It's report time.

No fiction this time, because I am doing a lot of fiction with one of the teams in the Ambitions run-on competition. Awesome fun. If you need a DB fiction fix, click on over there to get more than enough.

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Recently, Macron has had to step down. His real life decided to double down on hours or him, so he had to peel back out of Naga Sadow Consul. He's donw pretty well with that gig over there, and he's still working on a couple projects for me. At any rate, we had opened applications for Consul to replace the mad alchemist.

After a bunch of good apps (and a non-serious one from Howie), Halc and I came to a decision. Locke, the current proconsul of Sadow will serve as Consul. He's been PCON under Macron for a decent amount of time, and came very highly recommended by a number of other people in the club.

As this opens up a Proconsul position, that spot would need filling. However, after discussing with Halcyon and Locke earlier today, we have decided to move another applicant for Consul into the PCON position. Teu is no stranger to the Brotherhood, having served for a very long time as clan rollmaster, helping to ensure that the journeymen in Sadow were well taken care of. Between the two of them, Halc and I both believe that there are good things in store for Sadow.

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A few weeks back, Jac and Sarin put together a pretty awesome guild site for us at http://www.djbtor.com. If you haven't already done so, swing over there and take a look. It's pretty wicked, and a great tool for us to try to recruit people out of TOR for our own nefarious plots... I mean, to join our awesome club. Yeah.

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Many of you will have noticed that Korras has sent out emails to your units. This is the all too important AWOL check. Due to new (and awesome) technology code written by Jam3z, there'll be a link in your email to click on. Hit that beast and follow the directions. This allows us to avoid the messy parts of trying to sort through a million emails, about half of which don't have ID Lines in them (it's not that hard, honestly) and gives the added bonus of letting unit leaders see in real time who has responded already.

If you don't see the email yet, don't panic. Not all the units have had them sent out yet. Just check your spam filters and make sure it's not hiding there already, first.

There's a few reasons that we do AWOL checks. For those of us who are new, or are just interested, I'll lay them out here.

1.) Knowing how many members are really active right now helps us determine if what we are doing is working. Simply put, a clan or house has realistically one job: to turn new and inactive members into active members. We have reports that show us how many members are assigned to any given unit. Knowing how many of those new members are retained (stay with the DB) is an important tool for us to see if what we are doing is working.

2.) Knowing how many people are there helps us 'Right-Size' houses. While AWOL check results are not the only factor in determining if a unit is ready to reclan or not, it plays a factor. If there are a lot of members in a unit, we might need to look at clanning them up so that the ratio of leader to member is maintained or improved. The last thing that we want to do is have members slip through the cracks because there is so much activity that a leader can't keep up. (Although, it is an awesome problem to have, as anyone in a quieter house can attest).

3.) Having the Master at Arms run the AWOL check frees up local leadership. A long time ago, AWOL checks were run almost constantly by Aediles, rollmasters, Quaestors, et cetera. This turned out to be a constant administrative job, and one that kept our leaders from doing what they really need to be doing: making new and inactive members into active members. Taking that bit of bureaucratic paperwork away from them frees them up to get on IRC and talk to new people, help them with their wikis, character sheets, or finding competitions for them. It's better this way.

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Speaking of awesome things that Jam3z has done, he also came up with a really neat activity tracker that dovetails with the DB site to help make our Masters attend to their students all the much easier. The program has been in beta for a little while, and Arcona is running a final test run on it, so look forward to Jam3z launching that beastie DB-wide shortly.

For those of us who don't know, Jam3z is an old-school retired Seneschal (Code guy) who has recently returned from the rogues and inactivity and has been kind enough to grace the Brotherhood with his time and effort again. We could really use it, especially as we have been working Orv so hard that he's been logging on from work and keeps running around in a chef's apron screaming in Swedish. I think. There was a moose in the Dark Hall the other day, and he kept saying something about desert until Halc took it away. I'd ask what he did with it, but I'm not sure I'd understand it, because it's probably a Canadian thing.

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There's been some worry and discussion that I was going to be closing a house soon. There are a couple places in the DB that have had rough spots lately, but none of them have fallen so far to demand closure yet. Halc and I, and the rest of the DC, have been working together to try to bridge the gaps there, to bring everyone back into fighting trim again. We have a few months yet until the next Vendetta, and my hope is that every house and clan will be at their optimum strength for those competitions.

I just wanted to put that out there to ease some minds. I'm not closing any house soon.

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Ask the GM time.

Howie asks "Do you need an intervention for your TOR addiction?"

Considering that I haven't had the chance to play in about a week and a half and I didn't get the DTs, I think I'm fine. Thanks for the concern, though.

Archangel asks "Are wiki-based competitions, like the ones we saw in the GJW, allowed to be run outside of major competitions? If so, what, if any, rules should we follow?"

We can of course run some wiki competitions. As far as guidelines, have a talk with Benevolent (the Wiki God) about setting it up, and Korras (The Master At Arms) about what awards would be appropriate.

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Kind of a short report this time, but the rest of the stuff I have cooking has to wait. It's not done yet, but I am sure that people will enjoy it. If you need anything, shoot me an email, look me up on TOR or PM me on IRC.

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