In a short announcement today, RAZOR Alliance leader Maestr0 has decided to leave the Imperium by unanimous vote of all CEOs, and will be returning to their old home of 6NJ8-V in Venal effective immediately, continuing for the foreseeable future. In a public SoundCloud post, the RAZOR Alliance upper leadership disclosed it will be staying blue to Goonswarm Federation temporarily until they have finished their movement operations to their new home, as agreed with GSF Diplomats, after which they will, presumably, reset all standings and become neutral to their former allies.
RAZOR’s decision to leave lowers the overall size of the Imperium by 1,234 pilots, bringing their total number of pilots down to 19,849. While The Imperium maintains its number one spot in coalition size, the Drone Region Federation is now incredibly close, with 18,427 pilots. With the recent losses in the existing Imperium alliances, it is not unreasonable to extrapolate that the Imperium will be losing their top spot in Coalition strength within the next few weeks.
While RAZOR has not played a major role in the Imperium’s oppression fleets against Pandemic Horde or in the besieged response fleets in Saranen, they have been quite busy in skirmish PVP in Syndicate, Outer Ring, Tribute and Venal, and since January have lost almost a thousand members, presumably due to the MBC/Imperium conflict, a situation which the Alliance as a whole agrees is unsustainable, as weekly activity and PVP participation has fallen drastically, with only 68 pilots involved in PVP in the last 7 days.
In a very short question and answer session, leadership stated the goals of this move were limited at present to moving and rebuilding, but it was also stated that it was in immediate response to members’ plummeting desire to remain in the Imperium.
‘Basic ideas are we are going to harass everything around us,’ one senior member said, in reference to a plan to field more Black Ops-style fleet doctrines while answering a question as to what they were planning to do when they reached their destination. ‘6NJ is not a bad place to be, there are agents, good PVE, some PVP but without all the politics. It’s going to be a lot of fun.’
Another member asked, ‘What is the long-term plan, will we be aiming to get revenge or hold sov somewhere?’ another senior member added, ‘We’re going to take back a few of our old moons, we are going to rebuild, have fun and be really annoying.’ ‘Recruitment is almost impossible due to being part of a universally hated coalition and we’re getting our faces smashed in. No one wants to join that.’
RAZOR stated they would be focusing on tactical destroyers, stealth bombers and interceptors for now, but the implied loose nature of their announcement suggest there is plenty of room for adaptation and enhancement to their plan. There has been some criticism that this move op has been publicly announced without movement operations firmly organised internally, and that this might have been a tactical mistake. It is clear that RAZOR does not intend to maintain relations with The Imperium any longer than necessary for their move ops, as they are already asking ‘Can we kill a Goon Citadel?’, which received the answer ‘Not while we’re blue,’ and several members stated how happy they were with this plan to leave their former allies.
Some members of the reddit community are claiming that the Imperium Alliance The Initiative. will not be observing blue standings with RAZOR, but these claims are unconfirmed. In the announcement, the temporary blue standings were said to have been agreed upon with Goonswarm and INIT, but have not been agreed on with other member alliances. The Initiative. have been closely involved with RAZOR in Syndicate, and have also avoided the majority of the siege of Saranen which has led some to speculate as to whether they will be following suit and resetting The Imperium for the same reasons. While neither alliance’s departure will hurt The Imperium’s combat effectiveness in the war against the MBC forces in Saranen, Deklein and Fade, the sudden loss of yet another alliance, this time for reasons other than deteriorating political relationships and simply because it is no longer fun to remain within the coalition, might encourage other Imperium alliances that have been hit much harder by the war to formally reconsider their continued membership.
