Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Li3 leaves the HBC: Drama and Trolling incarnate.

On or around February 14th 2013 our alliance leader Jadecougar received an offer, a most unusual offer. He was being contacted by the CFC, by Goonswarms Corps Diplo, and being offered territory in Vale of the Silent. Apparently while we weren't looking, the primarily AU timezone alliance Convicted [AIF] had some leadership problems and was made to leave the CFC. With a new sector of space opened, they asked Li3 to join and take Convicted's old space in Vale.

Jade, who originally came on the podcasting scene with Lost in Eve was at that time the CEO of  a wormhole corp Z3R0 Return Mining. He later went on to form Li3 Federation as a cross security type of alliance, attempting to integrate corps from all walks of life into a single community. While that was largely unsuccessful he did place an alt into Multiplex Gaming. After a time he decided to make Li3 into a nullsec sov-holding alliance. He formed a new corporation Li3's Electric Cucumber and they started as a small corporation inside SMA. He got to know the ins and outs of nullsec politics and already knew many of the important Goons from interviews on Lost in Eve. He campaigned to have his alliance join the CFC as a member but was turned down, as there was no available space and the alliance was inexperienced in the vagaries of nullsec life. The Goons suggested joining the then starting HBC as they were prosecuting a bloc war in the south against the nullsec alliance Against All Authorites and their smaller neighbors, and would surely have space to give an up and coming alliance. Upon hearing this the Cucumbers left SMA and rejoined L3F, joining the HBC's forces in Delve. After a time Li3 was given sov in Querious and contuned to perform in HBC's subsequent campaigns.

All the while I think some part of him longed to return to the CFC. The Goons are many things, one of them is well organized. It was clear to me at the start that the HBC was decidedly lacking in this area, they didn't have the experience or organizational skills to transition from running one alliance of 9000 characters to suddenly running a coalition spread across several regions, 15 alliances and 30,000 characters. Jade had some communication issues with HBC leadership, and was by and large given the cold shoulder. When the offer came Jade met with his directorate and it was decided that Li3 would accept the offer to join the CFC. Corp CEO's were notified at a meeting shortly thereafter, as well as Montolio himself.

Jade endeavored to keep things above board and make a clean break with the HBC. While that was largely successful as far as the sov mechanics and leadership went, the line members of Test and the rest of the HBC went into some kind of rabid shitposting frenzy the likes of which I've never experienced. The mongoloids were crawling out of every corner it seemed, the worst aspects of Reddit and Kugutsumen combined into a Voltron of venom and shit spewing, and that was just the external factors. Several corps had no intention of following Jade back to the CFC. One corp, had been on the CFC blacklist and thus didn't want to consider it. Some of the corps were just old fashioned Goon haters, others were alts of characters in TEST and Pandemic Legion and others simply didn't want to follow Jade, despite saying prior they were up for the journey, wherever it took them. Those corps were the majority, but as Jade was the executor, and thus the autocrat it was his decision where his alliance went.

Of course there was a cost to this, a 1300 man alliance saw over 700 of it's members leave. While disheartening I was not surprised, it's times of adversity that determine who one's friends truly are. MPX stayed committed to Jade and we made preparations to move across the map, again.

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