Welcome to Voice Report #8. I have spent the last month traveling 4400 miles across the United States in a car and 1600 miles in an airplane. It was crazy and I am happy that my massive road trip has culminated with my arrival at the Army Command and General Staff College (Army Graduate School). I will be here for the next year and look forward to my time as a student and an ever increasing role as your Voice!

This week's report:

1. ACC Updates
2. Fiction Update
3. Fiction Grading/Fiction Nova Archive
4. Review of Troy Denning's Crucible
5. Praise

-> News <-

ACC Updates: Mav and the ACC team are working with Jamez and the coders to finalize the character sheets. We have all been very pleased with their progress and believe they are going to offer our club a very unique way to individualize their characters even further. A special thanks to all of you who participated in the aspects competition.

The upcoming completion of the character sheets will allow the ACC team and myself to fully focus on the redesign of the ACC. We have held off on any major rewrites due to the synergistic relationships of the character sheets and the ACC.

A draft ACC planning document is in circulation right now and pending Muz's final approval. Our goal is to focus on the member experience and help everyone enjoy the ACC. You can see a sneak peak of our lead planning document below:

Fiction Update: The latest fiction update was released prior to the current round of the Dark Crusade. High performing members of the Dark Crusade were utilized to foreshadow a few upcoming events. Painstaking care was used in writing these characters as their creators intended for them to be written. Hopefully we did our job.

The fiction updates will continue to weigh in at 3000 or so words. Long enough to tell a little story, but not TLDR long.

Starting in August or September we will transition to a solid story line that will lead up to the events of the next GJW.

I intend to put out a summary of events style plot update for all of you who are too lazy to read :p

Fiction Grading: I'm handling the Infection and Madness events this round and will begin to grade entries tonight. You still have until the deadline to submit, but I'm going to get an early start in order to have them done much quicker this round.

For those of you who have not submitted yet, I encourage you to remember that the first 500 words of your story are really key in these competitions. You have to catch the judges attention with something a little different. I can only read so many "dances of death" lightsaber duels.

Additionally, the Nova Archive is available for everyone to get an idea of what the winning entries look like.

You can see all the entries at: Awesome Nova Library of Awesome Nova.

-> Star Wars Reviews <-

Crucible: The novel Crucible is Troy Denning's 14th Star Wars work and the latest in the Star Wars Timeline. The book is set in 45 ABY and features Luke, Leia, Han, and Lando in the role of aging heroes facing off against twin Nargons, Mandalorians led by Mirta Gev (Fett's granddaughter), and everyone's favorite new Sith, Vestara Khai.

The story is set up with Lando requesting the aid of Han and Leia to deal with a pirate problem plaguing his mining operations in the Chiloon Rift (think the Shroud). Things become rapidly complicated when the pirate problem turns out to be the master plan of two brilliant Nargons who are employing Mandalorians and Vestara Khai to push Lando out of the Rift. Shortly after it is revealed that the rift possesses much more than ore, leading Luke to investigate.

If you know me, this book sounds right up my alley. Nostalgia for our favorite characters, Mandalorians (I own a full size set of Armor), and the Lost Tribe of the Sith. What's not to like?

Unfortunately the book takes a metaphysical turn during the last 1/4 of the novel and focuses on Mortis/The Ones (From the Clone Wars TV Show), and an insane amount of Force trance/hallucination/alternate reality story telling that was a bit much for me. Additionally, the push to make the Mandalorians thugs continues in this novel and I despise that approach to their characters. Mirta Gev knows she is being duped in the story, but stays true to being a bad guy for the sake of being bad.

I'm a big fan of Denning, but I found his send off of the old cast too over the top for me. Regardless, he has ushered in the new era of characters and I'd imagine Jaina, Jag, Ben, Tahiri, Vestara, and the newly introduced Omad Kaeg (Han Solo v2) will be the Star Wars focus moving forward.

If you have the time, I'd recommend reading it, but you might want to wait for the paperback or a used hardcover.

-> In Conclusion <-

I'd like to congratulate our new Fist, Valhavoc. Calm, capable, and somewhat funny, Val is the right guy to replace the last Fist.

I don't say this because he was my DJB apprentice (he was), but because Val and I served together and were roommates in Iraq in 2007. I don't know many people more capable of being our gaming Guru.

Okay, report over. Thanks for your time. We look forward to getting the ACC out there for some initial testing.

Darth Pravus