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!