Event History

Mune has worked as Praetor in the Master at Arms office for years now, and their contributions come just about every single day. The MAA Office is a little different from other DC (that's right, DC!) offices, our large projects (or even any projects) come once every few years (looking at you XP!) – and little projects are once or twice a year.

The real work of the MAA Office comes in the day-to-day work of approving and denying medal requests, processing appointments and resignations, managing competitions (and manually editing competitions) – and knowing the nuances of our database to make competitions work (for instance, switching competition archetypes to allow manual addition of participants, and then switching it back).

Mune has also been invaluable in keeping the Master at Arms Office up with its impressively short turn-around time for requests that come into the database, or that come in as emailed requests (when people remember to email him!). In that, he's processed hundreds of competition, medal, and promotion requests. Since the deployment of the XP System, things for us have changed - but...only somewhat. We have the whole new beast of trying to define what non-site XP is, what a member has contributed outside of our enormous fancy-ass database, and Mune has been instrumental and helping me, Halc, and ultimately all of us navigate this strange new XP world.

One of the most important, and generally unstated roles of a DC Praetor (especially in the MAA world)? Reality checks, or something like that. Mune has offered opinions on policy choices, or recommendations that are sometimes in line with my own to verify my own lack of senility. Sometimes though, they demonstrate that I am off my game – or I have not considered a position or opinion. Or sometimes? Sometimes I am just flat out wrong – and Mune points it out and corrects me. For all of that? I am forever grateful.

Mune has done well for the Master at Arms Office over the past twoish years, and I have full confidence that things will continue, and ultimately improve for the benefit of all our members.

They remain the nice one.

Congratulations on the green stabby thing!

Howlader Taldrya, 2024-06-19 23:23:38 UTC

Oh, hi. It's not every day I get to give someone a Ruby Scepter and Emerald Dagger back-to-back, but here we are!

Turel's last few months as Fist have been busy. He planned and launched a very popular revamp of the GMRG and has kept abreast of new games and changes to existing games, making sure that extremely popular (and unexpected) hits like Helldivers 2 received rapid approval, adding the new The Pit activity to Diablo 4, and adjusting cluster values of Diablo 3 greater rifts despite some vocal opposition. Fist is probably the most difficult job on the DC by ratio of salt to power: GM, DGM, JST are often responsible for making unpopular decisions, but we are often more insulated from criticism by virtue of being another level removed from most decisions and (except for DGM) having tenure built in. The Fist is on the front lines. Turel has to keep tabs on the rapidly changing interests of our gamers while ensuring that CF awards remain relatively balanced between many disparate platforms--and gamers are a notoriously salty bunch. It isn't an easy job, and we've had Fists in the past who just couldn't cut it. Turel has done a difficult job with enthusiasm, diligence, and an overriding care for the experience of our members.

On top of his gaming-specific duties, Turel has also been one of the most active participants in DC discussions. DC debates can be intense, especially for newcomers, but he has never shied away from disagreeing with me or anyone else. Anyone who knows him knows that he isn't afraid to speak his mind, and I value his opinion quite highly. He has had an impact, direct and indirect, on many of the decisions I have made as GM (and DGM before that). This Emerald Dagger is a token of my appreciation for his hard work and dedication to this club. Congratulations, Turel!

Lord Dacien Victae, 2024-05-28 14:25:42 UTC

Zuza has been Arcona CON for almost half a year, but this medal has nothing to do with that. In fact, I just gave her an RS for all of that stuff like two weeks ago.

Zuza is receiving this because she is ridiculously active. Since her last medal (again, a Ruby Scepter two weeks ago), she has participated in 55 comps and won 38 crescents. Just since her promotion in April, she's done a whopping 184 comps. Hell, since she joined she's participated in nearly 1,000 comps and won 173 diamond crescents (she's now the all-time leader in Cr-Ds despite only having been a member for three and a half years). Most of those numbers aren't really relevant to this particular award, they just illustrate how unusually and profoundly active Zuza has been.

Congrats, Zuza. You earned this!

Lord Dacien Victae, 2024-05-28 13:51:11 UTC

Never thought I’d be main rec on an ED, especially for all XP. But from what I’ve heard and seen, “that’s Warp.” There’s more XP behind this one too, so splitting up where it all came from is impossible. But I am glad that we can recognize your past activities and reward you for it. Congrats!

General Socorra Tenebrosa Nhar’qual Erinos, 2024-05-22 22:26:45 UTC

TuQ'uan Varick di Plagia is going to have to change his nickname from "The Hat" to "The Man" after this. Where to start with this guy? In short, he's been an entirely invaluable part of the Plagueis summit team since his last award for general and leadership activity within the Clan last year. He's amassed a ton of activity, as both Imperial or Metric values (take your pick). He's done amazing work from the standpoint of his own personal activity while exceeding all expectations and thresholds from the perspective of leadership.

Breaking down the counting numbers since June 8th of last year when he earned his Ruby Scepter is a bit insane. He has participated in 580 non-container competitions and earned the following placements: 1 each of the three forms of Vendetta Novae (Gold, Silver, Bronze) to go along with 17 Diamond, 76 Ruby, 139 Amethyst, 101 Sapphire, 30 Emerald, 13 Topaz, and 6 Quartz crescents for a placement rate of 66%. He's grabbed 62 Clusters of Fire, 57 Clusters of Ice, 383 Clusters of Earth, and 84 Clusters of Graphite. He's picked up two Scrolls of Foundation along the way and was awarded a Seal of Loyalty this May 4th. He earned 26 Seals of Transcendence for last year's Vendetta as one of Plagueis's most active members. He's generated 22,840 words between fiction and RP sessions (the latter as both a DM and participant). He's seen 11 society rank ups all told as well in that time. Additionally, he's also organized or co-organized 200 competitions. I've seen folks not do as much over the course of years, let alone months.

The contributions that TuQ makes to leadership in Clan Plagueis, however, are even more valuable while being harder to quantify. He has published his report monthly like clock work, with the exceptions for months when major events such as Vendettas or Pro Bowls were falling during competition time when we focus on one to one engagement. Speaking of that, TuQ has done an amount of that engagement that almost puts the sites auto generated emails to shame as far as the amount. He is muchly responsible for the Clan's overall second place finish during the most recent Great Jedi War as well as stellar participation ratios in that event as well as the last Pro Bowl and our recent Ascending Conflict event. He had been sending out a weekend update for his House in order to connect members with activities for their weekends, something that he has expanded to the full Clan since taking over as Proconsul. Plagueis and his House have never failed to meet or exceed a 66% participation rate in every major competition event during his tenure, and our continued success as a unit has been as much due to his work as anyone's. I feel like I keep writing the same recommendation for TuQ from time to time, which really speaks to the continued excellence of his contributions and efforts.

TuQ'uan Varick di Plagia, the Clan is honored to have someone who does as much on staff. He ascended to the ranks of the Elders last year and did not slow down even slightly in everything that he has done, not content to sit back on his laurels. He continues to push forward with a level of excellence that none can match, and the Ascendant Clan is all the better for his contributions. Congratulations, TuQ'uan, on this Emerald Dagger. May you wear it with the thanks of a grateful Clan.

Master Selika Roh di Plagia, 2024-05-14 01:09:46 UTC

Man, where do I even begin with Thran?

It’s hard to decide, to be honest. With Thran, there’s no question about what he did. It’s how much he did. The answer is usually? A lot. Thran has become a staple of the Regent Staff since I first hired him many moons ago, and continues to perform above par and expectation as my Praetor. Every single discussion, Thran is there. Every debate, every decision, Thran plays a part. He may not always like the part, or the decision, and we do disagree fairly often, but we always come out on the other side fine and one thing is for certain; Thran does the job and the job gets done.

Right after my last reward, Thran finished and practically solo-launched our Capital Ship Upgrades project, inputting, stocking, and doing quality control on all 102 different upgrade prototypes - that he has been previously rewarded for pretty much solo developing - putting in several hours of work to ensure that these were deployed with minimal issues and opened up swaths of new avenues for the Clans to tell their fictional stories. Whenever you’re deploying slotable upgrades, however, you need to add sub-item slots for those prototypes to the items in question, requiring Thran to navigate several pages over and over and over to add this new sub-item slot to every clan capital ship in the system, and then do a quality control sweep over all that work before announcement to ensure minimal errors during launch. Any deployment is a massive undertaking, one such of this especially so, and Thran muscled through it entirely on his own.

Thran was a big part of our discussions on what to do with the Celebration Store, which we felt was serving dual purpose and gatekeeping the most lore-intensive items that members might want to acquire more than once a year to tell their stories and really build their characters. As of last May, the Regent Staff massively changed how this store worked (previously stocking both heavy lore-related and special edition items, now stocking only special edition items).

For the last two years, we’ve run our Life Day Celebration Series on November 17th to commemorate the near real-life Star Wars holiday of Life Day. Each year, this guy plays a big part in the discussions and making sure it goes smoothly, helping organize competitions and ensure a smooth experience for the Regent Staff’s annual event. While he only ended up running a single competition this year (through no fault of his own, sorry man :P) Thran helped with the Life Day Celebration II item launch, stocking all of the prototypes and performing a quality control sweep with various corrections - even working up two prototypes of his own during development.

Our big project this year has been the Crafting System, the beast that keeps rearing its ugly head in Thran’s direction. We consider this project to be our whale, given it involves over a thousand different prototypes and many different nuances that normal item development doesn’t have - such as crafting materials, their cost, the overall item’s cost, its additional perks for being crafted vs purchased, etc. He’s been my main go-to man on this project, sharing insane ramblings amongst back and forth and debating - endlessly, I might add - all the little tidbits and inner workings of the project while slaughtering a massive amount of the work. He’s worked on countless aspects of this project from its initial inception of Masterwork Possessions to its transformation into a much more development-heavy Crafting System, devoting tens of hours to bringing a new system that (when polished and fully deployed, instead of our little lightsaber and corvette beta test) members will hopefully enjoy for years of come. He was integral in discussions for our what we should work on/launch first, and insisted on a “small scale” launch that we could use to get feedback on the system for additional tweaks and polish.

His tenacity has paid off, and after launching craftable lightsabers and member corvettes (which he did a quality control check on, which included checking all lightsaber crafting materials, lightsaber prototypes, and the crafting blueprints recipes) we were able to gather important member feedback that we can use to improve the system for everyone, offering his own ideas on how we can make crafting more enjoyable and give it a bit of more “oomph”/a larger dopamine hit for the member.

Even with the dozens of hours that Thran has put into his club just doing project work just as my Praetor, that still wasn’t enough. He’s been consistently keeping an eye on existing and new launches from the team, and has been making numerous quality of life improvements/fixes to prototypes in the system that stretch as far back as possessions’ inception under Evant and had been missed with numerous sweeps by the Regent Staff and non-staff members over the years. I could try for days, and I could still not put into words how much Thran does behind the scenes for every member that uses possessions (re: pretty much everyone but Howie) and for me personally as my Praetor.

I knew from the moment I hired Thran that it could take him a while to adjust to Regent Staff thinking from Clan leadership thinking (you need to have a certain level of disconnect, i.e. we don’t control what clans do in the sandbox, we just help fill it and give them the toys to make their sand castles). It did. But I also knew that I was going to be getting an impeccable work ethic, someone that I could rely on to always push me or play devil's advocate, and someone that (like me) was a bit of a redemption story and was going to be better for it. All of that turned out to be true. When the day finally comes that I retire, I know that the then Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master will open applications for Regent. They’d be stupid not to; you always want to see what kind of interest is out there, what kind of ideas…. But they’d also be stupid not to hire Thran. And that says pretty much all it needs to on its own.

This is by and far probably the longest recommendation I have ever written. I could keep going. There are so many little intricate things that are required for deploying a release of any type, or so many different things that can occur in one of our days-spanning conversations, that if I were to type out every little thing a staffer had to do over and over on every single deployment, and really break it down, my recommendations would be so much longer. There’s a misconception (how common, I’m not sure) that being on the Regent Staff is hard, or daunting. It’s not. It’s about organization, being thorough, and most of all pacing. When you’re dealing with (consistently) almost a dozen different fields on several different pages for a single prototype, and that’s just during deployment, you really need to control your pace to avoid burnout during development and deployment of a Regent Staff Project. Thran aces it.

Thank you for everything you do.

Anubis, 2024-04-29 20:17:01 UTC

Since his last medal, Kamjin has served 9 months as CSP CON, 7 as M:HM, and 3 as Justicar. While CON, he organized 29 competitions, including contributing to the most recent Pro Bowl, and has participated in an impressive 170 comps in the last year. He left CSP behind in October to take up one of the club's most important roles, Justicar. In the short time since he was confirmed to the role, he has overseen one expulsion trial, a Covenant Amendment to reform the process for banning members from independent units, and participated in essentially every discussion the DC has had (which is really quite a lot, we've been busy.) He has also shown considerable efforts in researching items we solved 6 years ago, so thanks for that.

Even before his became JST, Kam acted as an informal advisor for me, and I have come to trust his judgment and seek his opinion on important decisions. His conduct as JST for these past three months has been exemplary, and I'm happy to award him his first real Emerald Dagger.

Lord Dacien Victae, 2024-01-07 19:43:40 UTC

Idris does a lot for this club. For the last two years he's served dual roles as Voice and Combat Master, responsible for all aspects of our character sheet system , the ACC, the club-wide plot and fictions to move it forward, as well as reviewing fiction competitions and reviewing some of his own. On top of that, he's our sanity check (we're doomed) for all Krathy things. If a DCer wants to do something fiction-adjacent that they think is cool, they ask him if it makes any sense at all. Occasionally it does. But he gets pestered about all of this stuff, except by Howie who doesn't care.

In the 14 months since his last award, he has moved the club plot through the conclusion (for now) of our CoM arc and Mav and Evant's Excellent Adventure. He's run 24 competitions, including most of the GJW fiction comps, and written thousands of words of club fiction updates. Among those updates were the four released with the GJW and six from the Galactic Happenings series. He also rewrote the ACC Guide, worked with James to launch the Combatant side of the ACC Society revamp and plan for the final Judging side, added a bunch of member-requested species, and found time to judge 54 ACC matches and participate in 63 competitions.

Next up, GJW XVII: The Great Chicken Coup.

Lord Dacien Victae, 2023-10-23 20:58:54 UTC

In addition to his extensive work for and activity in Arcona and the club at large, as detailed by his clan summit below, Eleceos has been one of my most reliable staffers in renovating the Shadow Academy. Eleceos was the sole author on Personal Starships, developing 2500 words of course notes as well as the exam. After developing the framework for Personal Starships, he created the course notes for the sister course, Personal Speeders, addressing land vehicles.

Even though the Possessions system launched almost seven years ago and starships received a special upgrade system three years ago, until recently the SA effectively ignored how member-owned starships work in the Brotherhood. What we had instead was, judging by my PMs, some of the most widely feared courses in our catalogue. Although we're still working on migrating those from the course catalogue to the wiki, Eleceos' work already provides members with a clear and comprehensive guide to how to realize their dream of having their own X-Wing.

Additionally, Eleceos was one of the very few HM staffers who has stepped up to help with grading any courses the professors haven't taken care of within 16 hours of submission. This has been a big help in ensuring we maintain our standard turnaround of under 24 hours.

Thank you for all your hard work and congratulations on your first case of ED!

Alethia Archenksova
Headmistress

Darth Strix, 2023-08-23 20:06:57 UTC

Herald is an unusual job in this club, a specialist more akin to Seneschal than any other DC spot. It requires significant skill in making graphics, the ability to work collaboratively with the whole DC and the clans, and a great deal of project management and people skills. Since his last medal, Rian has kept his head down and focused on managing his staff and making art for the club. Among his graphical contributions are seven custom weapon skins, twelve warbanners, custom report graphics, images for the Children of Mortis dagger awarded after the last GJW, and 162 images for variations of five items launched in the 2022 Christmas release. He's kept the Herald staff moving forward and encouraged and mentored them.

His biggest single accomplishment in the last year is the launch of the new Warbanner template, which has been in the works for months. This overhaul streamlines and modernizes the Warbanner template and makes it possible to create Warbanners of higher quality and greater resolution than ever before. This was a major project for the Herald office, and I am happy to award this Emerald Dagger to Rian as a token of our appreciation!

Lord Dacien Victae, 2023-05-31 14:55:31 UTC