The crack of thunder resonated loudly in the old throne room, the stone doing nothing to muffle the sounds even as the tapestries and carpets ruffled with the movement. Dust settled around polished black boots as he adjusted to the light of the Throne Room. It was dimly lit, torches and sconces casting shadows across their faces, across the stone, deeper reds and purples emphasizing the cloth that hung from the walls.

Valhavoc bowed his head a fraction of an inch, bringing a closed hist to his chect in salute. "My Lord." He cleared his throat as the doors swept open behind him, Socorra's bootfalls muffled by the carpet as she stepped through. Valhavoc did not adjust his attention, continuing. "I know that you felt the wreckage."

Muz turned his head slightly. He had. But he had not felt the passing of the occupant. He let Valhavoc continue, the pale blue of holoprojectors bringing the smoking scene to hover above his outstretched hand. He watched the Master carefully, looking for some sort of reaction, some emotion, something that he could work with, that he could understand. Instead, he turned, setting his eyes on the Herald, wordlessly asking if she was done with her work.

"Never." She tried to muster a smile as she bowed her head, but fatigue had already set its claws in her, making the gesture longer than it should have been. She set a parcel down on one of the side tables before stepping back to let them have their room, the proof of her last week's work silent in the leather wrapping. He nodded at her, dismissing her back to her office before looking back to Valhavoc.

"What now?" He asked the Krath Lord.

"We wait."

I hope everyone's holidays have so far been safe and joyous. As we wind down another year, we look back at the things that we have done, at the changes that have happened.

December is a terrifyingly busy month for many of our members. Those of us who are at school study for finals and then going home for the holidays. Those of us who work usually have the insanity of office/work parties, crazed ideas of what needs to happen before the end of the year, and then having to deal with the dual nightmares of shopping for christmas and then dealing with hosting the big family meals. And to those of us who work retail...well, may God have mercy on our souls.

As a result, some of my overly ambitious plans got sidewrecked by my employment. Twelve to fifteen hour days are not conducive to getting a lot of work done when you finally do get home, and for that, I apologize. That said, some really good progress has been made, and Jam3z hates me a little bit more every day (which is kinda how I know that I'm doing my job. Sorry, Jam3z!).

Some of this stuff includes working the clan and order powers to the new character sheets. Clan powers are being written up in the new sheet style, but order powers are being fine-tuned, since some of them are rather odd to work into the current system. Yes, we will be taking a good look at how many points every rank gets, so you won't have to completely torpedo your old sheet in order to get some of the sexy clan/order bits.

I have some great talent working on designing the graphics for the Dark Brotherhood alchemy guide, and then the PDFication/release will be along shortly. The guide will be mostly fictional at the time of release, whcih makes for a great character resource. The in-game mechanics will be reliant on a Possessions 2.0 release, so that may take some time to get done. Again, Jam3z hates me with each new email. We have been debating about whether 'Alchemy' should be a skill or a Force Power. I can see arguments for both sides of that particular coin, so what do you think?

I have been personally working on the planetary holding awards for winning (and/or having great participation rates) during the Dark Crusade. They're not ready quite yet, but i will have several different layouts and sizes to choose from when I am done. There will be some rather unique things involved here, and we will be picking them in order, so the victors will choose first, then we'll go in order of who got the better scores.

I'm also working through the PDFication of the Lightsaber combat guide 2.0. There's a lot of really great material here for people who really want to delve deeply into their ACC, their lightsabers, or just for all-around fictional purposes. Good stuff, although getting delayed by December Sucktitude.

Herald Style Hannukah is ongoing, and there has been a lot of cool things getting released there. The Herald Office has some pretty talented folks working over there, and it has been really cool to see some diversity in the gifts, not only from a idea standpoint, but also in a stylistic standpoint.

Pravus's work on the buildup for the GJW has been pretty awesome. If you haven't read it yet, click https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0rPsJ1Xn54cODFVVGtaZHpoMkU&usp=sharing to see what he's cooked up so far. TL;DR? We're all bad guys. ;)

There was some need to revise the rules on a couple of things recently, due to some people being ...let's say 'particularly clever on rules interpretation'. This is not something that happens infrequently, I'm afraid. It seems ever GJW we have at least one incident of the same. The problem is that we have to have rules so that everyone understands what is expected, but they tend to forget that the first and most basic tenet of playing with others is fair play. Our whole club is based around that notion: that when we compete, we don't play dirty, we don't bend the rules, we don't look for loopholes so that we can get better scores, rack up more points, or so that we can screw the other guy. The 'other guy' is in our Brotherhood too, and we should try to remember that.

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Oh, J.J. Abrams. Say what you will about his use of lens flare, but he does seem to know his audience and our ability to nitpick things to death. (ICYMI, that's a dejarik table that the note is on, which only appears in the Star Wars films on board the Millennium Falcon)

And this is a potentially leaked concept buildup of action figures for the new film. There's beena thousand pages of overanalysis on how the hands are shaped and whether that has any bearing on what weapons that each character may have, but it's a bit conjectural, if you ask me. (It totally looks like the girl is set up to be a jedi, btw)

Ask the GM Time!

Rhiann asks "Muz, what did you get for Christmas? :D"

I got a couple of bottles of single malt scotch whisky, one of those sodamaker gadgets, and a viking spear. it was pretty awesome.

Furios asks "How customizable will the Alchemy stuff be?"

Considering that it's not even coded yet, it's hard to say for sure. The intent at this point is to make it so that there are a lot of different things that can be made, enhanced or converted, using different processes and gear. We always aim high, so when we get to the coding, Jam3z hates me a little bit less when we can do reverse scope creep... until i get another idea and he hates me all over again.

Sight asks "What are your thoughts on the recently released beta for the journeyman application, and also if you could have type of mobile application made for the Brotherhood what would it be?"

I think it's a cool little tool for the people who are working their way through the journeyman trials. I think a 'library' resource for the DB would be pretty cool. I know that I keep PDFs of the saber guide and the comics and such on my iphone, and that has helped me when I have been working on stuff for the club. Ultimately, i'd like a better mobile platform for the site (I'm rocking an older iphone, so there's not enough real estate for all the site buttons), but I want to keep cracking the whip over Jam3z on possessions instead. Once upon a time, Orv and I were kinda half screwing around with a mafia-wars sort of DB application idea, back when mafia wars was a huge thing. I think i may have an old screenshot of the mockup around here somewhere...

so there's that bit of insanity.

Celahir asks "AskTheGM: How many times a day does a customer make you want to facepalm, followed by the thought of 'I need a drink..'?"

On a good day? Maybe once or twice. On a bad day? 10-12. During the holiday season? 20-25. Not awesome.

And that is about all for this time. Have fun out there!

TL;DR

• GJW set for January 8.

• SW toy sneak peek.

• Project update.

• Have a Safe and Happy New Year!