From Zagdul

A little over a year ago, I became CEO of this alliance. With my coronation into this position, I inherited some responsibilities which were remains of our former regime. One of these responsibilities was living up to a promise made to a small alliance living in Syndicate, Black-Mark. When they were introduced to me I pored over their killboards and set them on tasks to accomplish small goals. They achieved every one of them. Initially, they were good to work with and were fun neighbors. They seemed to have competent leadership and a good atmosphere to blend into this coalition fluidly. As I said, initially things went well. I used my newly acquired status as CEO of FA, ties within the NC and the newly formed CFC to get them access to all the intel channels and in to fleets. For a small alliance, they did well for themselves. However, had issues with playing nicely on the diplo front. There was always an argument or something we needed to help them manage. This is to be expected from a small alliance just breaking into null sec but over time, it's something you expect that would mature. It didn't. Relationships between BLM and the Coalition remained cold and my desire to continually defend their right to be here grew tiresome and began taking up more time than I wanted to invest.

This all came to a head a few weeks ago when the BDEAL fiasco went down. We were getting blamed for things that former BDEAL corps were doing in Fountain, things they were doing against TEST's wishes (like evacing assets), but the corps in TEST's gaze weren't in FA - they were in Black-Mark. This created more friction between us and the coalition and quite frankly was destroying what I had built for you all. The final straw was when their CEO's started coming to me and complaining about issues within their alliance. I personally lost confidence in their ability to function and it's time to bid them farewell.

Black-Mark have done well over the past year supporting FA and have worked hard to support our objectives. There are a lot of 'behind the scenes' things which I cannot share right now, but I'd like to remember them as the little alliance who could, tried but just fell short. Please remember, their transition is going to be a rough one and this is not a hostile expulsion. So, treat them with respect, they've always treated us with such. Many of their corps will be coming over so help in any way you can to assist them in getting acclimated into our culture.