Introduction

Don't worry, I don't intend to make a habit out of releasing two QUA reports a month. However, there were two very big announcements that merited this.

New Aedile!

After Mako stepped down as QUA and I stepped up, the position of Aedile was vacant. After reviewing the applications we got, one candidate had the mixture of practical, immediate ideas, leadership experience, activity, and respect from his his peers that we were looking for. Everyone, please welcome Daniel "Seraphol" Stephens as your new Aedile. Sera joins us from the Disciples of Baas, though he's served Odan-Urr as our Rollmaster, Hoth's QUA, and Knight-Commander of KoA in the past. I'm looking forward to working with him and I hope we'll do some great things for Shan together.

Garza's Pathfinders

What We've Done

The Disciples of Baas and Strike-Team Ooroo have been closed and all of their BTMs have been transferred back into the main House. Len Iode, DoB's BTL, has been moved to a new BT, Garza's Pathfinders. Hopefully the concept is a good mesh of what people found appealing about Baas (heroism, Light/Jedi-style behavior, a role for non-combat characters) with what people liked about Ooroo (stealth, daring, a chance to stick it to the bad guys). The old BTs still exist in-character, but for the time being they're NPC units. Hopefully we'll see them come back to active status one day.

Here are the requirements for membership:

• A rank of at least Neophyte, Runner, or Private (JM1)
• Active membership of House Satele Shan for at least two weeks
• Participate in a minimum of two competitions each month. If unavailable, email the BTL and BTS to inform them.
• Maintain an active presence on the Clan e-mail list and/or the Clan, House, and Battleteam Telegram channels.

If you've done the first two, and you're willing to make an effort for the latter two, just contact Seraphol or myself and let us know you'd like to join.

Why We Did It

This was not a hasty decision. I wasn't in STO very long, but I have fond memories of the unit and I know many others felt the same way about STO or DoB, so I feel like you deserve an explanation.

Unfortunately, we just don't have the juice to run both BTs at a level comparable to KoA or other successful teams in the Brotherhood. There's been a bit of handwringing about this for a while, and for some time now I've had current and former House and Clan leaders agreeing with me that we needed to consolidate one of the teams. The point of a Battleteam is cluster our most active members in one place, where they can foster each other's achievements and build relationships to keep them involved at that highly active level. When it comes to member retention and success in inter-unit comps, having one or two of those members in one unit and another two or three in a completely different unit doesn't make much sense.

So the decision came down to which team to close. Do we close Baas because Ooroo's older? Do we close Ooroo, because Baas is more active right now? Well, I've seen plenty of characters that don't fit well inside either box, especially since both units were developed before NFUs were a thing, and back when we weren't solely a paramilitary unit. Garza will, hopefully, have more sexy action than DoB but fit a much wider batch of character concepts than STO.

Conclusion

That's all for this report. I look forward to hearing from those of you who'd like to join the new team.

Alethia Archenksova
Quaestor, Satele Shan