He slunk along the wall, sliding aside the vent grate as he cursed himself silently. Juda's helmet flickered up, the HUD showing the schematic for the Bothan Assault Carrier that he had made after studying Arcona's own The Darkest Night. The Ventilation system would lead him past three doors, and while he could slice them, he would much rather attack from a direction that the traitorous Captain would not expect.

He crawled silently, a difficult task as his armour could clang against the durosteel vent walls at any second. The training he had received at the Obelisk's Black Pyramid was brutally effective in teaching him to move without sound, a wonderful addition to his Mandolorian training. Deadly and silent, he pressed on, the light from the Captain's chambers filtering in through the grate.

<p>The Anzati sat silently, staring at a holoimage of a woman and child, his hand resting casually on an armory saber from the Herald's stock. Juda sneered beneath his mask, flicking the switch on his gauntlet just as the air started to pressurize, masking the metallic sound as the blades swung outward. He had been told by the Grand Master to bring him this anzat's head, and he would do so without fail.

<p>

---

<p>

The blast rocked the prefabricated base, and Tremil swung himself back toward the window. It had been thirty minutes since the enemy had retreated back into their battle-hives. He had heard the order for forward artillery to pummel the earthworks, and everyone had expected that the enemy would have gone deeper in the ground, buying them at least a few more hours until they would be able to mount another attack.<p>

He scanned the barren grounds from his observation post, vaguly aware of the other soldiers snapping up next to him, the triple daggers insignia of III legion on their shoulders almost glowing in the flickering light. Tremil lifted the electrobinoculars to his eyes, switching optic modes and zooming in, seeing the insectoid setting up another mortar-like device. He chirped out the directions, spotting the beast for the sniper to his left. A second later, a wave of heat bloomed on his face for a second, and he saw the creature crumple into a pile of broken chitin.<p>

"Confirmed." Tremil zoomed out one setting, spotting another of the aliens as it was setting up a similar device. He hoped that they were just mortars or something like that, but they seemed a bit bulky for just that purpose. No matter, he just knew that if they were dead, if they did their job, it wouldn't matter. He called out the direction and watched as the sniper ended another one.<p>

---

<p>

Korras tapped his fingers on the table, looking across the meeting room at the Dark Lord's Praetor. He was a bit of a nervous man, a Krath that had seen more books than battles, a bit more in-line with the stereotype than the Master himself. Korras smiled inwardly, remembering the simpler days when he and Muz had been sent on missions by elders that no longer graced the Brotherhood with their presence. Both himself and Muz had come into their own, growing past the confines on Tarthos and fighting their way up the ladders of power. <p>

Paladin stood nervously in the corner of the room, stroking his beard as he stared blankly at he wall. He wasn't often seen outside of the private halls of the Dark Hall, but his influence was felt almost any time that one had dealings with the Dark Lord. Korras watched the older man carefully, trying to sense a glimpse of what he was thinking, an echo of what he might have been called for.<p>

The door opened at the far end of the room, and all eyes shifted to it. <p>

---

<p>

The old man snorted as he put his glass down, staring down Pavan with a vehemence he had previously only reserved for his brother. He waved away the bartender as he hovered nearby with his bottle, opening his mouth and closing it again as he chewed the thoughts into something he could actually say.<p>

"Dead?"<p>

Pavan just nodded. <p>

"So..." <p>

The weasel of a man shrugged, his eyes explaining how his involvement in the matter evaporated when the money did. He angled for the door, plainly uncomfortable being in close proximity with him, despite the crowd. The old man reached into his pockets and tapped an Aurum credstick on the bar, drawing Pavan's eyes in a heartbeat.<p>

"I need to get ahold of someone..."<p>

---

<p>

The whirring sound of cheap pneumatics echoed off of the walls of the Holocron Centre of the Brotherhood. Muz paused in his step, his head lowered and his eyes framed by long tendrils of dark hair. The Force whispered to him, and he knew all he needed within a moment.<p>

Vexxtal pushed the fresh power coupler into the backup circuits, the red optical sensors reflecting the teal glow of the Brotherhood archives. Metallic fingers released and the servos were commanded to turn the torso around. Spinning slowly, Vexxtal cursed the jury-rigged combat droid he was forced to utilize to interact, to move, to do what needed to be done. Shock racked the Shard's senses as it saw the bright purple glow of a lightaber.<p>

"You're no droid." Muz snarled, a cruel glint in his featureless eyes.<p>

<p>

Report Time!

<p>

<p>

We've been plodding along with quite a few projects in this slow-down time. I'll elaborate a bit by points here.<p>

The RoS is going to be drastically different from the vendettas we have seen in the time I have been here. I know I haven't been letting a lot out of the bag regarding it, but i'll cover a few of the cool strokes regarding it:

1.) The RoS will have a much less frantic pace than the GJWs, due to the way the competitions are timed.

2.) Clans will have the ability to pick specific events and focus on those to best effect.

3.) DCers will be allowed to fight for their home clans.

There's more, but the details will be released as we get closer to the January 2nd start date.<p>

We have had, for a long time, official fleets and naval forces, due to a neat point system that had been put together back a few years ago. We've continually upgraded and updated this system, allowing clans to 'buy' more ships with points earned in the vendettas. But this was just for the fleets, and we had left the ground forces out of the mix for a long time. This was mostly due to not wanting to quantify ground forces when we had so many issues with the fleets being built sometimes haphazardly (see the no-transports flaps of years past). This is going to be changing, and soon. Thanks to Dash and several other GMly advisors, we have a working system in beta-testing right now, and I hope that we will be releasing this to the clan summits before the end of the year. This will be a combined armed forces points system, allowing the clans to buy both space forces and ground forces out of the same pool. This gives us a lot of flexibility for the clans to play with, and still keeps things relatively simple, as it is all one points pool.

<p>

Clan powers: Last report, I announced the launch and selection of new clan powers. These powers have yet to be coded into the character sheets (I tried, but the code declared a fatwa on me, so I'm having Orv/Arion/Awesome handle it). Also, after review, my GMly advisors and I came to the conclusion that we should shift the levels for clan powers down by one. That means that instead of the clan powers levels being for Equites, Elders, and GMs, it'll now be available with the ranks being Knights, Equites and Elders. This gives usanother awesome benefit of being knighted for our journeymen to aspire to.

<p>

<p>

I opened a topic on the Forums about our timeframe here in the DB. Mostly regarding how we advance fictional time in the DB. Take a look, comment, etc. Let your voice be heard.

<p>

And as usual, I am continuing to host the 'Ask the Grand Master' forum, available here. Best questions will be posted here and could net you a Dark Cross. <p>

<p>

Kschamehellan asks: I have a question or maybe more of a suggestion as well. I was on another website and they had what would be the equivalent of medals for terms of service. A person was awarded a specific graphic after every year since they had registered as a member. I wanted to know does the DB have anything like that (if we do I'd be surprised I never heard of it) and if not would there be a way to start something like that since it seems it might be just another thing to motivate older members.<p>

Well, we don't have any time-in-service medals because it doesn't encourage activity out of the older members, since they don't have to do anything except just hold a dossier for that period of time. Seeing as how it's the default of this club to keep a dossier (i.e. a member keeps a dossier unless they tell us to delete it), they're not actually doing activity, so 'earning' it is a bit of a misnomer. With the DB being exclusively merit-based and competition-based with regards to how we award medals, a simple 'time-in-servide' medal would run counter to our culture here. We'd rather make people work and earn the medals, rather than tell someone that specific medals can't be earned by hard work, but rather by sitting around for a decade. Thanks Kschamehellan, enjoy the DC.<p>

Aabsdu asks: On a scale of 1 to Jac, exactly how kick-ass will the upcoming RoS be?"<p>

That's a pretty hard to answer question. I'd like to say that it's pretty Jactastic, but seeing as how we are doing a lot of things with this new RoS that haven't been done before, I can't rightly make that claim until I see how it works for us as a club. I think that it's going to be pretty bloody successful, otherwise I wouldn't even try it. I am pretty enthusiastic about it, though.<p>

<p>

<p>

TL:DR<p>

*RoS Coolness

*Armed Forces Reset coming

*Clan Powers getting coded in, available at DJK

*Years topic on the Forum

*Impetus scored a RS for her work. Well done.

*Congrats to Windows on his promotion

<p>

And that's all for this time. If you have any questions, or anything I can help with, pm me on IRC or shoot me an email. Have fun!

<p>

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