This will be a quick report where I go over a few topics that have come up over the past week to share with everyone. An important (at least to me) reminder that I am trying to build an awesome staff to help me shape the fiction of the Brotherhood, and some competition details in case you find yourself with some free time wanting something to do.

Updates

What’s in a name?

Just a quick note - on naming stories. Or giving your piece of work a title. You might ask, does it matter? I mean.. you can tell a story without it. I’ll just answer and say yes - it does matter.

Of course it should be something appropriate, something that draws your attention. Fortunately in the format of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood, you kind of have the grader as a captive audience, but at the same time your story is trying to compete. A title can help frame an entire story and help the reader (or grader) immediately get in the right mindset of your tale.

There are many resources out there to help you come up with a good title. Sometimes you come up with it at the start, sometimes it comes at the end after you’re done, or somewhere in the middle it comes to you. In the end - I just encourage naming your stories.

Character Sheets

While there are plans to possibly expand the number of pre-written aspects available to the membership, the most flexibility and creativity to develop characters will come from custom aspects. There are standards in place around writing these custom aspects, for standardization, readability, and balance, and during the review process the Voice Staff and Combat Master will as necessary step in to help correct anything problematic with as much useful feedback as possible to correct the issue. I don’t want the creative freedoms of anyone to be stifled, but at the same time, as a collaborative and collective group of writers, we strive for a certain standard that allows everyone to work together and understand each others characters.

Staff

I am still collecting applications for Magistrate (M:VOICE), if you are interested in being part of the Voice staff to fictionally develop the DJB and join the team please send in an application. From my original announcement, I am accepting applications through July 17th (tomorrow) before I’ll start making some decisions and reaching out to people about accepting and taking on certain projects. I encourage anyone to apply who is interested, even without an impressive list of prior work, there is a chance you could end up being a great fit for a project.

Active Competitions

• An Objective History: Andrelious from Clan Arcona is still running a DJB wide competition focused on different items your character has owned that will run for the rest of the month until July 28th.

• Boarding the Zephyr: Bentre Stahoes from Clan Naga Sadow is running a DJB wide where you come across a floating ship, and write about what awaits inside, that will run until July 20th.

Completed Competitions

• Keeping it together: This competition ended last week. Congratulations to Calindra Hejaran of Clan Scholae Palatinae who placed 1st. I enjoyed reading all the submissions, and getting an idea of how the membership views the Dark Council. I’ve concluded that of top priority to the DC would be: Getting members to spy on their Clans or Clan members, killing things, or stealing things. So, truly a Dark Council.

• Chaos Ensues: Has concluded, and congratulations to the placing team from Clan Naga Sadow of Bentre Stahoes, Scarlet and Tasha’Vel Versea. It was an interesting new take on fiction to run it cooperatively, and the staff learned a lot about how this was run to better address future collaborative coop fiction events. Arden (the other half of the Voice staff that isn’t the Combat Master) is currently drafting up some key learnings and hopefully we can get another cooperative event running in the future as we gauge interest in it as an event versus a Run On.

• My JW Experience: Has concluded as well, congratulations to Renarr Kul of Clan Tarentum for placing 1st in this dinosaur themed creative competition.

• Hear Me Roar!: Has concluded as well, contratulations to Xantros of Clan Scholae Palatinae for winning this entertainment themed and less-than-serious fiction competition.

Clusters of Ice

Reminder again: Organizers must send their pins and word counts to me, for Clusters of Ice to be awarded. Format: Pin#wordcount.

Voice Links

• Competitions
• Antei Combat Center
• CS Approval Guidelines
• Cluster of Ice
• Dark Side Scroll

Conclusion

I wanted to get another update out ahead of the deadline for anyone who might be interested as joining the staff as a Magistrate, of course there are always opportunities to get involved in a less official capacity. As well as some updates on fiction opportunities, I expect to see more coming as I get some new staff and want to give members an opportunity to potentially influence the DJB through their submissions. Think of Mav’s create an NPC competition with some possibilities to look into where some of those GJW NPCs ended up and what they might be up to. I’m sure you’re all super curious what happened to Rhiaen Ust’essi and might want to help her stay on a path of the Light… and/or help her fall to the Dark.

If you ever have any questions, ideas, feel free to let me know. I do my best to reply quickly.

In darkness,

Evant Taelyan
Voice of the Brotherhood