Sapphire Blade events for Duke Kojiro Keibatsu Sadow

Sapphire Blade events
Event ID
157645
Award
Sapphire Blade
Quantity
1
Requested by
Epis Locke Sonjie
Primary reason

I am honored to be writing this recommendation for Riku Keibatsu. He has been an excellent leader within CNS, and continues to serve well as Aedile of House Marka Ragnos, a position he has held for the entire nine months since his last recognition. Beyond that, he has been a leading participant in competitions on his own, and is always at the forefront of any event in CNS. Beyond his House leadership, he has also served as a Magistrate to the Headmaster for the past six months, which Marcus' supporting recommendation will attest to. It's not easy to balance a demanding Magistrate job along with the duties of an Aedile, while still continuing to maintain a high level of activity, but Riku has managed to do so.

Riku has done a good job of leading in House Marka Ragnos. He helped run the "Rest and Relaxation" event for the House along with Tasha when she was Quaestor, which resulted in a total of nine members of the House participating, with nineteen total entries. Along with Tasha, he spent significant time planning, writing, and judging for this event. He additionally ran The Void run-on competition along with DarkHawk. Riku led in the creation of this event and fleshing out the idea, and worked closely with DarkHawk. This really exemplifies Riku's ability to get members involved with projects and competitions, and I know that afterward the two were pretty satisfied. Together they spent several hours to develop the story, which included bouncing it back and forth between each other and me and Sang. It isn't always easy to get our approval for things, but whenever we requested a change or made a suggestion, Riku was quick to respond to it and ensure their work was modified. In the end, he and DarkHawk co-authored 3332 words of fiction supporting the event. They further went on to judge 9700 words of fiction from the collected entries.

Riku has also run a number of stand-alone competitions for the club as a whole on his own. These have generally been pretty good, well-thought-out ideas, as evidenced by the participation of 45 different members, for a total of 63 entries. A lot of times, club-wide competitions that are not part of a major event seem to be overlooked, but Riku had no trouble accumulating a lot of entries for his. As a result, I'm frequently excited to see what kinds of competitions he comes up with.

Additionally, he has worked on a lot of fiction and other supporting updates for his House. Riku has written 4297 words of official House fiction, and helped coordinate roughly 13,000 more that were written by other members of the House Summit. He further worked on wiki pages such as the Kar Alabrek page, which is the House's home city. This page totals 2800 words, and Riku spent time revising it. This included going through contradictory information from the past several years (and many fictional direction changes), reaching out to older members who remember what happened during these times, and compiling the information together. He then had to run it through Muz to get it approved and further revised, before it was ready to go.

In addition to his leadership listed above, Riku has participated in a total of 44 competitions since his last recognition. While this isn't the same super high, over-time amount as some of his peers, Riku is known for hitting big Clan events with outstanding participation. This is evidenced by his activity in the feud we had with CSP, where Riku was one of only five members (totalled from both Clans) who participated in all seventeen competitions. He also used this time to encourage his peers to participate and led the House through the feud as Aedile, along with his Quaestor Tasha. Due to their efforts, HMR produced 91 entries for the feud, averaging ten per member. When the feud was over, even though CNS lost, it was HMR members who earned the gold and silver novae for the event, placing first and second overall. There's no doubt in my mind that Riku's leadership helped lead to this.

More recently, he also participated in all seven of the Project S.P.E.C.I.A.L competitions. Riku is a leader who never expects more from his members than he is willing to put in, and this is exemplified in his participation and his work. Both his event participation and contributions to House materials like fiction and wiki pages are excellent, setting a great example for his members. If there is a leader who 'leads from the trenches', Riku is a perfect example.

I'm proud to be recommending this award for Riku. He is someone who has been on our Summit for a long time and his contributions have been very significant. CNS would not be in the same place it is today if he had not come to us, and we would not have enjoyed many of the successes we've had without him. When a Consul or Quaestor looks for a new Summit member, they want someone who will not only participate, but also work behind the scenes to improve their unit. Riku excels in both of these.

Congratulations, Riku!

Consul of Naga Sadow

Epis Locke Sonjie, 2017-01-22 18:28:58 UTC
Additional reasons

Riku was given the task of auditing the Department of Flight Studies which included Starfighter Studies, Capital Starship Studies, Astronomy Studies, and Freighters/Transports Studies. All in all, this is over 20.000 words of content that he's had to fact-check, spell-check and rewrite. That means going through every statement and every statistic and comparing it to the Wookiepedia (and his own considerable knowledge) to ensure it was still canon. In addition he's gone through each revised course word for word, making sure that the whole course flowed well as it was read. I even made him redo Starfighter Studies when Rogue One and Possessions came out.

Riku didn't stop there though. He's gone through every single exam too, making sure that their subjects and desired answers were still on-par with what he had written in the course notes. One of the goals of the Audit was to remove the dreaded 'answers vary' answer keys, which Riku replaced with concise and clear descriptions of what the intended answer should look like. Combining all these tasks, it takes roughly eight hours per course to finish them completely, including markdown coding. That means he's spent 32 hours pouring over wiki articles, rewriting courses, looking for images, and coding SA articles.

That amount of effort deserves a reward in my opinion, so I am happy to lend my recommendation to award Riku with his first ever Sapphire Blade. Congratulations!

-Marcus Kiriyu
Praetor to the Headmaster

Marcus Kiriyu, 2017-01-22 18:26:32 UTC

This is overdue. I inherited Riku from the previous administration, who had been going through some real life time constraints. As a result, this man's accomplishments kept getting missed and glossed over. I'll take some of the blame for this, based on my old-school mindset and push toward larger and larger rewards. At the end of the day, it has been 9 months as Aedile that he has served quite admirably.

Riku has been my left hand since I have decided to unretire. He has been in almost constant contact with me, despite a five hour time difference and hectic work schedules. In the rebuilding of Marka Ragnos, he has been instrumental in helping to run the Siege of Heaven competition, between brainstorming, planning, grading and writing the official fictional account of the event, That was a month's worth of meetings, plotting and planning and several thousand words of work on it's own, given it was the first major project of its kind in HMR for some time. Pushing forward, he has helped to brainstorm and plan the currently running 'Sands of Time' event, constantly in discussion with me about particulars and possibilities for the event. In addition, he has worked behind the scenes on numerous updates and tweaks to the existing HMR fictional entities (like Kar Alabrek and the cathedral) and works (such as the Tarthos reborn planning doc), bringing them up to date and modernizing them. In addition, he has helped to proof and direct DarkHawk in his fictional direction as well as proofread and tweak my own fictional releases.

For the raw numbers portion; Riku has 16 competitions that he has helped to organize or grade. You could also look at his great record of participation himself (as I am a huge proponent of 'leading from the front') of having participated in 44 competitions since taking on the role, accumulating a tidy pile of crescents and clusters, including two of the pretty difficult to acquire diamond crescents. this shows a dedication to many of the aspects of the leadership of the House. In addition, he has served on the Shadow Academy staff, but his work there would be better elaborated by the Headmaster.

His work has been critically useful to my plans for the house, for the preparation of our members for greater involvement in the club, including the runup to the coming wars. He is one of the best Aediles that I have worked with, which is saying something, considering how little on-the-job training he had prior due to circumstance. I am more than happy to request that Riku Keibatsu be awarded with a Sapphire Blade for his efforts thus far, and as thanks for being such an integral part of the summit.

Thank you, Op.

~Muz Ashen, the Lion of Tarthos

Lord Muz Ashen Keibatsu, 2017-01-22 18:26:58 UTC

Riku has spent the last 9 months working two jobs for the Brotherhood, first as Aedile of House Marka Ragnos, where he has learned on the job, most notably from the previous Grand Master. Secondly, Riku has served 6 months as Magistrate to the Headmaster, where he was heavily involved in rewriting courses and the auditing process.

Riku is hard working, dedicated and is always available to his members. He gives his opinion frankly and openly with Clan events, competitions and fictional direction. We can rely upon him to always give us feedback.

I consider Opie a good friend, both within and outside the Brotherhood. He's come far since joining Naga Sadow, even though he doesn't realise it. Riku is one of those members who puts themselves down, instead of realising and admitting just how great a member they are. Sure, he may have spammed the Voice's inbox with his constant CS changes, but I'm sure they'll get over it.

Locke has spoken amply about why Riku deserves this Sapphire Blade and I'm pleased to support it. Riku provides succour to me as a member, he listens, he advises and he helps. His members, his colleagues in the summit and his compatriots in other units via telegram in the Fiction, Art and Gaming channels.

Riku has worked his arse off, and yet he's sadly been missed due to changes in leadership. Despite that, Riku has continued to serve, refusing to slow down, even talking about postponing date nights to get the job done. Sometimes you have to remind him to put real life first.

Dedication, kindness and camaraderie.

Riku has them in spades.

Congratulations on your Sapphire Blade, Riku. You've done me proud, you've done CNS proud and you've done yourself proud. See this Sacramental as a token of our appreciation for your hard work.

Proconsul of Naga Sadow

Professor Sanguinius Tsucyra Entar, 2017-01-22 18:27:20 UTC

In my six month term as Quaestor, I was able to choose an Aedile to help serve the House of Marka Ragnos. The one I chose was Riku. Together we tried to provide some entertainment and fun to the house through a competition event called Rest and Relaxation House Marka Ragnos Style. The event lasted a month and took about a week of planning, editing, and submitting. He helped with organizing, gave solid ideas and thoughts, and helped me as a judge in a few of the competitions. If you give him a gameplan, he will take it and run with his own flair of creative ideas added to the mix.

He also worked hard to encourage participation. As part of a boost and revitalizing activity within our house, Riku would send out emails every week to check activity and encourage our members who may not have telegram to participate and enjoy their time in the house. It helped me to find a bit more time working on other projects for the house members and reduced the stress of having to worry about activity all the time. I always had a report that I could use to see what areas we could strengthen and create a better environment for our house. For that, I thank Riku very much.

Overall, I have really enjoyed working with him on competitions, love his encouragement to participate and can't wait to see what he can come up with next as an Aedile to the new Quaestor.

Congrats to you, Riku!

Tasha'Vel Versea, 2017-01-22 18:27:52 UTC

This could not have come to a better person. Raider Keibatsu has significantly helped me throughout his time as my Aedile. He has guided me through my time as a Battle Team Leader with whatever issues that have come up. He also went out of his way and guided and aided me throughout my first comp organization, promoting said comp and finalizing that comp with grading. He has made me more eager to organize competitions on my own and gave me tools to get my Battle Team more involved in participating them. For me, as a BTL I see no reason why great things should not be bestowed upon Raider Keibatsu as his willingness to help towards the HMR and battle teams is without question truly an asset we cannot lose.

Warrior DarkHawk BTL Night Hawks

Adept DarkHawk Sadow, 2017-01-22 18:28:19 UTC
Event ID
211260
Award
Sapphire Blade
Quantity
1
Requested by
Master Bentre Stahoes
Primary reason

Kojiro Keibatsu: one guy who has continually tried to give back to the club at large.

He has been serving the office of the FIST as a Magistrate for almost a year since his last recognition, and having watched the competitions he has been putting it out he has been giving us some fun options for play, to the tune of 15 comps organized. Before this, he had helped to enrich Clan Naga Sadow during a term as Battle Team Leader in House Marka Ragnos for 2 months as well, which I think further illustrates that "desire to give back" that Kojiro often shows.

More than just the producer, Kojiro has also stepped forward in instances like this latest Vendetta. Since almost a year ago, Koji has participated in some 53 competitions, with 16 of those representing our Clan in this last Vendetta (which also brought him home some Seals of Emnity!) and a pretty spattering of Crescents. How pretty is this spattering? Well, he has placed in almost a third of his total competitions. He has brought home a Crescent with a Diamond Star, 3 Crescents with a Ruby Star, 5 Crescents with an Amethyst Star, 2 Crescents with an Emerald Star and 3 Crescents with a Topaz Star.

Beyond just Crescents, Kojiro has brought home other shinies for his gaming. He has brought home a couple of Pendants of Blood for feats of gaming, 6 Clusters of Fire for 3 PVP matches and 12 Clusters of Earth for 5 PVE activities. He also has worked in the real of fiction, earning 7 Clusters of Ice. His writing pursuits have been split between 4 fiction activities to the tune of 2471 words. He also showed off his artistic skills in competitions to bring home 21 Clusters of Graphite! He has also tackled 1 course in the Shadow Academy and received a Seal of Loyalty this last May the Fourth.

Kojiro has shown he is, if nothing else, eclectic in his nature.

For his contributions to helping to enrich gaming for the Brotherhood, for his representing our Clan in this last Vendetta and for his continued support of the club as a whole, we wish to present Kojiro with this Sapphire Blade.

Bentre Sadow, Consul

Darkhawk Sadow, Proconsul

Master Bentre Stahoes, 2021-08-06 01:36:36 UTC
Additional reasons

Koji has been on the Fist staff in the role of Magistrate since June of 2020, working on what is now his third term in the office. It is not an exaggeration to say that his efforts have been herculean during his tenure. He has approved a whopping 642 PvE/O submissions and 189 PvP activities. Additionally, he has run a competition for the Grand Master's Royal Guard series each month he has been on staff. Not only can I always rely on Koji to have his competitions submitted ahead of schedule but he also takes care to consider what member's are playing and what game we have or have not supported in recent monthly competitions. This added level of care is essential to ensuring we give equitable support to all of our platforms.

He has been the most prolific Magistrate I have had on my staff by any measure. Koji has also shown tremendous growth in his leadership skills while on staff. I've had the pleasure of working with him one on one coaching and he has shown a passion for learning. This growth has distinguished him as someone who not only is committed to doing a fantastic job in his role but also to continued development with the eye on future service to the club.

Congratulations Koji, this is much deserved!

Raiheaux, 2021-08-05 19:10:40 UTC