Disclaimer: The following story is a submission. All statements made in the following article are from the writer and not from EN24.
Survivalists call it the Golden Horde effect: after a disaster in a high-density area, survivors swarm out of ground zero in search of safety, and wipe everything off the map. Some say it doesn’t happen like that in the real world, when resources get low and mobility’s limited. In EVE, though, the dispossessed tend to be well-armed, well-connected, and highly mobile. A small flood of CO2 refugees is displacing local powers and getting preyed upon in turn. Fresh, tough, local alliances are going head-to-head with the bits and pieces of a superpower in decline. Politicians call this a rear-end collision.
One name that comes up a lot is Domain Research and Mining, a midsize alliance that farts around in the hind end of Domain and Derelik. When CO2 lost a Nyx the other day, DR&M was front and center. They’re walking tall and moving outside some of their normal haunts; they smell blood in the water. As the Domain-Providence pipeline heats up, local hubs are seeing increased sales but higher risk. A quick jump through familiar lowsec, or a wormhole in a friendly 0.5, isn’t the safe bet it used to be.
Me, I see opportunity. There’s not a lot I love more than accepting iffy contracts in aggravated lowsec, dodging gate camps, and making bank. In the past week, I’ve seen folks liquidating bulky assets in obscure corners. Displaced fighters and pirate groups on the move are buying up high-end combat consumables in local markets. As a wise Ferengi once said, the riskier the road, the greater the profit.
Even so, as pressure builds, the stakes can get a little rich. Strings of gate and station camps, obvious or not, are cropping up on the local trade routes. DR&M, Goons, CO2, and Honorable Third Party are all over the place down there – even northern folks like dontpanic. They don’t seem to be operating at the same scale you’d see in nullsec, but it’s more than enough to put a damper on the corps and shippers that operate in the edges of highsec. Domain’s two largest kills of the week were jump freighters that ran into DR&M on a quiet back road, and they’re far from alone.
Frankly, I find the whole thing exciting. My experience with lowsec has had its share of drama, but always at a much smaller scale. As lowsec stretches to accommodate the new dynamics, adaptation is the name of the game. If you’re a shipper, watch your back but look for deals. If you’re a pirate, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. If you run a market, now’s the time to play supply line. Consider the Golden Horde a blessing in blinged-out disguise.
Author – Jenne Exupery
