Fraternity. is having a busy few days. The alliance that DOTLAN lists with 54,028 pilots and 343 systems under control picked up fourteen sovereign systems in the Tenal outlaw region on September 26, started upgrading them on October 3, and on that same day wiped out a Goonswarm Federation fleet at LX-ZOJ in Geminate. None of it was announced by Fenris Creations; it is all visible in the public data, and it is worth reading together.
Tenal: fourteen systems in two steps
According to the event log on Fraternity.'s DOTLAN page, the alliance gained control of nine Tenal systems at 13:14 on September 26 (A-1IJ9, A1RR-M, AR-5SY, GW7P-8, OE-4HB, RKE-CP, SF-XJS, Y-YHZQ and Z-SR1I) and five more an hour later (1BWK-S, KMV-CQ, NV-3KA, S-1LIO and U1TX-A). Eight of them were then moved from "FRT Holding" to "Fraternity Building Management", the alliance's own holding structure.
Then, on October 3, the same fourteen systems appear again with an index upgrade from 0 to 1: nine at 13:17 and five at 14:17. In other words, the Oct 3 entries are not new conquests, they are the first infrastructure upgrades on territory taken a week earlier. The Tenal region page shows the older Fraternity. systems in the region at index 5 and these new ones at 0, so there is a long way to go.
A caution on who lost them: DOTLAN's "Top Sov Changes" widget on the Tenal page lists Fraternity. at +14 and No Visual. at -14, which points to No Visual. as the previous owner. We only have that widget to go on, so treat it as likely rather than confirmed. What the log does confirm is that "No Visual Holding Corporation" left Fraternity. on October 2 at 04:01, and that No Visual. is among the alliances shedding members in DOTLAN's seven-day table (-153). Why, nobody has said publicly.
LX-ZOJ: 66 kills to 3 in fifteen minutes
The loudest result of the weekend came a few hours later. On October 3 between 13:20 and 13:35 EVE time, a battle in LX-ZOJ in Geminate pitted Goonswarm Federation against Fraternity. According to EVE-KILL:
69 ships destroyed, 12.18 billion ISK in total
Goonswarm: 3 kills, 61 losses, 10.24b ISK lost
Fraternity.: 66 kills, 8 losses, 1.94b ISK lost
108 characters from 26 corporations, and no titans or supercarriers lost
The most expensive single loss was a Nightmare worth about 1.54 billion ISK (killmail). Note that the battle page does not say which side each victim belonged to, so we are not attributing individual losses. LX-ZOJ was also named the most violent null-sec system on DOTLAN's three-hour list at the time, with 110 ships and 58 pods destroyed.
For context on why Geminate matters: this is the region where the Imperium and the Winter Coalition (whose logo on EVE Monthly's dashboard is Fraternity.) have been fighting since spring. We covered the wider picture, including the August membership numbers, in our null-sec report from September 17. A one-sided fifteen-minute fight does not turn a war around, but it is a very different story from the "Winter Coalition keeps bleeding" narrative of that report.
The rest of the killboard
LX-ZOJ was not the only place where ISK burned on October 3. EVE-KILL's battle list for the day also shows, among others:
FLK-LJ, Perrigen Falls: 79 kills, 9.06b ISK, over 1 hour 10 minutes (battle report)
Wirashoda, Pochven: 76 kills, 9.84b ISK (battle report)
J5A-IX, Fountain: 28 kills, 11.7b ISK in just five minutes, a multi-party fight involving The Initiative. (battle report)
Irmalin, Khanid: 8 kills, 10.5b ISK in five minutes (battle report)
The Perrigen Falls clashes, with Celestial Palace. and others, are a story of their own and we will come back to them. For now the takeaway is that the weekend was busy across Geminate, Fountain, Pochven and Khanid, with no capital or titan losses flagged in the listings we checked.
Membership swings, without the explanation
DOTLAN's seven-day alliance movement table, as of October 3, shows some large numbers: The Initiative. +963 members, Dracarys. +747, Fraternity. +294, while Pandemic Legion -926, Warriors of the Blood God -405 and Justice Gas Consortium -285. The pages for the alliances themselves do not explain the changes, and neither does anything we could find. They may be corporations moving between alliances, or something else. We are reporting the numbers, not a cause.
The jump-bridge complaint
On the player side, one forum thread captures the mood about the September 22 force projection overhaul. In "Ansi changes killing null pvp in AU tz", posted October 4, a pilot says targets in intel went from five or six jumps away to "10 or 11" for Australian-timezone players, asks for better Ansiblex access for battlecruisers and smaller ships, and says they will not be playing much longer. Replies suggest filament content or moving to the border of your own space. It is a single thread with three posts, not a poll, but it matches the criticism we reported when the update went live.
Side note: what counts as "excessive" mining in Exordium?
A longer-running thread, "Any Official Limits on Exordium Yet?", asks Fenris Creations for a clear definition of "excessive mining" in the new starter region (see the Introducing Exordium post). Replies from other players say there is no written definition and speculate it is left vague on purpose. Nothing official has been added, so this is community discussion only, but it is worth watching if you plan to mine there.
What to watch next
Whether Fraternity.'s Tenal upgrades move quickly or stall, and whether anyone contests them.
Whether Goonswarm answers in Geminate after losing 61 ships in LX-ZOJ.
CSM 21 candidates are due to be announced on October 6, with voting from October 22 to November 3 (via The Ancient Gaming Noob).
Sources
Images: alliance logos via the EVE Image Server; EVE Online is a trademark of Fenris Creations.