Halcones the Raider: The beginning to the end

[Manson]

This is an autobiography written by Halcones, the founder of The Black Hawks. Taken from the RaiderCon forum.

Hello. I am Halcones, and this my story as one of Nationstates' most feared raiders.

I joined Nationstates in the summer of 2004. I found out about the game through my elder brother, who was informed by one of his friends at school. He knew through two of his RPG friends. When I started Nationstates, the first nation I made was Halcones. I moved this to the region Aequus Isles, joining my brother and his friends. His nation there was Wise Oliverous. I started off in this game just answering issues, and looking forward to the day when my nation got to the 500 million population mark, so I could write issues. Not much happened in Aequus Isles. It didn't go far as a region - it was just a meeting ground for me, my brother, and his friends. I only stayed with them for a couple of weeks, after which time, I was contacted by the Black Eagles General.

The Black Eagles sounded pretty cool to me, so I joined. This was the beginning of my raider career. I was taught how to raid in the Black Eagles. It was with them that I made my first puppet, Zorros. Unfortunately, the Black Eagles never really took off. It became inactive, including the founder. After sitting there for a while, I decided to go off and make my own raider region. I liked the Black Eagles name, but I couldn't use that.

So then I made The Black Hawks. That may seem pretty crazy. I founded The Black Hawks very early on in my raiding career - even before my nation population reached 1 billion. I was widely seen as a noob. That didn't stop me though, because I quickly built up contacts. Silver Tongue from Invaders agreed to help me out, and he made the forums up for me. Back then, I had no clue how to set forums up. Domination from Invaders also gave me lots of advice. Soon, I set about starting to recruit. After a while, The Black Hawks eventually gained some pretty decent members, namely Missing Dog Head, All Holy Names, Anarchy 2005, Black Buzzards (a friend of my brother from Aequus Isles) and others. We were able to build up a tight inner circle within The Black Hawks, which really helped make us strong. When we started off raiding, we were very loud about it. I wanted to become known, along with The Black Hawks, so I made sure we were talked about on NS news, whatever it was called back then. The one NS news site that actually worked. It was a great shame to lose it. Some of our first raids were on Middle East and 3 mile island. In both cases, we met defenders. We battled on in each, but eventually lost through numbers. Other raiders soon started to know about us, namely DEN. We were considered as loud noobs. That didn't stop us though. The Black Hawks went on, and built up a good name for itself. We pulled in more valuable members, such as Crushing our enemies, Red Back, Sorenity2, Holbornius and Jarron. Red Back actually came from 3 mile island, as many may know. As time went on, I started to come up with ways to try and recruit more people. Standard recruitment just wasn't pulling in enough numbers. I tried recruiting outside of the game, but this didn't get far. Soon after, I planned my first project: Project Alpha. This was a recruitment project, with the aim to setup a new region, called The Great British Empire, under puppet accounts. I created the puppet account King Johnson I, as the founder of The Great British Empire. Sorenity2 and Holbornius also created puppet accounts, which they used in TGBE. The plan with TGBE was to setup an attractive region, which would pull in lots of new nations. We would then merge it with The Black Hawks, bringing a sudden surge of new nations into TBH. This didn't go as well as planned. In the end, we gained Lisvania, who caused more harm than good. In TGBE, he tried to overthrow King Johnson I, during a time I was inactive (holiday).

Soon The Black Hawks started struggling. We were becoming inactive. I decided to merge it with the Blades of Conquest. TGBE still kept going through the whole time that we were with BoC. In the Blades of Conquest, I became Head of Intelligence, and eventually made the Phantom Operatives, a close inner circle of long serving Black Hawks - this included myself, Jarron, Marthior, Sorenity2, Holbornius, Red Back and others. The Phantom Operatives started becoming independent of BoC - we were gaining our original Black Hawk spirit back. Eventually, I decided to recreate The Black Hawks, out of the Phantom Operatives. In doing so, I merged TGBE with the new TBH, bringing in Lisvania. The Phantom Operatives became the Black Hawks Intelligence Agency (BHIA). I trusted Lisvania, which was indeed a risk. I let him take Commander in Chief of The Black Hawks, whilst I concentrated on intelligence in the BHIA. Further down the road, we hit trouble, major trouble. This was after I setup Project Omicron - an intelligence project with the aim to setup a new defender intelligence summit, called Global Defence Intelligence Summit (GDIS). It was an ambitious idea, and looking back at it now, it was a bit noobish. It was entirely run by me - I created 5 puppet accounts to set it up. I did manage to pull in some defenders, but it wasn't long until the big boys - Blackbird and co. - knew what was going on. All this ended me in a pile of mess. RedSeven, from Counter Terrorism Unit, took the opportunity to frame me. He used what I had done in Project Omicron, as well as claiming that I had intentionally destroyed Blades of Conquest, by taking it to war with CTU, and afterwards, recreating The Black Hawks. At this time, RL problems hit me, and I became unable to access the internet. RedSeven was easily able to shoot me down. Red Back was swift in trying to save The Black Hawks. It did have a temporary death, but later, Red Back and Sorenity2 merged their two raider regions together, to recreate The Black Hawks. All this time, I was off the game, for a long break. I occasionally came on, to see what was happening, and to have discussions with my most trusted contacts - those being Red Back and Jarron. They tried to encourage me to return, but I resisted for a long while.

Eventually, I made the move, and tried to make a comeback. The Black Hawks let me in, after some hesitation. They made me their Intelligence Commander. At the same time, I created The Hidden Ones, another of my projects, or call them experiments if you may. The idea was to setup an intelligence organisation, which tried to recruit publically. I wanted to be able to get the numbers, so I could plant agents in as many places as possible. I soon realised that public recruitment wouldn't work. However, I carried on with the agents I had, of which there were about 10. I had agents sent to FRA member regions, such as Sapientia, and actively recruiting neutral regions, such as The United Kingdom. At the time, it wasn't an FRA member region. I sent an agent there because I had suspicion that it would join the FRA, so therefore it would become a useful base. Myself, I was spying on Sapientia under the puppet account of Friendlypenguins. I chose them because they were a quiet FRA member region. My aim there was to make it a base to infiltrate the FRA. I had at least 3 other agents sent there, though they were never active. Further down the line, it appeared Friendlypenguins wouldn't be too successful, so I moved it to Hethrum, a defender region that was trying to get going again. Not only that, it was also a raiding target. Friendlypenguins quickly gained trust in Hethrum, all the way to adminship within a few weeks. He also gained the password, which was leaked to The Black Hawks. This was covered up, by moving a scapegoat agent in - nation name: Musselkingdom. The agent behind this was Crushing our enemies. Friendlypenguins gave the password to Musselkingdom, and used him as the scapegoat when the raid happened. Friendlypenguins succeeded in keeping his cover in the eyes of the Hethrum natives, however, was not trusted by senior FRA officials. Still, he was able to infiltrate Hethrum high command, and was in top secret discussions about how to tackle The Black Hawk raid. He was also able to gain access to Hethrum's statcounter, which they had so nicely made public. Coming to the December of that year (2008), I became inactive again, due to school work. I was out for another long spell.

A year later, I made another comeback. I started off converting The Hidden Ones into the Infiltrators. I wanted to try out something new - yet another experiment. This was making an intelligence organisation that was divided into teams of agents - each with 5 agents. We had two teams: Alpha and Cobra. We were able to recruit some agents from other raider regions, such as Dream Killers and Siriam from Unknown. At this time, I started off spying with another puppet. My target was Nasicournia. I saw them as a threat. I knew what they were like in the time of RLA and ADN. I had the whole of Team Alpha descend on Nasicournia. Unfortunately, most of my agents were inactive in their missions. Later that year (2009), I decided to setup The Black Riders. I wanted to make a new raider region again, but this time, with a lot more experience. I used a similar structure to the Infiltrators - divisions, each 5 strong. I recruited crazily, and was able to pull in 100 nations within 22 days. We very quickly rose to the top of FRA's and TITO's threat list, launching big raids on regions like Yorkshire, Ohio, and Georgia. I felt we could go far, especially when we started to pull in some of my old time friends - Jarron, Crushing our enemies, and others. Whilst The Black Riders were running, we did become aware of an AC spy. This was actually Gerzam, who was trying to spy on the AC at the time. When December came round, I went inactive again. I struggled to come on whilst away from university. Without my activity, The Black Riders went down. Everyone we had was becoming inactive. When I got back in early 2010, I tried to pick things up again, but there was no hope. I soon became inactive on NS, and let myself concentrate on university studies.

After Easter in 2010, I was eventually brought back into things. This began with the Franco Spanish Empire raid. I was invited into this raid by Crushing our enemies. It was a success. In doing this raid, I got talking with Satya from The Dominion. I agreed to help them in raids. We attempted to raid Yorkshire and Ohio, though in both cases defenders saw us. This was first through Lamb Stone, a known defender spy, and second through poor raiding tactics. Satya's troops weren't trained well enough on the battlefield. They admitted to the WA during updates, just before the strike. I soon got fed up of working with them. Not long from this point, the raid in South America happened. I was contacted by Onderkelkia, who requested immediate backup. I did a lot for him, going round all my contacts trying to get anyone I could. I also approached regions we usually keep away from. One of these was New Britannian Empire.

This is how I ended up working for NBE. Rey invited me to help NBE becoming a strong raider region. I didn't have much to do at the time, so I went for it. He was very welcoming at first, and I quickly became Lord High Admiral, commanding their military. That I did, and we soon had raids on the go. I also helped out considerably in recruiting for NBE - you could say I sold myself out to them. I encouraged them to get a recruitment tool, and I helped improve their recruitment message. I became their main recruiter, sending out over 1000 messages. Further down the line, I became aware that the AC were getting active and trying to recruit people. I was told they wanted to do away with their old, dirty, image. I agreed to help them, under the puppet account DeadlyNinjas. It became apparent that they were pretty hopeless. They were very inactive. Of course, they didn't trust me. I'm sure they knew how I would so easily turn on them. In truth, I did nothing for the AC, apart from registered on their fake forums, and coordinating a raid on Iran with Patrick. His troops never showed up. My own pointman was late entering because of a powercut, which delayed his alarm. Not long from this point, I was contacted by Lord Alphanesia/Dave, who came at me like some child with rabies. Truthfully, I had never heard of him. My usual focus is defenders, not terrorists who go around threatening people. He seemed a nob to me, so I said some pretty harsh things to him. I hit his button, got him angry. He started saying "Halcones has to die", "Halcones must resign from NBE and leave". I don't take demands and threats lightly. I felt it disrespectful. He then started threatening to hack me, and wipe my computer, as well as hacking my nation and posting "penis pics" all over Nationstates to get me deleted. The full conversation that we had shall be made available for all to see. The AC eventually succeeded in driving me out of NBE. I was put on trial and banned from NBE - to ban someone and put them on trial is a bit ludicrous. Sort of thing tyrants do. I made the decision to quit NBE. I felt I was robbed of all the time and effort that I spent there. I therefore feel betrayed by NBE. Rougiers/Malcolm was the key figure in prosecuting me. Not because he's AC himself, but because he saw the opportunity to displace a loyal friend, so he could take my roles for himself. I had before helped him when he was condemned by others for forum destruction. I wish I never had. He is a true threat to anyone. Never trust him. Funny enough, he now has adminship at NBE. I don't care anymore for them. I'm not going to care for those who betray me. Instead, I shall betray them back, not because I agree with revenge, but because it teaches them a lesson.

That said, I have now officially left NBE, and in addition to that I am resigning from all other positions I currently hold in other raider regions, such as Celtic Lands and The Golden Dusk.

I am now officially ending my raiding career. It has been a good time, and a long time. One that has gone up and down in waves, though that is characteristic of any journey that gains incredible experience.

So that is the end, of Halcones the Raider. Act 1 is closed.

That is not the final end though. There is an Act 2. Halcones the Defender has now begun. It'll take some time to switch after fighting so hard so long for the raider cause. This though, is the perfect time to change my cause, my purpose, my side.

I will work with the FRA at first, and help out in any defences I can. I shall also offer my intelligence experience.

In the long term though, I shall create a new defender network. Its name shall be Royal Defence Network/RDN. Many will doubt that I shall succeed, but fight I do. I always shall stand by morals, to never surrender, in doing what I believe right. Those who feel themselves loyal to me, are welcome to join me in my new chapter. I know just how many enemies I shall now make in the raider world, though these will be replaced by friends in the defender world. So far, I have come to realise that defenders are often more friendly and understanding. Those that command the FRA are not arseholes like most raiders may say. They are decent and honourable, when you get to know them.

I shall look forward to fighting my old friends on the battlefield, and working against you in defender intelligence.

As for NBE, my final words are, "You put your feet through the thin ice that was beneath you. You're now in a pile of shit, and you don't have the boots for it".

As for Unknown, I hope you don't become the strongest raider region in the game. I hope you don't become the one. What I've seen from you so far, is far from what I stand for.

As for other raiders, I would be very happy to see The Black Hawks make a comeback. I'd be very happy to see one of my old Black Riders recreate TBR. I also give good luck to the new DEN. I hope you succeed. The old days of raiding seem long gone, and I hope you can bring them back.

As for those I have begun to help, but have so sadly had to leave, I wish you all the best. I am sorry it has come to this, but if you want anyone to thank, Lord Alphanesia, Patrick, Rougiers/Malcolm, and Sav are the people to go to.

There are true traitors in the raiding world, and I can say they remain at large. If you want to ensure you keep away from them, then band together with raiders from The Black Hawks, and the new DEN.

That is it. I'm done.

Now ACT 2 shall commence.