One of the most dangerous parts of EVE is the market shortcuts that go through low sec. These areas attract pirates like a stream full of salmon attracts bears. One such area lies between the Gallente’s trade hub (Dodixie) and Minmitar’s second trade hub (Hek). There are three paths (pipes) to chose from, all of which are heavily camped.
Next door to this dangerous area, in Dudreda, a lone titan pilot was waking up in his Avatar after six months of waiting out his hunters. That wasn’t long enough:
“I’ve been watching this guy since June 2014; when my cohorts in Freight Club killed his Nyx in Ignoitton and this Avatar was left in a safe spot there ever since.
On Jan 1, I returned to my computer to see a notification telling me that he had logged in for the first time since June an hour earlier, and for only 10 minutes. His alts, only one of which I saw with occasional regularity in Jita, were on as well. A locate verified that Br TAK moved to Olettiers during those 10 minutes.” – Tarsas Phage, The Marmite Collective
“We were watching this guy for like 5 hours, he was setting up a pos.” – Zarnum, Dead Terrorists
EN24 tried to contact the pilot and his CEO for comment, and have not yet heard from him, but from the description of events it can be assumed he was shopping and setting up a POS in preparation to move his Titan somewhere else. The Titan pilot’s corporation is only 14 people which probably means his character was either sold or in transition. His corp records show he was a former member of the mighty Burning Napalm corporation, which leads the NCDOT alliance. In any case, he was ambushed.
“I rushed my HIC over there and engaged my resources. He did log in, and I landed on his e-warp spot as he cynoed out. My resources were ready and were met with Dead Terrorists”- Tarsas Phage, The Marmite Collective
The Dead Terrorists pvp corporation wasn’t the only group to show. Their Hics landed on the titan the at the same time Pandemic Legion’s did. Like two predators biting the same prey, eyeball to eyeball, the pair snarled and agreed to take down the Titan instead of each other.
“We both had hics in system cloaked near this guys pos. It wasn’t coordinated (with PL). We were both just going after the same titan because we had seen it jump into a nearby system the night before and I guess we both followed the cyno toon into Dudreda.
We literally agreed in local only to kill the titan after both our dread groups jumped in. It was pretty tense. We knew they were after the titan because of their alts turning up in local so we assumed a super blob was incoming. We hesitated for a minute but when we saw only a handful of PL dreads come in we figured it was worth the risk, and they had already started asking for additional hics in local, but yeah the PL guys were surprisingly cool about it, we just nuked the titan then went our separate ways by pure chance even the loot divide was nearly evenly.” – Letelio Denmun, FC, Dead Terrorists
* Funny: In the video at (1:34), note the late arrival of a Revelation dreadnought.
Update: Br Tak was kind enough to responded. Usually Titan victims won’t. We appreciate him getting back to us.
“I was just trying to move it to get ready to sell it and they set a very good trap.
I didn’t have a good enough understanding the dangers of moving it solo as I have so many times before. Being gone from the game for awhile has got me way behind the curve.
Kudos to the guys who set it up. They were very fast.”
Br Tak didn’t really make any mistakes and his Avatar had a solid defensive fit. He was just unaware of the scrutiny he was under after being away from the game, and the jump travel restrictions nerf probably affected his plans. They were new to him.
The amount of free intelligence Titan hunters have is very generous and when he was tracked by the hunters without allies to help, his fate was sealed. Being a Titan pilot is like being a runner in Logan’s Run, there’s always someone who wants to kill you, and one “Got a runner!” call for assistance always brings a brings in a mob tripping over themselves to get on that killmail.
“Run, Runners!”
Please add any facts you know to the story in the comments section. Contact me at
@Matterall373 or write me at [email protected] if you have a story you want told.
