wants to come with me and enjoy Eve in NC. will get my help to switch from a shield super to an armor one, and if you meet the requirements of the corp you will also get my vouch. It may not be the best way to do it, but the ISK will never end up in those traitor’s hands. They can be commander in chief of their very own: dead corporation.

I hope for nothing more than everyone in QUAM to find a good place, either with me in NC. or in any of the other corps in TRI. There are many which are great and will gladly have you guys. But please do not stay with the sons of bitches that threw me under the bus after everything I did.

It saddens me deeply that I did not get to ride this war out with TRI. It was the unwinnable war for us, the biggest challenge ever. And we have done better than we could have ever imagined. Surely the XIX blob is on the full offensive right now, but our guys live to PvP, not to krab. We would have come out on top for sure, 500b in mercenarily sheckles could not kill us for the past 6 months, it made us stronger than ever before. We live for this shit.

I wish all of you guys good fortune in the wars to come.