Header Art by Redline XIII

Editors Note: This article comes to us from Aryth, Goonswarm Financial Director

First, this is a post to announce a cessation of hostilities between the Imperium and GOTG/Dead Coalition starting the weekend of the 29th of September. Some of the terms of this deal will be at the bottom of this post/article. I will outline the broadbrush strokes and spare you the pedantic items. 40 Faction Fortizar Equivalents for a 6 month NIP. I negotiated this one personally. So you know it has the real seal of GOOD FINANCE!

As most of you know by now, the CSM Summit is also prime time Metagaming. You have leaders of the most powerful forces in EVE spending a week with each other. Copious amounts of alcohol only further breaks down barriers to socialization and Metagaming. The fact we tend to eat at only the finest restaurants in Reykjavik each night probably helps keep everyone in a great mood in that dark hellhole. This summit was no different as you had Myself, Merkelchen, and Innominate from Imperium leadership, Sort Dragon, and Killah Bee from GOTG and NC leadership respectively.

During the summit the war was still in full swing with fights occurring regularly. Granted, at this point it was mostly CO2 getting hazed twice daily and feeding our FCs such easy wins that C-team FCs were helldunking on the regular but I digress. I opened negotiations in Iceland with Killah Bee over a drink called the Big Kahuna. Big kahuna indeed. Initially, I threw out a deal almost identical to the one that we would eventually agree to. Only the payment terms ended up changing and the eventual person I struck the deal with.

Part of the meta is getting information and having a win even if you don’t hit your initial goal. One of the reasons I offered the deal was to see just how broke our enemies were. The answer was, very fucking broke. The number I originally threw out was so low that it was an insta take unless you were dead broke. They were going to lose far more than that amount just in keeps. You could argue they didn’t know then they were just about to completely break but there is no way they couldn’t have known in our estimation. However, perhaps we just didn’t have the right people talking at the time.

Coordinating this sort of activity on your phone in the middle of many hours of meetings at CCP HQ is challenging at best. You are trying to relay to our highest leadership general terms to make sure we are all thinking of all the angles and support the deal. Because of this we never did get close to a deal at Iceland in addition to the other factors that came up CSM wise. Midweek of the Summit our attention completely pivoted to CSM items with CCP. Things dramatically changed midway through the summit with how the CSM perceives our relationship with CCP.

Due to this, the metagame almost ceased until the last major dinner night. I had also changed my flight to a day earlier than everyone else except Innominate and Merkelchen who had also changed their flights a day earlier. So, this meant there was no real time to get anyone really comfortable with a deal while in Iceland. However, the groundwork had been laid.

Fast forward to this past weekend. Originally, I had approached the NC leader at the summit as NC is the majority partner in that relationship. However, there is also the problem of getting parties to trust one another enough to even do a deal like this. GOTG we didn’t feel like we had many options on that front either. Adding to this was the relative unknown in Killah Bee. Obviously, a bloc FC but did he also possess the ability to negotiate on the behalf of NC? These were things we didn’t fully understand so there was also a component of not knowing if you were dealing with the right person. So, the question remained how do you deal with someone you cannot fully trust within the mechanics of EVE? Much like everything else, collateral or payment and dealing with the right person. Sort Dragon ended up being the person I would continue negotiations with. I had a couple summits with him at this point and that goes a long way to being able to do something like this. At this point CSM summits are like United Nations of EVE meetings when we aren’t busy really sticking it to those filthy wormholers anyway.

With my initial deal terms rejected we turned to accepting Faction Fortizars as payment. We very well knew just how much wealth in Forizars was in Deklein because we built the outposts that were converted into them. We could burn down Deklein or we could extract our wealth from Deklein. At first, there was a bit of back and forth about the terms. One mistake I had made was assuming that Sort had been fully informed of the terms in Iceland. I was led to believe that he had been filled in privately about my pitch. Since he hadn’t I had to outline the framework over the course of a couple days. Those days were the weekend of the 15-16th. By Sunday the 16th we had the framework written and were just getting each side’s leadership informed and inking the deal.

The goal was to keep the deal secret. Our side had no need to gloat because we had just dropped the biggest dick EVE has ever seen on the table and watched everyone else flinch in horror. Half a dozen keeps dead or whatever absurd # if you count lowsec etc it was. From our perspective we have just donned the Kings of EVE crowns. There is no chance anyone can challenge us right now but we also have a lot to do at home. If we can extract a ton of wealth from our old home and bring it to Delve as a Dyson sphere trophy case we have a monument to our conquest. Plus, we have a bunch of shit to do with our own economic plan still and other areas of EVE that will need some sweet sexing after a reset of the brains.

From a hostile perspective they needed their space to be secure enough to live in again or their regions would continue to shed members and alliances would continue to fall apart. They were going to lose the entire region to a wildfire of steamrolling Titans/Supers. We save a ton of grinding in AUTZ and they probably save their coalition. For them it was a no-brainer. The right call in every scenario.

Sort wired me the money the night of the 18th US time. The deal went into effect today the 19th. It will expire on March the 19th 2019 as long as there are no more violations of the terms. Speaking of violations….

But Aryth, you said it was supposed to be secret? Indeed, it was. One of the corporations that was departing GOTG for NC. Their application rejected, they were bitter and decided to publicly leak the deal. They didn’t know much but knew enough to know there was a deal. This led to Riotrick wanting to presumably save face in front of his people and so leaked almost the entire deal terms. Once this occurred we were understandably upset as leaking a deal on literally the FIRST DAY is pretty fucked up. However, given it is pretty hard to spin getting a ton of Keepstars sodomized, entire regions almost scorched to the ground, dead alliances, running alliances, hemorrhaging alliances, and your allies running for the hills well… we can be magnanimous. All of EVE knows our victory. After dividing out some spoils we will return home like Smaug and curl up on our riches to rise again shortly and give a proper sexing to the next on the list.

Deal Terms – What follows are direct copy and pastes from the deal document signed by both parties.

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The Imperium will withdraw main fleet, SIGs/squads, and cloaky campers from the northern territories* for 1 month, and from GOTG** space for 6 months, starting on Sep 29, 2018 if the following terms are fulfilled:

GOTG pays total of 40 faction fortizar equivalents

Within 72 hours of agreement, a payment of 10 faction fortizar equivalents or 500 Billion ISK which will be refunded when the 10 Faction Forts are delivered as the first payment to a highsec station with highsec only routes to Amarr.

Within 10 days of agreement, all 5 Moreau+30 other faction fortizars must be delivered to a to a highsec station with highsec only routes to Amarr.

For the purposes of this agreement Moreau fortizars count as 2 faction forizars. Example: 5 Moreaus and 30 other faction forts would satisfy this payment agreement.

GOTG will not attack any withdrawing Imperium forces or interfere with unanchoring Imperium structures or ships attempting to scoop unanchored structures.

GOTG will not attack Imperium structures*** during the period of this agreement.

Within 24 hours of this agreement, Imperium will cease creating new offensive timers outside Fade/Pure Blind. Existing offensive timers can be attacked until Sep 29. As a sign of good faith, the Imperium will not hit the 2 planned Ihubs on the night of Sep 16. Both parties will maintain the secrecy of the agreement as much as possible. Imperium will also attempt to reach a “natural stopping point” after the main Keepstar kills and use that as cover to withdraw.

Definitions:

* Northern territories (Tribute/Vale of the Silent/Geminate)

** GOTG space (Deklein/Branch/Fade/Pure Blind/Venal) Venal blazers can do whatever still.

*** Any Imperium structures

Imperium Alliances (CONDI/BASTN (DUTCH)/B C C (RENTD)/INIT.(-IA-,IM)/LAWN/TNT/IMGAY/ME4U/MEX/PBLRD/SV./WI.) This means no structure hitting in Cloud Ring also during the 6 months for any structures belonging to IMP alliances. This does not apply to non-imp entities.

500B down payment will go to “Aryth” who will refund it after 10 Faction Forts are delivered.

Faction Forts can be delivered to “Dj’s Retirement Fund”

Upon start of the 5th month both parties can come together to decide if an extension is needed if not both parties accept that by the end of the month this deal is completed.