12 June 2009

Headmaster Report #26

The Shadow Academy had certainly seen better days. Despite Lyspair not being a battleground during the war, from the outside, one would have assumed its walls were the victim of a bloody siege. Its rightful inhabitants, the Headmaster and his staff, feared what they already knew. Inside it would be worse.

The most alert, and adept, was Aabsdu, who led the way into what was left of the Academy. The reception was a warning of what was to come. The lights were out, but even through the thick darkness it was clear that the room had been warped beyond recognition. The durasteel walls had shown zero resistance to the attack, a tell-tale sign of Yuuzhan Vong amphistaves at work.

Taigikori followed Aabsdu closely into the room, followed by Impetus and Vorion, both new to their position as Magistrates. A small contingent of battle droids entered with them, their role to simply add additional fire should anything go wrong.

'This damage looks fresh' Aabsdu told his subordinates in silent whispers through the Force. 'Stay alert, they’ll still be around somewhere.' Even the quietest footsteps sounded like thunder to the ones who made them. Handles of weapons stayed firmly grasped in the hands of their wielders as the group explored deeper into the ruined academy, each room as devastated as the last.

With a scream and a crash of metal the room lit up in a dance of the droids’ blaster fire, lightsabers activating instinctively from the hands of the Dark Jedi, illuminating the room in a glow of silver, crimson and violet light. Aabsdu recognized the danger immediately upon seeing the hateful eyes of what looked like seven diminutive Yuuzhan Vong Warriors. Reacting in a flash, he brought one of them to the ground with a burst of Force lightning that bathed the room in an azure glow. Impetus’ yellow arm smoothly glided across her body, telekinetically catapulting a battle droid at the other, only for the makeshift projectile to be batted away as if it were a child’s toy, and promptly impaled.

"Slayers!" Aabsdu shouted at his staff, who promptly retreated back towards the front door, the time they took to dispatch the remaining droids gave the Dark Jedi a split second head start. As soon as they were out of the doorway, the silver lightsaber of Aabsdu span away from his hand, cutting down the stone wall and blocking in the Vong warriors, giving them a few precious extra seconds. Crashes of Yuuzhan Vong against the rubble created a din that barely allowed the four survivors to think. "That won't hold for long," one of them said.

"We need reinforcements," Headmaster Dupar responded, "Now," and then turned back towards his shuttle, preparing for the coming siege.

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News

--We're going to try something new as we work to develop our fictional updates. This report's update ended on a cliff hangar, but what happens next is up to you. For the next two weeks, we will be running a competition where you write the next fictional update. Open to all members of the Brotherhood, the updates should be roughly around one page long at 12 font. Details can be found here. All fictions submitted are subject to editing by the Headmaster. Have fun with it.

--For a while I've mentioned how we are working on a major revamp of the programming department of the Shadow Academy, and today the first two phases of the revamp go into effect. With the help of Derev, RevengeX, and Arion, a new, and much better, HTML Basics and HTML Advanced are now public on the site. They are up to date and just all around good. There's plenty more coding revamps to come. Check out the notes in the Important Links section.

--The May Journeymen Competition went pretty well, so we will continue to host those for our younger members to earn some easy medals, but for June the DB-wide fiction event will take the place of those competitions. For the May event, congrats to the following winners:

First: Isildur

Second: Aesir

Third: Mei

--You may or may not have noticed that with the conversion to PHP several of the courses were missing revisions made in the months leading up to the conversion, and almost all of them were missing their images. We are currently in the process of making sure that all notes are up to date as they should be, and that all images are showing as they should, so that's a work in progress. As always, if you come across something weird or wrong, send an email to Taig and I and we'll take care of it.

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Projects

--We've got a lot of stuff planned to happen during these wonderful summer months (June/July), so in the next four reports you can expect another major course revamp, the release of a new course and degree, plus another Blast from the Past! And then there is a major restructuring of the Shadow Academy that is currently in beta testing, so hopefully we'll be able to go public with that sometime in the next month. Plus there are some cool Shadow Academy-related changes that will happen during the main site conversion to PHP, so we're keeping busy.

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Important Links

--SA Website

--SA Degree Requirements

--SA Forums

--HTML Basics Notes

--HTML Advanced Notes

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Summary

• Write the next fic update! See competition for details!

• HTML Basics/Advanced revamped!

Dark Side Adept Aabsdu di Plagia Dupar

Headmaster of the Brotherhood