Let’s talk about the Hevoanthas.

Well, one of the Hevoanthas anyway. I found four different groups called that and three of them officially named themselves “Bearers of God”, and none of them were even remotely connected to each other. They’re members of an Amarr off-shoot religious-political-armed movement that emerged from [REDACTED] in [REDACTED] roughly thirteen years ago. (Given the kind of power some of my readers can wield at random, I’ll keep certain specifics vague to avoid needless bloodshed.) They are of the Zardan sect and are predominantly Iar’Rite-led, thought the movement also reportedly includes Seno’Rite adherents.

Their leader, al-Baddradan [REDACTED] had the group emerge as a Zardan opposition to the local Holder who they accused of massive financial corruption and for being backed financially by a Holder from an entirely different House, at the expense of the Zardan people and relative sovereignty. The Holder having ordered his arrest, al-Baddradan was killed in [REDACTED] seven years after the group’s formation, along with a number of his guards and family, which sparked the Hendaphti Insurgency in [REDACTED]. The group has since been led by his brother, al-Malik [REDACTED].

Now, this group is just one of many backed by the [REDACTED] who through the patronage of Houses [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] have managed to keep themselves from being branded heretics or otherwise too inconvenient to be allowed to remain active, and like many of these groups the Heovanthi movement attracts its Zardan-Iar’Rite followers in [REDACTED] by promoting regional political-religious issues in its media, including the overarching House [REDACTED] and Khanid conspiracy and Tar’Rite “collusion.” The slogan “God is great, death to the [REDACTED], death to [REDACTED], curse the Minmatar and victory for The Faith” was officially adopted a year before al-Baddradan’s death. It’s become a bit of a trademark for the group but the Heovanthi officials have claimed it is not to be taken literally.

The movements stated goals include combating economic underdevelopment and political marginalization in [REDACTED] while seeking greater autonomy for Heovanthi-majority regions of their continent. They also claim to support a more liberal approach to the Reclaiming, saying more open trade and forced Reclaiming is the best path forwards. The very centerpiece of their program has been fighting corruption.

They took part of the attempted revolution in [REDACTED] by participating in street protests and coordinating with other opposition groups in the year [REDACTED], and joined the Dialogue Conference as part of the Cooperation Council initiative to broker peace following that unrest. However, the Heovanthi would later reject the CC deal’s provisions stipulating formation of six sub-regions in [REDACTED]. This they claimed was because the deal did not fundamentally reform the governance of Holder [REDACTED] and that the proposed solution “divided the continent into staggeringly poor and incredibly wealthy regions”. They also feared the deal was a blatant attempt to weaken them by dividing areas under their control between separate regions. Three years later they repaired their relationship with the now former Holder [REDACTED] and with his help took control of the continental capital and much of the south.

Just two years ago, they took control of the planetary government with the help of the former Holder and announced the fall of the current government of the then current Holder [REDACTED]. Heovanthi have gained control of most of the planet’s territory and has for the last two years been resisting the military intervention by House [REDACTED] that claims they want to restore the inter-planetary recognized government to power. Additionally, Sia’Rite militant groups have attacked pretty much all the conflict’s major parties.

So, that’s the rough history of the people of Heovanthas and the group they formed. I am willing to bet not a single one of you lot have ever heard about them. In fact, a lot of you, including some Amarr won’t even have heard of the sub-factions of the Rite. Hell, most of them can remain unknown to denizens on their very own planet, simply by dint of being “somewhere over there and thus not very important to us over here.” and this is further compounded by the complexity of inter-planetary societies and intermingling of people from across massive star clusters.

What then is the point of my little ramble here? Well, I want you to think about the fact that you know fuck all about any of this. It’s meaningless to you, unless you somehow happen to be that statistical impossibility who were born and raised there. Yet this is pretty much the entire lives of millions. Going entirely unnoticed, a speck of dust in a sunbeam from the perspectives of us who fly around seeing entire worlds as just so much dirt packed in a ball.

Little dirtballs, packed with staggering complexity of human interaction, politics, religion, industry and economy, even in such a nation as the Amarr Empire that prides itself on its monocultural and monotheistic fervor. Now look at the rest of that star system. Now widen your view to the constellation. The region. The Nation. Go all the way out to encompass New Eden itself and if your mind doesn’t want to unravel trying to imagine the unfathomable complexity and enormity of humankind, you need either some good drugs or a lot of higher end education that you should have had as a capsuleer already.

Now, I’ll grant you that there are some blacks and whites in New Eden that it’s perfectly reasonable to take a hard stance on. Slavery is bad. Sansha are atrocities. I am a pretty gentle flower in a meadow. Outer Region Entities are inherently horrifying. Entirely reasonable things to consider axioms. What you can’t really do that with are people. Concepts and entities, most definitely. An entire nation can be utterly vile due to some inherent characteristic, like the Empire’s slavery and Reclaiming, but it’s people are a different matter entirely.

I have kept seeing so much “Minmatar are/do/will this and that”, or “Caldari are all X and Y” and such perfidious nonsense these last few weeks, from all sides. It’s rather infuriating, as even my own keep doing that shit to our enemies.

Stop it.

The enemy is not one singular entity. It never will be, in a universe like ours. We are so unfathomably vast that trying to group think nations in New Eden is staggeringly moronic and serves no purpose at that. Whether it’s about enemies, or trying to say something about ourselves, it well and truly doesn’t matter what you say. You will be wrong, because it will not apply to countless millions of us, by sheer dint of our societies complexities even in the most monolithic of our nations.

Remember nuance. Remember the Heovanthi. You didn’t even fucking know they existed yesterday, and you think you can say something about the Amarr and expect it to hold true? We all do this shit, me included. We shouldn’t.

Take off the blindfold of perspective and See.

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