Almost everyone who has not been hiding under a rock in highsec and who has had access to community forums such as Reddit is well aware of the fact that there is a great deal of unrest in the South of New Eden at the moment.

Test Alliance Please Ignore and Circle of Two have had a recent falling out

Test Alliance Please Ignore (Test) and Circle of Two (Co2) have had a recent falling out due to an existing diplomatic tension. Not particularly understanding the current situation, many people have decided to jump on the blue donut bandwagon and the tinfoil-hat in support of the notorious russian RMT empire. I am here to shed a little bit of light on the current political drama in as simple a way as possible from the perspective of a line member / occasional lazy skirmish FC from within Test.

This entire mess all started during World War Bee, known as the Casino War among the Imperium, when Gigx of Circle of Two decided to betray the Imperium and switch sides, joining the Money Badger Coalition. The Imperium took this really personally and all of Eve united under the MBC banner due to an universal attitude of “grr Goons”. At the time we welcomed Gigx into the family, happy to have another ally; one already entrenched in Imperium space from which we could launch attacks deeper and deeper into their controlled territory. Test Alliance was riding high at that time, enjoying victory after victory and Test Alliance’s and Co2’s line members developed an incredibly deep friendship and mutual brotherhood while fighting a common enemy. This era of peace and brohood lasted until the action dried up and the Pandemic Family (Panfam) needed someone new to shoot because “content”.

they had lost the single greatest asset at their disposal to the largest super capital force in Eve Online

Co2 was chosen to be the next target of Panfam and they also happened to be our neighbors while living in Vale of the Silent. Having had a close working relationship between our alliances we (Test) jumped at the chance to help out our bros and brought 150+ in literally hundreds of fleets against the aggressors, standing side by side with Co2, fighting and losing against the largest numbers fielded by any military organization ever seen in the game. It was a long and hard fought defensive war and we bled together, but finally Co2 lost their capital system and Keepstar in M-O and was in the process of folding as an alliance. At that point it was over for Circle of Two; they had lost the single greatest asset at their disposal to the largest super capital force in Eve Online and with the massive amounts of time dilation our combined defensive fleet could do nothing but sit and watch as our friends’ home burned to the ground.

This is what people don’t understand, we were family, Test and Co2. We fought and bled together in the trenches in two massive wars against the most powerful people in New Eden. They were the one and only entity that we trusted beyond any shadow of doubt and for which we put everything on the line for. When Co2 fell we felt the loss so greatly and we valued our brotherhood so much that that same night we had announced a full and absolute evacuation of Vale of the Silent, and all of Test space, in order to go with the evacuating Co2 and take a new home for ourselves.

Together we invaded the south, fought Stainwagon, and won spectacularly a series of insanely lucky fights that allowed us to overwhelm and win the south. All of the Russian organizations fell like dominoes with the sole exception of Coven who fought tooth and nail every step of the way, making us fight grueling battles for every system we took. They were a fantastic enemy, and I have nothing but respect for them.

We took the south and Testco (Test/Co2), which would later become Legacy coalition, was born. And this is when things drastically began to change in our relationship.

I still don’t understand what happened, but Co2 became increasingly more and more isolationistic and stopped working with the larger group. Gigx is unstable, he has a powerful personality and a cult of influence about him and would frequently tell everyone to “Fuck off” and then go and do what he wanted. This was not necessarily a bad thing: a strong leader capable of making hard and quick decisions is an incredibly good asset to have. But we were working towards the benefit of all, securing Catch for our junior coalition members, helping them fight off invasions so they could grow and become better as alliances. We took in Brave and gave them a home among other groups who were farmed for content for a long time. We were the underdogs but still some people looked at us as the “big Papa” who keeps members around to just serve as a meatshield. But this is not the case, I have personally heard Sapporo Jones and Dran Arcana on multiple occasions bending over backwards and doing their absolute best to make sure our coalition members have everything they need to succeed. I have led fleets and seen many other show up to almost every single timer that was under threat to help our members.

And throughout all of this I only ever saw Co2, which whom we had been so close with until then, showing up just twice. We were supposed to be brothers in arms and our fates linked together.

But the communication had stopped and multiple times we reached out just to find out why and what was going on. In the end, Co2’s diplomats were fantastic but Gigx just told us to “go fuck yourselves” and that he would not even entertain talking with our Head Diplomat, Test’s de-facto second-in-command. I read the logs on Reddit of his conversation with Dran Arcana and I was heartbroken. I could not understand why our family for whom we’ve risked everything to build up would turn against us in such a fashion. At that point the deployment to the north happened and our deal with the russians was signed.

It was at this point that I took a break from Eve and as such I was not involved in the war in the north. I only have a cursory knowledge of what happened during that deployment, but aside from the cultural victory of retaking our home station of TVN in Vale of the Silent, it seemed to me to be a major defeat for my alliance. Test returned home, but during this time Gigx and Co2 were becoming increasingly more erratic and hostile towards FCON and the encroaching russian expansion. Co2’s diplomats had signed several agreements and pacts, alongside with the coalition, which were violated and thrown to the wayside. Gigx stated that he had not personally signed or made any agreements and according to the logs he was not even made aware that the diplo’s of his own alliance had made such agreements.

His response was “fuck everyone”. He did not personally agree to anything so therefore nothing was agreed to and he would burn everyone to the ground even if it cost him his entire alliance.

This was the moment of no return

This was the moment of no return, in order to use russian space to stage out of we agreed to fight on the russians side should they be invaded, and Gigx chose to throw in with Triumvirate to hit russian space. We had no choice, the council was summoned and a vote to expel our brothers was made. The relationship between Test and Co2 that had been built up through innumerable battles was just casually thrown away because of one single individual’s ego.

Our family was gone and broken apart, but we had forged a new one with the Legacy Coalition and the decisions we made we made for the benefit of the entire group and for the betterment of all. This is how I see things and how the vast majority of my fellow line members and lower ranking individuals feel. We look at the situation that has befallen us and it brings sorrow, but we continue and still hope that things can be resolved.

However, I don’t think it will. While Gigx wants to burn his alliance to the ground to get his way, we still share blood and many still have nothing but love for our Co2 bros. It’s just a shame that their leader has thrown that relationship away in favor of something else and chose not only to put a knife into our back, but to thoroughly twist it as well.

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