The Left Wing of Dread Sends

Welcome, one and all to 2016! I hope you all had a most excellent holiday and are settling back into your normal work/school/whatever grind again. Did Sithy-Claus bring you everything you wanted? I’m still seriously upset that I still don’t have a hoverboard, shoes with power laces, and an auto-fitting/drying/talking jacket. And no, this monstrosity is NOT a hoverboard:

So the spoiler ban has been lifted. I hope that The Force Awakens lived up to your expectations. It certainly met mine!

We’re all waiting on baited breath for the GM’s big report and fictional update. It will be very interesting to see how the DJB moves forward and what changes are coming.

What’s The Buzz, Tell Me What’s HAPpening?

Recently Teylas sent out a request to both House Summits to get an idea of what we were doing and what projects we were working on. In the sake of transparency, here is an excerpt from my response to him:

“Future planning for the House is being done in terms of Lines of Effort. Each line of effort operates independently, yielding to an overall endstate. Each of these lines of effort is broken down into measures of performance and measures of effectiveness. As we move along, I will update or change performance and effectiveness measures to help meet the desired endstate for member activity. These lines of effort and their subtasks are:

LOE 1: Junior Member Development and Retention

• Immediate welcome by House leaders to all newly assigned House members

• Individually tailored promotion pathways based off of analysis of member activity

• Continuous positive feedback through low-level merit awards for exceptional levels of activity.

• Preventing loss of members due to lack of interest or lack of communication with leadership

LOE 2: Equite Continuing Development

• Monitor Equite performance via the Promotion Assessment Tool.

• Push inactive Equites to take on roles supporting development of new members (MSP, running low-level competitions, assisting with fiction revision, etc.)

• Provide projects for Equite members to showcase abilities and contribute to the Clan at large (House wiki updates, updating House fiction in line with new Star Wars Canon)

LOE 3: Functional Area Training and Development

• Provide community-based support within the house for DB focus areas of gaming, writing, and graphics.

• Institute a writing improvement or assistance program. Focus on increasing interest in run-on fiction and ACC qualification

• Link members interested in gaming up with other gamers in the Clan and DB.

LOE 4: Enhancing Overall Member Experience

• Provide multiple avenues for members to take part in competitions. Always have something running for fiction, gaming, and graphics.

• Cull members for feedback on events they want to see or take part in.

• Provide a positive leadership climate where members feel valued and welcome at all times.

Future Plans

The current “Clan Plagueis, The Wise” competition provides an excellent platform for forward movement on all LOEs. Over the course of this competition, the House summit will set up low-key events primarily for House members, but also open to all other members of the Clan to participate in. The intent is to provide a platform for HAP members to earn competition awards, while at the same time allowing for all clan members to earn participation credit.

Additionally, I have tasked the House leaders to push members at all levels to organize and run their own events. Like the HAP events, these will be open to the clan for participation credit, but only House (or Battleteam members) will be eligible to place.

I do not intend to develop any large-scale projects for the House until the completion of the PLA/COU feud. As noted during the Forged Alliances event, having House events running right up to or possibly during large-scale events is borderline overkill. After the PLA/COU event (and a short breather afterwards), the House Summit will implement a one to two month long event similar to Restoration in setup and execution.”

So there you have it. That’s the view from where I sit. At the end of the day, we (the House Summit) owe it to you (House Ajunta Pall) to have something available for you to do and enjoy as often as possible. But I also don’t want to limit activity generation to only the House-Level leadership. If you have an event you want to run, draft up the request and let one of us take a look at it! Running competitions is a great way to knock down pre-Knight promotion requirements, and it also shows you how to be an activity producer instead of just a consumer.

The Next Big Thing

It’s almost Feud time! That’s right boys and girls, Plagueis and Odan-Urr are going to have an old-fashioned Clan on Clan throwdown. It’s good vs. evil, light vs. dark, Hatfield vs. McCoy!!!

This is the first feud event in a long time. I don’t have the details for any of the events yet, but we can probably expect some of the usual fare in terms of gaming, graphics, and fiction. Unlike Restoration or Forged Alliances, this time it’s the whole Clan working together for the big win. Participation matters, folks. Winning is great, but we need you to come out and compete. Do something you aren’t good at. If you can’t draw, don’t shy away from graphics. Draw something, scan it in, and submit. Seriously, if I can do it, so can you:

This is a real submission that I did for a competition a while ago. Does it suck? Yes. Did I submit it anyway? You betcha! Why? Because participation counts! What you do MATTERS! So get ready for the big event and let’s tell those Light Siders over in Clan Odan-Urr what we really think of them!

And speaking of what you do, the Clan Plagueis: The Wise competition is going on right now. Everything you do will count towards this. You don’t even have to sign up for the competition! Game. Take courses in the Shadow Academy. Write fiction. Every month, we’re going to tally up your activity and then the Clan Summit will award crescents to the top three most active members! Shiny!

Here’s how the whole thing works:

Every general activity you perform within in the Dark Brotherhood has a point value. These point values are listed below and are based on perceived difficulty and time taken. At the end of the month the points will be tallied and the top three most active members of Clan Plagueis will be awarded a crescent.

General

• Competition placement: 5 points

• Competition participation: 3 points

• Co/organizing a competition: 2 points

• Earning 1 Cluster of Ice: 2 points

ACC

• ACC win: 6 points

• ACC loss: 4 points

Shadow Academy

• Course: 5 points

• Novitiate Course: 1 point

• Pundit: 3 points

• Maven: 5 points

• Savant: 7 points

• Sage: 10 points

Gaming

• Cluster of Fire: 2 points

• Cluster of Earth: 1 point

• Pendant of Blood: 5 points

All activity will be tracked and tallied at the end of each month by the Clan Plagueis summit. No need to submit anything through this competition to count.

Competitions

There’s always something to do in the DB. Go to the Competitions page to find more stuff! Remember to check the target unit for a competition prior to signing up. If it’s DB-Wide, Clan-Wide, HAP or DoD focused, you’re good to sign up. If it’s outside of that list of units, email the competition organizer and make sure they’ll actually let you place or even participate in the event. Some will, some won’t. Don’t allow yourself to be surprised and disappointed if you compete in another Clan, House, or Battleteam’s event and wind up not receiving any credit!

Honors, Arrivals, and Promotions

A few weeks ago, Taranae Rhode was elevated to the grade of Equite 2. You can read her promotion write-up here. Additionally, her last report had a great fiction where yours truly catches her training with a saberstaff. You can read that report here. Congrats on EQ2, Taranae! I’m extremely proud of you.

New people GALORE this month. Some are fresh faces, some are returning from the rogues. All are showing awesome levels of activity! A big welcome to House Ajunta Pall to the following new members:

• Felix Fulmen
• Ithil
• Oric Ral
• Dark Gek
• Varik Molokai
• Leroy etnik
• Warwulic

Welcome back to the following members!

• Ophelia Delacroix d’Tana
• Vanessa Rhode

Other HAPpenings from Around the DJB

Herald Report - Vyr is looking for a Magistrate! If you haven’t had a chance to work with Vyr yet, and you are artistically inclined, you should apply. Awesome person with an equally awesome and helpful staff. Go Apply!

Headmaster Report #18 HM is looking for a Praetor and a Magistrate.

Clan Plagueis Report - An absolutely outstanding farewell fiction from Callus, a solid explanation of what it means to be Dark from Teylas, and all sorts of info about the upcoming Feud with Clan Odan-Urr.

Plagueis Rollmaster Report - Kelly's first RM report!

Gaming Update #48 - Lots of cool gaming stuff. Ultra-competitive this quarter for GMRG rankings. Mako is looking for feedback on MOBAs.

Final Words

That’s it for this month, folks. The House Summit will be providing you with some stuff to do between now and the beginning of Light Vs. Dark. In the meantime, hit up the competitions page, go knock out some courses in the Shadow Academy, or have a write-off in the ACC. Do what you like, like what you do, and most of all, keep having fun!

-Drac