It had been years. That was all Kaek could really think as his sabers pressed against his opponent's. Years since his guile and cunning could not defray the situation from obvious violence. Years since he had needed to actually press the ignition switch on his sabers. Usually, the old spymaster could arrange a death, assassination squads at his beck and call. But today was different. This was different.

The Chagrian bolted back, away from his bisecting blade, the lethorns that draped the side of his tattooed head wobbling as he came to an abrupt stop.<p> "We know why you are here, False Sith." There was no malevolence in his voice, stating the epithet as if it were just another fact. Kaek let it add to the furnace of his hate. "Therefore, you should just return home, beyond the Caldera, until He is ready for you."<p> Kaek relaxed his arm, letting his blood flow normally, calming his heart. "Until He is ready for me?"<p> The Chagrian nodded solemnly.<p> Kaek snapped forward, his blade searing the air at the red-skinned alien's face, the blade sizzling against flesh and bone, horn and sinew. The Chagrian howled as his hands flew up, his saber clanging to the ground with the horn that was cleft from his skull. Blood crumbled under his fingers, fresh blood breaking through the cauterization to flow deep and blue across the red tint of his tattooed hands.<p> Kaek didn't laugh, even though he wanted to. <p> "Where is He?"<p>

---

<p> Vodo looked up at Korras, the emotions crawling across his face. Inevitability, sadness, understanding. Korras nodded as he turned away, a half bow before the Obelisk would leave the way he came. Vodo could not ignore the truth. The almost constant warring since the Vong arrived had taken it's toll. The agents in the core, responsible for bringing him fresh recruits for the Shadow Academy haven't been heard from since Coruscant fell. The few new recruits from the Academy were all but fodder for the Taldryan War Machine.<p> Once the stuff of legend, many of the elders in the Clan called for them to retire, to resign themselves to their fate and leave the Name of Taldryan on a high note. Vodo had balked, even as Arcona bested them on Antei, even when Revan surpassed them on Salas V. The Brotherhood within a Brotherhood would not fall. He remembered the oath to the Taldrya that he had made. He stood slowly, watching the doors close behind Korras as he left. <p> It was time to return to their roots. To recall their former glory. To rebuild. To be reborn. <p> It was time for Ektrosis again.<p>

---

<p> Ma'ar waved Robin onward, the hand-speak loaned from the Obelisk serving the Fist well in his missions. The beasts that crawled over the half-demolished prison and laboratory on Mount Ashfire were posing a problem for them. They had recruited as many people from the clans as they could, but they only could spare so few. They needed their own people to maintain their huge empires, empires nearly unsustainable without the ponzi scheme of more recrits coming through the Academy.<p> Robin clucked her tongue as she reloaded the magazine, slamming it into the rifle and charging the barrel as her back felt the crate that was her cover for the moment. Maybe we needed to be less harsh on the recruits, she wondered. Every death in the halls of the academy was one less Sensitive to bolster the Brotherhood, to lead soldiers and carry a saber. She snorted the idea away, for the weakness it was.<p> Sith are forged in blood and death. Surviving the training is what made them powerful, tested, dangerous.<p> She squeezed the trigger, a fountain of gore erupting from the neck of one of the alchemically mutated...things... deep in Codei. She watched the thing slip on its own blood, thumping on the ground as its life seeped out onto the tiles. <p> Something had to change.<p>

---

<p>

<p> It's report time <p>

<p> Big changes.<p> The AWOL Check is over, and it told us a lot of things. None of our clans had more than 60 people after the check, and Independent House Revan had only ten people less than the largest clan had after the check. We always lose a lot of people in AWOL checks, however. People miss the email, or otherwise are away from the DB for a while, and a lot do eventually come back.<p> So, we look at other stuff. The Database generates a report on member activity for us. It takes a look at the last year and sees how many people joined versus how many people get promoted and stick around. Traditionally, the point where a member is considered 'hooked' and will stay around is DJK. This is because it takes a serious amount of effort to get DJK, and if someone is willing to get that, they're more likely to stick around. Realistically, it shouldn't take most people longer than a year to get knighted.<p> Last year, when we ran this report, we had found that out of about a thousand members, we only had 7 make it to DJK. That spooked us. We added perks for the new members, putting blasters and more robes in for journeymen (like the year before when we gave armory sabers to journeymen), trying to make it more enticing for people to stick around. We tried to loosen things up a little... but in the end, it didn't work out.<p> Last year, out of 743 joins, only 3 people stayed on to DJK.<p> That tells us what we have known all along, that we're not able to get as many people as we would like to stick around with our old structures of letting the Clans train and promote our journeymen.<p> The good news is that we already have been planning on doing something about that: the Grind Path. Letting new members progress at their own rate for most of the journeyman ranks will help retain some of the people that we were losing by oversight or delays in grading or promotion. We have been competing with automated promotions in things like WoW for years now...and we are competing... competing for members time.<p> But there's more. What about the people that leave because of other members? It seems that a lot of people who would otherwise have stayed on and done well, we have lost due to drama and what not. Now, we're not naive, thinking that we will ever be able to stop everyone from leaving due to member conflicts. But we need to look at lessening the impact that they have on the health of our club.<p> This whole time, we have noticed that we have been getting less and less people applying for positions. Positions like Consul and DC positions, where we once would have a dozen applicants or more, we get two or three applications for. Positions like QUA and AED sometimes only get one, and we end up filling them with people who are downright toxic to the brotherhood. People that would rather lord it over on people, or would want to turn our club into another /b/ chan. That tells us that we have too many leadership positions. <p> About two weeks ago or so, I started talking to elders and influential members in the club, trying to brainstorm what we should do. There were a couple options, and I put those options out for feedback among the Dark Summit. The response was actually really good. We didn't have any infigting or bickering like many of the times I have seen dark summit conversations go in the past. We're all worried about the Brotherhood, and we're all looking for the solution. That's a great thing. None of us are laying down arms and giving up. We all have looked at what seems to be working for us, and are looking to discard that which is not working for us.<p> Yesterday, I had an impromptu meeting with four of the five consuls on IRC, where we discussed options. Overwhelmingly, the feedback was that we wanted to make the clans more flexible and still reduce the overhead of how many 'chiefs' we had. We agreed that the clans had lost enough people that they should be considered Independent Houses, and that we all would work together to strengthen the Brotherhood enough to warrant clans. This was not a decision easily made.<p> As opposed to the old punitive method, we are not going to be taking away clan powers or dominion or anything. We're simply reorganizing so that we don't have more leaders than we do active members. Consuls will become Quaestors and Proconsuls will become Aediles.<p> This is a big change for us, but one that the entire dark summit agrees must be done, and will help us move out of the past and into the future. There's a lot of opportunity here for people, and a lot of work that can be done to make a name for yourself, and all the rewards that go with that. Combined with all of the other work that the rest of the DC is doing, we are all confident that this will strengthen the Brotherhood, and make us weather the changing landscape of the internet all the better.<p>

-> <- <p> ROS news<p> The next rite of Supremacy will be titled 'Disorder' and will be starting in October. It will run three weeks to keep it short, sweet, and intense. It will be a vendetta event, not a Great Jedi War. Naturally, Seals will be awarded for participation, as well as Novae for placing in the top three of any event.<p> And now, a sneak peek of what is to come...<p>

-> <- <p>

-> <- <p> Promotions! <p> First up is Ronovi, who is being promoted to Equite 3. Ronovi has served Tarentum admirably, making some big changes and working to keep that clan rolling. She has a significant pile of reccomendations for you to read, so go take a look. She is a driving force within Tarentum, and has more than earned her promotion.<p> Next up is Korras, who has since his last promotion, been Consul and Proconsul, Quaestor and Aedile, and Master At Arms. It has been almost five years since his promotion to Dark Side adept, and while his activity has not been always been a beacon of light, it has always been constant, behind the scenes, and humble. Going back to his roots and embracing the fictional role of Master At Arms as a commander of the DC forces, the work he has done on the coming wargames has been exciting to say the least, and his turnaround and consistency as MAA has been excellent. Korras and I have been allies, friends, and partners in crime since i followed him up from battleteam leader over in the Night Hawks of HMR in CNS. Even though neither of us have been to CNS in many years now, he has still been more than willing to help with anything as it comes up. He has been a great MAA, he was a legendary Obelisk high Commander, and he is nothing short of an excellent friend. His touch as an elder has reached very far, and it is for that reason that I hereby am promoting Korras to the rank of Dark Jedi Master.<p> I had to make that a sneak attack, so he didn't see it coming. Anyone who wants to add their own reccomendation to Korras's promotion, and let him now how much we all love him, please email it to me. Thanks!<p> Finally, another member who toils behind the scenes will get their due. As an advisor who is close to me, I am sometimes too loathe to promote people for their work for fear of the cries of bias. This sometimes makes me wait longer on promoting or awarding them, even if they have earned it a few times over. Ashia Kagan Keibatsu is pretty much the worst victim of that. As my wife, she has been literally my left hand on just aboout everything that has come from my office. She proofreads everyting, puts up with my deranged ranting at three in the morning about projects that i am working on, and brings things into perspective for me. On top of that, she has served as a consul, helped to bring House Revan into play, and has helped countless new members with everything from their ACC skills to Shadow Academy exams. She is not expecting this, but after a short discussion with Korras to make sure I wasn't off my tree, he agreed, She is long overdue for the rank of Equite 4. Well done, Ashia.<p>

-> <- <p> Ask the GM.<p> Fremoc asks: Will there be more new medals?<p> There are a few new medals on the drawing board. One of which will be called the 'Wayfinder's Cross', which will be awarded to journeymen that make their way through the Grind Path. If you're already past that point in your DB career, don't worry, you will still be able to earn one of these puppies by testing out new Grind path stuff and running through it yourselves, when it goes live.<p>

Kalak asks: wWill the Dark Side Compendium/Codex be updated in the near future?<p> Probably not. The Dark Side Compendium is one of those massive projects that the people who work on them often promise the moon, but then never deliver. The Codex is mostly already on the Wikipedia, which is easier to keep updated than the codex.<p> Azazel asks: With our presence on TOR, will we just be focusing on the Sith Empire, or will we have two guilds, one for the Sith and one for the Republic?<p> I imagine that we will have one guild, but with a backup guild for our Republic Alt 'Toons.<p>

<p>

-> <- <p> TL:DR

*Rebuild phase: Houses.

*Grind Path is being worked on

*RoS: Disorder due out October, get ready

*Yay Ronovi and Ashia

*Korras is DJM!

*New Grind Path Medal!

*Codex is on the Wiki

*First person who correctly guesses who Kaek is dueling in the opening fiction and sends it to me via email will win a LSS

<p> And that's all for this time. If you have any questions, or anything I can help with, pm me on IRC or shoot me an email. Have fun! <p>

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