There usually comes a time of year, when everyone is complaining about the cold, and how long winter has gone on. I'm not usually one of those people; after all, I'm Canadian. An unbearably hot day to me is about 6 degrees above room temperature. But seriously Mother Nature? This is getting ridiculous. It's too damned cold.

Oh, and it's also Wednesday Report Day!

Headlines That You Need To Know

• Fading Light: Bosthirda Results (Taldryan Wins)
• Fading Light: What is to Come (ACC Event)
• Dark Council Change-Up... (The HRLD is Dead, Long Live the HRLD)
• Positions Open Around the DB (Tribunes & Aediles, Oh My!)
• Rollmaster Report (in absentia)
• Competition Roundup (Do all the Things!)
• Gaming Update (Diablo and TOR Updates)
• Taldryan: The Path Forward... (Fictional Stuff!)

Fading Light: Bosthirda Results

Well, my report concerning the Bosthirda event this week is a hell of a lot more positive than last week's. After a gruelling week of grading, Pravus and his cohorts managed to get through the 250,000 total words written by the various teams from around the DB during the event, and have judged all of the entries.

This was a winner take all event, and I am happy to report that thanks to the efforts of Taldryan Team 2 (Aidan Kincaid, Halcyon Rokir, Tarax Kor, Rathus Marr, Jac Cotelin and myself), we took all. The object of the storyline was the recovery of Ferran's lost sword Revelation, and I'm happy to say that Taldryan is now the proud owner of a fancy Sith sword. Not entirely sure how we're handling it, whether it's going to be a symbolic thing, or granted to one of the members of the team as MVP, or what, but we'll let you know as soon as we know.

Bottom line people... we got started off on the right foot in the Fading Light events performance wise. I'm still expecting us to do a lot better next round in the realms of participation though.

Fading Light: What is to Come

Speaking of the next round of Fading Light, we've been telling everyone who hasn't already to get themselves all qualified up for the ACC, because as we know, the ACC is where we're going to be battling it out in the next round.

Right now, all the details we have on the design of the competition are that it's going to be a tournament. We can probably guess that it will take the form of a single elimination bracket style tournament (much like the one currently running on the staging site) but we have no absolute details on it yet.

Here's the simple fact though. You can't participate unless you've taken ACC Fundamentals and then gone through and passed your ACC Qualification Exam.

You should probably also be taking a look at your character sheets (character creation guide!), and tightening them up. Maybe update important sections on your wiki pages (if you have them) to fill in your backstory as best you can.

If you have any need of advice, everyone on the summit is available for giving it. Just drop us an email or hit us up on IRC.

Dark Council Change-Up

So, this week saw a few massive announcements from the Grand Master, and while there's a lot in his report that you should all be reading, I just want to touch on a few of the really big points.. the biggest being the resignation and appointment of a new Dark Councillor.

Orv, the mango loving comic making madman has come to the unfortunate conclusion that having a real life is more important than putting on his wizard's cloak and playing star wars with us magical internet people, so he's stepped down from the position of Herald.

Stepping up to fill his enormous Swedish chef shoes is his Praetor and Right Hand (Woah!)Man Socorra. I'm sure she'll do great. So congratulate her when you see her around.

Obviously, Socks had been serving as the Forum Tribune, so that position is now Vacant, and just to make sure Muz's inbox wasn't lacking for applications, Xantros also got slapped around a little bit by the real life hammer, and also stepped down. This means that of the three Tribunes, after Muz's report only Ben is left standing.

Big thanks to Orv, Xantros, and Socorra for the work they've done (and in Socks' case continue to do).

Positions Open Around the DB

Oh, right, so I mentioned that there are two Tribune positions vacant. What that means obviously is that there are two Dark Summit positions open. If you're interested in applying for Forum Tribune or Recruitment Tribune, email Muz and the Deputy Grand Master with your application by 2359 EDT 27th March, 2014.

Yeah, that's tomorrow. Sorry guys :D

There are also two other positions of note open for applications Praetor to the Herald and Aedile of Ajunta Pall over in Plagueis.

Rollmaster Report (in absentia)

So, our beloved Rollmaster Howlader is down with the flu this week, and has barely been online enough to be considered annoying. But he did send me along his Rollmaster report before he fell into bed tonight... well, at least he gave me the cliff notes of what he wanted to report on.

He wished to make sure that I reminded everyone to congratulate Armags again on his recent ascension to Dark Jedi Knight, as well as welcoming Bis-Ron and Kooks to Taldryan. Kooks has already been ratcheting up the ranks and has made it up to Acolyte on the back of some solid SA and Gaming work.

He also supplied once again this week's competition roundup..

Competition Round Up

As you all well know, I'm a big fan of pestering people to do all the things. With that in mind, here is a concise listing of all the competitions available to members of Taldryan, so go forth, do all the things!

Taldryan Run Competitions

• Taldryan Gate Keeper Trials, March 2014 – Fight for the honour of being the commander of Taldryan’s Honour Guard!
• Kaz and Mav's Crazy Graphics Extravaganza – Mav and Kazmir need graphics! Go make them some. Creating the Harbingers' Logo – Battleteam Harbingers needs a logo!
• The Wardens Weekly Puzzle #1 – A puzzle competition hosted by Aiden Dru!
• Hunt the Jedi #3 – Quaestor Halc’s weekly report competition!
• Ektrosis Motto – House Ektrosis needs a new motto! Go forth and enter!
• Creating the Harbingers' Motto – Nero’s Battleteam needs a motto! Enter it now!

Brotherhood Wide Comps

• A Night at the DJB Casino – This is a Pazaak tournament hosted by Odan-Urr’s Defender Brain The Fist!
• Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? – Hosted by Arcona’s Kookimarissia Mimosa and Sarin – this is a character driven competition wherein your character wakes up in their own past.
• PVP Master – A Fist of the Brotherhood office competition – member with the best PvP win to loss ratio wins!
• Monthly Mobile Gaming: Basketball Mania – A Fist of the Brotherhood mobile gaming competition. All participants earn 5 Clusters of Fire.

Gaming Update

Some more news coming in on the gaming front this week, with the Fist announcing updated Guild Bank Rules and unit representatives in the DB's SWTOR Guild (Congrats to Armags who is Tal's representative in the Guild).

Also, for all the Diabloheads out there, I'm sure you need no reminder that this week saw the release of the Diablo 3 Expansion. There are a bevy of Club First Competitions, and Valhavoc went ahead and clarified some frequently asked questions concerning them.

I think one of these might have been completed already, but I'm not entirely sure. Either way, here are the three Club First comps.

• Club Firsts: Diablo 3 Level 70 Character – This is a Fist of the Brotherhood hosted competition – first person to get a Diablo 3 character to level 70 wins a Pendant of Blood.
• Club Firsts: Diablo 3 Torment 6 DJB Group Malthael Kill – The first full group of DJB members to defeat Malthael (Act V End Game Boss) on Torment 6 Difficulty will all earn a Pendant of Blood.
• Club Firsts: Diablo 3 Torment 6 Solo Malthael Kill – A Pendant of Blood will be awarded to the first member to defeat Malthael (Act V End Game Boss) in a solo game on Torment 6 Difficulty in Diablo 3

Enjoy reaping those souls!

Taldryan: The Path Forward...

In case you missed the bit in Halc's report about Ektrosis' new fictional role... well, go read it. It applies to everyone. I just wanted to do what he said I'd do, and expand upon it a little bit.

The summit has been working on a bunch of things going forward, to trying to work out a more "realistic" fictional backstory as to why despite Kr'Tal being within spitting distance of a few New Republic planets, they haven't just wandered by and swatted us like flies. There are a lot of holes we want to fill, and fictional paths we want to wander along. The fictional development of the Clan moving forward is going to be a very high priority, one that we want to involve everyone in as much as we can.

While we still have a lot of work figuring out how we're going to go about doing this, whether it be via runons, fictions, graphics comps, or whatever... what we have figured out is the basic fictional identity of the two houses within Taldryan.

Ektrosis is going to be our shield. Their mandate is going to be largely domestic, keeping us safe from threats to the planet, and our people. With the story we have planned for the internal workings of Kr'Tal, there's also going to be some hardcore Sidious-esque political conspiracies at work here too. It's pretty cool.. or at least we hope so.

Dinaari is going to be our sword. They're going to be the people we send out there to deal with enemies abroad, whether it be by blowing up their faces, or assassinating people in back alleys. If we want to get some people dead, it's likely going to be Dinaari that's pulling the metaphorical trigger.

Like I said, this is an ongoing project, that is still very much in it's infancy. But we're excited about it, and hope you guys are too.

While you're at it, make sure you get a few more matches in toward the Taldryan Gate Keeper Trials. This honorary position is just the first example of the sort of thing we're looking at bringing to you guys in the coming months (and hopefully years!)