With their recent renaming to -ARK-, the Arkanian Brotherhood completes the dissolution of their merger with the Hyporian Commonwealth, now called Erythri. This concludes one of the more perplexing attempted mergers in recent times. This tale has threads that run far back into our galaxy’s history. To even briefly touch upon it all would take make this story much longer than it already ample length. Therefore, this story aims to summarize just the recent situation with references to the history of these events.

The Hyporian Commonwealth was founded after the killing of Sol Savrek and the expulsion of Caedmon Gaines and Redjon Mirrabel from the group formerly known as the Cooperative. Although aware that the previously mentioned Gaines and Mirrabel were about to murder the group’s leader, Nikolaj Eyre and Solarius Masha took control of the remaining assets of the group following the killing, claimed no responsibility for the killing, and formed a new government.

Shortly after the Hyporian formation, Nikolaj (usually called Niki), reached out to Va`Li Owa and the Arkanian Brotherhood to request a merger. This merger was not well executed, poorly constructed, and ill-fated for many other reasons. In terms of the merger’s execution, Niki and Va`Li had some preliminary talks on the matter. Suddenly, one day, Niki simply began transferring assets to the Arkanian Government, making the merger reality. The move was a surprise to many ranking members in both groups who were still unaware that a merger was actually going to happen, though most were aware that it was a concept that had been in discussion.

The newly merged organization had trouble finding its feet operationally. With now redundant departments merging, there was confusion and disarray, as many people found themselves working with, reporting to, or managing sentients that had been complete strangers the previous day. As personality conflicts erupted at many levels, continual shifts of personnel were required to maintain a semblance of peace and avoid outright unrest. Many individuals from both merged groups pointed to Solarius Masha as a source of much of the infighting, citing multiple antagonistic discussions across the various divisions.

Culturally, the two organizations also seemed to be a poor choice for merger. The Hyporian Commonwealth, like the Cooperative before it, was based more in the ideals of communal property, where personal assets are often provided to the larger group for use. Within the old commonwealth, the lines of personal and governmental property were blurry. The Arkanian structure was more rigid in that respect, believing that entities owned by the government were in fact, solely government property. Therefore, there were multiple situations where assets ‘belonging’ to former Hyperion members were being shifted between the government’s ledgers and private hands, with minimal accounting. This practice left Arkanian members wondering and concerned about theft or other shady practices.

On top of that, the death of Savrek and the disbanding of the Cooperative led to an investigation by the Galactic Alliance looking to identify the level of responsibility of the ranking members. Owa himself led that investigation. Then, he found himself in the process of merging his government with that of the people he was investigating and had yet to fully clear of responsibility in those matters. With that as a foundation, there is no wonder that lack of trust and cooperation ran rampant throughout the merged organization, while it lasted.

It is still unclear why Niki chose Arkanian as a merger partner. It is rumored that Sol Savrek wished the territory of the Cooperative to remain friendly with, and tied to the Galactic Alliance. However, this is a tenuous claim, at best, with no factual founding that we could find. In fact, Sol Savrek appeared to at times, have been nearly advocating going to war with the New Republic, who had long been a backbone of the Alliance. The Cooperative had been aligned with the Galactic Alliance, certainly. So a merger with an Alliance friendly government would make sense from an ideals perspective. However, there seemed to be no need to have a merger, as the Commonwealth seemed reasonable stable, for a government born from murder. Niki pushing the merger unexpectedly and quickly still is a misunderstood event in the proceedings.

Owa’s perspective on the merger appears to be clearer, especially once Niki transferred a significant quantity of the old Hyporian Commonwealth's assets into the ownership and protection of the existing Arkanian infrastructure. As the leader of the newly merged group, Owa was in a position to ensure that Arkanian and the Galactic Alliance obtained at least one of two potential outcomes. Ideally, those former members of the Cooperative could be evaluated, the worthy members retained, and their former strength maintained within the Galactic Alliance. However, if it appeared that the Hyporian Commonwealth’s organization and members were not suitable for Alliance membership, then Owa at least had the ability to strip the Commonwealth of their territories and keep the citizens of those worlds under Alliance rule.

Eventually, Owa chose the second path. His reasoning for going that route, was likely the most merciful death the merger could have received. However, that decision was based on tenuous grounds as well. Recently releasing some documents for their own inner workings from the last few months, the Arkanians try to spin their actions as “doing what is right, not what is easy,” when in fact, what they did is more accurately termed as looting or theft.

The assets within the Cooperative, the areas that Arkanian identified a goal to keep as Alliance territory, were never previously owned by the Arkanians. These planets were placed into Cooperative ownership by Savrek, and had previously been controlled by a group known as the eXiles. The history of the eXiles is also fraught with deaths, and chaotic mergers and alliances. Therefore, it is a quite an illogical leap to assume that these planets “deserved” to be Arkanian lands. This is especially true since Owa himself admitted that he could never establish the exact level of Niki’s culpability in Savrek’s death. So, there is no basis to claim Arkanian any rights to those lands, even if you assume the transfer from eXiles to Cooperative to Hyporian control was ‘legitimate.’

In addition, Owa sighted theft and treachery, primarily by Solarius Masha, as another reason for dissolving the merger. Although Masha’s actions during the merged organization’s existence were not exactly transparent and highly inflammatory to many, Owa’s use of them as justification seems an over-reach. There were rumors swirling of Masha being accused of credit siphoning, attempted planetary control theft, conspiracy with the Zann terrorist organization, as well as claims he was instigating much of the civil unrest and disquiet in the organization. While Masha certainly was an antagonistic presence in the structural re-organizing attempts of the merged government, the other claims are much less clear cut. The alleged credit theft claims arise from a payment of 60 million credits tagged as salaries for two factions owned by Masha . These factions were converted to nationalized groups during the merger, however Masha pulled the factions out of the government as his relationships fell apart. Masha says the government was still responsible for that month’s wages, as at least part of the month the factions were still nationalized organizations under the government and provide service to the government. Owa provided no conclusive retort to that claim, except saying that if Masha removed the factions, then Masha should be responsible for their pay.

The alleged attempted planetary theft was a combination of factors. The merged group was attempting to improve infrastructure on multiple planets. In general accountability for these projects was somewhat disorganized. As suspicion of Masha grew, more attention was paid to the development projects he led and organized. Niki alerted Owa to some potential missing assets from the build. Niki demanded Masha produce the assets. Around the same time that Masha was organizing those assets and returning them to the government’s control, he also invited another assistant into the organization and provided him the rank and authority to manage the project. This person was Sasuke Drol, relative of Xanxus Drol, a known Zann affiliate. The dual specter of ‘missing’ assets and a possible Zann affiliated infiltration was another of Owa’s rationales for this mistrusting of Masha. However, in our investigations, it appeared that all the missing assets were returned and other than familial ties, there is no conclusive link between Sasuke and the Zann organization, other than a familial relation.

Also about the same time as the above events, Zann also leaked the now infamous list of Imperial spies in the galaxy, which contained the name of a high ranking Arkanian Ambassador, George O’Rourke. Arakanian investigated O’Rourke for evidence of spying and eventually cleared him, returning him to duty. However, his appearance on Zann’s list was assumed, without any evidence, to be a lie planted by Zann as a diversion of attention away from Masha.

From that point Owa had made up his mind to formalize the divorce from the Hyporian group, and return the name of his organization to their Arkanian history. But, of course, Owa gets to keep the planetary control of the formerly eXile and Flower Company owned lands, save for a few moons that Niki had already transferred out of the government. Therefore, in a very over simplified summary, it appears to be yet another situation where mistrust and greed won out over stability and order. In the face of this, once again, we hope that everyone stays safe out there.