Event Details

Event ID
165054
Target
Aurora "Aura" Ta'var
Award
Grand Cross
Quantity
1
Non-site XP
64 XP
Requested by
Headmistress Alethia Archenksova
Primary reason

Blade's only been in COU for four months. To be honest, that's kind of hard to wrap my mind around because she's become absolutely integral to every aspect of the clan. I'm just going to spit out the numbers to get them out of the way, because, while they're impressive, they're the least interesting thing Blade's done for us. 21 competitions organized, 107 participated in. 22.5 thousand words of fiction, not counting all of the personal fic and the microstories she posts in chat. 23 crescents, 11 CGs, 17 CEs, 34 CIs, and 732 CFs. Yowza.

"So this girl's active. So what? Lots of people are active." Yeah, but none of those people are our Rollmistress. Most people view RM through the narrow scope of emailing new joins and shuffling them up to JM4. Blade's redefined it as a community organizer for the whole clan. She tracks every member's status and made sure to get to know everyone she could. She's one of the first people to start a conversation on the clan Telegram channel in the morning and frequently closes out the day with her trademarked sleepy doge pics. She's adapted the fiction chat daily question concept to a semi-regular clan character development prompt, and on top of that she tracks every member's answers and makes them publicly available for other writers. Blade's run several fiction and graphics comps that explicitly require members to involve other members' characters, and then made sure that everyone in the clan had a chance to see all the entries (with each entrant's permission). In a club where comp entries are all too often 'fire and forget' items that go unseen by anyone besides the comp organizers, this was a fantastic way to showcase the variety of talent we have in COU. More generally, she's constantly collaborating with new and established writers to develop their characters and the relationships they have with their clanmates. Oh, and she runs frequent training sessions for JA that several members have taken advantage of. And of course, it goes without saying that she does all the normal RM stuff as well.

Blade, a GC doesn't fully express how grateful Turel and I am for everything that you do, but it's a start. Congrats on your first Grand Cross!

Alethia Archenksova
Proconsul, Odan-Urr

Headmistress Alethia Archenksova, 2017-06-23 00:25:39 UTC
Additional reasons

I've often said that anyone who doubts the validity of the Rollmaster position need only look at COU's very own Rollmistress for an example of RM done right. Blade has been an absolute asset to COU and an essential part of our sustained growth since taking the position. It's more accurate to call her our community manager than what most in the DB associate with the rollmaster position. She certain takes care of the "pups" but she is in the channels day in and day out creating content, hyping competitions, spotlighting member works and achievements and generally looking out for all of COU's members.

In addition to all the statistics laid out by Arch, Blade recently not only got first place in the Desperate Measures coop event with Clan Taldyran but she was the only member in either Clan to have a perfect 16/16 competition participation. That's the kind of leader Blade is, front and center in the trenches with her people.

Please accept this small token of our gratitude for all you do for the COU community.

Turel Sorenn
Consul, Clan Odan-Urr

Champion Rajhin Cindertail, 2017-06-22 17:15:34 UTC

Aurora, or Blade as I have known her, is one of my newer judges but one of my most reliable. She can always be counted on to bring a hardline analytical view to the judgement process. She is very systems based, working with a focus on as exact a reasoning as possible. It is this perspective that Blade brings to all discussions within the ACC Staff, as each judgement often becomes a group effort at least a few times during the process. In that way, she influences each and every judgement. Even the ones she isn't directly involved in.

Since her last merit, Blade has successfully completed 9 battle judgements where she has taken point and a single qualification exam. In that time frame, only two judges managed to complete more and even then it was only by one match. That is no easy feat. It is simple to shrug off a judgement as just picking numbers arbitrarily and declaring a winner but that is far from the case. In Blade's case, she often takes 2-3 hours to complete a single judgement while being as meticulous as possible and not leaving anything ambiguous. If she has a question, she won't complete the judgement until it has been convincingly answered with no room for error.

I am honored to put up my own recommendation along with the others to see her granted a token of our collective gratitude. For all that she has done and continues to do. Congratulations, Aurora.

Atra Ventus
Combat Master of the Brotherhood

Darth Renatus, 2017-06-22 21:44:06 UTC