Run-on introduction: The Awakening - by Cyris Oscura and Elincia Rei

Vicious winds lashed violently through twisted trees. Hurricanes of dust and debris scarred the wastes. The dust storm left a trail of devastation in its wake. This world was as brutal as it was terrifying. Its broken landscape was an amalgamation of merciless, craggy wastelands and festering bogs and swamps. Natural vents pumped the sickening smell of sulphur into the air. Life on Vanir II-what little of it existed-had evolved to last. This was a world where only the strongest survived. It was as if the moon itself had long embraced the Sith Code.

Darkness cast by the gas giant Oedin Prime shrouded Vanir II in perpetual night; a night as ominous as the Dark Side’s insidious influence upon this world. Only once a year did light touch the surface of Vanir II, a fatal, scorching discharge that lasted mere seconds. The Dark Side of the Force had long devoured this world from the very earth to its putrid atmosphere. This corruption attacked the mind of even those most resilient with the same reckless abandon that the apocalyptic dust storms battered the lands. This was a world of madness.

On Vanir II, a shadow lingered... forever starved for power.

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The Renown, a Cruiser of Scholae Palatinae, orbited Vanir II, with a curious crew onboard. The remote star system had not been scouted in over two decades until a recent Scholae scouting party was dispatched to it. The routine recon mission ended in disaster when communications were lost with the party. Before the transmission was cut, the scouts had reported encountering frightening visions, devastating, unnatural storms and a faint beacon signal. The news sparked a surge of interest in Vanir II amongst the Dark Jedi of the clan.

Emperor Xen’Mordin the Manipulative himself had sanctioned the expedition, transferring captaincy of the Renown to the Dark Jedi on board. Audacious Force users from both arms of the Empire, alongside the bravest of mercenaries and military men, had assembled for this mission. They would face the unknown united as one.

There was a crackle in the Renown’s communications system and the voice of Dr. Elincia Rei, clear and even toned, sounded across the ship. Transmitting from Judecca, clearly breaking from her responsibilities as the new system moff to take on a more familiar role as support scientist, she gave a quick, effective briefing.

“Early estimates show optimal time to land is in 40 minutes. Light levels will be similar to Judecca’s dusk for 15 minutes, to be followed by several days of night. Data is insufficient to perform reliable weather predictions on Vanis II, but we expect a dust storm of 200 kilometres per hour winds in four hours. The last scouting team detected a faint beacon signal. Estimated location has been forwarded to your datapads."

[More information here https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/9891]

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News

January has been an awesome month for 'new' recruits that have already become important parts of the clan. A massive shoutout to Alara Deathbane, Blade Ta'var and Zehsaa Hysh. Although you only joined us a month ago, it's difficult to imagine the clan without you. I hope you're all enjoying your time here as much as we enjoy having you with us.

Recently we were also lucky enough to have Elad Cirith rejoin us for the rogues, who was almost immediately promoted to the rank of Knight under the new requirements. Welcome to CSP Elad and congratulations!

Finally, at the other end of the rank scale, we're thrilled to have a good friend of mine, Adept Cyris Oscura, join us. Cyris is an extremely talented writer and artist, and will be co-hosting the training run-on with me.

February 1st will mark the start of a training run-on co-hosted by me and Cyris, to explore an uncharted world. We will also have practice events for graphics, by Archangel, JA from Jorm and ACC from Xen.

Monthly Topics

Massive congratulations to everyone who entered my monthly topics in Janurary. The fiction, especially, was the best participation, both in quantity and quality, I've ever had from one of my competitions. There are entries that missed out on medals, but would usually have placed 1st. Regardless of who placed, I enjoyed reading every single one, so thank you for participating. In the end, I chose Cyris, Shadow and Lexiconus as the winners, but congratulations are also due to Alara, Blade, Zagro, Tater, Draco, Lucyeth and Elad for their exceptional entries.

General positives: Story. Everyone took to the open-ended nature of the plot really well and there were some awesome storylines. Lexiconus had a very imaginative story involving Elincia as a co-main character, and Blade produced an unpredictable piece around a 'puzzle ball' of unknown origin. General weaknesses: Appearance. A nicely formatted PDF, with your own title, looks so much more professional and thoughtful. Cyris' fiction was an excellent example of this. 1 second after opening the document, I'm excited about how awesome this piece is going to be.

February's monthly topic will also be open ended, and to write a fiction that involves one of the brotherhood's societies. All other story details are your choice. FAQ: does <awesome idea> fit the competition? A. YES, now go write. The prompt is there to INSPIRE you, not to restrict you.

Links to new MTs: https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/9898 https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/9897

Training Events

Run-ons: The training run-on, to explore a dangerous moon called Vanir II, can be found here https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/9891 . This will be a practice run-on where I will provide a lot of feedback on each post, on team-working practices, and introduce curve-balls in the form of new rules to encourage different approaches. This will be co-hosted by myself and Cyris Oscura.

Jedi Academy: During February, Jorm will be focusing on JA training. He is usually available most evenings in EU time. Shout at him via email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] or on Telegram. Prepare to die a lot.

Graphics: Archangel is planning to support graphics skills development with this competition: https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/9854 - which will give plenty of feedback on how to improve your artwork

ACC: Xen has plans to work on ACC skill, which will be announced sometime soon.

Other events will be hosted for other areas of DB activity later on. Let me know if there's anything you really want to improve on!

Ask the Eli

Lucyeth asks: with all these events and recruiting going on, what is the rollmasters plan going into brotherhood wide events?

• The plan is in all these events, we develop our skills by helping each other improve so we're better equipped to place in db wide events. Beyond that, no plan. I want everyone to enjoy the events and participate in what they like, rather than feel pressured to compete to help the clan score

Alara asks: what is the number one thing you would like us to be more active in on DJB?

• The stuff you enjoy the most. I want everyone to enjoy membership in the DJB, and I want everyone to do the things they find enjoyable.

Xen asks: what is the one thing you want to accomplish in the club?

• I want to help CSP to become an environment that inspires its members to help each other to create excellent works of fiction filled with vibrant, memorable characters.

Lexiconus asks: how does math? <_> and How does the integration and the resigning of Cruise play into our Clan story? Please be detailed in your answer :P

• Fictionally, Elincia will be performing the duties as system moff remotely, from her lab. But 'story' shouldn't really be singular. There are lots of stories within the clan, not all of which are written by me. I typically math by telling the computer to do it for me. In the modern world, knowing what maths to do is many times more important than actually knowing how to do it.

Eether asks: what made you get into martial arts?

• A guy at Oxford Brookes university told me to do Taekwondo so I did. A couple of years later I picked up Shaolin and Seven Star Praying Mantis Kung Fu.

Delak asks: will you guys be incorporating any of shadow guards zombie comp into further stories since it tied us to monstrosity?

• I think we've done enough of the whole monster / zombie thing for a while. Zombies are not commonplace in the Star Wars universe and I'd rather they didn't become commonplace in clan lore either.

Archangel asks: why are clouds fluffy but hail hurts? :(

• The friendly-looking fluffy clouds are unlikely to be the same ones that drop hail on you. Be careful that you don't discriminate by tarring all clouds with the same brush. Just because some of them are evil, it doesn't mean they all are.

Reiden asks: Are you designing or building another FWEC bomb? If so, when do you plan on implementing it, and on what target?

The FWEC bomb was built to deal with a target made of ice. If we encounter another giant target made out of ice, another FWEC bomb will be built.

Cruise asks: What's the plan moving forward in regards to recruitment. Obviously everything has been growing, but maybe a monthly reward might encourage those that don't normally try to step out and do so. A monthly goals sees to fast, but maybe quarterly?

• Alara, Blade, Zehsaa, Elad, Rhaub and Cyris have joined us during the month of January. We're doing pretty good for recruitment right now. If people are not stepping out with recruitment, they may have perfectly good reasons to do so. Rewards are handled centrally through Scrolls of Indoctrination anyway. I feel that allowing recruitment to be down to the individual is optimal.

Lex asks: do you game? What are your thoughts on Battlefront? What games do you currently own?

• Occasionally, but usually just cheap stuff on steam. Battlefront is like £60. Maybe I'd buy it if it was 6. At the moment, I play Sanctum 2, Borderlands 2, and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (which I HIGHLY recommend if you have friends and are willing to lose them)

Lex asks: What should first time masters reflect in their personality and service

• In personality, I'd like masters to be consistent with their activity. Don't need to be super active, but consistent with their presence, not here for a week then gone for a month. Service should really be in the same field as the apprentice's interest. Right now though, we're a top heavy clan with more equites than we have apprentices, so finding masters is not an issue.

TL;DR

Thanks to Alara, Blade and Zehsaa for their contributions to clan life. Everyone who did my fiction competition was awesome. There's a new one. There's a run-on too.

Closing Quote

"A Black Belt is a White Belt that never quit"

Dr. Elincia Rei

Rollmaster