Hey guys. Some other Discoers told me about this, so I decided to pop in and put in my two cents.
This makes me sad. More than anyone else, I've poured my sweat and tears into the Hellfire Legion. I joined the day I joined Disco – just after Christmas in 2006. The Hellfire Legion had existed for all of two months at the time, and I was one of maybe three non-founding members. When I first joined, I wasn't even in high school yet, and now I'm almost halfway through college. I had no idea what RP was. At the time, New York was both the starter system and a no-RP no-PvP system (yeah, that was dumb). My first words on the server were “newbie looking for clan, pst”. TankTarget – the leader and founder of HF – happened to be in the system, as was a member of the newly-formed SA (LN, back when they were terrible). After listening to them both, I joined HF and never looked back. Tank took me under his wing, giving me a top-end train right there from day one. For months, I flew around in my little Slipstream with full Chain Gun Ecos and no armor, slowly learning. I learned what it meant to roleplay, why it mattered, why it was fun. I learned about making characters, about lore and background and storytelling. It was fun.
All things change with time, and after about a year or so, I found myself as the head of HF, and the earliest remaining member. I'd pulled us through some hard times with hardcore recruiting – I had all the free time in the world, and spent almost all of it on HF. I was regularly, personally recruiting and mentoring over a dozen members a month. Were most of them terrible? Yes. That was the start of the Legion's reputation for selectivity. We took everyone, trained them, and weeded out those who refused to learn. The result was one of the largest, most dedicated roleplaying factions on the server. We built lore, we did events, we spent an average of over a dozen manhours a day just talking with people in system chat. It was glorious.
Eventually I moved on from Disco. I've been on and off since – I've even led the Legion once since – but really, those were my glory days. That's when the bulk of Legion lore was fleshed out. Oh, sure, it already existed, but it was silly, written like a superhero comic crossed with a bad fan fiction. We ironed out the kinks, filled in the details, figured out motives and means and morals.
“But HF is just a PvP faction!”, you protest. That's a blatant lie. We were never about the shooting. I've tried to make people understand this over the years, but no one ever has. So let's be clear – Freelancer is a violent universe. Just look around you as you fly around – NPCs run around for the sole purpose of shooting each other every day. Seriously. Pirates shoot transports, Xenos shoot Junkers, GMG shoots Outcasts and Corsairs. Such a universe doesn't just suggest shooting – it demands it. But there's more. The Legion was, fundamentally, an organized and violent anti-government group. In-roleplay, of course, we denied any wrongdoing – we were freedom fighters! But no, out of character, we all knew we played villains. We played rabble-rousers and revolutionaries, people who refused to go through the proper democratic channels to change the government, but instead opted to enact change via a coup. In other words, we played people - people united by a common cause, but people. Violent ones, at that. Sure, they would moralize, and they even meant most of it, but at the end of the day, killing people – even if they were just Navy people – was what HF did. To suggest, then, that we not shoot people is ludicrous. It would be very bad RP. In the early days, we tried to take a more propaganda-driven route. I preferred that path, to be honest. More interaction, and longer, meant more fun, for longer. However, we got complaints and mockery. “Just shut up,” people said. “you're spamming chat. Go away. You're just a terrible wannabe faction.” So, we decided to let realism usurp my own preferences and started actually fighting more. And we won, for the most part. We had a long history of winning. When the LSF finally showed up, we had actual RPers to play with and fight. Then, when the SA turned into the LN, within a matter of weeks our winning streak was over. We've won since, and regularly, but every time we've gone on a winning streak, we've been called ooRP PvP whores and cheap gankers. Not sure how we were supposed to win there.
Another subset of the population has always cried “but think of the Hackers!” at HF. Frankly, that's a load of crap. If you take one thing away from this, if I can only hammer one thing about into your head, let it be this: The Hellfire Legion was never a Lane Hacker faction. Ever. We held a Lane Hacker IFF and ID for years simply because there was no better option. We needed a vehicle for our roleplaying ideas, so we said we'd been taken in by the Hackers. There was no Hacker player faction at the time; we were the first Liberty unlawful faction. As such, we had a lot of plot leeway, and we used it. We always maintained that we were distinct from the Hackers. The Legion frowned on Cardamine from day one, even when we were allied with the Outcasts. We never harmed civilians or pirated, and any who did were promptly executed or banished. From day one, we told everyone that we were not Lane Hackers. We told people our backstories. We'd stop and tell our foes who we were and try to convince them to come over.
As soon as we had the chance – and it was far later than it should have been – we got our own ID. A couple years after, our own ships and IFF. We never wanted to use the Lane Hacker ships or ID, and got rid of it as fast as we could. It did nothing but hamper our vision. We even abandoned the ships Gurjiv made specifically for us – the modern Broadsword and Falchion – and left them to the Hackers so we could do it. Tycho/Durandal/whoever you know him as painstakingly modeled a whole new line for us just so we could get rid of the Lane Hacker thing. It was years in the making, but we finally managed to be true to our vision.
“But what about the Spyglass!?”, some cry. Well, because I haven't spammed you with enough history yet, here's the story about that. In the beginning, Discovery was still a ship pack. It still maintains a lot of ship pack mentality, actually. But the original Spyglass was just one of many ships – along with the original Ranseur, the original LABC, the original Liberty Carrier, etc. etc. - that was just given to some random faction as part of the ship pack. You know the who “stolen from Liberty” backstory? Yeah, HF wrote that. When first came about, we saw this thing laying around, thought “huh, no story there, that's silly”, and made the original LNS Ragnarok a Spyglass. The Spyglass was always an HF ship we “loaned” to the Hackers in exchange for their support. And, when the Legion and the Hackers finally went down to unfriendly, those Spyglasses went away. A lot of people were angry about that.
And what about Vespucci? Did we steal the Hackers' guard system? Well, no, not exactly. We bought it and made it the Hacker guard system, because we were Hacker-affiliated at the time. It was never a Hacker system – it was always HF. It just was stuck as Hacker as long as we were. When we went full HF, we even offered to mod a system for LH for free, but they declined. Thus, no Hacker Guard system.
A lot of the confusion stems back to Discovery's original no-original-factions policy. Yeah, HF kinda broke that, along with many other factions (CR, Phantoms, SCRA, etc.). So like those factions, we had to be “affiliated” with an NPC faction. CR was affiliated with many people – IMG, for most of their lives, but other factions before that too. The SCRA was Corsair-affiliated for years. The Phantoms were Xeno-affiliated. When that rule finally relaxed, those factions started to become canon groups. Problem for HF was, we were 1) Unorthodox in our roleplay (it was more complex than just “kill all 'cause crazy”, “we're commies!”, or “exiles seek home”), 2) in the public view (because Liberty), and 3) had terrible PR at the time because frankly Gurjiv just didn't care what people thought. As such, no one really “got” us, few people liked us, and it took longer to get anywhere on the whole faction thing. When you have years-long development cycles, a couple extra months can result in a much later introduction time.
So what was our roleplay, anyways? It's hard to boil down, but I can give a short explanation. Fundamentally, the Legion consisted mostly (not entirely, of course, like any organization; there are corrupt BPA members, for instance) of self-righteous moralizers who, for various reasons, thought they had been wronged by the Liberty Navy. They hated the Navy, specifically. Most were ex-Navymen, and for various reasons they thought the Navy was fundamentally unjust. Most were fugitives from the law, desperate men willing to lay their lives on the line for their misguided beliefs.
Legionnaires truly thought they were in the right. They saw themselves as the “good guys” - and tried to act like a true House military at war with another House military. As we were allowed to develop, Legionnaires started shooting drug smugglers and pirates, developing independent relationships with any who would have us, and treating our captured enemies more like PoWs and less like captives to be tortured and converted or killed. We performed super-soldier experiments, experiments which gave the Keepers a springboard into existence in a hostile environment. We had corporate sponsors (spent ages developing those relationships IC), allies (see: Xenos, they hated us and vice versa at first, and it took a while to get that trust together), and, yes, defectors and enemies. We operated increasingly like a military as time went by. There were even propositions to make HF a true open faction based in Vespucci as a capitol system, with HF military and trader IDs available for everyone. Unfortunately, the developers at the time shot those down. Incidentally, I'd still love to see that happen.
Hopefully this clears up a long of lasting questions on HF. I doubt it will, though, because despite my hopes, I've made posts like this about half a dozen times over the years, and no one every did pay them any mind. Discovery's a stubborn beast with a thick skull, and I don't doubt most of you will ignore this post as you have every other. Nevertheless, it's a fitting eulogy to the best and boldest roleplaying faction ever to grace Discovery. If anyone has any questions that aren't answered above, you can contact me over Skype at denelo.mori. I'll do my best to answer them. If you're going to tell me we suck without reading the above, you can go do anatomically improbable things with a plum.
You have no idea how hard it is to see my seven-year-old baby go, but it's time. Not because of the inactivity – they could recover from that – but because HF has become rotten. I've seen pictures of Legionnaire members saying things and doing things lately. Just because I haven't been around doesn't mean I don't know what Legionnaires are up to. Watching Legionnaires run to the system wall and torp suicide to keep LN from getting blue messages is painful. Watching bad grammar, bad RP, and just general stupidity from the Legion hurts. So yeah. It's time.
Ultimately, it was the victim of a combination of an internal rot of ignorant or thickheaded members and a leadership that didn't care to train them, and an external pressure to water down our RP that never once ceased. Discovery is a toxic environment for roleplay, and it's claimed its finest victim yet. gg, folks. Who knows, maybe you'll even learn something about what RP is and isn't from this for once. Doubt it, but it could happen. Regardless, it'll be forgotten. I don't really care, to be honest. I had my fun, and screw legacy. gg, folks, had fun with a lot of you despite a lot of others. Gonna miss the Legion.
But this is the end. Libera te ex infernis.
tl;dr: No, this is the second oldest faction on the server, and has more pages on pages of lore than anyone else here. I've put many thousands of hours into this thing. If you can't read a three-page eulogy, you honestly don't deserve to know about the epic that was HF anyways.
(06-30-2013, 09:13 AM)Kazinsal Wrote: Did you seriously just insinuate that everyone but the Hellfire Legion sucks at roleplaying?
Not intentionally. Please do try to bear in mind that that was written at 3 AM. XD
What part of that post made you think that?
This whole chunk:
Quote:Discovery is a toxic environment for roleplay, and it's claimed its finest victim yet. gg, folks. Who knows, maybe you'll even learn something about what RP is and isn't from this for once. Doubt it, but it could happen.
(06-28-2013, 10:12 PM)ChillerMiller Wrote: Stuff got blown up, some people laughed, some people raged. It's been epic being a part of this.
My feelings also. I was part of the Legion for a long time. There are many, many great memories, both of the people and the insanity we got up to. Fun times.
Personally, I've always avoided joining factions ever since i started playing on Discovery. There are various reasons for this, one being better control over character development (ie: My still-active LSF Director -- which received approval from prior =LSF= Leaders when they were leading the faction). Other reasons are either too many to list or reason's id rather keep private.
I'm glad to say that Hellfire Legion was indeed the one exception to that. Having joined after being invited to post an application when I was still new to everything and gaining a ton of help in developing as I continued to play on the server.
The disappointment in seeing this thread is that I have slowly been able to put more and more time into playing Freelancer and had planned on doing so with much of my activity being put into my role as a Hellfire Legionnaire.
I'll admit, alot of my inactivity wasn't just due to work or RL things. Instead of repeating what was already said:
Denelo if you don't mind:
Quote:but because HF has become rotten. I've seen pictures of Legionnaire members saying things and doing things lately. Just because I haven't been around doesn't mean I don't know what Legionnaires are up to. Watching Legionnaires run to the system wall and torp suicide to keep LN from getting blue messages is painful. Watching bad grammar, bad RP, and just general stupidity from the Legion hurts.
I'd rather not see the Hellfire Legion disband entirely, but instead not continue in its current form. However, if that is indeed the only way to accomplish that, then so be it.
Libera te ex infernis
Sam "Raisu" Mason, [HF]-Raisu