The Dark Council is seen mostly as the ruling body of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood. A lot of times we forget, however, that the work these people do everyday is not done for their personal gain or interest. No position is more selfless, however, than Herald. A Herald's sole purpose is to create. To bring ideas to life in a way that only certain people with certain gifts can. Creations for the benefit of others. And in truth, that was something the Brotherhood missed during the course of a year long competition, with our former Heralds time being absorbed by real life. Enter Orv, or Baxir as we now know him (curse you, Esoteric!). Orv had already served a long stint as a Dark Councilor. and we always enjoyed his art work, whether it was character commissions or an entire RoS comic.We took it for granted that he ALSO was our head coder, which is how many people remembered him before he had to step down. It was refreshing, then, to see not only a new style of art introduced into the Brotherhood (in the form of lightsabers and robes), but how he didn't even flinch with getting right back and involved in projects that will go on to change the look and feel of our club for years to come. The weekly comics he started doing where not a requirement, but something that brought joy to the entire brotherhood. He revitalized the entire Herald staff, set them up in a position where they could better address and meet the members needs, while diving headlong into the plethora of projects that needed to be done for the sake of the club.

The join form is where new members will get their first taste of Orv, as he created a Light Side and Dark Side character to help make the choice of selecting your path more organic. They will then see it in subtle ways as they move throughout the site in the small Clan Logo's on the side bar, or access the Wikipedia color scheme (which, finally looks like it matches our Site theme, no more ugly yellow links yay!). When they go through the selectors to pick their robes and sabers, they will also see a series of creations that came out of Herald Style Hanuka creations. They will also benefit from the Avatar submission guidelines he created, which shows that he wasn't just an artist, but someone who worked on a technical level to ensure everything worked. Always willing to compromise, I never saw Orv raise his "voice" or get flustered in a conversation about policy. His level headed approach to everything is inspiring to all, and it shows with how well received the changes he's made have held.

He even went so far as to join us in Hangouts on Google Plus; allowing members to watch his process as he drew while offering tips to artists interested in learning more about the craft. That apparently extended to, on New Years, drawing a representation of my likeliness in a sea-shell bikini. Complete with plenty of phallic additions, of course. Thanks...buddy. (But srysly, you might want to get that subconscious habbit checked out :P)

When I was just starting out in Arcona, Orv was an example I tried to strive for.That sentiment still stands to this day, exemplified by his passion, ability to work with anyone (regardless of their background), and easy smile. In my humble opinion, Orv embodies what you expect out of a Dark Councilor: passion, dedication, and a selfless desire to improve the club and help as many people as he can. And not just for leaders, but any member of this club can only hope to one day be as universally loved as Orv.

Thank you, Orv, for your long-term dedication, vision, and commitment to the brotherhood. Thank you for inspiring those around you to be better, and of course thank you for everything you have done for us since stepping in as Herald for the past 5 months. ~ Marick Arconae, Consul

If Orvles isn’t blushing by the time I’m done writing this recommendation, then I didn’t do my job. He was nothing short of inspiring as Herald. I worked for him as his Praetor for four months, and it was four months of hard work and fun. Orv worked hard on many projects at once amid the various tasks that had to be done day to day. I’m sure this isn’t even a full list, but he did things such as the twitter and facebook covers and join images, his own rotating banner image, the DJB Icon font/clan images and credit symbol, 404 and 500 error page images, Avatar policy wiki article, numerous sabers and robes for Herald Style Hanukkah, logo for HOU military force, several Herald reports, and of course the hilarious and thoughtful weekly webcomics that the membership loved.

It certainly doesn’t stop there. Much of it was behind the scenes, the things that I was privy to see, that made up a good bulk of the work. Orvles compressed the core site images, updated the HRLD lightsaber wiki to add the request table, made a lightsaber request wiki hilt image, cleaned up and organized the DB DeviantArt page, cleaned up and updated the Warbanner Photoshop file to make it even easier and faster for the staff to create them, added the SA logo to the icon font, designed and styled the news waterfall post layout, added meta description & keywords to site (extremely important for SEO), made CSS tweaks to the website, Wiki CSS tweaks, Test of Lore tweaks, new Join form, and even brought back the Wiki navbar. I could be wrong, but I think he brought back the forum navbar too, which had been broken for quite some time. There are some other projects that Orv was working on that are secret squirrel, probably some that I don’t know about myself, but I’m sure Muz can attest to the work he’s done on those fronts.

As a leader he was a lot of fun. I watched him create his images a few times and early on he would critique my own and offer suggestions, and then later do the same for the new Magistrates that came aboard. He let me run with my ideas and supported them. We usually agreed on everything, and those we didn’t he would always offer supportive evidence that pretty much turned my opinion around. Orv was really good at that. :P

Orv didn’t just make pretty pixels. He made the club better in a short amount of time, and it wasn’t for reward, he did it because he was passionate about the work and the club itself. I think the biggest evidence was in the webcomics that he just decided to do. Everyone can see that passion in his art, the cleverness, and the care to actually depict real characters from DB. That right there is Orvles in a nutshell. I absolutely enjoyed working with him as he was fun, and he inspired me greatly to improve myself and have fun in the Herald office as well. If I had an Ellie Badge I’d pin it on him, but I suppose this sacramental award will have to do. Thank you!

~Socks, Praetor to the Herald

Today, I have talked to Baxir. Recently, he's been finding that his real-life work has been taking him more and more time. Sadly, that means that he has had less time to do his work as Herald. I have asked him to stay on and continue his awesome webcomics for us as magistrate to the Herald.

Now, recently, he's been busy, but before that, he was most prolific. The activity tracker for the HRLD office has a lot of entries for the man, as it should...but they aren't as readily visible as just showing great big piles of lightsabers and robes. He's done graphical work, yes. He manhandled Herald Style Hannukhah, he's done up new navbars for the wiki, join characters for the new join form and the social media accounts and the aforementioned webcomics that help keep us all laughing. But he's done a lot more than that. He's pushed forward the concept of a Graphics society, to help grow our artists into something better, a resource for those of us learning and looking to do more. He's also worked diligently to codify and document the unwritten (or horribly out of date) policies that guide the Herald's office. It's been a lot of work, and it's worth our praise and thanks. To that end, I am very pleased to award Baxir an Emerald Dagger as a token of our thanks. Your time with us is always appreciated. ~Muz Ashen, Dark Lord of the Sith

Lord Muz Ashen Keibatsu, 2014-03-20 18:59:02 UTC

For achieving 2nd place in the Weekly #Tarentum Trivia competition.

Lontra Boglach, 2013-12-12 03:35:01 UTC

We have not had a massive crisis in some time (thank god), but the maintenance of the Brotherhood's systems never stops. With so much competing code and servers that are unruly on the best of days it takes someone special with the knowledge and tempermant to keep the cogs of the club running without running and screaming for the hills. Although have a good and highly productive life outside of the club, Orv still manages to find some time to continue to help improve everything we do here. He has always been adding bits and pieces to our infrastructure when he has a chance, as well as maintaining and stabilizing what he can when things pop up. His efforts continue to take him beyond the here and now, instead focusing on the future and ensuring that the club stays relevant, at least technologically, for years to come. His efforts cannot always be seen, yet the fact that our website continue to function and even improve is a testament to his skill and efforts. Thanks for everything, Orv, and please keep it up!

---

DJM Halcyon Taldrya Deputy Grand Master

Orv is epic. And not in the Xbox gamer way. He's not just a sixteen year old kid swearing profanities and insulting mothers (although he is from Arcona, so the mum thing goes without saying), but more like Gilgamesh, who the gods hated so much that they killed his best buddy and he stormed the underworld and attacked the very gods that had sought to kill him. He's that kind of ancient awesomeness. Orv works a double shift every day. EVERY DAY. He goes to work at 8 am and comes home at midnight. He is also a husband and a caring father, so he has another twelve hour job on top of that. Figure in five hours for sleep (i'm being generous here) and we can see that Orv does thirty-three hours of stuff in every day. That's before you calculate the work he does for us...work that I may add doesn't pay him, except in pixels. So when I tell you that Orv has been the one guy responsible for keeping our site from sinking like an overweight flailing man in quicksand, you have some kind of reference for how much he does. He keeps the hackers at bay. He polishes the site functionality and adds to it where he can. He's also been working with the other coders and is working to make sure that everyone is up to speed, which is a crucial bit of site planning. On top of all that, I know he has been working on several big overhaul-type projects for the site. I don't have a way to even guess at how many hours he spends on our site a week, and frankly, I don't want to open that can of worms, because i remember having a similar discussion with Jac when I was herald. So, I will just repeat. Orv is Epic. And to commemorate and reward that work, I am proud to present to him a Sapphire Blade as a token of our appreciation for him. Thank you, Orv. Your work means a lot to all of us. ~ Muz Ashen, Dark Lord of the Sith

Lord Muz Ashen Keibatsu, 2012-04-17 11:48:03 UTC

3rd Place puzzle comp, great job!

Celahir Erinos Arconae, 2011-09-24 10:07:52 UTC

Orv has repeatedly proven himself a tremendous asset to the ACC as a coder. Over the past few months, he has brought two major aids to the Centre in his capacity as a Seneschal.

First of all, he has created an automatic notifier that gives all Judges summary warnings should there be anything in the queue that they require. This has helped tremendously in preventing delays in the constant battle to keep the ACC's workload manageable.

Second, he has just finished coding up a rather awesome Character Sheet change, allowing people to change their Character Sheets at any time, without major impacts on their active battles.

In addition, Orv has helped us twice at bugfixing. First, when the judging interface suddenly disappeared and made it impossible to Judge or start battles. Second, when any attempt to add to or comment on a battle caused it to lock up and become impossible to read.

Given all of his efforts, it seems only proper to give the SCL some small token of appreciation. Thanks much Orv, you deserve this stuff. <3

Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae, 2011-06-11 09:38:23 UTC

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last month, you'll know that the Wiki has been having a rough time lately. There was a big oopsie, and Orv has been working pretty much incessantly to get that fixed. Given how integral the Wiki is to a lot of what we do nowadays, that is a huge deal. He's also been workign to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. With all of that work just ont he wiki, it's easy to forget how important Orv has been to work in enhancing and expanding the brotherhood.
A few weeks ago, Halc and I went through and made sure that we rewarded some of the people that often get overlooked, and we purposely left Orv off of that list because of this work. With the amount of time and energy he has invested recently, it helped expand his award into a Amethyst Kukri as a token of our esteem. Also, because we can't give him bacon through the internet. Thanks again, Orv. Keep it up. Please. ~ Muz Ashen, Dark Lord of the Sith.

Orv Desserx. Smelly Arconan, but resident bad-ass coder and saviour of the DJBWiki. When the Wiki went down a couple weeks ago, this man right here was quickly alerted to the problem and got to work as soon as possible. He found out that we had no access to the server that the Wiki was stored on, and alerted everyone of the alternatives. It wasn't long before he got to work, locating an older version from a year and a half ago. He set up a new database on the server that holds the DJBWiki's coding, and downloaded over 6,000 cached pages. Six thousand! It took him daaaays. In addition, he's written scripts that tweak the cached pages into wiki code, therefore making it much easier for pages to be restored. To do this, he wrote 2,200 lines of custom PHP code, as well as converted almost all of the custom infobox templates found on our wiki into the proper code. Over 50 of them! Overall, he's spent roughly 100 hours of hard work on restoring our Wiki. While there is still much to do, our resident bad-ass coder has made it much easier on the DJBWiki Staff, as well as the general Brotherhood member populous, to restore it to it's former glory. Backups are stored off-server and updated weekly, in order to prevent such a loss of data. While restoring the DJBWiki was part of his duties, doing almost all the work for actually bringing everything back up to date was not necessarily his job. He went above and beyond the call of duty, showing the Brotherhood just what a fantastic member he is and just how dedicated he truly is to this club. He juggles a full time job working for a university as a coder, being a dad, and coding for us. It's a lot to take on, and this man is definitely up to the task. I'd put forth my recommendation for a Sacramental Award in the name of Orv Desserx any day. Congratulations buddy, you've more than earned it. Keep up the great work. ~Anubis Annedu

Originally, Orv was going to be awarded a "smaller" medal, as a token of appreciation for his continued efforts as SCL as well as for his fantastic event in the IGs. Yet suddenly the DB had a bit of a crisis as one of our most popular activities and repository of information, the DB wiki, was suddenly lost to us. What many people hard worked so hard on over the years was gone, and things were bleak. Enter: Orv. He only had a back-up that was over a year and a half old, but no worries, he would go to google and download as much of the wiki cache as he could and then convert the html into wiki code. He would bring the wiki back to some semblance of it's former self. He would spent countless hours helping to shape the wiki back into a recognizable form. The wiki is now almost ready to be released to the public. Although much work will need to be accomplished, Orv has saved us literally years of work. He has also ensured that this can never happen to us again. I would just like to give him my heartfelt gratitude for all of the work he's put into this, and I'm sure I am speaking for the entire club when I say that. Thank you, Orv! ~Halcyon Taldrya, Sith Lord

Lord Muz Ashen Keibatsu, 2011-06-05 17:46:23 UTC