Battle Lord Teylas Ramar di Plagia was selected to lead Clan Plagueis over one year ago. His selection was an arduous process and came with the additional scrutiny of having a Grand Master who has previously served as the Consul of Plagueis. I sought a leader to take the role of Plagueis Consul because the previous leadership had struggled with the ability to unite the Clan and focus their efforts towards important lines of effort.
I am extremely pleased to say that Teylas has not only met my expectations as a leader of Plagueis, but he has far exceeded them. Teylas’ calm demeanor immediately stabilized Plagueis and his ability to focus everyone on tasks kept the members from reverting to the historical dance of insane Plagueis infighting. Teylas accomplished these things will skill and elan and the DC was exceptionally happy to see his success.
Over the past year Teylas has managed members, competitions, fueds, and a host of small dramatic events. He has done these things in a manner that not only makes him fit for EQ4, but eventually for the Elder ranks beyond.
Teylas, I appreciate all you have done for Clan and Club. Congrats.
GM Pravus
Teylas has overseen one of our strongest units as Consul for the last year, after spending the previous six months as Proconsul. Each of our units has their own unique challenges our leaders must tackle. In the case of Plagueis, Teylas is challenged with a unit of proverbial sleeping giants. Plagueis tends to be at its best when there is a major prize or a big competition, and can be challenging to motivate between such events, but Teylas has found his ways. In one of our earlier unit reviews, I recall asking Teylas about Plagueis’ participation numbers, which were middle of the pack. He noted that the unit tended to be particular in what they enjoyed, but he had a plan to make sure that his members had activities they could really dive into. Teylas’ plans came into clear focus when Plagueis and Odan Urr proposed a Feud. He helped guide delicate Feud discussions with Odan Urr, and then subsequently lead his unit to a victory in our first major Feud in years. Following the Feud, Teylas rallied his members with another major event, as Slagar describes below.
So far this year, through both unit reviews, Plagueis has been our top unit in several participation metrics, including participation ratio and the number of participants per organized competition. Teylas’ strategy has really paid off. His unit continues to develop skilled new members, with the most total new Knights this year so far, despite the unit’s relatively small size. On a personal level, Teylas has organized 26 competitions, and co-organized another 344, including several events of a Feud with Odan Urr. His leadership skills have been recognized with an Amethyst Kukri, as well. Teylas is not just an excellent leader, but a steady and active member in his own right: when not organizing or administering competitions and events, he is an active participant in any competitions he can. He has participated in 36 competitions, and earned 12 Crescents from those competitions. He has earned more than 1900 Clusters of Earth and 7 Pendant of Blood, and holds his own in fiction, where he earned 17 Clusters of Ice and wrote some 8000 words of fiction.
In an Equite, we expect a member that creates content for others and leads his fellow members. For those that reach Equite 4, we expect that they are exemplary leaders and active members. In Teylas, we have just such a member: dedicated to his unit and their enjoyment, Teylas works tirelessly to better his command and to give them an opportunity with the activities they enjoy. For his success as a Consul, Teylas more than deserves Sith Warlord. Congratulations, Teylas!
DGM Mav
When I look at Teylas’s tenure in Clan Plagueis, the one quality that stands above all others is consistency. He has been a part of the Plagueis summit since January of 2013, almost directly coinciding with his arrival in the unit. He’s held every summit position outside of Rollmaster, having been a Battleteam Seargeant, Battleteam Leader, Aedile, Quaestor, Proconsul, and now Consul. He has always been there to make the Clan better, at no times more so than over the last 18 months coinciding with his tenure as Proconsul and Consul. His leadership hasn’t just been about doing what he says, it’s about doing what he does. A devout proponent of the concept of leading from the front, Teylas makes sure he’s the hardest working member of the summit staff on any given day. That devotion, coupled with equally high expectations of his subordinates, has created a culture in the Plagueis leadership that has driven the Clan ever forward.
The largest stand out of Teylas’s time on the Clan Summit has been his full throated embrace of “event” competitions as being the standard for Plagueis competitions. He understands that member engagement drives member participation, and that building engagement with large scale events is far easier than with singular, one off competitions constantly being run. Since February of 2014, Teylas has helped oversee our three month Restoration feud, the Forged Alliances event with Clan Tarentum, the Between Light and Dark vendetta against Clan Odan-Urr, the Plagueis Pro-Bowl, and the recently completed A Call to Arms House Feud. By focusing on these large scale events, it allows Plagueis to create a setting where all entries can make substantive contributions to the eventual outcome. That reality means that Plagueis continues to generate stellar member participation numbers, which are the hallmark of continued member engagement. This sort of competitive environment, however, would quickly collapse without a strong and steady hand at the helm directing everything, as the amount of work required on the part of the summit running the competition is magnified. More events need to happen in less time, so the time crunch on creation gets worse. On the outgoing end, grading is likewise condensed into a short period of excessive work. “Event Television” style competitions also require more in the way of fictional structure built around them, which requires fiction to be generated in far larger amounts than would be required for normal, run of the mill competitions. All of this really is my way of “showing the work”, so to speak, that Teylas puts into his position as Consul. In short, he sees no problem making it harder on himself if it ensures that a great product is delivered for the members’ consumption, the true mark of a great leader.
Additionally, it’s important to focus on the kind of environment Teylas creates on the leadership side of the Clan. Over the years it’s been obvious that some summits work better than others, some are well oiled machines while others are highly factionalized while working at cross purposes. Plagueis has a summit of the former variety, and I attribute that much to the approach Teylas takes with his subordinates. First and foremost he strives to create a culture that is highly inclusive, encouraging summit members to be friends as opposed to simply appointed co-workers. Be it pictures of your latest mountain ascent, the fun you had helping run a convention, or the conquests of your debate team, Teylas has made a place that sharing the events of your day is welcome because the summit is a cohesive team. That sort of attitude filters down to the membership as well, as that good-natured camaraderie is infectious. Teylas is the guide who has made it his foremost task to create the most inclusive and welcoming environment possible in the Clan, email, and Telegram, and we’ve seen Plagueis become (forgive the cliche) more of a family because of that.
He has also seen to it that the Clan has room to grow fictionally. It had become clear that the members had been looking for more variety of setting upon which to craft their stories as we had more and more people join that found the spaceborn existence of Clan Plagueis not work as well for their characters. Responding to that growing need, coupled with the changes to the Brotherhood’s fleet structures, Teylas crafted a planetary proposal for the Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master to bring Plagueis back to a more terrestrial existence. Aliso has given our unit an outlet for our members while crafting a more inclusive setting, an example of fictional updates being drafted, not for mere story advancement, but with an eye towards member engagement and appeal. It was a project that most Clan leaders never have to undertake, the very definition of “above and beyond”, and Teylas went out to find the work that needed to be done.
All of this work, team building, and member engagement has paid huge dividends in terms of raw numbers. Our Pro-Bowl event saw a staggering 477 entries generated by 31 unique participants over the course of a three week event. That number was good for a participation average of 9.73 entries per person across the entire Clan and 15.9 entries per competition. I don’t think Plagueis has ever seen member participation as such levels, not in any Vendetta, not even during our victory in the Dark Crusade. Even starting less than a month later, and overlapping the busy summer months for many of our members, our just completed A Call To Arms feud still saw good participation: 183 entries generated by 17 unique participants at a participation average of 4.35 entries per person across the Clan and 7.65 entries per competition. Even with those participation numbers being somewhat more “pedestrian” than what was managed in the Pro-Bowl, they would still be better over that time than any other Clan in the last quarter. In short, Teylas has built Plagueis into a Clan that, on its off days, is still doing a great job keep its membership engaged and having fun. And those two goals (engagement and fun) are both the top priority for any unit leader across the Brotherhood, a fact that Teylas never seems to forget.
Speaking on behalf of the entire summit of Clan Plagueis, I wish to thank Teylas Ramar for all that he has done for our Clan. Since we can’t name him “Super di Plagia”, I guess putting him forward for promotion to the fourth and final rank of the Equites will have to suffice!
Warlord Selika Roh di Plagia
Grand Master Declan Roark, 2016-08-24 21:20:27 UTC