**The Imperial Palace

Ohmen, Judecca

The Cocytus System**

Xen'Mordin wasn't fond of the word torture. People hear the word torture and they get upset. And of course, upset citizens were harder to control. Xen looked around the small room slightly bored. Officially this section of the Palace didn't exist. You wouldn't find it on the blueprints for the building, or hear of its existance from any of the staff who kept the palace running. No, this room like many things in the Cocytus System was made for secrets. Dark secrets. Secrets someone had been whispering about.

Xen reached over and pushed a button, turning the machine on again. Screams erupted from the writhing man in front of the Sith. Xen let out a sigh and turned a knob.

"I'll have you know we did some tinkering with this machine. You see this knob?" Xen said calmly through the screams coming from the man on the table.

"This knob goes all the way to eleven." Xen allowed himself a cruel smile and turned it again.

**Hell's Haven

Lyon, Judecca

The Cocytus System**

The Shaevalian waved his hand signaling for another drink. His eyes continued to scan the dimly lit room. Out of days of torture, they had only managed to get bits and pieces of information. The closest thing to a specific detail they got were two words, Hell's Haven. It was an out of the way bar in the blue collar city of Lyon. It was especially important to allow the working class to have some way to vent off the weight they were forced to carry in society. Bars such as this littered the city.

Archangel received his new drink and continued to watch from the shadows. A handful of workers were scattered around the room drinking their pain away. Archangel put down his glass as a stranger sat down across from him.

"You ain't from around here are you." The stranger said. It wasn't a question. Archangel shifted slightly in his seat.

"No... And who would you be?" Archangel asked.

"I... I represent someone who doesn't like it when strangers come lookin' to interfer with his business. I have a feelin' you are gunna cause some trouble, Archangel." The man smiled. There were two blaster shots, milliseconds apart. The man fell to his side dead and Arch glanced over at the charred spot inches to the left of his head.

The front door burst open, and several troopers rushed into the room. Archangel stood and walked calmly toward them.

"It would appear we have a bigger problem than we expected. I need to make some calls. Secure this lot for questioning." Archangel said, gesturing to the men in the bar.

Hello Scholae Palatinae! It is time for another report and I've got some important things to talk about so lets get right into it! There have been some changes to the house, and some awesome work done by some of our members to highlight!

The first thing I need to talk about is some changes that have occurred over the last few days in the house. When the recent AWOL check was finished, the HSP Summit took some time to talk about how we might better approach the running of the house. There has been some fantastic activity recently, but we wanted to do better at having some more structured forms for members to work in the house. This led to two decisions based around our battleteam set up.

We have had three battleteams for quite sometime, and despite our best efforts, things werent working out as well as we hoped. The battleteams were specifically structured to work based on interests of the members, with there being a gaming BT, writing BT, and a BT to help new members. We have decided at this point and time, this structure just wasn't working. We have decided to close both Nightstalkers and Dorimad Sol as functioning battleteams. I want to thank Dante and Reiden for the efforts they put into these teams. Caliburnus is going to remain open as a general activity BT with the continuing leadership of Xantros.

By now some of you might have looked at the house page on the site and seen we have a new battleteam. Part of our restructuring includes the opening of a new battleteam, Hephaestus. This battleteam is sort of an experiment by us. We wanted to both give new leadership opportunities for our members so they can grow, but also try a new approach to how we manage house projects. As many of you know, there are things being worked on all the time in the DB, and a lot of the time, if you want to continue on past the rank of DJK you work on projects to help better the house, clan or DB as a whole. There has been many times where people have come asking if there are things they can work on. In order to facilitate this we have created Hephaestus to put all these individuals together so they can work together and hammer away at things that need to be finished. So the tl;dr version is, Hephaestus provides new leadership opportunities and is all about working on house projects.

We are pleased to say that Hephaestus will for the time being, be under the leadership of Kael Fayne. Kael had a brief window as an AED before we were declanned, so he never had a fair chance as a leader. We are very excited to see how he leads this team. There are already several of you who have been contacted about participating in Hephaestus, but if you are interested in helping out around the house, and want a chance to help out on specific house projects (which for starters is helping out with our wiki section) please email myself and the rest of the summit.

Since my last report we saw the entirety of the Winter Games, which once again was a great success. I was incredibly happy to see so many people participate and strive for the "gold". It was once again a learning experience on the planning side, and I look forward to continuing it as a Scholae Palatinae tradition!

But the games haven't been the only outstanding activity we have had recently. Akatsuki has been running a series of very well participated puzzle competitions highlighting portraits of members of the house, as well as other fun competitions. Eether also recently ran several very well participated in competitions as well. As always we love seeing our members come up with their own ideas for competitions and love the excitement that comes from people participating in them. There is always a wide array of competitions available both on the house level and the DB level for you all to participate in. The participation in competitions by you all has been fantastic so keep it up! If there are specific kinds of competitions you personally prefer participating in, let us know! We want to make sure we give things that YOU find enjoyable.

Now as many of you know, TOR continues to be a massive part of the DB since it came out this last December. I know many of you have been playing, and it has been fantastic to see notifications about this come in my email. However I want to highlight one particular member who has been consistently slaying it in TOR. Kelvis Xavier has been filling my inbox with CFs notifications since the moment TOR was released. I know in talking with Fremoc, that he also is a major help to players in game. Kelvis has also taken on helping members of HSP who are specifically here because of TOR.

Right now we are continuing to improve the house. We want to make it as fun as possible for each one of you. At the end of the day, this club is about you the members. Should there be anything you want to see happen, or have issue with, please come talk to us. We don't bite (Well, most of us don't). Giving you the best experience possible here is our one goal, and while sometimes that may not seem evident, it is in the core of everything we do here.

TL;DR

*Nightstalkers and Dorimad Sol closed

*New BT: Hephaestus

*Y'all have had some fantastic activity! Keep it up!

*Kelvis is a BAMF in TOR

*Let us know if there is anything we can do for you!

FOR THE EMPIRE!

Xen'Mordin Vismorsus

Quaestor of Scholae Palatinae