With all the intel in this thread i suppose you will soon have permanent visitors around you. I would have used an alt on my account for anonymous discussion or kept it to a support ticket with CCP for clarification.
Even naming the system you retreated to is super stupid. It is safe to not consider it a retreat anymore. Unless it is the other way around ofc and you are setting up an elaborate trap for your soon to arrive guests.
Why should the drifters have all the fun?
Why did you even lock them? That only gives you information about their current HP percentage, not their resists. I’d be surprised to learn that locking an NPC wouldn’t be considered a hostile action.
Drifter battleships only spawn if some idiot shoots the lancers anyway. They are aggressive towards everyone IIRC but as long as no one messes with the lancers they don’t show up.
Maybe someone did this to indirectly gank people and the plan succeeded. 
Oh those things are terrifying! If I shot an Autothesian Lancer 5 years ago with my mission Corm (took one shot of 720 damage, I still remember the exact value) and took off, would they be mad at me still?
Or is it only drifter aggro in Jove Observatory systems?
Edit: I did this in Arnon. If this summoned a Drifter Battleship I probably really ruined someone’s day.
No personal experience really but if you see them best to get away quick unless you’re in an expendable ship.
Also not sure how long the aggro stays so can’t tell if they still have you on their aggro list after five years.
Maybe you could check it out with a cheap frigate as suggested in the resources and worst case they blow it up thus likely clear the aggro and best case they won’t even mind you.
Just make sure you don’t warp to one of their stellar observatories nor unidentified wormholes as that can trigger their aggro.
Stay Safe!
Wanted to BM the Zkill page for hilarity’s sake and I… I just noticed the Obelisk.
Do not come to me going “yeah see those NPC are the problem”.
Thats exactly what some people do. Kill some lancers, wait for the reinforcements, warp to a station and wait until they follow. Before they can lock, dock up. Enjoy the next inexperienced guy who simply don’t know what they are and/how to deal with them.
No offence, but I had a look at your ship loss and it isn’t even remotely “fully tanked”. A fully tanked Golem sports at least: 2x abyssal shield extenders, 2x deadspace multispectrums, a faction damage control, full Nirvana implants and at least one shield extender rig (ideally two).
At a glance, even in Bastion this fit probably had no more than 50-60k EHP (and not the 200-300k EHP I suggested you’d need at a minimum).
This is intended solely as constructive criticism. If you can get ganked by a half dozen catalysts you don’t have near enough tank. You want to force them to bring at least 3-4x that number to the party.
There are a few diehard ganking groups that run around with 3-4 bombers or ENIs that you’re also vulnerable to.
Sry, only idiots fly in HS with Deadspace fit Marauders. -_- No offense.
At least it wasn’t officer fit…
You did something naughty is Stoure didn’t ya..? 
Please Don’t give me ideas.. 
CCP has introduced a lot of very dangerous NPCs, designed to do one thing and one thing alone: Kill capsuleers, particularly in high sec. To not do proper intel and gather information about NPCs, other players, or anything about the game is utter suicide and it seems like you just want easy kills. To state that the cruisers are “designed” for high sec but not the drifter BS is hilarious to me. You just want whack-a-mole NPCs to slaughter and not actual entities that can do any real damage. No danger, no risk. Ive lost ships to NPCs in hilarious ways like warping to a planet to probe and not having them on overview and getting nuked in a few seconds. You adapt and move on, not whine on the forums how it was bad game design and scream to get it changed.
CCP wants more destruction, particularly in high sec, and yes that is game design. If youd been around for a while and actually researched information about the game youd have seen it happening.
I hope you are hunted and culled from the herd. And then I hope you respawn as a more educated player, stop the whining and adapt, improvise and overcome in Eve.
As for the drifters yes shooting them once will cause a lifetime of grief. Sometimes its fun to hang on gates to watch poor saps aggro them and die in blingy stuff so I can loot their corpses.
High-sec is potentially very dangerous… Drifter revenge against players for the Drifter Crisis?
Based a player poll - 78% spend their time on some form of PvE. And according to CCP’s own numbers, in excess of 50% of the player base spends their time in high-sec. So one could argue that high-sec is already borderline “HelloKittyFluffyPuff land” (null-sec is already SnufflePuff land").
@Syzygium is right, though. The super-OP/over-the-top Drifter battleships that basically one-shot you are ridonkulous in high-sec.
I am starting to see what people meant when they said there are a bunch of forum trolls with chatgpt posts.
Yes, they only shoot if you have shot at them. And they remember aggro for a period of time but not forever.
Thus I am not buying the thread author’s claim that he never shot at those things.
A mining permit can prevent such loses.