As I said: IF Grath were to give that order, it would be followed. Having talked to Grath more than once, I don’t expect he’d give that order, even if he did come back.
The conflict began over a year ago, because when we came north in YC 120, Sort Dragon negotiated a peace deal with us after we killed half a dozen Keepstars belonging mostly to PanFam, and basically made his space unliveable. That was also the occassion of Killah’s immortal order for NCPL pilots to dock up all their faction supercapitals—a smart order, but not exactly an inspiring one.
Gobbins, in particular, got mad at Sort over the deal. I don’t know if the problem was Sort securing a bit of breathing space for Horde while we had all of Geminate more or less shut down on ratting and mining, or if it was because we wouldn’t give anyone but DeadCo the full 3-month ‘we won’t attack you’, since Sort was the only one on that side paying us off. Either way, Gobbins got butthurt, and immediately declared war on DeadCo. A little while later, NCdot declared they were stepping into the conflict in support of DeadCo… and then promptly shot them anyway.
Of course, as Sort will happily tell people: that sort of knife in the back is pretty much par for the course with Vince. Which is why, last year when we came north again to punish NCdot this time, Sort decided he’d had enough of Vince, and went on his own offensive—the war you’re talking about is the same war that started 16 months ago.
And for the record: CVA and Provibloc have been fighting to hold that space for at least twice as long as your alliance has existed. They don’t need you coming around trying to tell them ‘I only hit you because I love you’. And the Trigs aren’t nearly as big a threat as you seem to believe. If they were… then you wouldn’t see tiny little dread groups from the empires as their response. You’d see titans and supercarriers, with full fax support. You’d see the empires taking it seriously.
I mean, ok. You’re new. You haven’t seen what it really looks like when capsuleers go to war. You’ve seen… what? Eagles? Muninns? A battleship fleet or two? Dread bombs of two dozen ships? If the empires really took the Triglavian threat seriously… they’d go to war like we go to war… when we really go to war.
I promise. Nothing you’ve seen so far even comes close.