It sounds Machiavellian to admit that this took some planning, but it did. I'm not sure why anyone would go into something without thinking ahead, perhaps it is the entrepreneur within me, but it made sense to try and plan out a way to make this work. (Not only am I an entrepreneur in real life, but I work with them all the time.) Everyone I talked to back in those early planning days said the same thing, "Make sure you have a plan!" Ok, makes sense, so we had a plan.
Again, not in a grand-master controlling every detail way, it would be contingent on many factors we couldn't directly control - but it was still a plan. And now it is time for Phase Two of that plan.
Lucifer's Hammer will remain independent.
With well over 40 offers on the table our options were, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. As I promised earlier I won't reveal those options, suffice to say they ranged from fellow Pirates to Null Sov Holders and beyond. I would like to express my personal thanks to everyone that contacted us over the past week to talk about your Alliance, Corporation and or plans for the future. It once again illustrates to me the vitality of this community and the wide-range of activities people are engaged in. Sometimes you forget that and need to be reminded. We tend to get a little "tunnel-visioned" working on our little corners of the universe, don't we?
That is the thing about having a vision. While it may change daily in minor detail, the ultimate goal never wavers. Each opportunity we received was a possibility. And each one was dealt with and considered as such. In the end we decided that it was time to take the game to its ultimate conclusion. To keep trudging along on this path and see where it leads. We started out on this path with a goal in mind and we need to continue on that road.
Much remains to be done. We are still building that group of 40 great pilots upon which we can build a great Corp. Recruitment is going very well and we are over half-way to that original goal. We are an odd bunch and we don't really fit well into established groups. Which makes me wonder if there isn't room in Eve for yet another large group of like-minded pilots that don't buy into the "serious business" aspect of this universe?
My good friend and fellow Director (although I prefer the title Minister) Ashkrall, who is responsible for our amazing website (portal, forum and killboard), wrote something about us on the forum yesterday that I'd like to share with you. I've edited parts of it for public consumption, but this was written without my input and I thought it captured the spirit of our Corp extremely well.
"LUCRH has a rather unique corporate culture. We all get along extremely well, and we all know and are friends. We enjoy flying non-conventional fits and fleets, and we all very much enjoy flying with neutral friends. This is, in a large part, what makes us successful. This is also a large part of what has caused friction between us and our past alliances.
In BLACK-MARK, we were pvpers in a den of carebears, and the corporate culture of awesomeness and winning clashed with ally leadership. In RK, our neut friends and our silly fits essentially got us kicked. Our culture again also clashed with leadership. In Unicorns, yet again our Corp culture got us kicked in record time.
LUCRH is the problem. We don't fit into most cookie cutter alliances, because we simply are too batshit crazy. We want to do our thing whenever we want, f**k the consequences.
That is why we should form our own alliance.
Flying with friends is a huge priority for us. Our own alliance let's us set our own blue list, and dictate what we want to do.
Flying with neuts is an integral part of our way of life, and our own alliance makes us accountable only to ourselves.
Our own alliance gives us the freedom to redeploy clear across the galaxy whenever we want, make new friends whenever we want, declare wars on noobs whenever we want, and do anything else we want.
There are undoubtedly likeminded corporations out there that may want to join. These people aren't potential alliancemates, they are brothers-in-arms. We don't, however, pin our egos to some trivial number such as alliance member count. If we never find another Corp to join us, so be it. We still have our blues and our neut friends to fly with us."
Lucifer's Hammer will be forming our own Alliance. Welcome to Phase Two.
More details to come.