Riverini’s note: The FoxHole is a brand new column at Eve News24 which aims to provide a face off with New Eden’s game changers, spymasters and shadowy figures. If you have an untold story and wish to be featured, feel free to email [email protected] and give us an outline of why feel your story should be told.
Today we start with Mr. “S”
“Q” is a long time Lowsec/Syndicate pvper. She also dabbles in W-space and a bit of 0.0 politics. Today she brings us an interview with Seraph IX Basarab which was done over a night of skype and wine and may carry some influence from the latter.”
Q·Fox: Hello and thank you for agreeing for this interview. I’ve enjoyed reading your work in the past and it’s a pleasure to have a chance to speak with you.
Seraph IX Basarab: The pleasure is all mine.
Q·Fox: First things first, what’s your drink?
S: White Russian but also tuica and slivo for regional pride.
Q·Fox: So throughout your time in Eve, you’ve done a variety of things from helping establish Bombers Bar to writing critiques concerning nullsec politics here on EN24 to now being a diplomat for Surely You’re Joking among other things. What started you on Eve and what underlying ideology keeps you playing the game as you do?
S: Well this character first started out as a bit of an experiment for me. I had dabbled in Eve to say the least previously and I wanted to try something a bit new. The same way older players started new characters and joined groups like BNI, I wanted a refresher on Eve. I even went through Eve Uni. I’ve managed to keep everything completely separate but at this point I definitely identify with Seraph as “the main account.” I enjoyed my time in helping bring Bombers Bar to the forefront as a public fleet community and even long after I stopped flying with them, I keep in touch with some of the members. I had the opportunity to work with some great people. My work for EN24 was born out of a dislike for ratting coupled with the pleasure of writing. As far as SYJ goes, I am merely “the most junior of diplos.” But over all the underlying ideology as you put it, would be doing as much as I can with as little as possible.
Q·Fox: How do you mean?
S: Well I’ve always enjoyed the history of resistance groups and how they used proper technique to defeat larger armies. People know for example the name of Vlad Dracula, mostly from Bram Stokers writings. But fewer people know that he was a real person from Romania who was a brilliant tactician. So that sort of play style in Eve and elsewhere has always fascinated me.
Q·Fox: Perhaps I’m going to attract the ire of readers before even finishing my first interview, but Gevlon Goblin wrote in his blog that you had exposed a certain CSM candidate, Jayne Fillon, causing him to lose his election bid. In an interview he did he mentioned that you had some vendetta against him over leading a coup in your corp. What’s the background on that particular relationship?
S: Ah this question always comes up sooner or later. Well Jayne was a mid level director in my corp, Hades Effect, which had been put together by some more pvp oriented members within Bombers Bar. We looked at Bombers Bar as the classroom and Hades Effect as the place where you apply what you learned. The corp had some decent success but toward the end of spring of 2013, I was planning my wedding and finishing up my undergrad. My directors were fairly inactive and there was little direction within the corp. Eventually it just sort of died out and people had different ideas of what we wanted to do. It was all but dead when Jayne started spamming drama mails to corp and eventually kicked a bunch of members that had long stopped logging in anyway. I suppose that was his idea of “the coup.” Hyperbole to say the least. I mothballed the corp in “WhySoSerious” and unsubbed for the next six months. I thought it more practical than preparing for a divorce so soon after a wedding. When I came back, I told him we were cool as far as I was concerned and he even spoke to me about helping him in bbar with “some things.” Said things were, as the article (http://evenews24.com/2014/02/26/seraph-ix-basarab-csm-causality-as-you-sow-so-shall-you-reap/) explains, were some pretty dirty schemes. Even so I honestly didn’t care. I had long been persona non grata among certain bbar people and I had washed my hands of it. Jayne could scheme all he wanted as long as he kept me out of it. When he failed to keep me out of it is when I reacted. He now rants that I’m out to get his corp and spams my recruitment thread warning people about how bad of a person I am. It’s all rather uninteresting to be honest. As far as Goblin’s assessment goes, I’m not sure Jayne would of had enough player base support to win a vote regardless of what I did. I wouldn’t give myself that much credit.
Q·Fox: But only a few weeks ago, it became known that you used an alt to call Shadow Cartel to blow up a SASH Nyx. Any truth to this?
S: Well yes and no. There’s a lot of disgruntled individuals in Jayne’s corp and that community in general. (http://pastebin.com/H6EWDr3u) Another individual that had been keeping me informed about happenings came to me with the info about the Nyx and I recommended a contact within Shadow Cartel. A bit of a butterfly effect I suppose. Most people think that to be “good at meta gaming” you have to scheme and lie and cheat and that you have to come up with some large overly complicated plan to pull things off. The true talent to meta gaming is using truth and simply being observant enough. The “grand fall of BoB” from within wasn’t some overly complicated plan. There was a disgruntled member and there were BoB’s own internal discussions exposed.
Q·Fox: You were also part of some drama surrounding Brave Newbies. What role did you play? Can you shed some light on that?
S: Well at the time of my joining SYJ I wasn’t too thrilled about being blue with such a major source of fights. On top of that, one of their diplomats, Anna, was kind enough to contact my alliance leader and basically start rumor mongering at my expense over some disagreements we had with one another when we were both part of Bombers Bar. I didn’t react as nobody took him seriously to start with and I was won over by the BNI line members. I wanted to do what small part I could do to help BNI be among one of the forces in nullsec and although today they are just brave newbies, one day they will be brave veterans. The more sides in nullsec, the better. So when my intel receptors caught on that “elements” were trying to push BNI into doing something stupid like invade Geminate, I contacted Lychton and advised against such a move and instead strongly recommended Catch. Geminate would have had them attacking an allied element of both the CFC and PL with no third party support of any sort. They would have been turned back before the first system would have fallen to them. Catch on the other hand was a region held by N3/PL’s enemies and one that the CFC had stopped supporting strongly for quite some time. I had hoped they could have coupled with Provibloc and formed a third 0.0 coalition. I found out that CVA and BNI were not on speaking terms and through help from Severence, we managed to re-open communication lines between the two groups. It didn’t seem to move much further beyond that however. Going back to my discussion with Lychton, I asked who was really pushing for a Geminate invasion and that whoever was doing that was either incompetent or had malicious intent for BNI as an alliance.
Q·Fox: How did you find this out?
S: Aside from the other people that speak with and inform me, Lychton was very open. Not too surprisingly I found Nonnak Severin, a recent recruit of BNI turned diplo for the alliance and “former” 2nd in command of Jayne Fillon’s corp, SASH, was one of those individuals pushing for the Geminate campaign. At the time he and I were speaking and he openly bragged about how he was supposedly paid to infiltrate BNI. If that was true it’s not very smart to advertise it. More than likely, he was trying to impress someone. I linked him and Anna fairly early on although I didn’t know too much about Draleth. I informed Lychton and other leaders about Nonnak’s “mission” which threw a wrench in the works for Anna, Draleth and Nonnak in their attempt to reconstruct BNI leadership to their design. In the end Draleth was banned from BNI for exposing APIs, Anna lost any sort of meaningful leadership position in the alliance and Nonnak left after nobody in BNI leadership trusted him enough to work with him.
Q·Fox: Some on bni reddit claimed that Nonnak was a Goon spy. Can you confirm this?
S: If the Goons really wanted to do something like that, I wouldn’t own up to it as the execution was poor. More than likely this was a clumsy grasp for notoriety by “seeming mysterious” on Nonnak’s part. No competent spy advertises their mission before it is accomplished or insist so much on its success without any sort of proof. I probably contributed to the relevance of his actions more so than anything else.
Q·Fox: Have you spoken with any of the individuals involved?
S: The “Triumvirate?” Lychton? Jayne?
Q·Fox: Yes.
S: Just a short exchange with Draleth on reddit. I was a little smug toward Anna which prompted him to run around exclaiming that it was evidence of my nefarious meddling to everyone else after telling me I was irrelevant in the situation. Jayne spammed my recruitment thread about how awful I am. Nonnak makes Games of Thrones references at me occasionally and spouted some racist garbage at me about being Serbian even though I’m Romanian.
Q·Fox: Speaking of which I saw that you were advocating a “PLEX for good” movement concerning the flooding in the Balkans. Can you expand a bit about that?
S: Well up until about 7 or so years ago I hardly knew much about the region although I did enjoy history. Then something hit me and I read anything and everything I could. I had a vague understanding of my own country’s history but studying the surrounding areas encouraged me to study my own history as well. Since then I’ve grown to have a fondness of the languages, people and culture of the people there be they Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian etc.
Q·Fox: Some of the people commenting on the thread accuse you of trying to feel morally superior or say that flooding is just as bad in areas of Britain or that other areas in the world need help more such as Syria. What do you say to that?
S: I don’t care what bad opinions some people have for me. People will always dislike other people be it for good or bad reasons so that accusation is irrelevant. As far as flooding in Britain goes I can recommend people inform themselves a bit more concerning the issues in the former Yugoslavia. A country that lived under Tito and was bombed mercilessly while being pulled apart by external factors into a civil war during the 90s has a few more issues than Britain does in supporting itself. As for the issue in Syria, I see a lot of common issues between the civil war there and the one that raged in Bosnia during the 90s. I do agree that it is a complete travesty what is happening there but I did not suggest that as an issue for “PLEX for good” due to the political nature of that conflict. Rain falls on everyone based on the whims of nature. It’s a little different than bombs.
Q·Fox: Coming back to Eve online, what sort of conflict or issues do you find yourself dealing with today?
S: Well currently I’m still enjoying fleets with Surely You’re Joking and our allies, Easily Excited. Our campaign to defeat Jihadsquad, an alliance that formerly owned much of lowsec Khanid and had the misfortune of whelping some of our carriers, wrapped up a few months ago. I’m currently working to develop lowsec with my “renting” program by inviting smaller alliances and corps to populate the area in exchange for a portion of the profits that they make.
Q·Fox: Some more skeptical elements scoff at the idea that you would “rent out lowsec.” How do you even manage such a thing?
S: I had some experiences with some alt corps renting from all the major 0.0 alliances. I won’t specify but comparing my over all experience throughout I can say that on average it did not seem like an enjoyable experience. You’re simply ignored and left to your designs and botting/RMTing is extremely prevalent sometimes knowingly and other times unknowingly to the actual sov holders.
Q·Fox: Sure, but what makes lowsec a viable option?
S: Well for one it’s much cheaper and you are much less limited. Especially with the recent future buffs, lowsec is becoming more and more attractive. You aren’t locked into a couple of systems nor are you under constant wardec keeping you more or less purged out of highsec. If you want to build capital ships and run 20 man bot fleets, no lowsec is not for you. If you want to bring in your corp/alliance of your close friends and try to develop something out of your group, send me a mail.
Q·Fox: But how do you keep your clients safe? Can’t people just live in the very stations they use?
S: Sure, but then they also have to deal with SYJ being in the very same location. We live with our clients and “work the same land” they do. On top of that they aren’t push overs. We had Kadeshi and Darkness come and stay in Baratar, right in the middle of Khanid lowsec for some time. They attempted to hotdrop one of our clients. Instead of our clients whining to us about the situation, they formed up a fleet and counter dropped them back. I don’t take carebears that refuse to work to make themselves better as clients. I seek out groups that just need to be given a chance to prove to themselves that they can do it. Although alliance makes a little bit of money off of this and I myself get my portion for the work I put in, at the end of the day I enjoy seeing these groups grow and develop and that’s worth more than any amount of isk.
Q·Fox: More recently there is a bit of a war between your allies, Easily Excited, and Black Flag Society and their allies, Violent Declaration over resources in Aridia. The conflict has also drawn in the likes of NCdot which recently dropped almost twenty supers on two SYJ/EE Archons. What is the background of this conflict and how is it developing?
S: You’re going to get me in trouble here. Well it’s a bit of a long story and as you can see I tend to be very thorough. SYJ was originally a wormhole mercenary alliance. Last year or so SYJ gave their c6-c6 to a new corp and moved to k-space, first trying their luck in Stain. Lack of common TZ with the locals made it boring to live there and it wasn’t until SYJ whelped a couple carriers in Khanid at the hands of Jihadsquad that ears perked up and the idea to move to Khanid was made. I joined SYJ as they were moving into the region. At the time SYJ had a corp by the name of Arcana Imperii Ltd led by NickSuccorso. As I understood it, Nick had become more prominent on alliance leadership as the alliance CEO, Pell Helix, was not as active for some time. When he came back in full swing, there was some disagreement on how things were supposed to be run, Nick took his corp and he left. I’m told some bridges were burned and some toys were thrown out of the crib as well. But this happened as we were fighting a full blown war against Jihadsquad which was not in its prime as an alliance, but was well entrenched, held many towers and had a dominant AU TZ. On top of that many of our members were still trickling in either from Stain or w-space and the Jihad leader, Musa, didn’t just have a batphone, but had the phonebook of batphones. They were also somewhat aligned with the likes of pvp powerhouse, Black Legion. Eventually we managed to fight through the horrible AU timers, won the subcap engagements more than we lost, and turned the tide of the battle. A few weeks before we gave Jihadsquad its deathblow, in rides Nick and his corp, now as part of Nothern Army, an NCdot feeder alliance. So here we were fighting the war since 1914 and here comes NARM rolling in at the end of 1917 grabbing Jihad’s towers from behind. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this but it did help to speed up Jihadsquad’s demise so I tolerated it. Fast forward a bit later and we find out that NARM is falling apart from the inside.
Q·Fox: What contributed to its downfall? Were you involved?
S: Hardly. Between Nick and Varc and some romance drama, they managed to do all that by themselves. The whole story is aired out somewhere over reddit and I honestly couldn’t care less. Anyway, Nick forms Black Flag Society and teams up with Violent Declarations, led by MrsM and remnants of “The Mandalorians”. They wanted to hit Varc and what remains of NARM and take the moons that Nick sees as his own. Problem is, SYJ still had standings with NARM and Nick would obviously like us not to be involved. Now to complicate this even further, Black Flag has a corp called Capital Storm which were former Jihadsquad. Opposite of them, we were in the process of having another ex-Jihadsquad corp, Fat Dragon, join SYJ. The two corps dislike each other and in Black Flag’s first SOTA, Nick declares that on top of taking out NARM, they would annihilate Fat Dragon. Now personally Nick admits to me he has no idea what Capstorm is upset about or who Fat Dragon is, but against better judgement, they deploy to Gehi for content and to keep their AU corp (Capstorm) happy. Now unfortunately for Nick, his aussies failed to tell him that their former comrades are mostly composed of a bunch of Serbians that love three things: slivo, raznjici and blowing up anyone too stupid to stick around in Gehi. So that whole campaign fails pretty badly. Bradford may or may not also contributed directly or indirectly to capstorm losing a personal moon.
Q·Fox: So there were no official standings between SYJ and Black Flag?
S: No. We were in the process of this happening but we had to contend with several issues. One big issue was that EE leadership had some bad blood with Nick. The other big issues is simply that few (read no one) in SYJ particularly cared for Nick either. I didn’t understand it then and I’m only starting to understand it now. The point is few really cared for the guy and he had/has a reputation of drama mongering. I personally didn’t like them in Khanid because for me, they seemed like fair-weather friends. Here when it works out for them, leave when the fight gets too tough, then back again when there’s something to gain. To me it was a matter of principle. Even so I preferred not to judge the guy too harshly without getting to know him and the first few times we spoke I felt we really got along.
Q·Fox: What went wrong then?
S: Well naturally he was getting a bit impatient with negotiations but it was a complicated situation. His campaign in Gehi wasn’t going very well and pressure was amounting. Nick came to us and told us that if we supported him in taking the moons from Varc, he would do us the grand favor of getting NCdot not to come down to Khanid and burn down all of our towers. Now he may have meant this in the nicest way possible but it simply came off as a threat. EE seemed intent on war from the very start where as SYJ didn’t seem to care too much one way or another. However, there is some definite history between certain individuals in SYJ/EE leadership and BFS/VD.
Q·Fox: Why was NCdot backing BFS and VD?
S: NCdot’s diplo, Kimsemus, and I have spoken at length about this and it is due to Nick’s history with NCdot as an early founding member. I think he has a genuine care for certain members within that group and does the best that he can to maintain their stability.
Q·Fox: Have you been active in diplomatic relations with BFS/VD?
S: Yes, I actively look for ways to negotiate terms for both sides that would be favorable. Some people think diplomatic work is built on threatening or giving ultimatums to people. Others think diplomacy is only a sign of weakness. They think talking means that you’re doing so because you cannot fight. The leader of Fat Dragon, Jzma, one of the main pvp corps within Musa’s Jihadsquad told me something very interesting. Now keep in mind, Fat D were some of the most ardent and stubborn defenders of Khanid when SYJ took it over, but this was interesting for me to hear. Throughout the conflict I was constantly talking to different corp leaders within Jihadsquad. Now there was no malicious motive behind these discussions, I find simply being familiar with one another opens up possibilities for those involved to explore. But Jzma told me that Musa, Jihadsquad’s leader, had sent mails forbidding all his members from talking to us. For Jzma this meant that Musa felt his members so stupid and untrustworthy that they could not even manage a conversation with the enemy.
Q·Fox: Are you finding a similar situation with BFS/VD?
S: Not at all, on the contrary. I’ve spent many many hours exchanging ideas with MrsM of VD and Kimsemus who alt fcs for their coalition. I’ve enjoyed speaking with them as well.
Q·Fox: Have you reached a conclusion to your talks?
S: EE holds the majority, if not all of BFS/VD orbital assets so on the DNAC side there’s very little that leadership could want. At this point my goal was to further expand on DNAC’s advantage while also providing BFS/VD a way to emerge out of the situation with something. Again good diplomacy is not about making some grand scheme or hammering down a weaker opponent. It’s about having insight and adaptability.
Q·Fox: How do you see the current political landscape of 0.0? You’ve been highly critical of the dual nature of 0.0. Do you find that Eve is dying or simply evolving to a stable conclusion? Are they one in the same?
S: I never went along with the “Eve is dying crowd.” We’ve been hearing that for years now. The nature of 0.0 is a bit boring to play with currently. You’re either N3/PL or you’re CFC. Sure you have non aligned entities like Brave or Provibloc but those generally either don’t affect things in a manner like the big two, or align with them intentionally or otherwise. To a certain extent it is frustrating to see and I would like to see both coalitions fall apart so that 0.0 may be much more diverse. At the same time I understand that one coalition is keeping the other together. The fear of the “other” is the glue holding these coalitions together in large part. Eventually both will fall simply due to the nature of people. What I like to do is draw distinctions between the two and consider how the fall/division of the coalitions will look like.
Q·Fox: Distinctions in culture or organizational structure or other wise?
S: All of the above. There’s a distinction in culture for sure. CFC are more prone to focus on ideology and narrative. When used as a strength, this can easily herd cats into fleets. Other times it can be a weakness as we had seen before with the reaction from GSF members toward RZR’s individual identity. More recently we saw several corporations within RZR depart, at first in the form of hirr which is now with NCdot. Mittens saw the possible number of corps that would side with the enemy so he was much more understanding and lenient with the next few groups that left RZR. State media wanted to spin this as hirr being a particular problem child while the Graduates were much more reasonable thus allowed to stay within the CFC although under restructuring. The CFC over all is organized in such a manner that all roads lead to the GSF. Goons are the authority and the other alliances are, as I’ve said before, strong enough to be useful, but not strong enough to be self sufficient. The graduate article over at CFC media ended with a quote from PL FC Elise Randolph where RZR are reminded just how dependent they are on the GSF and the CFC as a whole.
Q·Fox: And you find that N3/PL contrasts how? No official top leader?
S: Well first off their culture is different, not better or worse just different. Their focus is “elite pvp” not as much as Mittens likes to make them out to be elitists but it’s still over all there. In part this is a coping mechanism from the age where the CFC really did out number any group that even had a remote chance to challenge their dominance. “At least we’re good at pvp” is uttered as you retreat in the face of 10x your numbers plinking away at whatever out of position ship you can get. This can attract a certain level of quality and skill yet at the same time makes the group easy to troll or even scare off. If the image of “elite pvp” is lost, then all is lost. Structure wise N3/PL is organized around the big three. NCdot, PL and Nulli Secunda. Now some may scoff at the notion that I mention Nulli but these guys have been a solid stable group ever since they lost Delve years ago. Throughout the Tribute War, purge of the Russians in the east campaigns, the Halloween War, they’ve brought solid numbers, organization, FCs and most importantly their role in bridging PL and NCdot leadership. I would put Nulli up against any non GSF entity in the CFC and they’d come out on top. That’s another major distinction. If any of the three were to leave that coalition, the balance of power would be upset. On the other side, can you name any single CFC member that would cripple the CFC if they left aside from the GSF? It doesn’t exist. Again there are pros and cons to these distinctions and I’m not here to argue in favor of one or the other, simply note the distinctions themselves.
Q·Fox: Perhaps a touchy subject, but I assume when you refer to “CFC State Media” you are referring to the “other site.” What’s the background to this attitude toward them?
S: I think they put out some nice pieces and have some great writers. I simply state the obvious, that organizations and people are tied to the entities that fund them. TMC is a media outlet the CFC would be foolish not to make use of and even more foolish for us as readers to fail to grasp that there is a link. Likewise I can say EN24 has a particular N3 lean, I just don’t think it’s as heavy.
Q·Fox: Finally, where do you think the next big conflict will happen?
S: Well months ago I predicted that the south west would light up and it has started to do so. A variety of N3 groups are staging in the lowsec area probing Delve as is Black Legion which is staged in Sakht, Aridia. Delve itself is extremely important for a variety of reasons such as resources but also for the fact that if Delve falls, it will cut off Period Basis and Querious. Delve and Period Basis are cash cows for the CFC renting program and if Delve is pressed, the CFC will be forced to react. Geminate is also shaping up to be a conflict zone although it isn’t sure how much so. DEATH might just send out token fleets and we might see some more “honorable 3rd partying” from the CFC. The move may be a strategic one on the part of N3 or it may just be a case of “nobody else around to take sov from.” Another thing to keep an eye open for is the Southern Rus. The last war did not kill them, they were simply pushed out of sov holding territory. If they emerge with proper leadership they can cause trouble for both of the other coalitions as they are not thrilled about losing their territory to N3/PL but I think they may be equally hostile to the CFC for only being fair weather friends during the Halloween War. The rest of the year will be interesting and people using terminology such as “Cold War” to express a slowing of activity should perhaps be thinking more along the lines of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yeah, not so quiet.
Q·Fox: Thank you so much for your time and letting me ask all of my questions. I’ve enjoyed this evening. You’ve given me insight both on your day to day and the greater happenings and factors of Eve and certainly gave me much more to think about.
S: Thank you as well and good luck with any further journalistic endeavors.
