This is going to be a more in depth article concerning the situation regarding Black Legion and the disputes among its leaders. For full disclosure, my name is Seraph IX Basarab and I’m the Intelligence Coordinator for Black Legion. What is going to be written will be based on my account and will go more in depth than simply a retelling of events. The short version is that Ipsimus and Elo Knight disagreed about recruitment policy regarding a specific member. However, the more in depth story is much more complicated.
Under the leadership of Ipsimus and Capri, Black Legion secured the wealthy region of Fountain after forcing heavy casualties upon Brave Collective, forcing a retreated to lowsec. The traditionally nomadic mercenary pvp-centric alliance now had to contend with what to do with such a rich region. Fountain was too valuable to squander, but too vast and empty of anyone to challenge Black Legion to keep. While wallets grew from the amount of ratting done, fleet numbers had begun to shrunk from their wartime numbers. Some, including myself, had called to sell Fountain as soon as possible and to move to a new conflict area.
Black Legion is not an alliance like most others. In other groups you have certain individuals focused on industry, others on ratting, and others on war. These various demographics unite when their common group is attacked or need to secure a goal for the greater good. BL membership is almost exclusively combat oriented and while that specialty benefits the alliance well in war, during peace the alliance suffers. Paraphrasing the Strategikon of Maurice, idle soldiers have nothing better to do that to start trouble among themselves and do wasteful things. Such is the case with Black Legion.
After several weeks of ratting heavily in the heart of Fountain, a move op was called to the edge of the region bordering Cloud Ring. This was not just a deployment, but a full on move op. “Get your shit out of 6vdt, we’re not coming back.”
BL struggled to have the numbers in fleet that it had during the war in Fountain. This frustrated the leaders who now lacked the critical mass to attain the objectives desired. Leadership vented this frustration by echoing some of the popular “anti-fozzie sov” sentiment. This seemed like somewhat of a contradicting considering we were living in Fountain/Cloud-Ring but had seemingly zero interest in engaging with the new eov mechanics. As a war machine, BL is used to high intensity decisive battle conflicts where as the current system requires a bit of “foreplay” before reaching that level. This shift in gameplay further frustrated leadership goals and interests, a sentiment which trickled down to the line members.
We lacked numbers because we couldn’t secure content objectives and we couldn’t secure said content objectives because we couldn’t get the numbers. This coupled with general leadership burn out put more and more weight on Ipsimus. It was this context that allowed a rather minor disagreement to escalate into larger drama.
A certain individual who is a personal friend of Elo’s had decided to leave BL and join Snuff. BL and Snuff had fought several times and was the primary ‘enemy’ in Placid for our fights. This prompted Ipsimus to take the precaution of kicking the member in order to avoid any sort of intel leak.
Elo, who had been afk for several months due to real life matters, had shown signs of returning to the game. Ipsimus had done a great job taking the leadership role within Black Legion as well as Origin and as such Elo decided to start a new corp and join BL with it as to not step on over him.
Elo’s friend, who had joined Snuff, wanted to rejoin BL now that Elo was back and did so in Elo’s new corp. Ips told Elo that if his friend was in the corp joining BL, he could kick the corp. He cited “the rules” which state that any individual kicked from BL cannot return by way of some other corp. In reply Elo, holding all the shares in Origin, called for a new CEO vote.
On one hand I can understand Ips wanting to kick a guy that is about to join a local enemy. On the other hand, I can sympathize with Elo wanting to play the game with his friend. While they are friends, it has not been the first time Elo and Ips have disagreed over how to handle certain things in the alliance. Who is right and who is wrong is irrelevant to most BL members I had spoken with and instead wish for some sort of agreement to be made to keep Black Legion together.
“They’re both just being childish. They need to squash it and move on.”
Short answer is, I don’t know. Nobody does. People had been bugging me to “write an article about BL” for a few days now and I’ve only done so at this point because there’s actually some concrete things to write about. Nobody knows how this will conclude. However, there are several possibilities.
Ips had stated that he would take the majority of active Origin members and form their own corp. From there they could strike out on their own, join a local lowsec group or even apply to Pandemic Legion. Initially it seemed certain that BL would simply cease to exist with corps making decisions about where to go individually or together. Certain groups such as P3AK and Boobheads have decided to stay in Fountain for the wealth offered there.
Some of these early declarations have been put on their head with Elo’s announcement that he would be returning to full activity in leading Black Legion. I’ve yet to fly under Elo but my impressions so far are that people think extremely highly of him. He’s a very talented FC that’s shown throughout his Eve career that he’s not just willing to take unfavorable fights, but pull many a victory off against horrible odds.
Where as there seemed to be no other options to disband BL and move on, Elo’s return has turned many people back toward keeping BL together. It was amazing to see how many people that were half way out the door did a complete 180 with Elo’s return.
The funny thing is Elo and Ips basically want to do the same thing: Lowsec pvp for now, specifically Placid. There’s actually more of a division in goals between the “lowsec camp” vs the “Fountain camp” than between Elo and Ips. A couple of corps had been uninterested to participate in the more recent fleets stating their frustration with the lowsec direction. Some would credit this to a genuine interest in the new sov mechanics while skeptics would say this is just due to an interest in going back to ratting and making isk.
It’s difficult to say how this will end up. There’s a lot of history and legacy that goes with the Black Legion name and people are attracted to the notion of flying under Elo. If his return is only momentarily it will depend wholly on the ability of the remaining directors to take up leadership positions that were once filled by people such as Ips and Capri. It’s still possible, and I think most people hope, that Elo and Ips will come to good terms and keep the alliance together.
Is Black Legion dead? Well it’s probably not going to be the same. The “Fountain Group” is already making preparations to lay their claim in 0.0 making the schism across a 0.0/lowsec divide all but inevitable even if Elo and Ips come to terms. At this point what remains to be seen is how the different members shift and who gets what.
1. Under the leadership of Baki and Carp, among others, the “Fountain group” has a distinct objective to be a force in 0.0, at least for the immediate future. Their attitude with sov seems to be a bit of a contradiction. Many of them such as Baki, Capri and Raknor, “hate the new sov” yet they want to go there. The plan is to “spread out within 5 LY” and find their own content while supporting one another against great threats. A very relevant question is, what is happening now that would motivate them to do this when this has not been done for the past month +? An answer presented was that now with a smaller group, other small groups would engage BL. Hopefully this theory works out for this group.
2. Ipsimus has been a very competent leader keeping Black Legion together after Elo departed. He’s gained the respect of many people in Black Legion including myself. He’s over all a very nice guy and if you’re willing to put work in to do something, he’ll support you. I completely owe my role within what I do in BL to his support. This is why his departure from BL will be a great loss. As for his prospects of striking it with his own group from BL, it may be somewhat problematic. While it may seem like a smart/stable move, the prospect of flying under Elo has gained the attention of many members.
3. Staying in Black Legion is basically only possible if Elo does as he says he will and come back and lead fleets. He’s an amazing talent, and as Capri put it “the best FC and content creator when he’s on top of his game.” Unfortunately some feel like he may not be up to the task and will lose interest within a few months of being back. If Elo does stay on board at least for a few months, it will be up to whoever takes up the new leadership positions to help Elo to keep Black Legion going in its less active times.
We’ll find out within the next few days how exactly this will play out. As someone that enjoyed flying with BL I hope all three parties accomplish what they set out to do.
