CLASSIFICATION: Public, and proudly so. SUBJECT: Shadow Talon Division and its Blue Coats Science Division, September 2025. COMPILED BY: The TNF newsroom, standing on the shoulders of a Lt. Commander.
Situation
Shadow Talon is TNF's black ops division: patient hunters who wait in the dark, then arrive all at once. September 2025 was one of its busiest months and, by some distance, its funniest, because FC Pict1on started writing the results up as mock-classified military dossiers. Executive summaries. Asset utilisation sections. Command sign-offs. The corp loved them instantly.
This after-action report covers three of those operations, plus a word on how a pilot gets into the division in the first place.
Mission summary
| Operation | Date | Unit | Reported result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Eclipse | 4 September 2025 | Shadow Talon | 3 confirmed hostile kills, about 3.9 billion ISK; one "ORE STRIP MINER" recovered |
| New Dawn | 9 September 2025 | Blue Coats, Science Division | 400 million ISK in recovered ESS bonds; collateral damage "minimal, mostly morale" |
| New Dawn: The Second Bugaloo | 11 September 2025 | Blue Coats, Science Division | 14 confirmed hostile kills, 3.2 billion ISK destroyed, 650 million in ESS bonds, around 1 billion in rare modules |
Execution
Operation Iron Eclipse
The first dossier landed on September 5. "Operation Iron Eclipse" was billed as a covert patrol sweep of "Sector 9, Outer Rim Territories," launched in response to "unverified reports of insurgent movement."
Translated from the military-speak: a black ops gang went hunting. The outcome section reported 100 percent of threats neutralised, three confirmed hostile kills worth about 3.9 billion ISK, and, under recovered assets, "Advanced mining technology ORE STRIP MINER." Somebody's mining day ended abruptly. The report was signed "Lt. Commander Pict1on, Tactical Operations Lead, Shadow Talon Division," approved by REDACTED, and classified "TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY," which is a lovely thing to post in a public corp channel.
The corp read the dossier and went straight to the killmails. Xander Ryn posted the pod kill from the night with a two-word review, "spicy pod," and Killjoy Ender seconded it: "nice pod kill." Harrat asked whether anyone from the Talon op had grabbed a usable screenshot, because a story that good deserved pictures.
Operation New Dawn
A few days later a new unit appeared in the paperwork: the Blue Coats, TNF's self-styled Science Division. Their mission was to test new ideas in small-scale ESS raids1 deep behind enemy lines.
Science is not always kind to scientists. The report filed this one under "Comp test / Limit testing," noted collateral damage as "minimal, mostly morale," and still came home with 400 million ISK of ESS bonds. Mission status: SUCCESSFUL. Nobody argued.
There is a serious point under the jokes. Trying an idea, writing down honestly how it went and then trying again is how small gangs get good. The Blue Coats simply did it with more paperwork than anyone thought necessary.
New Dawn: The Second Bugaloo
The sequel, flown on September 11, went a great deal better. The report claimed 14 confirmed hostile kills, 3.2 billion ISK of hostile ships destroyed, 650 million in ESS bonds and around a billion in rare modules recovered. It was co-signed by Lt. Commander AmoriA as Tactical Operations Lead for the Blue Coats, making the Science Division officially a two-commander outfit.
Special commendations
The finest paragraph of the month sat at the bottom of the Second Bugaloo report, under the heading "SPECIAL REVISON! & commendations." It was addressed to MontyGTV, who handled fleet anchoring.
MontyGTV, your anchoring is nothing short of a masterclass in brilliance. Watching you work is like witnessing a chess grandmaster play five boards blindfolded while reciting Shakespeare.
It goes on. It gets better. Footage from the roam went up in the corp media channel, where Pict1on rated one engagement simply as "peak."
Meanwhile, on the killboard
The black ops crowd were not the only ones having a good month. On the evening of September 11, Sllice found himself crowned "new king of Catch" by a corpmate after a strong month on the killboard. He thanked "all the ahem top pilots this month," with a special nod to Emperor Caligula for "taking a break so I can catch up." Anhenka then delivered his own acceptance speech: "I'd like to thank the Academy for their consideration."
Recruitment pipeline
Shadow Talon is not reserved for veterans with a dozen accounts. Earlier that summer, Xander Ryn finally got his first black ops outing: two drops and a hand in two kills. His review was three words long.
"Fun stuff!"
That is the whole sales pitch, really.
Lessons learned
- Write it down. A good fight is fun once. A good write-up is fun every time someone scrolls past it.
- Report honestly. The dossiers list what went wrong as cheerfully as what went right, which is why people trust them.
- Thank your anchor. Fleets fly in formation because somebody is quietly doing the hard bit. Say so, at length, ideally with Shakespeare.
- Science counts even when it fails. New Dawn's first outing was mostly morale damage. Two days later the same idea came home with 14 kills.
Sign-off
Report compiled, reviewed and approved by nobody with any authority. Classification remains: please read it out loud on comms.
Notes
The Encounter Surveillance System collects a share of bounties in a nullsec system. Raiding one means arriving uninvited, emptying it and leaving before the owners finish typing.↩
