Specifics

There had rarely been a busier time for the Arcona Summit. All sorts of things were going wrong in the Dajorra system, and they needed the personal attention of not only the Consul and Proconsul, but also both House Summits. Proconsul JaM3z and House Qel-Droma Aedile Strategos were just about the only ones with a scrap of free time left, and even that was usually consumed by pressing matters. To add to the Summit’s worries, Christmas was drawing close, and just like every other year, there were medals to be awarded. And recommendations to be written, otherwise there wouldn’t be any medals at all. However, due to their lack of time, the Clan and House Summits were unable to write the recommendations. “I’m afraid drastic measures will have to be taken” said Consul Mejas to the assembled Clan and House Summits. “Due to our severe lack of free time, we will not be able to write medal recommendations in time, and therefore will not be able to award medals. However… there is another solution. We could let members write recommendations for themselves. This will save us more time, and it might even provide us with better recommendations than we could have written ourselves. After all, no-one knows more about what a member has done than the member himself…”

There was a murmur of agreement in the chamber. Sure, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen, but when facing a lack of time, you had to improvise. And all agreed that Arcona’s Consul has improvised very well in this case. “JaM3z, Strat, since you’re the only ones with some free time left, you’ll take care of all the recommendations. You will read them, and you will only send the very best recommendations to the Chancellor. After all, we don’t want this to be an opportunity for members to get a free medal, do we?”

Strategos and JaM3z sighed; they were now forced to sacrifice the minimal amount of free time they did have, to boring Clan matters. Oh, well… someone had to do it.

The following morning, signs were hanging all over the Arcona base and all House bases. They looked official, and everyone was interested in what they said. Here is one of the signs:

Clan Competition December 2003: All I want for Christmas

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: write a medal recommendation for yourself. The medal you are recommending yourself for must be a merit medal and cannot be higher than Steel Cross (this leaves three choices: Dark Cross, Star of Antei and Steel Cross). The three best written recommendations, for any medal, win. (Example: the three winners can all be recommendation of Steel Crosses, all of Dark Crosses, or anything in between). Submissions can be any size, as long as they’re not shorter than 100 words and not much longer than 500 words (I strongly doubt if anyone will reach that marker, though :P).

The awards for this competition are rather unorthodox: instead of the usual Clan level Crescents, the three winners will get the actual medal they recommended themselves for. NOTE: You can only recommend yourself for ONE medal, so choose carefully!

You heard it: be careful which medal you recommend yourself for! Undoubtedly, the vast majority of you would choose a Steel Cross right away, since it’s the highest possible medal you can get for this competition. However, we expect nothing but top-of-the-line recommendations for Steel Crosses, and it’s much harder to get one as well. For example, if you write a good recommendation for a Steel Cross, you have a reasonable chance of winning one. But if you submit exactly the same recommendation for a Dark Cross, your chances of winning one are much higher.

To summarize it all: not only do we watch the quality of the submissions, but we also keep in mind which medal you’re requesting. Are you going for a small chance on a Steel Cross, or a large chance on a Dark Cross? The choice is yours.

Citeria: The recommendation must be based on facts. You cannot include things you haven’t done in your recommendation (for example, you can’t say you’ve w