Dearest Monkey’s,

In the last day we have encountered a new turn in events. We have said from the beginning that we have multiple plans and certain triggers needed to be in place for each plan to begin. Let's take a moment and step back and recap!

A week ago Winet stepped down from the directorate due to his beliefs with what was going on at the time inside of the imperium. He was not kicked from the alliance, he is a normal line member now. Winet never actually planned to leave or do any destructive damage to the alliance or the members; in fact he remained in contact with the directorate from start to finish. He also planned to biomass his characters to escape the reality of what his name has created. Winet was a friend to many as well as a member of this community. For all of time and efforts that Winet has given to SMA in the past and carrying it to this point he deserves the utmost thanks from not only leadership but the line as well! Despite the bull shit reddit drama, he was an essential part of this alliance. He led our combat department through Branch and into Fade and his sole intention was never to stir up the amount of shit that reddit created. While some people will question his methods there has never been a director more dedicated as a monkey then Winet. Honestly we could probably write a “novel” pun intended to describe the amount of effort he put into this alliance. In his time with us, Winet personally rebuilt nearly every single department at various times, a feat that has not been matched by any other director in SMA’s history.

Some of you have also noticed that Llama, long time director, has pulled a bit of a vanishing act of late. As some of you may or may not know, he and his wife welcomed their first child, Ryan Jeffery “Llama”, into the world last weekend. Over the last several months he has geared more and more into dad-mode and that had a predictable impact on his EVE time. After some time and several conversations, he made the decision to quietly step away from EVE so he could concentrate on his new son and fledgling new business. He does still lurk around and those of us that were close to him still chat with him regularly. Llama built up the diplomatic department before handing it off to become a director and continued to shape and guide that department from his new role while working with allies and helping to steer SMA through our immense growth after we moved from Branch to Fade, and his presence in our leadership circle will be missed.

Recently Elsemus was promoted to a director position. We are happy to report to you that she has been doing a fantastic job. Elsemus has decided to step into the Sky Marshal position temporarily until we can find a suitable permanent replacement. We have no doubt in her abilities in this position and know the office will be rebuilt to the same level it was operated at before burnout started to settle in to the previous skyteam. Please give her the full support she will need to be able to take this task on.

Bobby, Zack, Ivory and Kyle found their calling to enjoy EVE in a different way and that was to leave the alliance and form their own group. They got exhausted in the political boundaries that tie SMA to the IMP. As much as it hurts everyone in directorate, they will be missed and their timing was terrible. The leadership of SMA is not upset that they decided to leave to do there own thing, we are upset they deemed it necessary to use a strategy to leave sma instead of just speaking up and voicing their grievances so we could work something out with better timing that would work for the alliance as a whole. To be completely honest directorate was surprised that these guys did not think we would have their back, we would have. This team deserves your respect for the defence of Fade and their general burnout from this level of all out sov headshotting is not surprising. Sov is broken and at least we were able to abuse it as long as we did. These guys are our friends and they will remain our friends regardless of the choices they have made, they sure as fuck earned it.

We’ve been able to have conversations with most CEOs already, but to reiterate for everyone else: We are in no way giving up on SMA.. We will not fold. We will not merge. We will hold strong to our family and our community.

“We are the thinkers, the builders. We are the strength and the conviction. We are the shield and the sword. Defenders of the north and the aggressors of those that would bring harm to our own."