Voice Supplemental #3.1: LOREFEST! And Some House Cleaning.

Lorefest Is Back on the Menu Folks:

Bringing back tradition, I've launched Lorefest and the April Prompt goes live tomorrow. I planned to get this live immediately after I took office, but I was caught between figuring a lot out on the fly, hiring, and dealing with some health issues. Given these factors, I decided not to distract you all from the final event of Parabellum.

However, War is on the horizon, and we will (likely) take a short break from LOREFEST for the duration. This is a bit of things to come and something to get us through this foolish month. Also, I just really missed making competitions.

Hiring for a new CM:

Unfortunately, with Anderson's resignation on the horizon, there is an opening for a new Combat master.

I touched on this in my last report, but this is an excellent opportunity for those of you who are interested to step into leadership. Especially those of you who are really into the workings of the ACC. Applications run from 31MAR2026 until 14APR2026, which will allow the new Combat Master time to integrate ahead of War. Please, check my last report (linked above) for the duties and requirements.

Applications for the role should be emailed to Idris ([Log in to view e-mail addresses]) and me ([Log in to view e-mail addresses]).

Some Policy Updates:

One of the promises I made when I applied for Voice was that I was going to strive to revisit, review, and revise policies as needed.

Custom Disciplines:

One such case recently landed in my lap. There has been some confusion and kerfuffle about Custom Disciplines.

After some discussion in-office, the policy has been revised to remove the language limiting EQ3 to Tier I Feats, EQ4 to Tier II Feats, and EL to Tier III. If enforced in the manner designed, this would require our office to revisit and reapply your custom disciplines each time you rank up, if you remembered to request them, or just sit with limited Feats. Our office had already shifted to operating outside of this guidance as a matter of convenience. I'm officially updating the policy to reflect this.

The intake form for Custom Disciplines has been simplified:

• Current Rank is relevant only for ensuring EQ3+ remains only for verification and Metrics gathering.
• "EQ3: Is this Discipline for a Force User or Non-Force User?" has been changed
  • It now reads "Is this Discipline for a Force User or Non-Force User?"
• "EQ4: Is this Discipline for a Force User or Non-Force User?" has been removed
• "EL1: Is this Discipline for a Force User or Non-Force User?" has been removed
• Section 2 retitled "Order Selection"
• Sections 3 and 4 have been removed
• Metamorphosis & Fueled (Night Warrior) Feats added to both FU Feat Selectors
• Ichor Grenades & Depths of Power (Night Witch) Feats added to both FU Feat Selectors

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Languages:

As I noted before, and has been noted on the Language Wiki Page for a while, Wookieepedia's Language Category is the best reference for Languages. The DB Wiki article for Languages is a shorthand and primarily holds the languages from currently approved species for reference or listing best practices (such as regarding to Droidspeak as Binary). I do not intend to expand this article further, outside of best practice references.

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Hybrid Species:

No stranger to controversy, the Hybrid Species policy. This is still a work in progress, largely due to several other matters taking my attention elsewhere. I am in the middle of assigning Classification to species in an annoyingly long Google Sheet. The policy is largely unchanged from its previous stance, except that it will allow Species sharing a Classification to be listed as hybrids, not just Humans/Near-Humans. The Species page is going to be a crawling update as I work out the species classifications.

• A hybrid Species must indicate the Primary Species due to how the CS system works.
• A hybrid Species can have cosmetic elements of their Secondary Species worked into their Physical Description.
• A hybrid Species can only have two species utilized. Both of these species must be from the list below.
• Hybrids can only be created by two species of the same Classification.

I do want to impress that hybrids outside of humans/near humans are incredibly rare. Bothan Hybrids are one of the few non-near-human cases we have in canon that are readily available, as such Hybrid characters will still be held to increased scrutiny during approvals.

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Species Approval Guidelines:

Just a spot of clarification and a reminder here. Submitted species must be sentient and capable of independent movement and thoughts, be capable of using The Force, and should be accessible and well-known; an obscure species is likely not acceptable. There is no longer a requirement for members interested in the species when submitted, but, having more people actively interested and discussing the use of the species does increase the likelihood of an approval.

We are more likely to approve something that fits the system if we see it routinely in chat, instead of it suddenly materializing.

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House/Battleteam Fictions:

This one has been brought up to me a few times. The Inquisitorius Archive is not just for Clan Fictions. Consuls can submit the official works of their House and Battleteam Leaders and give them their due. However, unlike Clan Fictions, these will not be hosted on the Clan's front page Fiction tab.

The procedure is the same as uploading Clan Fictions: Consuls must upload the fictions to their appropriate INQ Archive section and email the Voice Staff with a link to the fiction, with the word counts and PINs of the members responsible for writing them. The Voice Staff will verify word count and assign appropriate CoIs/Credit as due.

Quibbles and Such:

There are a few other questions and concerns that have come to my attention over the last 60+ days that I'm still rounding to addressing in meaningful ways. A kind of frequent one, surprisingly, has been about grading competitions. This one I understand, and it's a weird place because if I move the goalposts at all, people are going to be weirded out, so I'll leave you with what I do, and if I were to make any changes in the it would probably just be to append this onto the current sheet and call it a version 3.5 or something, which is just sort of silly. What am I, some kinda coastal wizard?

Some of you are having the same problem I've run into, where you grade based on the Fiction Rubric and end up with tied scores, especially when you're grading people who have been writing together for a long time. 5 points can be a narrow gap for some of these, especially when the errors you may find in some areas aren't glaring enough to drop it by a whole point, and you love both stories. What I do is split it into a 10-point scale, increasing the room for nuance in grading minor details. It really made some high-stakes grading easier for me over the last 3 years.

Important Links

• C-D4WG
• Fiction Archive
• Fiction Resources
• Fiction Center
• Fiction Rubric 3.0
• Character Notes Template
• Voice Feedback Form
• Voice Staff Email

As always, if you have have any Fiction related questions, comments, concerns, snippy comments, or angry rants, feel free to DM me on on Discord or zip me an email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] just keep it civil.