Hello everyone,

First of all, I would like to thank Zachary O'Maille for creating the header and dividers for this report. He did a very nice job with them and was remarkably patient with me and my particular-ness. Thank you so much Zach-Bentre, it's great to have people like you in CNS. :)

This report is going to cover CNS news first, including details on our upcoming event for October, as well as a brief summary of what is going on in each House. Then it will touch on what is going on in the club in general (because I'm sure you haven't read that in another report). Finally, we'll talk about some recent reports.

I'd also like to apologize for not doing a report in, like, forever. I've really dropped the ball on that and I'm changing it now. Sang has also been a huge help in getting back on track. Take that as you will. :P

Brotherhood News

Pravus has released the recent Club fiction update called Treason. It is quite interesting, but thankfully Naga Sadow has survived the predations of the Grand Master for the time being, yet we’ll be in his crosshairs soon enough.

As you may have seen, Evant has moved to the position of Regent. The Regent oversees the new Possessions system, which has been in a closed Beta test. We’re awaiting the data gathered to be analysed and the changes made before the next stage of Beta testing, where we’ll see more of us gain access to the new system. I’m super excited about this and can’t wait to have access!

Wally aka Marick, the Combat Master, has stepped up to takeover Voice. Wally has been around for several years and served as Consul of Arcona. He has worked hard on the ACC and the CS and I look forward to seeing what he brings to VOICE as it’s bound to be good, given how awesome the stuff he did as CM was.

Atra has taken on the mantle of Combat Master. We’re super psyched about this and hope Atra continues creating awesome bits and pieces for the CS and the ACC.

Our former Proconsul, Cethgus, has stepped down from the position of FIST. Hopefully we’ll see him back in Naga Sadow when he gets off ship and back to the UK. The new FIST will be announced soon.

Howie also stepped down from Consul of Taldryan and a new Consul shall be appointed soon. Don’t worry, I didn’t apply. You’re all stuck with me still. - Sang

Turel has taken over as Consul of Odan Urr and is looking for a Proconsul. If you think you’ve got what it takes and want to play a Jedi (they’re super cool), then check out what he’s looking for.

We'd also like to point out that the wiki event, The Undertaking has been extended until the 9th, so you still have some time left to enter it. There haven't been a lot of entries so far, and these are 1st level crescents...

Clan News

Our Summit has been hard at work putting together a new event for us, which will be called Null Zero. Instead of being one big event all at once, this will tie into a number of smaller competitions over time. You can read below for a small excerpt from the opening fiction for this series of events, and the full fiction is available on the forums. I'd like to thank DarkHawk, Armad, Aul, and Darkblade for their assistance with the fiction. If you want to be included in fiction and weren't here, don't worry. We plan to try to involve many of our members as possible, so our story is all of us, and not just a few players.

---

Alabaster Square
Kel Rasha
Aeotheran

“Tell me again why we are here?” Armad intoned. It had been bad enough that they had to land so far outside Kel Rasha, but now they’d been relegated to walking a vast majority of the time. At least DarkHawk had the foresight to have speeder bikes aboard his “borrowed” VT-49 Decimator that he utilised quite a bit. Now that they had completed their ‘inspection’ of the outlying areas, they were in the more residential and smaller business zones, so they had to walk. He knew the answer to his question, as he’d already asked several times, now he was doing it just to see if he could get on DarkHawk’s nerves.

“We are simply to investigate. Those are our marching orders,” replied the Warrior in a cold, dead tone. “Oh, and no killing.” he reiterated. The Battlemaster just looked at his partner, smiling. “Dang, and I really wanted to,” Armad said sarcastically.

They could tell something was wrong as they neared the Alabaster Square. DarkHawk could see that the people in the square were behaving like the rest of the people that they'd already come across, while Armad was getting nothing through the Force concerning anyone or anything within that square. Both of them stopped at the edge of Alabaster Square, they knew then that they had found what they'd been sent to investigate.

“Get as close as you can, but do not engage. That is not what we are here for,” Armad tasked his companion. “I’ll garner what I can from the Force about is going on,” Armad stated.

“It seems that we have found what we were looking for. Something here does not seem right,” DarkHawk said.

The black clad figure silently split from his teammate and covertly made his way around the edge of the Square. The crowds were agitated, noisy and combative. A scuffle here and there as small groups civilians collided with each other and others threw rocks and bottles at shops. Yet, there were people watching the fights and others running away looking for the local law enforcers who were cracking down on the rioters. DarkHawk maneuvered himself through what shadows he could find. He stopped at the entrance to a small alleyway that would serve as his staging point to move in and out of the crowd. As he moved closer to the crowds, a very unfamiliar feeling of nothingness hit the Sith like a ton of bricks. His vision blurred, the world spun around him, causing DarkHawk to reach out for the adjacent alley wall to regain his composure before he collapsed.

Armad had made his way around the Square the opposite direction from his counterpart, and had made his way up on top of a building that gave him a good view of the area and DarkHawk. He watched as DarkHawk leaned up against the building and struggled to compose himself. When Armad reached out to the Force to obtain answers and felt a vastness of nothingness, he opened his commlink and hailed DarkHawk. “DarkHawk? You alright?” he asked as DarkHawk struggled to move further into the alley.

“Armad, stay where you are. Seems if I get too close, the Force is negated around them.” explained DarkHawk.

“What?” questioned Armad. “The Force has gone?” he asked.

---

You can read the rest of the fiction on Discourse.

Sang and I will be releasing the first series of competitions directly related to Null Zero in a few days, which will run concurrently with other active competitions from both Houses. This event will feature our Clan facing a new threat from a different vector than usual. Instead of a direct, overt result, we will be dealing with the effects of a strange virus. Events will involve combating the virus, trying to discover where it comes from, and how to stop it.

I’d also like to highlight Armad and Aexod who are currently in the semi-finals of the ongoing Annual Pazaak Playoff. Wish them luck. I hope that we’ll see them face each other in the Finals of the competition!

Our final highlight is Aul’s competition Take a left, then a right (Myrmidon layout design). He’s looking for a map of the new base for Devil’s Shroud. It’s open to the whole Clan, so HMR and HSD members alike can participate.

House News

In Marka Ragnos, as many of you probably know, Tasha had to step down recently and we have chosen Muz in her place. His experience is pretty evident, and his plans for the House are solid. Currently, they are launching a set of new competitions, and working on getting the House back in solid control of its territory, continuing the work that Tasha began. You can read the most recent Quaestor report from Marka Ragnos here: her favorite color is fire. Ophelia and Muz have also just released their new House event, The Siege of Heaven. The event fiction for it can be found here. Although this event focuses on HMR, anyone from the clan can enter the competitions .

Shar Dakhan is currently in the later stages of their event, Leadership for Kel Rasha, which has pit two teams against each other. Each is fighting for a particular political candidate, and with a unique twist the number of votes their candidate gets is based on how their team does in the competitions. The overall event ends on the 9th, and is open to all HSD members. Darkblade's most recent report covers many of the details of the event and it's fiction. You can find it here: Kel Rasha Event Kickoff!.

Upcoming Projects

We have a slew of new projects coming up. Some of them are old things that we didn't have the interest to work on before (like the wiki, definitely the wiki), some are areas where someone has identified something that was missing (apparently, when we were setting up the Warhost, we forgot about Intelligence. Add your own punchline.) Since we have the talent and the interest of a wide range of our members, whether on Summit or not, our goal on these will be to get different members working together so everyone has a shot at how things look moving forward, and not just those at the top. In the past, we had a series of me vetoing things while Sang grew increasingly frustrated, and I'd like to avoid him hating me as much as possible.

Sang here, hatred is not the way of a Jedi.

That's just what he says, but on the inside, we know the truth! We'll have more details of these in our next report. Right now, we are consolidating what areas need work for the clan and figuring out what people would want to work on and what would help out most.

Don't wait for us, though. If you have an idea, or identify something that could help, don't hesitate to contact us. The story and everything with this clan, everything you see up till now is a project of all of us, not just our Summit. Armad, for example, has identified areas of weakness in the wiki and volunteered to put together a list of areas that need work. Inyri, also, noticed the lack of Intelligence (again, ha-ha, 'least we've got medics!) and brought that up. So it doesn't matter if you're an Elder or Journeyman, you can easily make an impact.

Come work for us, we have cookies. And other stuff. ;)

Event Advice - Trivia

As Locke and I have spoken about it on Telegram with a few of you, I’d like to take this time to explain how best to prepare for Trivia competitions and get the answers in a quick time. You may have noticed that Malik and I smash the trivia comps on Telegram. This is because A: We’re old fogies. B: We know loads of useless facts and C: We utilise search engines.

When I do a Trivia competition, I have three tabs open on my browser. Google, the DJB Wiki and Wookieepedia. If it is a trivia competition for something like a GJW, I also have the Fiction for the event open as a fourth tab, as in the past, questions have featured the fiction. I then have a second browser open with the questions. I have these two browsers next to each other, so I can just peer over at the questions and then go searching.

This allows me to quickly find the answers if I don’t know them. It may seem simple, but it’s how best to do so.

With the last round of trivia in the recent event with CSP, some of you struggled to find information on the Artifacts. For those of you who don’t trawl the Wiki like myself or Zachary (in his role as Wiki Staff), then you could have found the answers in Legends/Lore. For example, the following link. This takes you to the artifacts owned by CNS. The other units have something similar now, but we have this excellent template thanks to Ophelia.

Next report, we’ll cover Multimedia.

Acknowledgements

We've seen a lot of great promotions and awards lately, from Jason Kane reaching Knight, to Aul, Lilith, and Firith all being promoted to Mystic. It's really exciting to see everyone moving up and we'd just like to give you all another pat on the back. You've definitely earned your advancement or recognition. Great work, everybody!

• Jason Kane was promoted to Knight
• Aexod was promoted to Commander and earned an Anteian Cross
• Mactire was promoted to Mystic and earned an Anteian Cross
• Aul was promoted to Mystic
• Lilith was promoted to Mystic
• Firith was promoted to Mystic
• Locke earned an Amethyst Kukri
• Zachary earned a Grand Cross
• Darkblade earned a Steel Cross
• Qyreia earned a Steel Cross
• Tasha earned an Anteian Cross
• Muz earned an Anteian Cross
• Scarlet earned an Anteian Cross
• Malik earned a Dark Cross

Competitions

Some ongoing competitions are listed below. Keep an eye out for competitions being released by Muz for HMR and us for Null Zero. A lot of what is listed below is DJB-wide, and you guys have really had a stellar showing lately. Keep it up!

Fiction

• Tempus Fugit

• HM: Mi Amigo

• They Whom From The Darkness Came

Graphics

• Take a left, then a right

• The rightful Mayor

Gaming

• Destiny: Let The Iron Rise

• The Quest to Become Heimdallr

Clan Questions

Italics = Sang Normal text = Locke

Ophelia asks: Who would win a marathon between Locke and Sang?

Locke believes that I would stab him in the back. I would do no such thing. Oh, who am I kidding, of course I would. I’m an evil Jedi and I’m here to do all kinds of horrible things.

I always said Jedi were evil...

Aexod asks: Is there any idea about some sort of training for GJW/Feuds/Vendetta for the members?

There are plans and they involves doing competitions that we're not used to that show up in vendettas fairly often. We’ll also be running competition types that maybe we're just not as good at. There are some other things in the works but nothing concrete enough that we can talk about right now.

In addition to this, I’ll be doing more things like the Trivia section in today’s report, which will give helpful tips and advice.

Aexod asks: Traveller or Maya?

Maya all the way. Who would actually vote for some hooded person whose identity they don't know? That could be anybody. I mean that could be like Sang, or Pravus, or like, my sister in disguise...I don't know.

It’s true, I’m the Traveller. Vote the Traveller.

Riv asks: You can keep it only after you give it to someone else. What is it?

No idea.

Your word.

Hey, I did say to google it. :P

I didn’t need to. Get wrekt, skrub!

Marcus asks: What are your plans for increasing communication from top tier to bottom tier? Things like gaming and fiction overviews for example?

Currently, we communicate to advertise competitions and we try to include members in writing event fiction, or at least include them in the story, for the past couple of events. In the future, we're considering more direct communication via email, to outline what kind of competitions for fiction, gaming, or other subjects are currently going on. I'm not sure if this really covers your question exactly, so if not, please send one of us a pm.

Marcus asks: Will you bring about a more focused (shorter) story line to the clan, without the added weight of a run on? These have proven great fun to a few people, but tend to drag out story lines very long, and people lose interest.

We will probably almost always have a Run On for our major story arcs. The reason for this isn't just because our Clan seems to like Run Ons, but also because there usually is one for major Vendettas. It’s something that we need practice in as a group. And, let's face it, some members like Run Ons more than anything else and it's the main thing they're really interested in. So even if they're not a big important part of the event, we'll probably almost always have them. The story line goes on with or without the Run On, and is on the event's schedule, rather than the RO's part, but...

In addition to this, the current October event doesn’t have a RO.

Atra asks: Why won't you let me destroy you?

You can try.

Provide us with a 10 page document on how you plan to do it and we'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks.

Inyri asks: There's been a lot of plans mentioned but it seems kind of vague about anything more than that they're in the works. Can we expect more concrete plans and direction soon?

We should definitely have more concrete plans soon. In fact there are things in this report that should reflect more concrete plans. It's true that in recent memory, there’s not been a lot of concrete stuff going on, but we should have a lot more in the future starting right now and in our upcoming reports. Sorry about that.

Locke has been thoroughly beaten by yours truly to have more concrete plans.

Marcus asks: Shall the entirety of the summit, instead of just the upper part, be utilized to run events? Meaning that they get a say in what goes on, rather than the old 'it's been decided that'. (yes this is a mean one, and yes you can answer off the record, but I'm gonna discuss it nonetheless)

They have been involved in the October event, they named the event, came up with the virus idea, created the banner and the starting location in the fiction and in fact, a lot of the fiction came from regular members or lower level Summit members, so in answer to this, we've kind of been doing it. The feud was necessarily limited to myself, Sang, and our counterparts in CSP, because that was how it was supposed to be.

More people have been involved in Null Zero, but we shall ensure the right balance is struck for future events.

Marcus asks: Next arc? More clan competitions? Less heavy, more light, to get the clan moving again?

We're doing a mixture of heavy competitions and light competitions during October so that we can appeal to everyone. If you mean big events vs. all events then yes, generally there's going to be more competitions in the near future. They won't be all part of some giant event, all going on at once. Instead we're going to have a bunch of smaller sections that all relate to each other and tie into the same story.

Less spying, more dying.

Marcus asks: Any word on Pravus being all die die die on cns? (yes, Pravus is Reaper)

We are working with him when there's time available, but there are a lot of things going on right now so it's still in motion.

So far, we have it worked out that we’ll be sacrificing the Longs to Pravus. Jokes aside, what Locke said.

Inyri asks: Speaking as a relative newbie, is there some way we can work on better integrating new members fictionally? I've pretty much made up everything I've done on the fly and even at JM3, I feel like Inyri exists in a void.

We try to involve members in our fiction stories when we can and feature their character so they have an actual involved role. Aside from that, it currently depends on Run Ons and other competitions, but it is something we are looking into in order to better pull everyone together, so keep an eye out.

We’ll take a gander and get something sorted. Ensuring our members feel invested and have a role to play is key here.

Conclusion

It's been awhile since we had a real report, but that's going to change. Things have been quiet lately as we got our ducks in order and worked with Summit to produce a new event. It turns out there is a happy medium between "involve everyone" and not involving everyone, and we've just about reached it. As you can see from the above, we've got a lot of plans rolling your way and we've also listened to feedback in the past. We've gotten to the point where now we're including members more in events, we're utilizing everyone's perspective instead of just a few people's. Now, we just have to streamline it and we can really get off the ground.

It's sure to be really exciting.

TL:DR

• Evant = Regent
• Wally/Marick = Voice
• Atra = Combat Master
• Null Zero event in October, comps out soon.
• COU PCON required, apply now.
• HMR event coming soon.
• Projects incoming, get involved.
• Marcus asks a lot of questions.

Signed:

Locke Sonjie
Consul of Naga Sadow

Sanguinius Tsucyra Entar
Proconsul of Naga Sadow