15 July 2017 ·event

Inner Hell - First Wormhole Keepstar and the Anoikis Eviction Era

Image: CCP Games / ISD Thalack Dalhar (Interstellar Correspondents) · CCP IP fan-content / Interstellar Correspondents embedded photography

On 15 July 2017 a combined Hard Knocks Citizens / Lazerhawks fleet destroyed Inner Hell's Keepstar in J135031 - the first wormhole Keepstar ever killed - humbling the Russian-speaking corp that had grown out of Quantum Explosion in 2015, and forcing the rebuild that turned Inner Hell into Anoikis's most-feared eviction-merc institution of the late-2010s and early-2020s.

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The Discourse - Hard Knocks and Lazerhawks first to destroy Keepstar in wormhole space · ARC Studio (YouTube @ARCStudioEVE)

Inner Hell - First Wormhole Keepstar Destroyed

Background

Anoikis (wormhole space) has different physics than known space: random connections, no asset safety, no D-scan / local channel intel, mass restrictions on inbound connections. By 2017, a small set of elite wormhole alliances dominated the WH meta - Hard Knocks Citizens + Lazerhawks chief among them. Inner Hell, the Russian-speaking corp that had grown out of Quantum Explosion in 2015, occupied J135031 - known inside the corp as Домашка (Domashka, "home") - and had built a Keepstar there: the first Keepstar ever in wormhole space.

The community assumption was that wormhole-Keepstars were structurally untouchable. Mass restrictions on inbound connections were thought to make assembling a real siege fleet inside Anoikis impossible.

The engagement

Hard Knocks + Lazerhawks proved the assumption wrong over a 3-day timer chain: shield Thursday 13 July -> armour Friday 14 July -> structure Saturday 15 July 2017. The operationally hardest part of the campaign was not the structure-bash itself but the preceding seeding: 143 capitals routed into J135031 over 5-6 weeks through carefully-mass-managed WH connections - 60 Dreadnoughts, 74 Carriers, 4 Force Auxiliaries, 4 Freighters, and 1 Rorqual - assembled across enough random connections that getting the fleet in place was the bigger logistical accomplishment than the kill itself.

The structure-bash fleet on the day was approximately 30 Thanatos-class triage carriers plus stealth bombers and subcap support, commanded by Braxus Deniard and J3rz11.

Defender fleet size on 15 July was not published. Inner Hell never undocked a full counter-fleet sufficient to break the siege.

Decisive moment

First wormhole Keepstar ever destroyed. Confiscated, Inner Hell's leader, gave the moment its line, recorded by CCP's Interstellar Correspondents:

"We will continue to live and prosper."

Approximate ~180 B ISK in the Keepstar hull alone, with roughly 120 B ISK in loot surviving the wreck that Hard Knocks reportedly recovered. Full bilateral ship losses were never aggregated.

Aftermath

Inner Hell relocated and rebuilt. The corporation pivoted into the institutional eviction-merc reputation it carries today - built after this loss, not by it. The successor fight at J115031 in March 2019, when Hole Control was evicted by Inner Hell acting as mercenaries, closed the Anoikis-eviction-era arc.

Returning player note

If you left during the early-WH-Keepstar era (2016-17), this is the moment "untouchable" stopped being marketing for any EVE structure - k-space or w-space.

It also re-shapes how you read Fort Knocks (December 2018): that bigger, more famous heist was not the first wormhole Keepstar fall. This was.

Battle stats

Hard Knocks Citizens + Lazerhawks held the field

System: J135031 · Anoikis
Sides: Hard Knocks Citizens

Anchor

On side: Hard Knocks Citizens + Lazerhawks

L A Z E R H A W K S

Partner

On side: Hard Knocks Citizens + Lazerhawks

Inner Hell
ISK destroyed: 180 B
Decisive doctrine: 3-day timer chain: ~30 Thanatos triage carriers + stealth bombers + sub-cap support. Wormhole-Keepstar siege using mass-routed WH connections

What does “held the field” mean?

The badge marks the side that held the field at the end of this engagement — who was still on grid, who walked away with the objective on the day. It is not a verdict on the wider war or campaign, which often turned on logistics, attrition, or political fallout in the weeks after. The full strategic arc lives in the deep-dive above.

Caveats & contested numbers

The ISK figure here is the approximate Keepstar hull cost at 2017 prices (~180 B ISK), per CCP's Interstellar Correspondents. zKillboard lists the same Keepstar at 708 B; the difference appears to be the ~120 B in surviving loot that Hard Knocks recovered, since zKill includes loot value in killmail totals while CCP IC quoted hull-only. A third figure, 2.71 B from in-game appraisal, is documented by Friendly-Splash's Wormhole MER analysis (12 July 2021) as a calibration example for the structural pricing-source discrepancy. Friendly-Splash attributes the 2.71 B in-game value to regional market thinness in F-R00030 where Keepstars trade rarely.

The full bilateral subcap and capital losses across the 3-day timer chain were not aggregated by any source, since J-space killmail aggregation pre-2018 was sparse on zKillboard. The defender fleet size on 15 July 2017 is not published anywhere either; the ~300-pilot figure that surfaces in retrospectives is Inner Hell's 2020 membership count per Talking In Stations, not its J135031 fleet on the day. Per-side ship-loss tallies are likewise unpublished. Anoikis is the player-conventional name for wormhole space; it has no formal sovereignty region in CCP's own tools, but the community uses it as the region label.

Context at this date

Total ISK destroyed 180 B·0.6%

vs M2-XFE's all-time peak (29.11 T)

Killmails: - total ships destroyed game-wide that month, from CCP's killmail feed (aggregated by EVE Ref).
PLEX: - Jita market price of one PLEX (30 days of game time), in ISK.
Maps: - quarterly sovereignty / coalition / faction-warfare snapshots from verite.space (Verite Rendition).

See /economy and /sov for the full series.