It is impossible to capture the full scope of Blade's contributions in a few hundred words and some numbers, but her activity as a member is a decent enough start. Since her last recognition, Blade has participated in 129 competitions and organized or co-organized an additional 17. That's earned her 15 Crescents—including 4 diamond ones—and 4 Gold Novae during the last Rite of Supremacy, as well as 23 Seals of Fury for her participation in the Meridian event. Her regular activity makes her one of the most well-rounded members in Odan-Urr, as she's earned 432 Clusters of Fire and 6 Pendants of Blood for gaming, 31 Clusters of Ice for fiction, and 60 Clusters of Graphite for her submissions to graphics competitions. Her gaming activity during the Rite of Supremacy earned her a 6th place finish for the GMRG quarterly ladder, and more recently she was declared the Frosty Romanae Memorial BGL Champion for Jedi Academy. Additionally, she passed 7 Shadow Academy exams and earned 4 degrees, including 2 Dark Sages in Tactics and History and Lore.

That activity did not arise in a vacuum. Blade knows in her bones that effective leadership in this club comes down first and foremost to modeling the kind of member you want to work with. She wants her members to do competitions, so she plugs them aggressively—but first she does them herself. Those 60 CGs don't represent an attempt to pick up a new hobby. They represent a leader setting a positive example for her members by being one of the fist to engage with an activity or prompt and demonstrate that you don't have to have 1,000 hours invested in an activity to just toss in an entry and have fun with it. Likewise, she has been one of the most visible and active members on every communication platform we have: clan and house Telegram channels, mailing lists, report comments (36 of them!), voice chat, and the forums. Much of that communication has centered around activities meant to build up the Odanite community into something to transcends competitions and clusters. This includes the many, many hours of Cards Against Humanity that she's hosted on Discord, or her lessons for would-be Jedi Academy champions.

Blade also supported me in every facet of clan leadership during my tenure as CON, substantially increasing my effectiveness as well as keeping me sane. This began almost immediately, as she applied her experience as Rollmaster to help hire two RMs in quick succession and help me navigate substantial intra-summit conflict. Once the GJW XII epilogue was released, Blade immediately contributed half of the first COU fiction update of my tenure, ensuring that high-performing members were featured in official fiction. Blade was also very much an equal partner in our first major event, the Consul Bride cooperative event with Arcona. Her role included competition planning—which helped lead to 140 competition entries from COU alone—and taking point on the COU side of the event fiction.

One of Blade's less public tasks was helping me with long-term planning and proposals. Once Mav and Vyr were formally recognized as GM and DGM, we were able to present our plans for fictional and event development to them almost immediately. The work on implementing those plans included the Station to Station lore development comps and the Tipping Point clan event, which between them saw 113 entries.

During the Rite of Supremacy, she not only did the usual leaderly hyping and motivation, but she set a perfect example for our members by exceeding full participation, and walked away as the highest-scoring Odanite and a key component of our victory in that vendetta. Simultaneously, she was engaged at the Dark Summit level, ensuring that member concerns were presented to the Dark Council in a straightforward and professional manner and resolved. Since the end of the RoS, Blade has taken point on managing the house summits.

Throughout all of this, Blade has also played a critical role in day-to-day management, including moderating sometimes-heated chat discussions, addressing concerns of and with particular members, facilitating the award and promotion process, and odd tasks like writing the clan's first PulseFeed update.

In the two years that I have worked with her, I have never once found my trust or confidence in her to be misplaced. I take Odan-Urr's future very seriously, but I rest easy at night knowing that everything we built will continue to grow under her leadership.

Alethia Archenksova
Consul Emeritus, Odan-Urr

Headmistress Alethia Archenksova, 2019-03-24 18:43:06 UTC