The Fist of the Dark Brotherhood is a challenging position that requires dedication, awareness, and an openness to new ideas from both our membership and our club's leadership. The Fist is required to operate with delicate balance by providing excellent customer service, but at the same time making decisions that do not please everyone. I am pleased to say that our present Fist, Valhavoc, possesses the appropriate attributes for the job and superbly performs along the very narrow edge of pleasing our members and leaders.

Despite the importance of having the right mental attributes, skills, and consistency for the job, a promotion to Elder also requires hard data points. Fortunately, our Fist has the metrics to support a promotion to any rank. Valhavoc has served his entire 12 months as an EQ4 on the Dark Council. During this period he has organized 47 competitions, co-organized 36 additional competitions, graded 179 SA courses, posted over 76 original threads on the news page, and responded to an additional 164 news page threads.

Outside of the objective numbers, Valhavoc has rewritten the Rites of Combat and adjusted CF values on multiple occasions to ensure an impossible mission of attempting to balance CFs across our gaming platforms. He has developed and submitted a new PvP and PvE medal system that will be announced to the club on 14 May 2015. Valhavoc has also rounded out his project work by detailing a new dbb0t gaming system in #db gaming with the SCL (project finished by the Fist on 10 March 2015).

Valhavoc is also an expert communicator across all know DJB communication platforms to include mIRC, Whatsapp, Telegram, and Twitter. This was highlighted at the recent Star Wars Celebration when Val took over 120 photos and shared them with the club, Tweeted 53 original Tweets, 15 updates on Facebook, and posted 42 times on Telegram #db chat. All of this was done over a 72 hour window and designed to bring Star Wars Celebration to our club.

Additionally, Valhavoc has not only run our gaming community, but excelled as a member of it. This was highlighted as he earned 2388 CFs and 3 Pendants of Blood this year. These numbers pushed him to the rarefied air of number one all time in the DB in total CFs. This achievement is remarkable given all of the additional work he has done.

Lastly, I am aware that history has shown Grand Master's set the tone for Elder promotions during their reign. Because of this, I did a thorough analysis of past EQ4-DA promotions. In a direct comparison between Valhavoc's EQ4 activity and his predecessor's pre-Elder promotion, Valhavoc stands light years ahead. Valhavoc has written 3 x as many news posts, 3 x as many reports, and ran 3 x as many competitions. Outside of a Fist to Fist comparison, Valhavoc's 12 months of Dark Council EQ4 time compares exceptionally favorably to the Titans of our club. This includes individuals promoted from EQ4 to DA at 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 5 months, 6 months, and 9 months. I'm comfortable to state to our club that a high performing EQ4 is more than eligible to move to Dark Adept in a 12 month window. Especially, when that EQ4 serves the entirety of the window as a Dark Councilor.

Congrats Val, you have earned this promotion a few times over. Welcome to the Elders.

Grand Master Declan Roark, 2015-05-14 23:10:52 UTC