Greetings to all Odanites, our allies, and our enemies.

There’s a good bit of news this month, including an event, a clan-wide project, and a bit of movement on the COU summit. So buckle up, kids, and let’s get this show on the road.

Arcouna Matata

Roughly three years ago, the COU and Arcona summits took their first steps towards the lasting alliance that we know today. Since then, our clans have become a sort of power couple, taking the top two places in GJW XII and working and playing side by side in the Tides of Freedom and Halloween Horror Nights events. Several of our most influential members migrated over here from Arc and Odanites and Arconans are active participants in each other’s clan chats. To celebrate our friendship and badassery in the war, the Shadow Kord and I are pleased to announce a joint event: the Consul Bride. You can find the parent competition here and the opening fiction on the GDrive or on the forum. In addition to Kord, I’d like to thank Blade, Terran, and Turel for their help in planning and Atty for her massive assistance in both planning and running the event.

The event runs from through 15 April. This isn’t a fight-tooth-and-nail-for-the-title event, but rather something we hope will be fun and a bit relaxing after the myriad of house and battleteam events we’ve seen so far in 2018. (Don’t worry, there will be plenty of chances to kick ass and take names in the months to come.)

Work Work

When I joined COU back in 2015, one of the things that stood out was the sheer volume of lore, with dozens of locations, units, and NPCs fleshed out with gorgeous wiki articles. The Arca Praxeum, for example, or the Melewati Bushfighters, or, of course, New Tython itself. While Moro, Turel, and Vyr put us on the right track with some awesome work on the Kiast system and the Vatali, and more recent work like Sky Breach Base, I’m sad to say that the clan summit hasn’t put much energy into updating and expanding our wiki, leaving the houses and battleteams to fend for themselves. Over the next few months, we’re going to work on turning that around.

I’ll be setting up three teams to get members involved in worldbuilding and cleaning up the wiki. If you’re interested in leaving your mark on Kiast and the clan, keep reading. We’ll also be documenting people’s contributions for awards and promos, and highlighting them in competitions.

Each group will have a team lead responsible for organizing our efforts and tracking members’ work. Once the team is happy with an article, it’ll get passed to the relevant summit members for approval and then up on DBWiki for the whole world (or at least the part we care about) to see. I repeat: summit members will have authority over the stuff they’re directly responsible for and may or may not want to delegate it. You can contribute to any or all of them as your time and inspiration permit, but you can only sign up for one article at a time per group.

The first group will be our wiki gurus, charged with making sure all of our articles are properly formatted and up-to-date. Their first task will be to revise the COU wiki policies as necessary, and after that to bring the COU history article from 2014 into the present. They’ll be cleaning up categories, infoboxes, templates, and typos. I realize this isn’t the most glamorous work, but it needs doing. I’ll be heading this group up personally, but hopefully I can pass it on in the near future.

The other two groups are based more on developing cool ideas and less on using cool square and curly brackets. I’m going to hold off on the details for now while we sink our teething into the event and get started on cleanup efforts. I’ll send an announcement out in a few weeks when we’re ready to get rolling with more details on what we’re planning and how you can get involved. The summit has a fairly long list of things we want to see developed, so I don’t think there were be a lack of stuff to do.

If you’re interested in participating in the history/cleanup group, let me know via email ([Log in to view e-mail addresses]) or PM in Telegram and we’ll get you set up. Otherwise, just hold tight until we let you guys know about the worldbuilding teams.

Odanite News

Changing of the Guard — After just over two years on Hoth’s summit, Edgar has joined the ranks of our retired geezers. As he moves on to a life of sitting on the beach, sipping on drinks with tiny umbrellas in them, Celevon has taken command of House Hoth. Based on the strength of their applications a few weeks ago, Ozosi Vym has replaced Keiji as Wildcards BTL and Sariel Dhejeuti has taken Cel’s spot as AED.

Edgar and Seraphol

Meanwhile, Len Iode has taken on the job of COU rollmaster and hit the ground running. His application had some solid ideas to it and I look forward to seeing where he takes the position from here. Of course, with Len moving up to RM, we needed to fill his shoes. Mauro Wynter has moved up to Shan AED based on his strong performance as Tython Squadron BTL. Of course, that leaves yet another position open. Applications for Tython BTL are open to members of House Satele Shan; look here for details.

C’est Bon — Newcomer (and red panda cub) Bon Riverio has been tearing it up, making his way to JM2 since he joined a few days after my last report.

Meanwhile, at the Legion of Doom

Armor Comes to the ACC — The ACC’s cosmetic-only armor policy has been a common source of complaints for a while now, but I’m happy to say that policy is now dead and gone. Read the latest Combat Master report for details on how it works. Balancing different factors and then communicating a policy in a way that’s easy to understand, easy to remember, simple, and unambiguous is much harder than it looks, especially when you have to coordinate efforts between multiple DC offices. Everyone give Atra a hand for shepherding this policy through. Shoutout to Mord and Len, as well, for their work with Arcona’s Tali Sroka on an independent proposal that was partially incorporated into what the ACC staff came up with.

Romanes Eunt Domus — Even though ancient Roman quaestors didn’t get imperium, these days Imperium gets a quaestor. That could be you. Although we’d hate to lose you, CSP is providing an excellent opportunity for the next stage of your DB career. See Raiju’s post for details. But wait, there's more! Taldryan is hiring a Proconsul (see here), and Naga Sadow is looking for both an Aedile and Quaestor (see here).

Let Your Voice Be Heard — The Voice staff isn’t hiring at the moment; however, Wally has posted a list of projects in his latest report. If you see something that you think you’d like to contribute to, let him know what your ideas are.

Giant Shinies — Dark Council positions can be rough, as so much of the work is under the radar and many members only notice you when you’ve pissed them off. But I think that’s truest of the Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master. It’s really, really easy to blow up at him for moving the club into the new canon, delaying the GJW, or closing Tarentum, especially when you’re not privy to all the behind the scenes debates that went into those decisions. And believe me, there’s debate: the Dark Summit went through about 650 messages of Telegram discussion on one issue on Monday night alone, and the GM also has to manage the Dark Council with their own ideas and concerns. So please take gander at Sarin’s second Golden Lightsaber award for a picture of what goes into running the club we all love.

Additionally, if you’re interested in clan leadership, check out Atty’s Emerald Dagger rec.

Ask Arch

Mord asks: In the wake of the Collective strike and its subversion of so many "supposedly" loyal NFU members around Brotherhood space - how is Alethia coping in a very much predominately Force Sensitive, not to mention scarred Jedi, Clan? How does she manage to not only govern a refugee/exiled nation effectively - let alone work in the White Lotus and maintain those operations against the Iron Throne?

Edit: by scarred Jedi, I mean survivors of New Tython as well as all the battles against the Brotherhood and the Collective forces. They have some major PTSD going on and trust issues is probably a major understatement for them

By min-maxing her stats in favor of social skills.

While this isn't true of active player characters (I think), the bulk of OU's in-character forces are NFUs, including the OEF, SeNet, the Tythonian refugee population, and of course our Vatali landlords. The vast majority of them haven't reached Collective-level frustration with the space wizards, but I suspect they're nevertheless pretty happy to see one of their own in charge for a change. Alethia will continue to quietly nurture that, since it's a win-win for her: the NFUs feel represented and it keeps her politically powerful.

She still doesn't really get the way the Force acts upon FUs or how dark side corruption works. There are enough Jedi and Jedi-like councillors to deal with that.

Governing the population isn't too hard because COU isn't really a state. People can get their roads and their running water from the Vatali and we'll just handle training padawans and shooting at things. I'd love to get into the political sausage making but a) it would be more Alethia-focused than I like to get in clan fic, and b) a lot of people were not fans of the politics in either the prequels or New Tython.

Mord asks: Follow up question then - what is COU? If we aren't a government in exile, or a refugee nation or whatever you want to call it. What are we as a fictional entity? (side note, I'm interested in the politics of all this!)

Nucanon seems to be mirroring legends on how the Rebel Alliance was structured, and we're pulling heavily from that. There was a military command and a civilian 'government' in charge of financing, propaganda, recruitment, etc. and that eventually turned into the new government when the Republic was restored.

So Odan-Urr is mostly a resistance movement that's fighting against the Sith and the Collective to make the world safe for the little guy. Of course, the Collective would say the same thing about themselves, but they want to shoot us so screw them. But regardless, most of our resources go into a military and intelligence apparatus.

There's also a Jedi order that contributes to the war effort while occasionally doing its own thing, much like the Jedi did during the Clone Wars. They also train up our FUs, even though a lot of them end up breaking away philosophically.

There's a population of refugees from New Tython (and maybe a scattered few from Florrum and other purges). A good chunk of them go straight into the OEF or SeNet because, hey, screw the Sith. But even the ones who aren't in the military do a lot to support us economically as they manage to get back on their feet after losing everything. We keep them safe but we're not running Whenua Elementary School or handling their zoning laws or anything.

The Council of Urr has representatives from all of these groups, and authority over most of them. Like Turel said, we hope to make this a little clearer in the near future through a project I'll be talking about in the report.

Donny asks: With the leadership of both Clans having transitioned. How does the new Odan-Urr consul view the ARCOU alliance? any concerns or expectations of what is to come?

IC: Alethia was pretty sympathetic to Satsi given how many biases they had in common, but nobody really controls Satsi. She thinks Kord might be easier to manage but suspects the Arconae will eat him alive.

OOC: I would say more of the same, but I probably won't be calling Kord 'sista' or day drinking with his mom, so I guess relations will chill a little bit.

Len asks: What is, in your opinion, the best way for members new and old to get involved in the Brotherhood and the Clan?

Bullshitting. No, seriously. Just chat with people about goofy stuff. I got hooked on the DB by shooting the breeze with Cable and making up ideas about Mar and Alethia that we never managed to actually write down. CON work aside, I chat with Blade, Turel, Mord, Ed, Len, Sera, Wally, Atra, etc. etc. etc. frequently depending on who's around. I like writing and gaming and puzzles and all, but those relationships are a way better link to the club and a more rewarding experience than doing comps. So just goof off in chat and ask people questions and see what happens.

In the Next Report

• More pictures!

• Words! Words. WORDS.

• Event results, maybe, but probably not.

Alethia by Oephy

Alethia Archenksova
High Councilor, Odan-Urr