The history of New Eden is full of amazing stories, incredible achievements, and from time to time, incredible “firsts”. Today, September 25th, marks the 10-year anniversary of one of the biggest “firsts” in our shared galaxy’s tale – the birth of the first titan. An Avatar-class titan named “Steve”.
Although the New Eden of 2006 largely belonged to the infamous, and oft-thought invincible, alliance Band Of Brothers, the alliance Ascendant Frontier was at the time one of the largest, and most powerful forces in all of New Eden. Lead by a CEO named CYVOK, Ascendant Frontier had a well-deserved reputation for completing large, logistically complicated construction projects by harnessing the time and resources of thousands of capusuleers towards a common goal.
However, while planning the construction of the first Titan, CYVOK and the high command of Ascendant Frontier were given pause by the recent events in the EC-P8R system. In EC-P8R, a rival alliance has been building a Mothership, a large and powerful vessel similar to today’s Super Carriers. The other large corporations of the time (including Band Of Brothers and Ascendant Frontier) set aside their differences to band together to destroy the nearly-completed Mothership in the interest of denying any one corporation an advantage on the battle field, and to maintain the fragile balance of power that existed at the time. The resulting battle was one of the largest in New Eden’s history.
CYVOK surmised quite correctly that if his enemies (or even his allies) got wind of the Ascendant Frontier titan that was currently on the corporation’s drawing board, that a similar alliance-of-convenience would almost surely be assembled against Ascendant Frontier, and the first titan would meet its end in the capital ship yards where it was being built.
To avoid this potential disaster, CYVOK kept information about the Titan construction project a tightly controlled secret, with only his closest of Ascendant Frontier lieutenants included in the planning and execution of his plan. Additionally, multiple decoy projects were planned and massive amounts of counter-intelligence, fake intel, and outright lies were fed to corporation enemies and allies alike to keep potential spies off the partially-completed titan’s scent long enough to complete the massive, time-intensive undertaking.
A massive mothership was ordered as a distraction, and even a second titan, a decoy titan, was ordered from a massive industrial corporation of the day, a corporation named NAGA.
As if to confirm all of Ascendant Frontiers fears, information about the decoy titan leaked immediately, and the NAGA capital shipyard where the decoy titan was being assembled was annihilated by the infamous corporation “Mercenary Coalition”. Exactly who hired MC to destroy the decoy titan and the NAGA shipyards is a topic of debate to this day.
Finally, on September 25th, 2006, all of the hard work, secrecy, and planning were about to finally pay off as the build timers on the massive Feythabolis capital shipyard ticked towards zero. CYVOK and the few Ascendant Frontier leaders lucky enough to know about the titan construction project held their collective breath as the final second passed, and their moment of triumph finally arrived.
And nothing happened.
Apparently, when estimating how long it would take a corporation to actually assemble the materials and manpower it would need to birth the first of New Eden’s titans, CCP hadn’t accounted for the sheer determination and force of will that CYVOK and Ascendant Frontier had brought to bear on the project, and the actual lines of code necessary to allow the shipyards to actually deliver the enormous ship into space hadn’t been added to the game yet.
As you may have guessed, CPP had also apparently been watching the shipyard timers with what I can only imagine was their own special brand of anticipation, and a CCP Developer was on the scene almost immediately to manually spawn this first, most anticipated Titan into space next to the now dormant capital shipyard.
To herald the birth of this new, most impressive of ships, CYVOK soon released the following statement:
The completion of the Avatar represents another true first for EVE brought forward by the hard work and dedication of all the members of the Ascendant Frontier and Axiom Empire community. Together there is no challenge that we cannot accomplish. The Face of warfare in EVE has just changed forever.
Now let’s name the bugger!
-CYVOK, CEO Celestial Horizon Ascendant Frontier
September 25, 2006
As I’m sure many, if not all of you, already know, the name that this first of all titans would be christened with would end up being “Steve”.
CYVOK himself would pilot Steve in many future battles to great effect, and as he had predicted in the Avatar’s auspicious birth announcement, the face of warfare did indeed change as more and more titans entered front-line service.
Fittingly, CYVOK was even at the helm when Steve was finally destroyed by a fleet of Band Of Brothers dreadnoughts at the storied, and controversial, battle of C9N-CC, which is where the Avatar’s shattered hull remains for all to see to this very day.
The Wreck of Steve The Titan. Photo credit – The Eve Travel Blog
But that’s another story entirely.
