EVE's Sansha live event takes an interesting turn
On the 11th of May, CCP announced that they'd be bringing live events back to EVE Online. Later that day, the first event was set in motion with the apparent leak of private CONCORD police documents into the hands of players. The documents hinted at a Sansha NPC military build-up, and suggested that Sansha's Nation was behind the reported abduction of a Ducia Foundry expedition team. Events rapidly escalated, with players breaking the news that Sansha fleets had begun attacking the populated worlds of the four empires and abducting citizens in the tens of thousands. The most worrying part was that the navies of the four empires were unable to respond in time as the Sansha fleets were using wormholes to enter their target systems.
During the first few days of the event, locator agent traces on key Sansha slave actors between attacks revealed their presence in a system named 3-CE1R. This was quickly written off by many EVE players as a roleplaying inconsistency as that system is within the Jove Empire. Jove space is currently unreachable as the mysterious and technologically advanced race decided long ago to cut the stargate connections between their empire and the rest of New Eden. When random wormholes through space began spawning after the Seylinn disaster, none appeared to connect to Jove space. This led players to believe that the Jove Directorate possessed some form of control over wormhole formation, able to at least block it from occurring in their systems.
Skip past the cut to read the startling revelations recently made in this epic storyline arc.
Getting a foot in the door
The possibility loomed that the Sansha fleet appearing to be stationed in 3-CE1R may not have been a mistake. Sansha incursions into high security space proved without a doubt that they had somehow mastered the ability to manipulate wormholes. Not only could they make the wormholes appear over their target planets with pin-point accuracy, they were also able to block non-Sansha pilots from entering the hole and could collapse it at will.
Speculation ran wild within the roleplaying community. Perhaps Sansha's Nation, possessing impressive knowledge of cybernetic integration, had managed to up-link with a Sleeper database and learn the secret to controlling wormholes. Worse yet, if they had managed to break through whatever defenses were keeping wormholes from forming within Jove space, they may have succeeded where the Amarr failed so long ago. Sansha's Nation may have gained a foothold in Jove territory.
Efforts to locate an entrance to the Sansha's base systems have been underway since the attacks began. Recently, a lone pilot managed to get a probe through one of the Sansha wormholes. The probe relayed a single image of the Sansha forces and the wormhole's target system before being obliterated. Upon posting the image on the forums, the EVE roleplaying community's worst fears were realised. The screenshot showed not only a massive Sansha force, but also a familiar-looking structure. The fleet consisted of rows of Nightmares, Chimera carriers, Moros dreadnoughts, Wyvern supercarriers and Avatar class titans. Sat in the background was a structure which has been identified as "Prosper Vault", a key Jove station in 3-CE1R. The entire station and all its technological might has fallen to Sansha's brutal nation. In response to the Sansha capital build-up in Jove space, the four empires have put their fleets on high alert.
