Cavemen draw a line and defend ‘The Cave’

One thing I have have enjoyed about citadels over the recent months is the opportunities that they have provided for smaller corporations and alliances. Having a place to call home that has your ‘flag’ planted on it is important. Before the release of citadels having your own home in the form of a ‘station’ was pretty much reserved for ‘sov-holding’ alliances and larger mega-corps, however, the citadel has made ‘home’ ownership affordable in all parts of New Eden. Beyond that it has also provided a fertile ground for one corp or alliance to come in and burn down someone else’s house. In high security space corporations can not ‘own the space’ as it all belongs to the Empires but citadels have become a way for these alliances and corporations to set up operations and deploy staging citadels to operate out of. When hostilities break out between these groups, usually due to one encroaching onto the other’s area of operations, they can’t take ‘sov’ so these citadels become primary targets. In alot of these actions/wars in highsec a mercenary corporation will usually be contracted by one of the parties to provide extra firepower to either defend or destroy said structures.

One such alliance, Cavemen, recently found their beloved home known as “The Cave”, a Fortizar-Class Citadel in the Solitude system of Yvelet, under siege and about to be destroyed. A series of incidents and hostile actions with United Systems of Avarice(USA) which on June the 3rd led to a final showdown over the final structure timer for “The Cave.” When it came to the actual fighting USA hired the Vendetta Mercenary Group to engage the Cavemen on their behalf. I had the opportunity to speak with Corvidae Crowfoot of Caveman on who they are and how this all went down.

So who exactly is the ‘Cavemen’:

“Cavemen. is a newbro-friendly alliance with a focus on finding fun content and staying free of political ties and staying classy with our attitude. We have an active PVP core, and live out of highsec Solitude, where every so often we assess our neighbours to see who would bring fun fights for our members.

A little way back, after we’d just got our footing, we declared war on Black Thorne Alliance and a couple of other groups, and the region responded by forming an ad-hoc coalition against us and joining in to defend, BTA, but we held firm and won all the wars without losing any structures (except POCOs) and took out a couple of highsec Raitarus, including one that was being defended by MC.”

“We declared war on a local group called United Systems of Avarice a few weeks ago, and they responded by hiring Vendetta to destroy our highsec Fortizar and base of operations, the Cave. We met the armor timer full force last week, and destroyed 10 bil worth of ‘blingy’ Vendetta Rattlesnakes, though they won the timer and returned last night for the final structure timer.”

We made a promise to ourselves and our newbros that we wouldn’t hire anybody to help defend. We wanted to prove we could do it ourselves – if we’re fielding something we can’t defend ourselves, then we don’t feel it’s wise to rely on it at all. So we called in a few old friends and prepared hard and met the fight – and won, against a Vendetta fleet of Rattlesnakes, Proteus and Fleet Hurricanes.

The total worth lost on our side was 10 bil, theirs 22 bil, and we believe via sources that the contract cost Avarice 60 bil.”

“What we’re taking from this is that having friends and scrappy newbros ready to take any fight, win or lose, is enough to counter well-paid mercs and have a lot of fun.

And also that good stuff can happen in highsec.”