Evant transferred back to the DJB in early August 2012. Right off the bat he took to being a constant presence on IRC, and within Scholae Palatinae’s efforts to expand activity. By Feb 2013, he had already manage not only to impress all of us here in HSP, but the DC as well, earning him a field promotion to Equite 1. This field promotion fueled Evant’s drive to even further push himself as a member of this club and into the amazing Aedile, Praetor, and friend he is today.

Long before Evant stepped up as HSP’s Aedile, he was already largely functioning as a leader of the house, just missing the fancy title. He was the catalyst for HSP’s year long Looking Home Campaign, a modular house event that let our members see the great many cool planets and locations of our home system, as well as have an impact on the over arching storyline of the house. He was the main planner on both the Ptolomea and Caina rounds, and both were massively well received by HSP members.

He also has kept a careful eye on the HSP military pages. It is not a rare site to see himself, Dante, and Archangel discussing various different tactics and plans for HSP’s fleet, and what they would like to see purchased next. When those purchases go through, Evant wastes no time in getting them up on the wiki and making sure all our military pages reflect the changes to our fleet. As a person who has absolutely no clue about military breakdowns, or has an extensive knowledge of SW ships, soldiers, and equipment, this task alone has made Evant a god send.

But Evant goes beyond just helping with the big picture stuff. He reaches out to members and connects with them. If any have a question or idea, no matter how far out there, Evant comes up with ways to work with them and help solidify themselves as members of the club. I’ve seen him start small “unofficial” runons with other members just to work with them developing their characters. He has never been too busy to work with someone, offer advice, or give reassurance.

And he doesn’t just talk the talk, but walks the walk. He may have several positions in the club, and a great many big ideas to bring members, activity, and great fun times to all, but he gets down in the dirt along side everyone else. He participated in competitions through every round of the Crusade. He participates in members regular competitions. He writes amazing fictions and earns some great Clusters of Ice. When I send out emails highlighting competitions, he adds in with his own experience working on said competitions.

Evant continues to exceed every hope and expectations I could have of him. He is a tremendous leader, member, and friend. Not many people are willing to dive head first into the thick of it, but Evant is. He is leading the charge in doing everything possible to better this club, and for that I am immensely grateful. There really aren’t enough words to explain how much I enjoy working with Evant. And now as the Dark Crusade is at a close, I am honored to call for his elevation to the rank of Sith Battlemaster. Congratulations Evant, drinks are on you!

Lord Idris Adenn, 2014-11-06 18:37:34 UTC

Evant and I click, really well; it's a simple as that. We clicked as Magistrates and continue to click as MAA-Praetor. He is a rock of statistical analysis, project development, controversial ideas, and generally interesting conversation. He does the usual: approving requests quickly, remanding with thought out explanations, so on. His trademark is a sometimes lengthy email that breakdowns each component of a request, it's validity, and his reasoning behind liking or not liking it. Often, these explanations are so great I tell him to just send them to the requesting member. This is day to day stuff for Evant.

Then there's the rest, a list I cobble together best I can: he helps me write fiction updates for my reports and works with me to generate competitions and future MAA fictional plot lines. He helped generate the wording of simplified request pages (Remember/Information/Tip). He helps maintain a folder of MAA Google docs and spreadsheets detailing our projects, manuals, and more.

Evant is the driving force behind the competition audit. It was his idea to apply 30-45 day warnings to judge competitions. He contacted organizers about old competitions, in some cases closing them himself. He created an audit spreadsheet to track everything, and helped write the emails that now go out to organizers. Stemming from this, Evant solely wrote the new Competitions course for the Shadow Academy, notes and exam, and now serves as its Docent.

There are several other major projects relating to everything from promotion requirements to medal awarding that Evant is one of the core brainstormers and proposal drafters for, but I leave details out while things develop. Evant has totally blown away my expectations as a Praetor. He is everything and more that I ask of him and I never worry about MAA dealings with Evant helping organize things. He does great work and is fun to work with along the way. His role as P:MAA is one of leadership, yet even while keeping up with everything here he is also the Aedile of HSP (a position he specifically asked to maintain when I offered him Praetor). More details on his work elsewhere in the other recommendations, but on the MAA front I have no complaints. His work is exemplary and will continue to amaze for months to come. Thank you, Evant. This is only the beginning.

Zanet Xox, 2014-11-06 18:34:38 UTC

Evant Taelyan. One of the most shining members of the Imperial House. He has been an outstanding Aedile, since he got appointed to this position. He has immediately started working on House projects and activities, which he has taken over from me. I am aware that it has been quite a challenge not to get confused with all the mess that he has taken over after my resignation. However, Evant has proven himself to be far better than necessary to deal with all these projects. He continues my work and expand my ideas to get them rid of any flaws and to make them excellent.

Apart from his duties as the Aedile of House Scholae Palatinae, Evant has proven himself as a reliable and impressive member of the MAA Staff, as the Magistrate and the Praetor to the Master-At-Arms. For his work in the MAA Office, he has been awarded with a Sapphire Blade. I am sure that Aabs has praised Evant for his merits in tha MAA Office, so I will not deprive him of this pleasure.

In addition to this, he has authored an excellent SA course regarding the competition creation, which falls into the Leadership Department. Though he has been a Docent only for few days, I can see that Evant has not only been a grader, but also a teacher. It is extremely important in the service on the SA Staff.

Finally, despite assuming the position of the Aedile of House Scholae Palatinae and other important positions in the Dark Jedi Brotherhood, Evant has remained as humble and hard-working person as I remembered him before. He has actively taken part in numerous competitions and placing in many of them, as well as earning numerous Clusters of Ice for his competition entries. He is not only an excellent leader, but also a beacon of activity.

All these achievements and merits, described in details by others, bring me to the conclusion that Evant has risen above and beyond what is necessary to become a Sith Battlemaster. I am honoured to see this moment in Evant's career in the Dark Jedi Brotherhood. Congratulations!

Adept Xantros, 2014-11-06 18:35:55 UTC

Evant is not one of my members, but I wish he was so I’d be able to claim to have taught him everything I know. Alas, while being a leader in another unit, he still manages to step up to help the Brotherhood at large as Praetor to the Master At Arms--one of the most underrated and underappreciated positions in the Brotherhood if you ask me. Why do I say this, you ask? Good question.When you think about it, the MAA’s job is to oversee the awarding and promoting of our members, which in a volunteer club serve as our only true form of showing appreciation to the work our members put in. A lot of the times, this means upholding a standard, and a lot of times, this puts the MAA team at odds or against the stubborn Unit leaders (like me) arguing cases for their members. For the past year, I personally had a very difficult time working with the MAA Emeritus. I say this, because not just with Aabs doing a stellar job taking over, but his decision to make Evant Praetor, ended up being one of the best moves the MAA office has made in years. At first, I wasn’t sure. I had only seen Evant in limited action as a magistrate up to that point, and from our talks as fellow DB members.

And then came my first time “discussing” things with the new MAA staff. Taking a cue from the rough grounds I had become used to standing on with the former staff, I came off as a bit hostile in my initial encounter with a remand request with the new team. Evant was the first person to get back to me. And the funny thing was, he didn’t just say, “No, you’re wrong, you’re an idiot, no one else has a problem with me saying no, something must be wrong with you.” No. Evant went into painful detail to explain to me what the issues with our recommendation submission were. He was patient. He never snapped back at me. He remained level headed and logical against one of the more vocal unit leaders in the club. He even reached out to me personally. He found me on WhatsApp, and we discussed things on our mobile phones together while I was at work/when we had time. In another instance, he managed to show me something I had overlooked, and made it so that we could give a member MORE reward instead of wasting efforts prematurely into a different kind of award. It was something that had never occurred to me, and only does so now because of the conversations Evant had with me. The underlying thing to take from this story is that Evant made the effort to listen.

Listening is something that you cannot teach. It’s a skill that all good leaders need to possess, but not all of them have it by default. I’m guilty of it, as are most of us. Evant really surprised me though by showing that he has it in surplus.

As a person, Ev is awesome. My colleagues will have no doubt covered all of his other awesome deeds. I hope my testimonial helps lends support to a much deserved and overdue promotion. Congrats Ev, and keep doing your thing.

Consul of Clan Arcona

Lord Marick Tyris Arconae, 2014-11-06 18:36:42 UTC

Evant is an extraordinary member of the house as well as the brotherhood, doing extensive work in many areas that would not be possible without his help. He has proven to be a member well deserving of a promotion based on everything that he has accomplished and continues to strive for the good of others. He is easy to contact with a great turnaround of emails and can always be found on IRC for questions or just to chat.

Evant is a very active member of the house, who participated in various events before his help was needed in elsewhere. He was part of the leadership summit of our light side house of the club to aid the leadership in their house activities. He saw too much of the light and decided it was time to come back to House Scholae, whom the members accepted happily. He became the Aedile of the house which had rapidly shown and continues to demonstrate the great and dynamic leadership we have in this house. He has committed himself to the restructure of the house under a more imperial role intended for what this house is in a fictional role. This plan formulated into an extensive project that included identities of each Battle team within the house, providing a framework of what the teams are in the eyes of the club from fiction. Each team specialized in some kind of role that engaged each member in the pursuit of their own role through battle team level activity. This sparked activity from the teams which played out into a house wide event with each team. This was a historical event where each team competed against each other for the title of Battle team of the house. These ideas are still ongoing and growing into something more each day as the imperialization begins to take shape. These results and future outcomes simply would never come to bear or possible without Evant.

Evant is also Praetor to the Master at Arms, doing his part for the entire club for each member to enjoy what we are all about. He has been a longtime staff of the Master at Arms for over eight months and his exemplary work over time has been shown through the award of a sapphire blade. He has contributed work to the shadow academy as well to provide a course based on organizing and leading competitions that meet the standards of academy and the office of the Master at Arms. His contribution to this course awarded him an Anteian Cross for his assistance in creating it. Currently, he is the Docent of the course, spreading his knowledge and wisdom both as an instructor and a MAA staff which I am unable to see no better until it is passed to the next instructor.

Evant has and no doubtingly will continue to put forth everything he possibly can for the good of his fellow house as a leader and member. He is a very resourceful member to the Brotherhood through his time and effort into the positions that he holds. These are reasons but surely not all of why Evant is well deserving of a promotion and will continue to do is best to benefit this brotherhood. He is what a great leader and a member of the club should be and is a great example for others. Congratulations Evant! For the Empire!

Lucyeth, 2014-11-06 18:36:15 UTC

I have come to know Evant through my entire career here in the Dark Jedi Brotherhood, and he has always been one of the standing pillars of Scholae. He is always there to help bounce ideas off of (one of which will be taken off in our house very soon!) help you with research, wiki editing, encouragement, and all around companionship. He’s a friend, a mentor, and by god, he’s a scoundrel! (But you’re our scoundrel!) He is always there to push everyone focused, forward, and always enjoying themselves. The big thing that sets Evant apart is his dedication. He is extremely dedicated to his friends, his house mates, and the DB as a whole! He never ceases to amaze me with all he does. Personally, I enjoy his company, he pushes me to do more SA exams than him, to participate in competitions, and a friendly face.

I am proud to recommend him for this promotion, as he deserves it after everything he has done for his House. There is so much more that I could say, but it would be a little redundant after all of the recs, but that doesn’t demean what he has done. Evant is an amazing friend, dark jedi, and colleague.

Issamuel Kin'Droth, 2014-11-06 18:37:05 UTC

In the past seven plus years since my return to the Brotherhood, I have a been an active member of Scholae Palatinae. I have witnessed many new leaders come and go through the halls of leadership within our clan/house, and I will say that Evant is one of the most thorough and competent leaders that we have had in the past seven years.

Hosting competitions is one of the main duties of the aedile, and Evant has excelled at this by hosting 20 competitions since his return to Scholae from a short stay in HOU. Through these competitions, Evant has worked hand in hand with our Emperor, Xen, as they have pushed the Imperial theme forward for the first time since the days of Thran. The year long Coming Home campaign has been the device for this during his tenure as Aedile, and the competition has allowed an outlet for both our journeymen and equites to progress their characters within the confines of the Scholae Palatinae storyline.

Evant has also taken a strong interest in furthering our Imperial identity through the use of the wiki. Over the past three years, Evant has dedicated large chunks of his time in trying to clean up our conglomeration of wiki pages and make it into something with a unified theme. His work with our military forces has been exceptional, and he has learned a lot from Archangel and I on how to effectively use our forces that are on the order of battle. As part of our War Council, Evant has a personal interest in learning how warfare is conducted in the Star Wars universe, and it has helped out Archangel and I tremendously with formulating possible battle plans and troop dispositions for our order of battle and in competitions.

These are just some of the ways that Evant has contributed to Scholae Palatinae and the Brotherhood at large. His service in other areas such as the MAA office is well documented on this recommendation, and his personal entries in large scale competitions is equally as impressive as the rest of his resume. I congratulate him on this promotion, and I hope to see him find his way into the upper echelons of the club over the next few years.

General Kell Palpatine Dante, 2014-11-06 18:37:22 UTC