As a preface, I’d like to explain why I am doing this- under normal circumstances, I do not reveal the identity of a source. I’ve left alliances in order to protect the identity of sources before, it’s not something I take lightly.
In this case, I have decided to break with that principal for the simple reason that, as someone who has spied against me, I consider Mike a double agent attempting to play both sides. As such, they are not a source, but instead a hostile spy.

Who is Mike?

Mike first contacted me in relation to NIGHT’s sieging of Lady Kynecha. I believe he contacted a great many players about that. I picked it up as a story for the telegraph, and proceeded to spin off a couple of other articles. Mike abandoned the Mike account as he had been extremely public about the situation.

The Warpath Heist

Mike got in touch with me again via a new account- Texas Red- with information that he had pulled off a major heist on Warpath. With this likely being the largest heist in Illyriad’s history, I decided to write up another article on it. The heist was perpetrated by an account called Nikesha, however afterwards the goods were sent to an account called Ignatz.
I had encountered Ignatz once before- when RUM was dissolving, Hellie had asked me to join RUM to piss runelord off. She claimed to sit Ignatz, and sent me an invite via that account.

Skirmishing with Laugh

YARR! was briefly engaged in a fight over a Dyallom Gall patch with Laugh. During our op to overharvest the patch, two accounts- catfish and marksman- leaked information about the op and bumped harvesters. catfish and marksman had previously come to my attention as they had the hallmarks of a suspected multiaccount cluster. Both accounts were kicked from the alliance.
We had tight infosec for this op, and so when a third account – JAKKU – had harvesters appear on the DG patch he was kicked from the alliance.

JAKKU and PUB

After kicking the three spy accounts, it was decided that they should be razed. Due to some bungled communication, some reinforcements for pinning blockades JAKKU were launched prematurely. When they arrived, JAKKU made a lot of shipments to Lady Rowena. Lady Rowena was evasive when asked about this.
JAKKU then moved into PUB. As a result of this, a brief war occurred between PUB and YARR!.

Mike’s PUB intel

Shortly after peace was agreed with PUB, Mike resurfaced on an account called Anaphora asking me what it would take for me to take out Jekyll and his alts. Mike then began sending me AC logs and mass mails from PUB and LaurL, with the LaurL messages coming from an account called Valerian Knight. The leaks were designed to cause me to go to war.
After Anaphora was abandoned, Mike continued to message me on a new account called RandomClot. Finally, today Mike sent me a mass mail from JAKKU. This indicates that Mike had both spied against YARR!, and attempted to incite a war between PUB and YARR! twice.

Conclusion

Mike is likely one of Hellie’s allies, if he isn’t actually Hellie (see Ignatz. PUB vs YARR! also generally works out in Hellie’s favour). The multiaccount cluster that catfish and marksman seem to be a part of is also likely allied or operated by Hellie.

I have IGMs that can confirm most if not all of this.

-E