When the age of colonialism began, the Invec Council (basically the Illuminati-light of the time) sought to proactively secure their positions of power as the separate worlds became aware of each other, and maybe maintain stability if it seemed convenient. One such effort towards this goal was the establishment of Erhnz-Pukto Collective, otherwise known as the Black Helmets. A mercenary group that was one of the first military forces to experiment with integration of races and technologies from all worlds, the Collective had a huge quantity of monetary and commercial resources poured into them.

For a variety of reasons, the onset of the colonial era was even more tumultuous than had been predicted. The council itself found itself explicitly targeted and all but wiped out by the resurgent Yigg-Santauri, and many traditional establishments imploded alongside them. Nations collapsed and were born in the span of months as a violent conflict for power broke out everywhere. The Collective, however outlived both their creators and their founding principle of channeling their influence wherever it was needed. In this period, the Collective inserted itself across the nations and civilizations of every world, working almost purely for profit. In many senses it was the first transnational corporation. The Collective even carved out huge swathes of territory through violent and subtle means, but this level of success was short lived and collapsed after a few years.

The Collective was eventually torn apart by internal contention and outward competition with the Yigg-Santauri, who were themselves apt at crippling the Collectives' vital but unwieldy sources of income and resources. The Erhnz-Pukto Collective eventually shattered, but many of these fragments would go on to have key roles in the creation of organizations such as the Intrafederate movement, terrorist groups, many of the most profitable private companies in modern times, and PUMI, who would famously become of the largest private militaries in history before ironically being absorbed by the Yigg-Santauri.

Some paranoid theorists still refer to "The Black Helmets" as a shadowy institution that still exists and has (depending on the theory) varying amounts of total control over all the institutions of the worlds. This is legitimately ridiculous, as the Yigg-Santauri more or less took on that roll years ago.