Bilderburg Alliance

The Bilderburg Alliance is the name a clandestine organization in the City of Heroes MMO and is considered to be world's most highly-kept secret organization, older than even the dreaded Illuminati.

According to Europe's premiere investigator Shodden Freud, the Alliance was created sometime in the 15th Century by Baron Victor Bilderburg as an alliance of bankers, merchants, and select members of the nobility to secure a better future for their respective positions of power. The group's name came from Bilderburg's palacial mannor house where the clandestine meetings would always be held. It is believed that their first successful activity was to convince the Spanish royalty to sponsor Christopher Columbus' expedition to the "New World" on the promise that it would yield a faster route to India.

Since then, the Alliance has supposedly been responsible for covertly influencing many of the significant events in human history, including the American Revolution, all of the major economic depressions and recessions including the Great Depression, and both World Wars and the Cold War. All of these activities were supposedly done for the purpose of benefitting their various members.

Wars are declared or averted on the basis of whether or not doing so benefits members of the Alliance. Nations rise and fall depending on how they benefit the Alliance. Leaders are made or broken at the whim of the Alliance and how those leaders benefit both the group and the members themselves. The respective assasinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy were allegedly done with the authorization of members of the Alliance.

If you ever wonder why corporations and major financial institutions are somehow able to avoid accountability, how some tyrants can be well-financed while others are thrown out of power by a "coalation of the willing", how the simplest of truths can somehow be denied but the most unbelieveable lies are accepted, one merely has to ask who behind these things is a member of the Bilderburg Alliance.

But even though they have the power of super-power nations behind them, the greatest weapon the Alliance has is its secrecy. Members of the Alliance rarely meet outside of their annual gatherings, which are billed as "annual economic conferences". They have an army of agents connected to various global government agencies, including Interpol, to keep reporters, attorneys, and even skilled investigators from getting too close to proving their existence. Reputations have been sullied and lives have been ruined or even killed to keep the full scope of the Alliance a secret.

Organizational Layout

According to Shodden Freud's notes, the Bilderburg Alliance has both an inner and outer circle.

Main Organization (Outer Circle)

The vast majority of Alliance members only know each other through their annual gathering. This is where they "network" and exchange information about their projects and possible opportunities and threats.

There are two simple rules at these gatherings:

1. No hostility whatsoever between the members.

2. What goes on at the gathering stays at the gathering.

The Voices (Inner Circle)

The inner circle of the Alliance is probably the most prestigeous... and the most secretive, even among its members.

Within the various groups are certain members selected to serve as the "Voices" for their respective areas. There are, for instance, "Voices" for London, Beijing, Washington, Moscow, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and - most recently - Paragon City. These "Voices" have the honor of representing the Alliance interests in those areas, but also the responsibility of keeping those interests secure.

Traditionally the "Voices" met in a special room in the Bilderburg Manor known as the Talon Room. They would often meet in secret, wearing hoods or masks to ensure that they themselves did not know who among them were "Voices". In more modern times, though, the "Voices" would meet through anonymous video conferences. But they would each keep a representation of the Talon Room among them when they would meet as a reminder of the enormity of both their burden and benefit.

The "Voices" identified themselves only by numbers, not by name or city. The number designation was made by seniority.

Proxies

To further insulate the "Voices", the various members were prohibited from taking actions themselves, especially when it involved other Alliance members. In order to do what needed to be done, the "Voices" would each have a "proxy" that was not a member of the Alliance. That proxy would be given the task of carrying out the tasks of their sponsor. Often this would be someone with the same drive and determination of other Alliance members, which was why membership would be used as an incentive for recruitment.

If the Proxy was successful in their efforts, they would eventually be rewarded with membership into the Alliance. If, however, they fail, then their actions could not be linked back to the Alliance.

Connection to Paragon City

The corporate facilitator Simon Barrister was supposedly linked to both Shadowborn and the Alliance.

As was revealed in Issue #28 of the "Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight" series, Wentworth's Fine Consignment CEO Andrew Wentworth had been a member of the Alliance for at least five years (if not longer). In "Guardians of the Dawn AFTERMATH", he confesses to his nephew Alex that he was the one that hired Barrister, not Lord Geddy. Afterward, the Alliance assimilates all functions of Shadowborn, essentially making it a part of the Alliance.

At the end of "The Guardian Powers" #15, Andrew Wentworth sees a new threat in the form of Alliance member Malcolm Rochspare. He begins to distance himself from the Alliance and sponsors the Guardians in their "resurrection" (even though they had been operating all this time as a ghost group).

In "Guardians of the Dawn GRADUATION", we find that Wentworth had severed all ties with the Alliance and his position as "Voice" has been passed on to Lord Geddy.