Black Legion leadership has called two completely separate meetings in the last twenty-four hours. Both meetings, called by different people, addressed the sharp and sudden schism that has developed in the Legion’s command structure. The rift was caused by recruitment drama between Ipsimus/Cesar Minero and Elo Knight when a friend of Elo’s submitted an application to Snuff Box that was extremely critical of Black Legion in general.
As per Alliance policy, the character was kicked from Origin., but Elo formed a new corporation he was going to bring into BL, in order to remove himself from Origin so as not to step on Ipsimus’ toes, and accepted his friend into that corporation. As a result, Ips removed the corporation from BL, and set the standings to red. This lead to a show-down where Elo arranged a vote with his shares in Origin in order to take back control of the corporation, and with it, Black Legion. Ipsimus’s CEO character, Cesar Minero, stepped down ahead of the vote.
With Black Legion already working on evacuating from Fountain, Elo announced a meeting at 0200 EVE time, with Capri holding his own meeting several hours in advance. Both meetings have been leaked to Soundcloud. The first meeting, by Capri, runs just over 36 minutes long.
The second, run by Elo Knight, clocks in a little shorter, at 34:36 long:
Both recordings were posted to the /r/EVE subreddit, some time after another post saying, among other things, that Elo Knight was being an ’emokid’.
Capri’s meeting covered a number of points. He began with a reminder about Elo’s meeting, then gave Ipsimus credit for being the primary content generator in the alliance in recent months. However, he added that many of Black Legion’s critical support staff — jump freighter and cyno pilots included — had gone more or less inactive.
Blame was placed largely on the new Aegis Sov system. The conquest of Fountain was acknowledged to have been a contributing mistake, but he stated that he personally felt the fighting with Brave Newbies had been worth it.
However, Capri also said that between the continuing troubles with the alliance, and this latest confrontation with Elo, Ipsimus would be leaving. This, in the opinion of most of the current leadership, meant that BL had become largely ‘inviable’.
After discussing the recruitment drama, Capri went on to tell listeners that Elo would be presenting a plan for rebuilding BL as a lowsec alliance. Capri said however, that he, along with “most of the people who’ve been running the alliance for the last four or five months” had “no interest in being a part of it, whatsoever.”
The rest of the meeting focused on prior incidents with Elo that have brought the rest of leadership to this point, as well as speculation on his current mindset. Other discussions focused on potential distribution of alliance assets, including donations for the Alliance Tournament team, and the proceeds from the rental program.
Elo’s meeting, by comparison, was confined to a narrower range of topics. First, he discussed the confrontation with Ipsimus, calling his own actions ‘childish.’ Elo then outlined a plan for maintaining alliance mobility by using black-ops battleships to bridge membership around, and urged everyone to train into blockade runners in order to take advantage of the extended covert jump range and reduced fatigue. The plan, apparently, calls for all pilots to carry around a heavy assault cruiser hull and all fittings in order to be able to fight once they reach their destination. In addition, the alliance would be relocating to the lowsec Gallente system of Vlillirier. This move would place them in easy striking range of a number of targets, including Pure Blind, Cloud Ring, and Fountain.
Members, however, did not seem completely on-board with the plan, pointing out that many of them had done very similar things in the past, and generally found the experience lacking. Following this began a long session of questions that seemed largely to be more focused on Elo’s leadership style and his ability to rebuild alliance leadership with competent individuals who could get the job done than on actual plans for the move and what they would do when they get there.
One observer summed up the two meetings simply:
Elo: “We will fix it by training for covops haulers and blops bridging to fights!”
Capri: “BL is functionally dead.”
Exactly which of those views turns out to be correct, only time will tell.
