Chapter 4: Viceroy
A crack becomes a chasm...
Among those reveling in The Mittani's public misfortune was Admiral Goberius.
Goberius, more commonly “Gobbins,” was the leader of an organization called Pandemic Horde, a training wing of the veterans-only Pandemic Legion. Horde was designed to bring new players into Legion’s fold who might otherwise be too intimidated to apply for membership. While Legion thrived on experience, Horde provided the raw numbers essential for modern EVE wars.
Pandemic Horde was a particular problem for The Mittani and The Imperium. The roughly 2000 members of the Horde weren't exactly a geopolitical threat to the empire, but they were young, excitable, and combined they could do an awful lot of teasing on the internet. When The Fountain War Kickstarter campaign started to seem like it was going south, Horde members in particular were merciless.
They weren’t the only ones, either. The Imperium’s enemies were more than happy to take this opportunity to rub salt in the Imperium’s first wound in years. Particularly vocal in this regard were nearby groups from low-security space which The Imperium had evicted from their homes in nullsec during the creation of their northern empire. These corporations and alliances were full of players who had been with EVE for a decade or more and had grudges against Goons that felt ancient. Case-in-point, one of them was NCdot, a haven for old Band of Brothers directors. After their many wars with Goons they still never missed any opportunity to hurt their oldest rival.
The epicenter of all this mockery was Reddit, the largest EVE Online community outside of the virtual universe at that time. The Mittani viewed Reddit.com/r/eve as something akin to hostile territory, because it was by far the most populous place on the internet for his detractors to voice their glee at his every misfortune.
Reddit was a threat to The Mittani because EVE and Reddit were both virtual societies. Connected, intermingled, but fundamentally different spheres of power. If we reprise Octavia Butler’s galaxy analogy to describe social groups, EVE and reddit were like colliding galaxies, and the two galaxies were now significantly intermingled.
Inside EVE Online, Reddit's presence was called TEST ALLIANCE PLEASE IGNORE, and it was actually the losing side in the very war that The Fountain War would be celebrating. Few were surprised that Reddit was the headquarters of resistance against the Kickstarter.
However, The Mittani scored an ally in his campaign that few expected. Sapporo Jones, the current leader of TEST, made a long post called "Why I think the Fountain War book is cool." In it he made an impassioned case for why he - even as the losing side of the war being dramatized - thought that it was good for the EVE community to publicize its most momentous events to draw in new players.
This was especially important because the Imperium was facing a problem other empires of EVE's history had confronted: it was too well protected. Surrounded by an ocean of allies, there was little for The Imperium's pilots to do on a daily basis to keep them engaged. The gamers were growing bored, and their attention was shifting away from EVE. The Mittani needed events for them to participate in, and if at all possible, an enemy for them to fight.
To cure the creeping malaise, The Mittani announced that The Imperium would be launching a promotional war game to re-enact the Fountain War. It was designed primarily to give thousands of pilots a fun event to participate in while reminding them to pledge to the campaign. However, accusations alleged that Sapporo Jones had faked his enthusiasm for the war game on orders from The Mittani. That he had actually been bullied into writing his enthusiastic post. That his unlikely support for the campaign had been in order to avoid The Mittani re-enacting The Fountain War for real… in TEST’s home.
Instead of the Fountain region, where the Fountain War took place, the invasion was set to hit nearby Cloud Ring, the home of Pandemic Horde. The Horde newbies stood no chance against full Imperium fleets. The incursion was expected to be simple. A game.
As the leader of Pandemic Horde, Gobbins knew that his newbies weren't capable of putting up any kind of real defense against an Imperium war fleet. Instead of organizing a futile resistance, Gobbins instead decided to just see if he could make The Mittani look a little bit silly.
Gobbins identified a handful of diplomats with loose lips and distant ties with The Imperium. In open chat channels where he knew they could see, Gobbins whispered that there was a secret coalition being built in the shadows to surprise The Imperium while its fleet was exposed during the Cloud Ring invasion. He said that this secret coalition would bring together all of The Imperium's most powerful enemies for a devastating surprise counterattack.
It was never true for a moment.
Months later when all of this was over, Gobbins would post screenshots of his conversations with these diplomats as well as conversations with his own friends about how they couldn't believe The Mittani seemed to be buying it.
All the while, what he was really doing was organizing the evacuation of the region so that The Imperium’s fleets would be invading a hollow shell.
When word reached The Mittani, he heard what he most desperately wanted to hear. That his war game invasion was about to become the biggest war in years right when he needed it most. That if he played this right, his war game would turn into a flashpoint that would reawaken the old zealotry in his many Goons, and attract the kind of media attention that would have The Mittani talking with journalists and speaking on podcasts for weeks. Right when he needed it most. He leaned in, and bit the bait.
In a speech to his members he said,
"War after speech. Timing isn't convenient to the USA workday, but needs must. Conflict will be all-timezone. This will be a long campaign. Stations will be captured and moons will be taken with extreme prejudice. […]
Vengeance is at hand."