Blackstone Collusion

 The Blackstone Collusion (BC) was a medium alliance on the black sphere. It was founded on 27 January 2009.

History
The Blackstone Collusion officially opened its doors and announced its presence with a recruiting video on January 26, 2009. It is not known how long Blackstone was operational prior to this date.

Its philosophy was based on combating the use of spies to frantically search for a casus belli in order to declare war against weaker, unsuspecting alliances, as well as combating common political practices such as accusations of harboring enemies. For this reason, the BC founders, Demeanor and Lex Luther, implemented a policy that required all members to remain anonymous. This allowed the Blackstone Collusion to escape military retribution for inflammatory political agendas, harboring a controversial member, or from making statements that would otherwise result in war.

The Blackstone Collusion posted a Declaration of Non-Existence (DoNE) shortly afterwards. The cyberverse had never seen anything like it before. This naturally led to many questions that were left unanswered, and created much confusion. The curiosity that followed led to the Collusion’s obtaining of over 300 members within its first 48 hours. Blackstone’s recruiting campaign was extremely controversial. It consisted of targeting alliance members of over 10 different alliances that had been defeated by the NPO, and offering them a chance for retribution. Traditionally, this would result in war, however, because BC’s members were anonymous, it was impossible to attack the Collusion. BC, however, became saturated with foreign spies.

The cyberverse welcomed the Blackstone Collusion with mixed feelings. While BC had created a few enemies, in the process, it created a few allies as well. All but one of its diplomatic ties remained classified. Shortly after BC’s DoNE, it signed a blanket treaty with Vox Populi – a fierce opponent to the New Pacific Order. While the two seemed to be natural allies, Vox Populi felt that Blackstone’s practices were beginning to tarnish its reputation. Additionally, the Blackstone Collusion opened its only viewable embassy at the New Sith Order shortly after its establishment.

While the Collusion announced its sole purpose, very few knew how BC had planned to carry out such a task. An announcement was made to its members that the Collusion would grow to sufficient strength prior to attacking the NPO. This, however, was a last-ditch long-term plan. One of BC’s main missions was to serve as a discussion table for representatives of anti-NPO alliances who were otherwise fearful of provoking a preemptive strike on their alliances. The goal was not only to work toward becoming militarily viable, but to bring a winnable war to NPO’s doorstep by any means possible.

The Blackstone Collusion saw the NPO-Jarhead War as an opportunity to build a strong enough army on its own. It offered various resources to the Jarheads, however, because the Jarheads lacked organization and focus, BC quickly realized that it had embarked on a failed endeavor. After NPO’s Declaration of War against OV, the Blackstone Collusion disbanded.

Charter/Constitution
While the Blackstone Collusion drafted an initial Charter, it was later agreed upon by its leadership that the Charter be revised and kept classified to prevent foreign entities from using the Charter against the alliance and its integrity.

Organization
The Blackstone Collusion successfully implemented a training program, intelligence analysis department, a classified foreign affairs organization, a research and development lab, and other classified departments. Rather than a military-style ranking system, the BC chose to utilize a chain of command similar to organized crime; job-based rather than social order.

Spying Activity
BC had earned a reputation as being a spy alliance. As its anonymous members were also members of other alliances, this enabled the Blackstone Collusion to serve as an information, as well as a disinformation hub. The BC leadership, through its foreign affairs actions, was able to sort credible intelligence from false intelligence that had been placed by enemy agents. Its members, however, were not privy to that information due to the lack of alliance security measures at the member-level. This caused the New Pacific Order to actively hunt for spies, and resulted in the dismissal of several of its members. Through this action, the New Pacific Order recognized the Blackstone Collusion as a credible threat. As long as the Collusion remained anonymous, it was seemingly free to do what it wanted.

The Karma War
Another strategy that the Blackstone Collusion would later employ was to serve as a catalyst that would provoke a world war. BC had expressed much interest in the green sphere for pursuing new friendships. Ordo Verde had just the right political connections that the Blackstone Collusion was looking for. While BC’s friendship to OV was genuine, the Collusion placed screenshots of the NPO forum into OV hands, sparking the Karma War. The alliances in which the Blackstone Collusion had “colluded” with still remain a mystery – a promise to those alliances in which BC’s leadership continues to honor to this day.

Research and Development
Most of Blackstone’s practices were experimental in nature and were the results of many new ideas on how to make an alliance virtually indestructible. By collecting guides and analyzing how each alliance fights, it was able to produce its own guides by taking the best from everyone. The Blackstone guide was nearly completed and was due to be released to the cyberverse just after the beginning of the Karma War. By releasing the best possible nation-building and war-fighting techniques to everyone, all alliances would be on level-playing grounds. Work was halted after the beginning of the Karma War.

While anonymity enabled BC to escape war, there were some disadvantages to its policy. Its security process allowed foreign spies to easily infiltrate the organization and incite uncertainty amongst its members. They were also able to provide false intelligence, which slowed BC’s operations. Nevertheless, this was a consequence that the Collusion’s leadership was willing to accept, and even exploit. Another by-product of anonymity was massive chaos and confusion. As the Collusion’s leadership was unprepared to correct this issue, its course of action was to use it instead. By encouraging chaos and confusion at the Collusion’s surface and directing everyone’s attention to it, Blackstone was able to carry out its agendas with little to no interference.

Although the Blackstone Collusion’s actions were unorthodox, widely unaccepted, and created much controversy within the cyberverse, it was able to carry out its agenda of ending global hegemony by sparking the Karma War. Through this war, leaders of all alliances soon came to realize that it was in fact, possible to defeat the New Pacific Order and her allies. In this respect, the Blackstone Collusion accomplished what it set out to do. While most recognize BC’s actions as instrumental in laying the foundation for the Karma War, others argue that it could have been done more gracefully.