"It is said that if you want to know what you were doing in the past, look at your beard now; if you want to know what will happen to you in the future, look at what your mind is doing now”

--An Excerpt from The Bearded Tome: Chapter 14, Verse 92

Greetings Folks,

We're coming up on that beautiful, wonderful, prophesied time. It's the time when the flowers begin to bloom, the skies open up and the sun shines in. It's the time where men and women are made free from tyranny only so that they can know happiness. We're almost there… but we still have to wait for a few more plot updates and results before we can fully, finally just... relax.

In the meantime though, we can start once again retooling our minds and our industry, and we can prepare for a time of peace, and not war. So, onwards to the report!

Random Image of the Day: Arrival by Whyst

Headlines that you need to know

• GJWXI Round One Results & Fiction are Released!
• The return to normalcy has begun, boredom ho!
• Star Wars News!
• Howie talks about Journeymen
• There's always another competition..

Round One Results & Fiction!

Like I said, we're not entirely done with the Great Jedi War and Fading Light and the Crusade quite yet. Upon the competition coming to a close, Sarin and his team of tardy editors prevailed upon us with the first in a 3 part epilogue, detailing the... I dunno exactly what's going on anymore to be honest. There have been so many red herrings I'm just sitting back patiently waiting for the answer. But Tarax shows up, so that's nice. Read the fiction in Sarin's newspost here.

As for Round 1, we had results released almosted immediately upon the close of the event. Taldryan put up a decent showing, but only captured enough points to place second thus far. Still though, something nice to take away from all this is that Taldryan sported the highest unique participant percentage of all the units in the DB. So many of you came out this GJW to support us, and to help Taldryan strive to win... and we're all very grateful for that, thank you.

Just want to toss a big shout-out to all the people from Taldryan who placed in various events:

• Fiction: Halc (Gold Nova!), Rathus (Bronze Nova!) & Vodo!
• Graphics: Jac & Shad
• Puzzle: Bubbsy (Gold Nova!!), Serenla & Shad

Great work to all of you, especially our Nova winners, well done.

The Return to Normalcy

What exactly is normalcy these days? We've been mired in Vendettas for so long, that we actually have a heavy portion of our active membership who doesn't know what it is to not have another Vendetta on the horizon. Well, what this means is that a lot of the activity driving impetus is going to switch from the Dark Council Level, down onto the Clan level. Taldryan is going to be responsible for writing its own stories again, developing it's own plots. How we deal with the fallout from the GJW, and the Crusades, to personal character driven stories, and helping Taldryan's own mythology grow... that's the sort of activities you can be looking forward to seeing in the near future.

I'm planning on bringing up more than a few competitions revolving around our new allies of the Gray Paladins and their leader Cole Drayson as well as running some competitions to help our membership create their own NPCs for Taldryan, and many other fun activities.

The first activity that has already returns is the Taldryan Gatekeeper Trials where you can fight over the honour of being Taldryan's Gatekeeper, an important fictional position that essentially leaves you in charge of security over our home base.

Rumours of my demesne...

Yeah, it's a cheesy title, but it's late, I'm tired, and I'm out of practice. Anyways, these had been a crapload of awesome stuff happening in the Star Wars universe of late, and I'd like to share with you some of the more massive bits and pieces of news that has floated across my desk...

• There was a Massive Leak of (as yet) Uncomfirmed Battlefront Rumours
• Vader and company are headed to the High Seas as Star Wars Days at Sea announced.
• Billy Dee Williams has a good feeling about Lando's return to Star Wars
• So, apparently Cliff from Cheers was in Star Wars, who knew?
• A massive collection of Star Wars Games is available at the Humble Bundle for a few more days.
• The new Star Wars Comic is apparently quite popular, accounting for 1 in 7 Comic Books sold in January.
• NASA Astronauts dress up like Jedi for Mission Portrait... and dude in the top left kinda looks like Nathan Fillion... just saying

Rollmaster’s Corner

Hello Journeymen! It’s been a while since we did a full fledged corner. Christmas, and then the Great Jedi War have gotten in the way! Now that’s over, and we can get back to the business at hand – namely, making all of you journeymen Dark Jedi Knights!

First of all, and most importantly, I’d like to thank all the journeymen that participated in GJW 11 (you higher ranked folks get love too, but less so. :P)! Every story, every graphic, every run on post, every game played – everything helps. Thank you!

Second, with the end of the GJW it means that it is time for the Taldryan masters to get back into the swing of things – and the newest journeymen, time to start thinking about non-Great Jedi War stuff!

I’d like to first welcome Artorias to Taldryan! He has joined us as a new recruit, and is now a member of House Dinaari! He’s already taken a big bite out of the DB, and I hope everyone gets a chance to say hello.

Two journeymen were promoted recently! Artorias was promoted up to Protector this afternoon, and Bobecc Varga was promoted to Guardian yesterday! Congratulations!

Journeymen Activities

Below are the highlights of our journeymen in the past couple of weeks!

• Protector Artorias: Promoted to Novice, Acolyte and Protector! Earned a Dark Pundit – Essentials degree, completed the Brotherhood Basics, Comms 1: Discourse, DJBWiki: An Introduction Shadow Academy courses. (And even more since! -Yacks)
• Guardian Bobecc Varga: Promoted to Guardian! Earned a Dark Cross and 3 Clusters of Fire! Completed the Leadership Management and Markdown 201 Shadow Academy courses!
• Guardian Kyber: Earned a Dark Cross!

Competition round up

Taldryan Hosted Competitions

• Taldryan Gatekeeper Trials, February 2015 – Best PVP Score wins!
• Starting on February 16th --- Speed Sporcle Challenge #7 – Hosted by our very own Zoron! Answer trivia questions on sporcle!

Brotherhood Wide

• Star Conflict: PVE – Fly the most missions and win!
• Mobile Gaming: Ice Rage Competition – Another glorious mobile competition!

OK everybody, that's it for me today. I just want to end off on a more serious note.. I have spoken at length about the fact that how you win matters. Given our current standings, I also want to remind you that how you lose may matter even more. Remember always: Win with grace, lose with dignity.

But lets keep on hoping we need to be more graceful than dignified :D