Stay Frosty and A Band Apart are probably the most neutral PvP entities in all of New Eden. The only blues we have are each other and our extended alliance family. We take no sides in wars, or in zero space, or in the constant tug-of-war that is factional warfare. It would be a mistake to assume this means we do not have friends - we have a lot of friends. It would also be a mistake to assume that all we do is fly frigates around looking for good fights.
We haven't survived for almost ten years in one of the busiest low sec areas in all of New Eden because we are stupid. We've survived for a wide variety of reasons, all of which are inherent in our mission. Primarily we survive because we bring reliable content to everyone. Those good fights we talk about are increasingly hard to come by and seeing an ABA pilot around the neighborhood ensures a certain level of content that we are more than happy to provide on a consistent level. This is good for everyone, even though some may not appreciate it from time to time.
We don't take Sov, except for fun sometimes. We aren't interested in territory.
Secondly is our events, which are massive, record breaking things that everyone enjoys participating in. We hold these for everyone, young and old, to experience PvP, Low Sec, and the pure joy of flying around in Frigates and getting exploded over and over again. There is nothing else like it in the game. And we'd like to keep putting them on every year.
Even so, every so often, someone gets it into their heads that we could be an easy target and goes and shoots one of our structures. Which we only have in our home system by the way. And that is when the other side of Stay Frosty and ABA comes into play. Now we don't claim to be a powerhouse or anything, we know where we fit into the ecosystem and we have no designs on anything else (see above), but that doesn't mean that we don't have an entire of blood-thirsty, experienced, well-armed pilots on hand that do little else but practice PvP every single day. Because we do.
And yesterday over 40 of them got together to defend our Athanor. The Athanor named after one of the original members of Stay Frosty - Joffy Aulx-Gao. So yeah, we may have taken that a little personal. And once you get that many of us together, well you can't just dock back up after the enemy refused to show up. So we went a few jumps over and put one of their structures into timer as well.
It was the friendly thing to do.