Introduction

I don’t have a lot of major news for this month, just some updates on staffing and projects as well as the first quarter wrap-up. I recently did a Q&A on Discord as well, so if you’re insatiably curious about the HM life, take a gander at that as well.

Staff and Projects Update

As you may remember from my last report, I’ve brought on some Magistrates to help renovate the SA. Without getting too into the nitty gritty of specifical plans (which are, of course, always subject to change), I want to introduce the club to who my team is and what we’re working on. As I mentioned, this group is primarily focused on course development while the Professors continue to handle the grading, but you may see the odd exam graded by HM staff just to ensure we’re hitting that 24-hour deadline.

As mentioned last month, Kamjin is working on updating our leadership content. For the most part, the existing courses aren’t wrong. However, they are getting conspicuously dated with their heavy focus on SWOT, 30-60-90 plans, ID lines, etc. Kam’s currently working on the more basic content with the intent to build up. As new courses come online, we’ll be revisiting the time-in-position requirements for our leadership degree series as well. The Maven, in particular, should really be preparing members for their first leadership position. At the other extreme, a leadership Sage degree should not be locked behind the six CoJ positions, especially when as few as three of them turn over in a year.

Storytelling in the Brotherhood has continued to expand and mature and we’ll be updating the SA to match. Zen continues to work on content aimed at traditional fiction writing, while I’m partnering with the Exarch office to provide some guidance for RP. As Idris moves forward with changes to the ACC, we will likewise try to support that. The idea here is that we have both solo and collaborative storytelling, and we want to prepare members to have an enjoyable experience with both.

The SA has a lot of what I’d call “stuff courses,” i.e. courses that cover vehicles and equipment. Since 2016, the way Brotherhood members and our characters have interacted with all this stuff is through the possessions system, but most of our content in the SA doesn’t really reflect that. In particular, the infamous starship courses are an unhelpful mix of Star Wars trivia, armchair admiral tactics, and ship design without providing any of the information you need to trick out your own ship for use in fiction and RP. Eleceos Araave will be taking point on streamlining and modernizing that content.

I also previously mentioned that the SA will be supporting art and graphics more. Nora Olen will be taking the lead on that.

That leaves Zuza and I and an awful lot of proposed content for what I’ve been calling “Brotherhood Studies.” Zuza will be updating and standardizing the notes for our societies courses–you may have noticed that, shamefully, the course notes for the ACS just link to the wiki, but we won’t be riding Benny’s coattails much longer. For my part, I’m hoping to knock out the DB History courses before moving onto new content that covers our various factions.

These courses range from outlines to a complete first draft, so it’s a bit early for me to give estimated release dates.

First Quarter Report

So first, off congrats to the three Q1 decathlon champions! Our top five were: Teebu, Pel, Deezn, Reiden, and Nicfer. Additional props to Reiden, Deezn, and Pel for their first-place finishes in the monthly comps. We also had four members reach the maximum rank in the ACS last quarter, so congratulations to Sykes, Qyreia, Koda, and Juda, as well as Teebu who maxed it out earlier this month.

The grading workload has been a little less nuts so far this month following a particularly busy quarter. The busiest, in fact, since 2018. The SA processed 1268 exams in three months, 293 of which were graded by our faculty.

It’s reasonable to ask where the rush came from. The honest answer is that I’m not sure, but adoption of XP combined with a bunch of new, easy courses in DB Fundamentals seems likely. I know several members very intentionally set out to work their way through the society in the last few months, which has had the side benefit of generating several ACC matches this month and last from members working on their Tactics Savant.

Closing Remarks

As always, if anyone sees any errors in the course notes or exam questions, please submit them through the form. Scrolls of Foundation are a nutritious part of a healthy XP diet.

And, of course, I am always available at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] or Archenksov#2230.

Academy Changelog

DB FUNDAMENTALS
Essentials 102: Progression
- Updated to reflect the launch of the Society of Envoys
Activities 104: Roleplaying
- Updated course notes to reflect changes to the bot commands
- Updated exam to reflect changes to the bot commands (Zoron and TuQ)

CHARACTER CREATION & DEVELOPMENT
Mercenary Order Core
- Tweaked an exam question that relied on knowledge from an EU novelization and not the course notes (Teebu)
Loyalist Order Core
- Removed references to the defunct Path system from the course notes and exam (Teebu)

COMBAT & WARFARE
Personal Armor
- Fixed broken images
Capital Ship Studies
- Fixed a typo (Wolfe)

LEADERSHIP, LAW, AND COMMUNICATION
Recognizing Members
- Corrected a typo in the exam (Appius)
Wiki Editing
- Numerous corrections to deprecated Markdown (Titius)
- Changed course notes to reflect that the Dark Side Degrees wiki article redirects to Shadow Academy Degrees now and not the other way around

LEGENDS
Legends Galactic History 107: Rise and Fall of the Galactic Republic
- Fixed a typo in the exa (Teebu)