On April 15th, 2018, Gnomelands released a video announcing their victory over Vendetta Mercenary Group. lil pheonix, of Danger Gnomes, was kind enough to take some time and fill me in on the details of their recent coup and why it mattered. The alliance was functionally disbanded and reformed with a vision true to their roots. Take a moment and watch the video, then come back and we’ll shed some light on what happened and more importantly, why it happened.
Vendetta Mercenary Group originated in 2013 as Khromius took his corporation: Commonwealth Mercenaries out of Break-A-Wish. Soon afterwards he recruited Danger Gnomes and VMG began operating as a small alliance. They made their name fighting larger groups with guerilla tactics as they gained respect and power in Hisec. They were honorable mercs, hunting their contracted targets and working as respected members of the Hisec mercenary community.
A year later, Danger Gnomes and Facetious Indifference merged into Forsaken Asylum (closed) for more content. They stayed for roughly a year and in Sept 2015 decided to reform with VMG, bringing along Natural Clonekiller among others. Natural was quickly tapped to handle administrative details for VMG, including handling contract details and freighter hunts.
That’s when things started to go sideways. In lil pheonix’s own words:
At this point Natural began to “Double dip” on fortizar protection contracts in the sense that he would get paid to protect fortizar A but then turn around and take isk to destroy Fortizar A. This led to a lot of fighting between Facetious+Gnomes Vs Commonwealth and Phoenix Rising (Phoenix is Natural’s corporation). ““
Diequietly STFU took his corp: Facetious to Mordus Angels and later Darkness, preferring nullsec life to the underhanded dealings of VMG. Diequietly informed me that on a number of occasions he invited Khromius to join him in nullsec and step away from the dishonorable dealings he was overseeing in Hisec. Khromius refused, turning his back on friendship in favor of isk.
Lil pheonix explained the last straw:
“Finally in August of 2017 the drama had reached a boiling point and I made the decision to remove Danger Gnomes from VMG in order to start our own Alliance by the name of Gnomeland Security. We had decided to stay light blue with VMG because of the years of friendship with Khromius
This changed very rapidly when he requested our help for a fortizar removal contract which resulted in our friendly fleet firing and destroying multiple Guardian logistics cruisers and Capsules of ours that were there to help VMG. Later that evening Khromius refused to SRP these losses out of anger towards us for leaving.
At this point we decided it would be best to set VMG to neutral and sever all ties within VMG and go our separate ways for good and all was quiet for a few months until we met with our new sister Alliance Spree Mercenary Group. Which came to us with a proposal of joining spree for some content and showing some of his guys the ropes of being a high sec mercenary alliance. We promptly agree’d as most of us enjoy the company of SMG
Early the next morning however Tainted Demon director and founding member of Danger Gnomes received a conversation from Natural Clonekiller informing us that he had in fact allied against SMG without the knowledge of us being there, Our reaction was “RIP VMG then.” Apparently this was not the response he was looking for as he then tried to suicide gank Garypls Fink’s svipul in his tornado.
When he failed he declared war instantly out of rage. This was the beginning of the war that would lead to the coup of VMG.“
Step one was getting someone back into VMG. Diequietly offered to put Facetious back into VMG to do some freighter hunting. At first Khromius declined the offer, but later rescinded and Diequietly was inside with his corp. The second step was to get hold of a timezone where Khromius was absent. Diequietly was put in charge of the late USTZ after a campaign of harassment and subterfuge worked to remove opposition.
The time had come. On his second evening with director roles, Diequietly systematically removed corporations from VMG until none remained but Facetious Indifference and The Church of Tranquility. Down 171 members to a tidy core group of 18, the coup pruned VMG, ready for a new direction in an old school merc style.
I asked lil pheonix what was next for VMG.
“As far as future plans, Our plan with VMG is to undo all of the damage to the mercenary community Khromius and Natural have caused because of their greed.
We have already started a new Mercenary Services channel which is the new official Merc channel where mercenaries can be listed, With khromius being the only active moderator of the original channel he has began to moderate the channel in an unbiased fashion in the sense of “You oppose VMG you get banned”
We have also gotten with most other leaders of other Mercenary groups to talk about the original ground rules for Mercenaries, such as the scamming, It has left a bad taste in the mouth of the public, and it needs to be addressed and dealt with by all of the mercs. Khromis and Naturals escapade of scamming has left a bad reputation on honest mercenaries who have never scammed a contract in their Eve career.
Break up the donut, make highsec a war zone again, instead of all of the mercenaries teamed up clubbing the carebears of highsec
They should be muscle used to be hired guns for carebears.“
Diequietly seemed unconcerned about possible reprisals from Khromius. While some repurcussions are expected, the tone was one of confidence that the new VMG would be able to weather anything Khromius could muster up.
Does this bode well for the future of Hisec mercenary work? Time will tell. The new merc channel in game stands as an initiative to revitalize Hisec warfare and the merc economy. Sometimes people need someone to protect their assets, or wage war on their belhalf. That’s what the mercenary community exists to provide. This new direction for VMG and perhaps the entire merc community may well be the answer to the strife facing CEO’s without a strong PvP presence in their corp or alliance.
All are welcome to join the in game channel Mercenary Services to discuss a mercenary solution to their problems. Well, maybe not Khromius.
This has been Moon Moon Burdy reporting for EveNews24.
