I tend to have an obsession with these conspiracy type things. I originally wasn't going to pitch this idea - as i have a strict policy of meta-protection. I don't like people knowing ANYTHING, regardless of what they do with the information. But I felt that it's creation required competent people with competent characters, along with them being trustworthy, and obtaining them under the conditions of the server - that's absurdly difficult. So here I am. The Space Illuminati, or the Collective, was it's IC name, was an idea i tried on another server. It failed horribly for a multitude of reasons ((unrelated to the idea, more because there weren't enough people )). My character's grenade was shot and he exploded, taking another poor bloke with him. Sad stuff. But the idea was there and was mostly complete. The Collective would be a Chaotic Good faction. Their purpose was to take particularly corrupt and powerful individuals posing a threat to the citizens of... well, anywhere, and remove/change/alter them, through means of bullets, blackmail, and machines. Of course, the scope of the plans that would actually be executed is much bigger than that, but again, that's the general idea. We would be comprised of powerful individuals - but rarely world leaders (IE: Tarl Hollow, Astora, Nox). But then comes the question - "Who gave you the right to make that decision?" But the collective acknowledges this. They work off of a democratic council - an administrator is at the top to manage recruitment and manage the general decisions, but all of the big landmark decisions are decided with council meetings. There are two parts of the collective - the aforementioned inner council, who will be comprised of no more than seven people, and then there are the outer rim. Those who the collective contracts and contacts, like the companies that they own or mercenaries they're dealing with. Now, I assure you, when it appears, the collective will not be called the collective, again, to reduce the chance of meta. But this is the idea of the faction. And I'd like to see if people would like it - and possibly develop characters who want to join.
the problem here is specifically deciding who would be part of this thing I'm not trying to be an asshole here, I'm just stating this objectively as an example: Nox and Hollow are on two completely different levels of power here. I don't know much about the Wolves' power structure or how many members they have, but something tells me that he doesn't command something nearly as large as the Armada. This applies on a broad basis and brings up the following question: who can join? How powerful do they have to be? Do they have to be leaders of factions? If so, how big and well-known do the leaders have to be? Would any new leader of any new faction be allowed membership just for existing? Not to mention the structures of the factions themselves. Hollow is the leader of the entire RA, because the RA is a non-canon faction. The same goes for Astora and the Order. But ICly the USCM guys are only a small subset of the United Systems, a faction that's in vanilla lore. The same applies to the Holy Fleet. Would they therefore be excluded? Not to mention this entire thing can blow up OOCly. People might claim bias for not being included. This might turn into a "I'm in the space illuminati and you're not so I'm better than you" sorta thing. Current server politics are a guessing game in terms of faction strength, as they should be imo. Nobody knows exactly how powerful the other guy is. Everyone has the stuff they keep behind their backs that dilutes and evens the playing field. Creating something like this could shift all of that and create something akin to a faction "VIP" club. If you're not in the illuminati, you don't hold any power. It would be very, very difficult for new factions to form and rise to power. Just my two cents.
*raises red flag, blows whistle* What makes the concept of the Illuminati be that of how ominous it is is the fact that it does comprise of world leaders. It has to. Like M-Bot said, the requirement of power cannot be handled at a subjective basis or else everything falls apart rather quickly. If you want this to work right, they have to purely be world leaders: i.e. the people in charge of Liberty Mills such as the Mayor and whoever commands the Fleet, Astora, and the like. Then there comes the difficulty of keeping that a secret from everyone else ICly, especially when people like Astora wouldn't go out of their way to deceive his citizens like the medieval Optimus Prime he is. What you've suggested is more of a council for world leaders to speak with each other about concerns, which could be pretty interesting since it doesn't have to be a sign of power to participate, but rather for it to just be a way of having peaceful talks with each other without grabbing each others necks. It also doesn't help when one of the first lines of the idea you're pitching is:
I feel that the world leaders thing has been misunderstood. When I say world leaders, I mean the ones with the most absolute power in the region. We wouldn't recruit Tarl, say, but we WOULD recruit the president, as he does not have absolute power like tarl does. The reason for this is that our purpose is to monitor and examine world leaders in order to keep them from doing bad things, and generally - when you ask someone who owns a city to work under you because you say so, it doesn't work out to well. Another reason for this is the fact that world leaders like Tarl, for example, could have quarrels with people in simmilar positions in other places, and if all of them are in league, this causes problems. If we were to choose a contact in the R.A., it would be a high-ranking lieutenant serving under Tarl, or something similar 1. I was just makin' examples. 2: The general aim for recruitment would be based on the following - > Are they competent and can they keep secrets? > Are they trustworthy? > Do they have enough power, contacts, or relations that can be useful to us? > Do they relate to a situation we are handling currently? > Will they brag about being in the space illuminati? Again, I have a policy of no meta. You'd know I was, obviously, because I pitched the idea in the first place, but they shouldn't be telling people OOC about this shit. I see your points, but recruitments are circumstantial. I can't exactly put out a dignified set of requirements, you'd just have to give me an example and I'd tell you. 3: Again, I have a policy of no meta. You'd know I was, obviously, because I pitched the idea in the first place, but they shouldn't be telling people OOC about this shit. Also, I should state this now: The way we handle investigations are very similar to irl police investigations. Nobody is spied on (we don't take their information unless they willingly show us a super secret nuclear weapon) , without sufficient evidence that is debated between the council multiple times.
