Event History

Ciara continues to perform at a high level as HM, overseeing the day-to-day operation of the Shadow Academy, working on new courses and revisions, and drawing up exciting new changes to the Shadow Academy Society. On top of all of that, she's a constant contributor to DC-wide discussions and projects, including the recently concluded RoS. And somehow, through her nearly 22 years in this club, she has not picked up a Sapphire Blade until today. Congrats!

Koji has been on the Fist staff in the role of Magistrate since June of 2020, working on what is now his third term in the office. It is not an exaggeration to say that his efforts have been herculean during his tenure. He has approved a whopping 642 PvE/O submissions and 189 PvP activities. Additionally, he has run a competition for the Grand Master's Royal Guard series each month he has been on staff. Not only can I always rely on Koji to have his competitions submitted ahead of schedule but he also takes care to consider what member's are playing and what game we have or have not supported in recent monthly competitions. This added level of care is essential to ensuring we give equitable support to all of our platforms.

He has been the most prolific Magistrate I have had on my staff by any measure. Koji has also shown tremendous growth in his leadership skills while on staff. I've had the pleasure of working with him one on one coaching and he has shown a passion for learning. This growth has distinguished him as someone who not only is committed to doing a fantastic job in his role but also to continued development with the eye on future service to the club.

Congratulations Koji, this is much deserved!

While browsing through the Vizsla roster for recognition and awards, one thing that jumped out to me was the huge hole left by Warp transferring to the Rogues. That clued me in as well that, as commonly happens when members go rogue, Warp’s accomplishments had been missed for recognition.

Prior to Warp’s move to the Rogues, he was a steady leader in the club and the clan, serving as a Magistrate to the Fist for a term, thereby helping approve over 75 gaming submissions as well as running monthly competitions as part of the M:Fist mandate. Further to that, he held a position as Quaestor of House Wren for over a year since his last recognition for that. In that time, he co-organized Vizsla’s third Great Hunt competition which drew in 18 unique competitors from the clan. He produced 4 reports in that time frame as well. As was expected of Vizsla leaders, he lead from the front and

Beyond his formal leadership roles, Warp has earned regular praise for his willingness to help anyone and everyone participate in gaming. This is perfectly illustrated from numbers for 2020, showing that he led the club in PvE/PvO events submitted with the second-most unique participants. That alone shows that he is willing to play with a wide swath of other players and that he volunteers to step up to submit the score screens.

Looking to the hard activity numbers, let’s be honest - there’s basically no one who can compete with this guy. 80 competitions participated, placing in 44 of those. Yup, better than a 50% placement rate. 4 of those were Gold Novae along with a Bronze Nova! That also includes a 4th place overall in GJW XIV with 100% event completion.

As already alluded to, he participated in almost 270 gaming activities, earning 2769 Clusters of Earth, 782 Clusters of Fire, and 12 Pendants of Blood! Not just a man of action, he also completed 8 fiction activities and another 4 run-on posts for nearly 5,500 words of fiction and 15 Clusters of Ice. Add in as well another 27 Clusters of Graphite and you have a well-rounded participant. He also flexed his academic muscles, completing 11 courses too.

As such, I would like to present a Sapphire Blade to Warp for his efforts for the past year and a bit!

Darth Aeternus - or Korras, as I know him - has a long and storied history in the Dark Brotherhood. Never one to rest on his laurels, however, he has maintained a level of uninterrupted activity going back for years; he has also repeatedly answered the call to serve the Brotherhood in various capacities. On those two fronts, he has accrued a laundry list of achievements since his last recognition for general activity (note that he has an AK for service to the Star Chamber and an SC specific activity for the Regent; that activity is not included). He has participated in 75 total competitions, earning 38 Seals, 4 Crescents, and a Silver Nova; he has participated in 3 ACC battles, 10 run-on posts (for over 5,000 words) and 10 fiction activities (for almost 5,000 words); he has served as an Aedile for 3 months, a Quaestor for 7 months, a Proconsul for 7 months, and a Magistrate to two different Dark Councillors - to the Regent and to the Headmaster - for 8 months a piece. Included in his service to the Headmaster was an audit of two courses and assisting in the movement of the Alchemy course from its old PDF version into a much more user-friendly version on the Wiki; as a former Headmaster, I can attest to how difficult yet important that last item truly is. Korras has been an exemplary member for years and I’m proud that he’s a member of Clan Vizsla and House Wren. Congrats, my fellow Tarentae!

I would like to add to the recommendation of Farrin for a Sapphire Blade to recognize his activity level as well as his continued service, both as a M:RGT for the club and as a house leader in Wren.

On an individual level, Farrin has participated in 28 competitions, earning placements in 6 of those. He has regularly engaged in gaming activities with other club members, with 53 such activities earning him 350 clusters. Additionally, he completed an ACC battle and also wrote just over 750 words of fiction in other writing activities. Finally, he has also completed 1 Shadow Academy course in that time frame.

But it is not just his individual activity that we are acknowledging. Farrin has contributed to the club as a whole by his work on the Regent’s staff - as is greatly detailed and explained by Anubis as part of this recommendation.

As a leader in Vizsla, he has served as both Aedile and Quaestor in house Wren for a year, and has led from the front. The expectation on the leaders in the clan is that they participate and help others do the same. In that regard, he participated in all but one bin in the recent Rite of Supremacy and assisted the clan’s prep by sending out a participation guide for all the event-long competitions. Further to that, he has been active in the wave of recommendations for member awards, submitting four award/promotion requests for member recognition.

I am pleased to recommend this award for Farrin and expect I’ll be doing the same again soon!

Kamjin's last sacramental award was given to him 24 years ago. I was 8 years old when this happened. He's done a lot since then in the DJB and the EH, and went rogue around 2003 after being Consul of CSP.

For some odd reason, which still kind of evades me to this day, he chose to return in late 2020 and became a voice that we rarely had in the Clan: reason, diplomacy, experience, and ideation all in one complex character. No matter the event or the happening, Kamjin was able to provide reason and professionalism. He could lend an ear while responding with a decisive and empathetic return.

This is reflected in the many projects he has taken up for CSP since becoming Proconsul. He took on the proposal of reorganizing the Clan into a way that honors the past while looking at the future. Through this project he created an identity for members to follow through with. He has lead the creation of a Clan story group that would allow many members to have input into the fictional development.

I cannot emphasize enough on how much of a mediator he has been. He has a way with words and with people. When people (sometimes like myself) make fires, he helps put them out and redirects the flames for something positive and for good use. He works with members who have complaints and responds and works with them, gliding safely between what the rules are and what he personally believes should happen.

And he has done this all while maintaining a high level of activity. He was one of two CSPers who competed in all 20 events. He was one of 10 members who ranked highest scoring in his pledged faction. He's hit the ground running since October of last year. But beyond that, he has become a good friend and mentor.

I thought I was doing a great job of developing until I met Kamjin. Through him, I see how I as a leader can do better. As can the rest of the Clan and the leaders all around the DJB.

Thanks, Kamjin. You deserve this.

Kamjin is an old member that has returned to the fold. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to expect from such a return. I didn’t know him or know of him, and then I learned that he was one of the founding members of Scholae Palatinae. No pressure there, right? Well any worries or doubts I may have had were quickly alleviated when I was met with a friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful individual. He’s someone that I know I can go to if I have an issue with anything and he’ll help me to understand it better, offering advice on what to do.

I’m not going to mince words here, Kamjin came to us during a time when we were struggling, trying to rebuild. From what I’ve heard from others and seen in our clan’s Telegram chat, his input, both as Proconsul and even before then, has been invaluable to our efforts. He helped drive activity by hyping competitions and running his own. Given his time away from the club, many things have changed in the intervening time, but if there was anything he didn’t know, he found out for himself or asked others that might know. He gives advice to anyone, regardless of whether or not he held a position at the time. He took on an apprentice and mentors others as well. Kamjin endeavors to work in all aspects of the club, as evidenced by his various Clusters and Crescents, 14 courses passed and 2 degrees earned. He stepped in to help the clan as Proconsul and sought to further help the club by joining the Justicar’s staff as the Left Hand of Justice. As part of his recent efforts to help the clan, Kam has put forth a solid groundwork upon which we can rebuild and expand our lore. The clan has a solid direction and there’s excitement in the air about all the possibilities that lay ahead.

Suffice it to say, he serves as an example for all in the clan. I believe it’s now time to properly reward him for his constant hard work and dedication to making Scholae Palatinae the great place I know it is and can continue to be. Congratulations, Kam, and thank you for everything that you have done and will do in the future. Drinks are on you! (And try not to spend all the credits on trips to see the rancors.)

It has been almost six years since Darcy Avarik has received any sort of recognition for his work in the Dark Brotherhood, and that is far too long for the level of consistent activity that he has put forth in that time period. His activity hits practically every facet of our club: he's participated in 92 total competitions since his last recognition, earning four Crescents, 39 Seals, and most importantly a Silver Nova in GJW XIV; he's written over 9,000 words of fiction and over 2,000 words in Runons; and he's earned multiple Clusters and Pendants of Blood. He's also served capably in leadership as a Battleteam Leader in Vizsla for nine months and a Quaestor in Odan Urr for six months, filing unit reports and even more importantly organizing/co-organizing 20 competitions. I'm proud to recognize Darcy for all of his efforts, and want to be the first to congratulate him on this deserved, if somewhat tardy, Sapphire Blade. Congrats!

Appius joined the Shadow Academy staff in January as a Magistrate dedicated to promoting the hype and lore of Star Wars. As he does everywhere we goes, in formal positions or out, Appius jumped straight into doing #allthethings. As a Magistrate, he does anything I ask of him almost immediately, but he also generates his own ideas and comes to me constantly with ideas to help improve the Academy or the Brotherhood. We’re still working on some of these ideas, so we’ll have to wait until next time to laud some of those, but I mention it here to illustrate the drive and character with which he approaches everything he does.

The first major project he took on as Magistrate was helping the Shadow Academy start hosting regular trivia competitions. He worked with me to test the Telegram quiz bot we’re using now until we were comfortable it would work in a bigger environment and took on the task of learning to use it to run the trivia. So far, he’s run three of these competitions (with a fourth already complete but scheduled to run next weekend) – but he doesn’t just run them. He creates the 20-question trivia questions and answers, puts them in the bot with added images for most questions, tests them a few times privately with me to ensure we won’t run into any hiccups, and then HYPES them in every channel repeatedly to ensure anyone who may want to participate knows about it and doesn’t miss it! He takes this role seriously and usually has topics and questions prepared or near complete well in advance.

He also recently completed the revision of Mandalorian Studies into Mandalorian Culture Studies – an effort that was more than just updating sections or proofing but entirely re-considering and re-writing a course to let the culture stand on its own apart from the old Mandalorian history section that we separated into another course. He has also already written a draft of over 2,500 words for what will become Mandalorian History 102 once the content and exam are finalized.

He’s also graded 21 exams in his role of “substitute” grader, which is assisting professors when they’re unavailable to grade or catching any exams that go over the 24-hour mark.

Finally, more than what he produces, Appius always has an upbeat attitude that makes working with him easy and enjoyable. He’s also extremely eager to learn and seems to do everything he does in the spirit of making things more fun for other members of this club. He’s been a sounding board to me for different ideas and I’ve found his input highly valuable as someone who has become so connected with the broad membership. Appius has more than exceeded my expectations of a Magistrate and I couldn’t be happier to add my recommendation for this first sacramental award!