Eighteen months of continuous service in a term lasting between five positions is no small thing. Adjusting to each of these positions of leadership is something this is by tradition a gruelling experience that requires someone to sit down and get to work on introducing their ideas outlined in the applications before being chosen for the position. Maintaining oversight for longer than I can remember in Odan-Urr, I have seen Nathan overcome this obstacle times beyond measure and without breaking a sweat. Rather, he has been able to have his ideas readied before tackling the challenge of settling into a new position with a focus on different members than before. This is an invaluable skill, and one that makes him suited towards whatever position we toss at him whether as a Battle Team Leader, Quaestor, Rollmaster or Proconsul.
Divided from this continuous term, we also seen another three months of leadership from him as the Battle Team Leader of Strike Team Ooroo. Most in our Clan haven’t been around long enough with the oversight to have witnessed all that he done for the team, but those who have are well aware of the task we set for him—to breathe life into a declining Battle Team that was on the verge of closure. Nathan, of course, managed to see the team’s numbers swell to rival that of our other Battle Team, the Knights of Allusis with the activity to call his term a success.
It wasn’t long before Nathan found the time once more to lead our then-House as one of the best Rollmasters to manage an otherwise overwhelming number of recruits. As I have so often stressed, Odan-Urr is one of the few units to have placed a massive workload on the Rollmaster position, until it was re-imagined under Nathan’s guidance in his next term in that same position. We once held the most members in one unit—double that of most Clans and far surpassing Arcona’s roster. Most of these were recruits seeking guidance and without the leadership numbers to manage, the task fell as a burden on the Rollmaster’s shoulders. Nathan bore this well, establishing a working record of not just the recruits, but the entire membership’s achievements that included a full list of awards, time since last merit medal and time since their last promotions in what I still view as the best record-keeping in the Brotherhood. Although it wasn’t in his list of duties, Nathan also hosted two competitions during this time.
More notable was his concurrent term as the Battle Team Leader of the Disciples of Baas, a new Battle Team that was then geared towards our Consulars. Although the model has fallen out of favour in recent times, he introduced this as a conceptual model that worked in alignment with the Guardian-centered Knights of Allusis and the Sentinel-aligned Strike Team Ooroo. Working alongside the Battle Team Leaders of both other subunits, a wiki was drafted for each that outlined their fictional roles and the roster was filled with active members to compete with the Knights of Allusis and Strike Team Ooroo. Eleven events were hosted for the Battle Team for three events that were written in the same manner as our current Clan-wide events, which include a fictional narrative to guide the event. One other competition was hosted as a clan-wide filler to grant members with some opportunities to gain crescents.
Knowing his success and long career working with our recruits and Battle Teams, we wanted to see if Nathan’s drive would hold under the strain of the Aedile position, acting as second to Liam Torun during the Dark Crusades. Though the Vendetta-scale event hadn’t allowed him to run more than two competitions, Nathan focused his energies towards bolstering a dwindling unit that was then burning out from endless phases of the Dark Crusade while suffering from a loss of House events. As our later numbers in the Crusades can attest to, we recovered despite facing the threat of closure at the time as Nathan ushered in a new drive with his Summit to see our participation numbers rise.
As greater evidence to attest to our improvement, our elevation to Clan was a strong one that brought with it a foundation rivalling Arcona’s, even though we lacked the experience of being an older unit. Nathan was one of those that had a hand in the two-week transition where we were able to establish a foothold with our doubled resources in record time. His involvement included having authored a number of documents in a project known as “Transcendance,” which was a roadmap we would follow on attaining Clan status with a working method to see our duties become defined in less than a week. Although we haven’t been notified of the possibilities of adding additional planets to our domain, Nathan still had worked on the redundancies that would have brought with it two wiki pages of existing planets in our solar system and a fictional backstory revolving around what was to be the Kit-Kunis Corporation.
Returning to the oversight of new members in the position of Rollmaster, Nathan was effective in training our Quaestors to take over the former Rollmaster duties in favour of transitioning the Rollmaster into an auxiliary position that worked in tandem with the Consul and Proconsul as a third voice and contributor to events. 42 individual competitions that included his involvement in running our Clan-wide events Tales of New Tython: Lost Civilization, Sentinel Network: Sanctuary and Rise of the Force Ascendant have made this his crowning achievement. Moreover, turned the Rollmaster position into something more than the usual mentorship program, creating far more oversight into individual members than all other clans—that is nothing to scoff at, being that this man has single-handedly tracked over 70 members while the remainder of the Summit focused on content creation. His work ensured that Odan-Urr, as a house and now as a clan, is able to produce awards without someone falling through the ice. Without these records in the form of multi-page excel documents and constant calls for recommendations (to which he already has the relevant information, well in advance of a member being prepared for an award,) we would have fallen short on awarding our members. Throughout his service (in this position and others,) he has provided me with regular internal reports on all the issues he sees, tracking reminders, and suggestions. In addition to this, he created the core guidelines for our refurbished position inside of a multi-page document for future Rollmasters.
More than often, we have asked ourselves—how does Nathan do it? To which, he introduced to us a network of spreadsheets, graphs and google documents that now form the foundations of our Clan—that is, how we have been able to ensure that our members are cared for without falling through the cracks. With one of the largest rosters in the Brotherhood, the importance of having such a net should be obvious in the interest of keeping a large portion of our active membership satisfied. Even though these members are here for fun, retention rates can often be linked to how members are being awarded; it is in our club’s nature to follow a model that awards for participation in activities.
Over 34 competitions Nathan has participated in since his last award for service to his Clan, he has amassed a Crescent with Ruby Star, two Crescents with Amethyst Stars, a Crescent with Emerald Star, three Crescents with Topaz Stars and three Crescents with Quartz Stars. He’s also earned 7 Clusters of Fire and 24 Clusters of Earth for gaming activities, with 9 Clusters of Ice for fictional contributions. For Vendetta-level events, Nathan has gained six Seals of the Crusader and two Seals of Revelation. His crowing award, however, is the Scroll of the Master earned for training Edgar Drachen to Jedi Knight—one of our most active members that has a reputation of being a top gamer for the Brotherhood.
I can’t begin to fathom the number and quality of his recommendations for our members for awards ranging from Dark Crosses to promotions, totalling 69 distinct recommendations. Most would see this as a meaningless task that is expected of all of our leaders and members; however, the extent to which he is involved in collecting records of each member in advance of an award being considered and the fact that his name is on a long list of award recommendations both inside and outside of his expected domain is nothing to scoff at. Other units restrict their recommendations to direct leadership, whereas Nathan has awarded members from all across the club.
Most recent, and sending his efforts over the edge for a Sacramental was his assistance in running our latest (and largest) event as a Clan, being the Rise of the Force Ascendant. He was crucial to developing thirteen events were co-organized between himself and the Summit, having graded 138 submissions and 23,503 words of fiction from 30 unique participants. The event fiction—a collaboration between the organizers—consisted of 6948 words of fiction that he was a massive boon to editing, planning and drafting for final release. This, however, does not include his own efforts in boosting our fiction with his own series “Sins of the Father” consisting of 5606 words of fiction.
His track record speaks for itself, and I could not think of a better way to thank him than giving him the sacramental that he deserves. Congratulations!
Seer A'lora Kituri, 2015-11-16 09:32:32 UTC