"We MUST attack now, Quaestor! They have already had enough time to dig in and fortify themselves. If we had just taken them out when they first landed we wouldn’t have this problem!"

Zekk stood with both palms planted on the Quaestor’s desk, while the older man seemed to take little notice of him.

"Now we must risk the lives of our men to deal with a big problem that you have let grow out of a small one," Zekk continued. "The Consul will not be pleased when he hears of this!"

Scion was engrossed in something he was reading on a data pad, and seemed to take no notice that his office was slowly filling with the highest ranking members of House Mortis. Solas had entered during Zekk’s tirade, and Darknyte was already leaning casually against the wall near the door, having slipped in a few minutes earlier.

"Frosty has been angry with me before," Scion said quietly. "I’m sure he will be again in the future."

Zekk threw his hands up in exasperation, spinning on his heel to storm out.

"Maybe you two can talk some sense into the old man. I’m done here!"

"Zekk," said Scion, louder this time. "You are correct. We should have killed them on sight. In fact, I wanted to. The Clan Summit directed me not to."

Read the rest of Eradicate the Settlement here!

The Story So Far

Eden City Cipher

A plague of nanites has infested Eden City. We don't yet know who is responsible or what the purpose is, but we did intercept and decode a message being transmitted out of the city by a prime suspect:

I have launched the swarm. Kard will be located very soon. The Seekers of the Light will reign supreme in Yridia!

What or who is Kard? Who are the Seekers of the Light? Stay tuned as the story continues to find out what all this means!

Eradicate the Settlement

We attacked Corvus Tanian's settlement, but things didn't go as planned. Please be sure to read the full story to find out what happened! Don't forget that participating in these short fiction comps will let you shape how the story progresses!

Competitions

My Mind is 90% Song Lyrics (Make a Playlist)
Reversed Captions #3
Friday Night: SWTOR and Overwatch!
Sunday Night: Pazaak!

Promotions

These are the promotions since my last report.

Jul 21, 2016 Dain Cathis was promoted from Proselyte to Neophyte
Jul 21, 2016 Dain Cathis was promoted from Novice to Proselyte
Jul 18, 2016 Tebbo Jensen was promoted from Courier to Yeoman
Jul 17, 2016 Lunamilevolk was promoted from Novice to Proselyte
Jul 13, 2016 Dain Cathis was promoted from Apprentice to Novice
Jul 13, 2016 Dain Cathis was promoted from Initiate to Apprentice
Jul 13, 2016 Tahiri Drakon Night-Thorn was promoted from Acolyte to Hunter

Awards

These are the awards since my last report.

Jul 27, 2016 Tahiri Drakon Night-Thorn was awarded 1 Crescent with Emerald Star
Jul 27, 2016 Darknyte was awarded 1 Crescent with Sapphire Star
Jul 26, 2016 Tahiri Drakon Night-Thorn was awarded 5 Clusters of Fire
Jul 26, 2016 Tahiri Drakon Night-Thorn was awarded 19 Clusters of Earth
Jul 25, 2016 Alexander Drago was awarded 1 Crescent with Topaz Star
Jul 25, 2016 Dain Cathis was awarded 1 Crescent with Emerald Star
Jul 25, 2016 Darknyte was awarded 1 Crescent with Sapphire Star
Jul 24, 2016 Darknyte was awarded 1 Crescent with Sapphire Star
Jul 24, 2016 Alexander Drago was awarded 1 Crescent with Emerald Star
Jul 24, 2016 Dain Cathis was awarded 1 Crescent with Sapphire Star

Transfers

These have been no transfers since my last report.

Quaestor's Corner

Hopefully you guys enjoyed my story from Eradicate the Settlement. I don't want to write all of our story by myself though. It's our story, not just mine. We deserve to destroy our enemies and go on great adventures together! Don't be nervous about your writing: the only way to improve is to practice. I'm going to try switching the format of the fiction competitions up a little, reducing the word limit to 250 and running them for two weeks instead of just one. Maybe that will make it a little easier for some folks to get their entries in.

Writing is very important in the Dark Brotherhood. Fiction is a main event in every major competition, and writing is involved in both the ACC and Run Ons, so some major competitions feature three or more fiction events! If you don't practice it now, how can you expect to win Novae later? If you're a Journeyman these short fiction competitions are great practice and can help to push your DB career forward. There are lots of experienced people in Tarentum who can help you edit your writing and give you tips for improving it. If you're an older member, these competitions are your chance to drive the story in interesting ways, to write yourself into it, and to make House Mortis go where you want it to go.

Let me talk a little more about that: what does it mean for the winning entry to become "canon"?

What I have done is to come up with a structure for organizing fiction elements for the House. I created a few different "fronts" that all have conflicting agendas. They could be pirate factions, mercenary groups, powerful individuals, even artifacts or strange locations. Each of them has a goal, and each of them has several steps to take before they can reach their goal. Each front's goal is something House Mortis probably wants to prevent. Sometimes they will help each other, other times they'll get in each others' way. If we do nothing, they will ultimately weaken our hold on Yridia and we will risk being destroyed.

The nice thing about this framework is that it is flexible. If someone had written about killing Corvus Tanian and all his guys then that would have been our story. His "front" would be defeated and I'd replace it with something new. If you write a story and introduce something new, maybe I'll make a new front out of it and it will become a recurring theme. If you guys let me write all the fiction, it's just going to be about us failing and losing until the good guys kill us and take all our stuff. You don't want that, do you?

Anyway, enough about fiction for now. Please let Zekk know if you have ideas for gaming competitions you'd like to see. He would be delighted to help get them organized for you. See me for anything fiction related. Anything else, either one of us can help with. Zekk and I are primarily here to make sure you're having fun. If you're not having fun for any reason I'd love to know why, so we can work on making it more fun.

Finally, if you're not on Telegram already you should consider joining and getting into the Clan Tarentum channel. It's a great way to meet up and become friends with everyone in the Clan. The number one reason I've stuck around here as long as I have is due to the lasting friendships I've built here. As the Internet has grown up, email has become less and less important so we as an organization need to keep up to date. Telegram works on your phone and can be configured to not spam you with notifications constantly so it's unobtrusive. It's encrypted and does not share your phone number with others. It will make your experience with the DB a lot deeper and more meaningful, especially since nobody is on IRC anymore. If you have any questions about Telegram please feel free to send an email my way.

That's all for now. Look out for the next set of competitions later this week!