Table of Contents

An Ever Evolving History of Brave

Brave has a long(ish) and storied history, some glorious, some not so much…

Items completely bolded and italicized are universally major events for time reference.

Green Labels indicate a corporation has joined the alliance.

Red Labels indicate a corporation has left the alliance.

Purple Labels indicate two corporations in the alliance merged.

Table of Contents

The Founding of Brave

  Forget ISK for a moment. It's a fictitious currency in a digital universe. What's your fun-per-hour rating?

(A much more complete history of the very early days can be found on bravenewbies.org, in case you want more detail and/or dates. Alternatively, watch this and get the story of the very early days first hand)

The Road to HERO

Note: A key feature of Brave's history in this period was the rapid growth in membership numbers. As a result, selected entries are postfixed with an approximate member count (accurate values aren't available).

The Burnination of Catch

Peak Membership And Pandemic Legion

Coup Days

At the start of April 2015 Brave Collective underwent one of the most famous coup d'etats in Eve history. Articles have been written about this stuff which explain what happened (from a certain point of view) and why it's important much better than a bulleted list can. So this section has two parts - the bullet points (just the facts, maam), and then a link dump of related reading. Enjoy! I know the rest of Eve did :(

C O U P B O I S links:

Evac to Fountain

Brave and Faction Warfare

Querious Fight Club

Fade Avec Le Français

Cloud Ring

The Return To Catch

The Golden Age of Impass

World War Reee

The Second Golden Age of Impass

Winter Clashes With the Inevitable Spring

From Darkness Comes a New Golden Age

Some context is needed for the start of this section. The combination of the Blackout and Cyno Changes had an incredibly detrimental impact on the stability of Eve. Concurrent logins for the game dropped to levels not seen since 2006. Once the Blackout ended most of Eve began to bounce back, but for a combination of reasons Legacy's active numbers continued to dwindle, dropping to levels not seen since the Coalition's inception. Our bounce back finally started at the end of the weekend on October 13th, 2019, and we rapidly began to regain strength from there.

The Anti-Farmer Campaigns

The Beekeeper's War

A New Age In Querious

Evac to Geminate

Invasion of Pure Blind

Peace in Pure Blind

Trouble in Pure Blind

War in the Northwest

Return to Querious

Appendix

Common Group Abbreviations

Other Raw Information

Previous Leadership

Previous Leadership

Dunk Dinkle Former Alliance CEO and Industry Director
Cagali Cagali Former Alliance CEO, HR Director, and Education/Dojo Director
Nancy Crow Former Alliance CEO and 2IC
Lychton Kondur Former Alliance CEO
Matias Otero Former Alliance CEO
Ariadne Invictus Former Chief of Staff
Yukiko Kami Former 2IC, IT Director, and Education/Dojo Director
kiu Nakamura Former IT Director
Jim Rheic Former Diplomacy Director
Panic Mangeiri Former Diplomacy Director
Park3r Kalkonen Former Diplomacy Director
Alonso Calip Former Logistics Director
n0rman Former Logistics Director
Metric Candy Former Logistics Director
Jinx De'Caire Former Education/Dojo Director
Shei Bushaava Former Education/Dojo Director
Ralend Oskold Former Education/Dojo Director
Cond0mBurst Former Industry Director
LSky NLX Former Industry Director
super hornet Former Industry Director
Dave Korhal Former Industry Director
Algorthan Gaterau Former HR Director
Wiros PotHead Former Propaganda Director
Khaldune Ro Former Finance Director
Motre Former Military Director
Kinera Anurin Former Military Director
Roartak Former Military Director
Extrems Tivianne Former Military Director
Blue Ice Former Military Director
Anna Niedostepny Former Military Director
Arik Alabel Former Military Director

Wiros' propaganda archive

Wiros' propaganda archive

https://imgur.com/a/Scjl6
Copy https://github.com/bravecollective/wiki-files/tree/main/Imgur%20Album%20Brave%20Propaganda

Aernir Ridley on Querious onwards (source = Slack, 2017-11-07)

Aernir Ridley on Querious onwards (source = Slack, 2017-11-07)

When I joined Brave in March of 2016 we had recently moved to Querious. We were based out of the system of I1Y-IU, and at the time we had just under a dozen systems under our control. Our staging structure was a little astrahus until we finally placed our first Fortizar without issue. We were among the leading members of the Querious Fight Club, a newer coalition whose goal was to remain neutral to eachother but come together and defend eachother when needed. We also had an incredibly good ratting pocket (U-H), and for the most part life was good.

Around early-mid July, an alliance known as Broski North (the complete and utter definition of cancer) anchored a Fortizar in nearby 9CG under the name _PL/NC Staging Area_. (At the time my stupid newbro self made a panicked post on the forums about it here: https://forums.bravecollective.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2839 ). This action sort of marked the beginning of the end of our time in Querious, as an increased enemy capital presence effectively shut down our ability to make money. We led a final stand against the Fortizar in early August, which led to our over-100-man tempest fleet getting absolutely massacred, and morale plunged. On August 17th, the call was sent out that we were moving to Fade, which our friends Beyond Frontier had taken control of during WWB and handed over to the rest the alliance.

Fade was a time of heavy PvP. We owned a single constellation and lived in the middle of a super-highway surrounded by neutrals. Our staging at the time was DO6H-Q (which we lovingly called DOG-HQ). Our location meant that while there was no shortage of fleets to fight, money making was incredibly difficult. So we created an "armada system." Basically every day all ratting and mining would be confined to one system, in an attempt to keep our ADMs up and allow for easy defense. We developed our Capital force, and things began looking up as time went on. Our resident Rooks and Kings member, Neutral Shock, also planned and successfully executed a Pipebomb on a 120 man Pandemic Horde hurricane fleet during this time period.

Eventually, Pandemic Legion (and especially Doomchinchilla) decided to start a proxy war against Brave because of an old grudge Doom had with Cagali. They anchored an astrahus in our staging system, which we successfully destroyed. They then anchored another 2 astrahuses. We failed to destroy the first one, but during the OP for the second one we managed to hold back the entirety of PL's supercapital/titan forces while a few HAW dreads destroyed the structure. The writing was on the wall though, and we needed to get away from PL, so on January 13th 2017, the invasion of Cloud Ring was announced.

We took Cloud Ring with ease, and holed up in the system of 9-4RP2, with one of the best ratting pocket systems in Eve, XZH-4X next door. With PL still nearby and constantly harassing us though, this was short lived. On February 10th a Move OP was announced with no destination. In reality we had decided to moved down South, with TEST and CO2 as members of Legacy Coalition.

We had a rough relationship with Legacy to begin with. CO2 had a serious hate-boner going on for us, and we were skeptical about the trustworthiness of TEST, who had abandoned us in the very region we were moving to 2 years earlier. Beyond Frontier left for PH, and slowly rebuilt themselves over the next few months. Morale for the remainder of the alliance was incredibly low, and for the first time in my history of being in Brave, I and several others began getting messages from line members who were concerned that the alliance was no longer good for newbros. Making money was hard in this new low-truesec space, and enemy fleets beyond our capabilities to fight were common. I forwarded as many concerns as I could to leadership, but our numbers actually began to fall and I started to worry.

We got a bit of a break when BO-LD rejoined us on February 23rd. They caused a tiny bit of drama in their return, but all in all they definitely helped improved morale with the fun roams they were taking out and their contributions in STRATOPs. Morale began to boost back to manageable levels, and with the war we declared on Stainwagon we actually had something to do as well. We continued to rat, mine, roam, and all the other things people normally do for the next several months.

When late August came around though, all hell broke loose. Pandemic Legion, using information obtained from our Capital Director Chester Paterson, managed to convince the head of CO2, gigX, that Legacy was planning to backstab him and invade Impass for his joining a war against one of our allies. He responded by posting the logs to Reddit (thereby burning Chester as a spai), and declaring war on us. Less than 3 weeks later, gigX's right hand man The Judge couped him, and destroyed CO2 from the inside. Legacy took what used to be CO2 space, and turned it into a "secure" ratting region for our members. This brings us to where we are today: a fast growing alliance eager to taste the awesome power that is a supercapital force.

Jana Halley on Legacy in the South (source = Slack, 2018-07-20)

Jana Halley on Legacy in the South (source = Slack, 2018-07-20)

Let's roll this up from the beginning. About a year and a half ago TEST and CO2 got kicked out of their space by PL, as did Brave. TEST, CO2 and a few other alliances took Catch, Impass and Esoteria from Against All Authorities and the Stainwagon Coalition. Brave joined shortly after, moving into some systems that test gave us in Catch. The first few months were spent clearing out the rests of Stainwagon out of Stain and a few conflicts with goons since CO2 and them really don't like each other. Brave started skirmishing with a small stain alliance a bit later that kept attacking our moons in Stain. When they began to lose, they batphoned Red Alliance and later their friends like Midas 22, Dream Fleet and Legio. PL also had a few structures in Catch and held a small amount of systems, but we pushed them out after a while.

Now the interesting part starts, Test deployed north to harass the Guardians of the Galaxy Coalition, staging from space of the drone region federation which held the majority of the east. Below the DRF there was Triumvirate holding a few regions, Immensea and Tenerifis were owned by the Phoenix Federation Coalition, their main member being Fidelas Constans (FCON). We were neutral to them, but supported each other against common enemies. At some point, Triumvirate decided that they wanted space from Phoenix Fed and subsequently attacked them. Phoenix Fed realized that they didn't have the power to withstand Tri and joined the Drone Region Federation. In exchange for being allowed to harass GotG from DRF space, TEST had agreed to defend the DRF if the would get attacked. Test decided to help them and in exchange phoenix fed. CO2 didn't like that and had wanted space from Phoenix Fed anyways, so they joined Tri in attacking them. The rest of Legacy then decided that they didn't like CO2 anymore and kicked CO2 out, resetting them to neutral. There were about two weeks of intense fighting along the Catch-Impass border before one of the CO2 diplomats couped them, transferring their keepstar to goons and a lot of other citadels to test and PL, effectively destroying their space and trapping the assets of all their members inside citadels they didn't have access to anymore. All of Impass was flipped in the course of a few days, test bought the Keep from goons and finally Brave bought it from Test. REQ and WALKA moved in with us, abandoning their space in Catch, which led to a short incursion of Red Alliance and friends that got dealt with after some time.

In the following months, FCON and the rest of Phoenix Fed died, Tri pushed against the DRF and GotG also led a short incursion into their space that was basically repelled when an anchoring GoTG keep died that they would have used as a bridgehead. The space owned by phoenix fed got taken over by Fraternity and their allies, forming the Winter Coalition. Tri slowly lost systems, and finally their keepstar, but never failscaded like CO2 or FCON did.

Brave enjoyed a period of relative peace, Catch got filled with a few other alliances, but elsewhere there was still conflict. the region of Providence got slowly taken over by PL, because they wanted to own the faction forts, and further up north skill urself, Volta and a few wormholer alliances started attacking the DRF. It took a while, but the DRF, previously being thought to be an incredibly strong coalition, fell and started retreating south with the aggressors, now being called the Holy Rental Empire, taking over that space. At the same time our coalition deployed to take back providence and steal the faction forts from PL, counting on them not bringing their supercapitals down to defend it. This worked and we extracted a large amount of faction forts from Provi when the stations were switched over into them.

Fraternity and the Winter Coalition had previously skirmished with TEST, getting pushed back and their war hat pretty much just fizzled out during the Provi campaign. Now with the DRF gone, tri decided to get rid of the rest of them and also to give us a bit more of a problem. They allied with Winter Co, moving their Supercaps to our border. The Holy Rental Empire decided to do the same and finally, after us being at a supercap disadvantage already, PL moved their supercaps as well, stating that they wanted to wipe legacy of the map for the humiliation in Providence. Before PL moved down, we had deployed the DY keepstar to get a defensive beachhead into Immensea, allowing us to cover our eastern border better.

Goons, being friendly with us since CO2 being couped, saw their opportunity and moved their full armor super fleet to the north, deploying an offensive keepstar and are currently attacking the western border of GotG in the hope that once they fall, they can push into NCPL territory and kick them out.

A few days ago, we deployed another keepstar, causing the united Northwest to attack it, while our coalition and the Imperium (Goons + their friends) shield fleet defended it. The keep died, but a server death disconnected all players, with only us logging back in and starting to camp the logged of superfleet of our enemies into system. The Fort on grid is now anchored, making it a lot harder for them to extract, and another Keepstar a thousand km over will anchor tonight.

If we effectively prevent them from logging back in, that gives us a supercap superiority in the south, allowing us to freely engage and destroy hostile assets there, while the Imperium keeps pushing in the north.

Dunk Dinkle on The Beekeeper's War (source = Slack, 2021-09-04)

Dunk Dinkle on The Beekeeper's War

The briefest tl;dr of the war

Early summer – I’m in command and there’s allusion to a war against Goons but no real specifics. To this day, I don’t really know how it was green lit or how the initial conversations with soon to be PAPI started, I assume through Vily and PGL.

War starts – at this time, there was no plan for what was going to happen if we won in terms of regions, who lived where, etc. Just war fever. Brave really has no choice but to go along. As part of Legacy, the choice was basically go to war or GTFO. Moving out of our two region entrenchment seemed impossible at the time.

Brave was never in the highest level coordination room of the duration of the war. I was able to talk with most of the leaders, but we weren’t consulted in the planning in any serious way.

By mid-fall, I am effectively the decision maker for Brave. The war is muddling along and several times I am told that “the war will be over in 4-6 weeks”. About this time some Legacy alliances start to struggle and there is first really talk about what happens “when we win”, which quickly turns into “how do we stop Legacy from falling apart”. The ideas about Brave living in Querious are now raised. I am very hesitant, as if we fully commit to Querious, we are basically homeless if the war goes poorly (this is foreshadowing…).

There a plethora of high-level ideas at this time. Many swirl around Legacy forcing all the alliances to join into Brave, making Brave the default auxiliary partner to TEST in a Coalition. I didn’t feel this was a great idea about “widoting” people.

At the same time, Imperium leadership is reaching out to me directly about the war. I am friendly with almost all of them. The want us out of the war. Either by flipping or simply backing out of the war. Or as I was asked “ease off the pedal and push your people in another direction”. I felt this was the wrong decision. That was my decision solely.

Why not flip? Forgetting all about who won, it was about Brave’s ability to work and negotiate in the post-war future. If it was seen that Brave was willing to flip on their coalition, we would never be seen as trustworthy by the rest of the game. It would mark us as group that could not be trusted in difficult matters. In my opinion, this was an unacceptable choice, as EVE is a game about relationships and relationships are built on trust. If we flipped, we’d never be trusted again, and permanently aligned with the Imperium.

At the same time, our Military team wants Brave’s fighting focus on the war in Querious & Delve, not with having a bunch of folks basically living in Catch & Impass, operating as if the war is not happening. We are still working to deal with the problem of the Quantum Cores, as everyone in catch & Impass want everything cored and this costs a lot of ISK. A lot of difficult and hard discussions over this.

At that time, I remain concerned that ordering a move to Querious is untenable for a few reasons. We don’t have several hundred billion ISK sitting around liquid to turn into a new infrastructure that in needed in Querious and there still remains to “win the war” which has progress slowed.

So there is in-fighting about what to do. Two things happen (I’m not remembering the timing exactly so don’t get all “we’ll actually” about it). Initiative deploys to our space to burn Legacy’s backlines. This is probably the Imperium’s best strategic decision of the war IMHO. Second, the M2 disaster occurs and everything is in turmoil. Immediately after M2, I know there were serious discussions about ending the war there, but it didn’t happen. Cue the “what if” scenario if it had.

I decide to refocus on defending Catch as, it was getting hammered by a variety of folks and we didn’t have a good foothold in Querious and the war seemed in trouble. This is the time there was a lot of heated debate about what to do. Others felt we had to go all-in on Querious immediately and let our space burn and I was concerned that if we didn’t win the war, our situation was going to be homeless.

On top of that, we didn’t have a lot of liquid ISK to spend on the infrastructure that everyone was going to need KS, industry, moon mining, etc. I refused to do warbonds because we had no way or ability to guarantee that we could ever pay people back. I wasn’t going to take people’s ISK knowing we had no way to pay it back.

The defense of Catch & Impasse is going poorly because we are basically were on our own to do it. We see the writing on the wall that there are no good choices and everyone is tired, worn out, and frustrated. The least worse option is managed move to Querious that we hope doesn’t end up in a rout in our old space and a desperate hope that we win the war.

Around this time the leaks happen of command arguing and talking frankly about the situation, which as was revealed, “we’re fucked”. Not a good day.

As a result, a couple things happen. TEST gives us the Keepstar, Sotiyo, and Tatara outright for free. I will always be grateful for this. The rest of PAPI also helps out in variety of ways. PL, our former nemesis, gives us 25 billion in loot from a destroyed Imperium Sotiyo as an example. Almost every PAPI group reached out to assist in some way.

The BC Piggy thing is since PAPI only trusted me in Brave completely, they wanted no other hands on the buttons of the Keepstar, even the rest of Brave leadership. BC Piggy (Brave Collective Piggy Bank) was a corp that Lychton set up to stash ISK years ago. Nancy Crow held it while he was CEO. I took it over because we try to make sure that Lychton’s characters always remain in Brave. So it was a corp that I was CEO of and the only other member was Lychton, who I was fairly sure was not going to flip the KS to Imperium. So after assuring PAPI, BC Piggy became the owner of the Querious ‘XL’ infrastructure.

We move into Querious while Catch & Impasse burn and we try to save as much of people’s stuff as possible, but many take huge losses in personal citadels, stuff that can’t moved, and other painful losses.

Around this point clarity is needed and I’m named Interim CEO. We try to avoid mistakes of the past in a variety of ways like giving the corp CEOs more freedom on structures, lowering the alliance investment in deploying and fueling. I also get very tight fisted on spending and try to rebuild our wallet. BC Piggy gave me a good vehicle to stash the ISK quietly and securely. As our industry/mining came online we started generating more income into POS Boys and the Holding corp, enough to cover our operating costs. We get a serious low sec mining operation running and people are making ISK and feeding industry materials.

Things are going fairly well. Our unified culture is a relief from the Catch vs. Impass drama and our wallet is growing. Cleary there were issues about our focus with needed Brave to be on the front line of the war vs. people recovering for losses due to the move.

And then we lose the war.

From what I can put together, there is argument and frustration in the highest level of PAPI leadership about the war. We weren’t in there, so I don’t know exactly. But basically the agreement is that PAPI is going to make a very strong push into the Imperium, it will be costly, but we need to crack them now, or PAPI will walk in 6-8 weeks (the dates always varied depending on who I spoke with). This led to the big announcements about the “final push” that coalition leaders gave.

We made honest preparations to make this push, driving the industry & market folks to make huge stockpiles of ships in T5. I invested 200 billion+ in the effort, others put even more into it. From what we were told, the major assaults would begin mid-week and then in earnest on the Friday before the weekend.

I still don’t know exactly how this was decided, but late that week before the assault, I was told that we were going to make a big push, and if it didn’t work, PAPI was basically going to cover an evacuation. If I revealed that information before the weekend, it would be betraying all of PAPI, whom we would need to cover our evac.

As you know the weekend starts with no huge fleets, and throughout the weekend, nothing really happens and I am told we are going to bloody their nose well on Monday and maybe get lucky, but be ready for the PAPI leaving announcement to happen.

Obviously, I’m frustrated for us as we are investing even more resources for the final fight all weekend, but I can’t call it off without the news being revealed.

The Monday assault happens and is a fizzle. Mid-fight, structures start unanchoring and it’s clear what is happening. I get time between work meeting to have the alliance chat where I read the words I wrote in case things went bad.

Rather than orderly evac with heavy defensive coverage by PAPI, everyone basically is rushing for the exit with loose coordination of the Keepstar chain plan to move the supers and fighting capitals out. PAPI basically abandons the plan to hold the Imperium in 1DQ for 3 weeks while everything unanchors in about 2 days and it’s free for all of chaos. The rest as chaos as the Imperium explodes out of Delve, preventing the ideal unanchoring and scooping of citadels plan for the most part.

We hold the line as long as we can to keep the JF and evac routes to high sec covered for Brave, while hammering our capital pilots to get their stuff moved to a safe place ASAP.

I’m also negotiating a place for Brave to regroup (Geminate) as I don’t want us in Legacy or another mega coalition as I feel that it’s the root cause of our losses. Not being in control of our own destiny and having to follow the lead of others.

That’s long enough for now. It’s only the briefest summary. I probably got some of the timing incorrect.

Yes, we need to reorg for better effectiveness and spreading of the load and address our paranoia that often makes us fearful to trust members.

Yes, we need more clarity on our direction, but we are only now securing Geminate as our regroup, and we all need to be focused as a group. When we try to have several major goals at once, it leads to internal strife, which is the death of alliances.

And yes, I’ve built us a nice nest egg to help our move to a long term home, but it will be no easy task, even with ISK. It will be even more hard work and sacrifice.

Alexis Finch on the history of bread pings (source = Slack, 2023-04-21)

Alexis Finch on the history of bread pings

Walayden Obsidia 0530

so…uh…why DO we ping bread?

Alexis 'It was like this when I got here' Finch (She/Her) 05:44

ok

Gather round everyone, Aunt Lexie has a story

I need to go run some errands so I'll make this quick sadly

Back in the day, the practice of pinging in lobby was forbidden by alliance rules

During the midst of a cultural renaissance, public opinion of this policy shifts towards allowing it, within reason. The rule is struck from the roster, the floodgates open. Lobby pings are allowed. In the first 24 hours, lobby is pinged several hundred times as people realize the new change and celebrate with a ping

But it slows down and people get bored

Move to 2020, the pandemic, lockdowns, etc People are at home, needing things to do, and a common hobby formed was baking bread. You don't need to go to the store as often when you make your own bread, all the ingredients are shelf-stable. People post bread they make, but don't ping it.

Then someone does, and we all agree we liked it

So we decided that if you make bread yourself, and you did your best, then it's lobby ping worthy

And uh

It's kinda just stuck

Because we're nerds and we like latching on to playful and unique things, and bread pings are playful and unique

, , , ,