---

A report, wherein Muz hopes that his old html works (it probably doesn't), releases Crusade Results, and Awards someone something quite awesome.

---

First off, The new site has launched. This is the culmination of over a year's solid blood sweat and tears from the seneschal staff. Arion Solnatus (Sunrider to us old fogeys) has already been promoted to the rank of Dark Jedi Master for his work here. As badass as the work that Arion has doen on the site, it is still second to the mind-numbing amount of time that Jam3z himself has done, and we still haven't awarded him.

I don't want to take away from Arion here. He's put in a crapton of work, and it was his nervy suggestion to go to Ruby in the first place, one that Jac and I said wasn't the right call when he suggested it to us years ago. mea culpa, Arion. We were wrong.

Everyone here benefits from Jam3z work. I can not overstate the amount of work he has put in. I can not overstate how important the work is and will be to our club. If you enjoy what we have, or have ever gotten excited over the plans for what we are working on, thank this man. Without him, none of it would even be on the remote horizon.

Jam3z was given one major task since he was made Seneschal in May or 2012: Save our club from this dying site. I don't need to tell you how bad it was on the best of days. Dossiers erroring out, requests vanishing into thin air, graphics getting erased, and everything loaded far far slower than we liked. This continued to get worse over the past few years, the result of so many seneschals, each with their own coding styles and piss-poor documentation to back it up.

It was a hell of a job, akin to getting thrown into a kitchen that had not been stocked or cleaned in twenty years and told to make a gourmet meal. It's not the first time I gave that job out. I'm not the only GM to hand that job out. But Jamez is the only man who achieved the goal.

Since then, he's been methodically burning through the site code, trying to find ways to do what we do now, but in more stable ways. He decided on a new framework code, called Ruby on Rails, to do the whole new site in. This makes the code modular, and easily adaptable for future projects that we've all been drooling over for the past ten years. Rough estimates from fellow coders place the amount of work he has put in at 700-800 hours of coding. That averages out to about two hours of coding EVERY day since he was named Seneschal, no weekends, vacations, or time off for good behavior.

That is a feat, gentlemen. One worthy of our highest award.

The Golden Lightsaber.

Now here's why it's the right time for him to get this award. He's done this out of love for the club. You don't do this many hours of dirty, hard, migraine-inducing work just for a few pixels, and the fleeting admiration of a few dozen people. You don't do this for the thirty comments on the announcement that will fall off the news page in two weeks. You do this because you want to heal the club, to make it better, to help us survive into the next ten years or more. On our old site, we could all feel it coming. The end of our club inched closer with every failed dossier load. Now, we have something that gives us a much better chance to not only survive, but to thrive. We needed this, and we needed it now. Now we can hone the site, live testing showing us where more work is needed. We have the framework for a new ACC, we have framework for possessions, we have framework for projects we haven't even had the balls to think up yet because those that were already on the list were clogging up our brains.

They're all possible now, and we have one man to personally thank.

Yes, there's more work to do. No, we're not done. But I think we should acknowledge the man as one of the greats in our organization, and show him that we do appreciate him and his work.

I ask you all to stand with me and thank Jam3z for his work.

---

Results!

The last chapter of results from the Dark Crusade are in.

Svolten (Special Forces):

Poetry Event 1. Troutrooper - Arcona (7656) 2. Marick - Arcona (10214) 3. Atyiru - Arcona (13486) 4. Legorii - Arcona (8893) 5. Raiju - Odan-Urr (4024)

Gaming 1. Cethgus - Arcona (6705) 2. Marick - Arcona (10214) 3. Troutrooper - Arcona (7656) 4. Atiyru - Arcona (13486) 5. Kaira - Odan-Urr (10057)

Graphics 1. Marick - Arcona 2. Atyiru - Arcona 3. Socorra - Arcona 4. Legorii - Arcona 5. Montressor - Arcona

Run-On 1. Arcona 2. Disqualified

Fiction: Infection 1. Troutrooper - Arcona 2. Legorii - Arcona 3. Atyiru - Arcona 4. Marick - Arcona 5. Tur'el - Odan-Urr

Fiction: Assault 1. Atyiru - Arcona 2. Marick - Arcona 3. Troutrooper - Arcona 4. Legorii - Arcona 5. Andrelious - Arcona

Arcona has destroyed the competition on Svolten with a score of 165 to 0.

Athiss (Special Forces):

Poetry 1. Ronovi - Plagueis (9676) 2. Macron - Naga Sadow (4856) 3. Solus Gar - Plagueis (6430) 4. Darth Vexatus - Naga Sadow (188) 5. Ka'Hava'Ve - Plagueis(10809)

Gaming 1. Kuro - Plagueis (7759) 2. Ka'Hava'Ve - Plagueis (10809) 3. Malik - Naga Sadow (97) 4. Raistlin - Naga Shadow (114) 5. Arden - Plagueis (13299)

Graphics 1. Xia Long - Naga Sadow 2. Sanjuro - Naga Sadow 3. Solus Gar - Plagueis 4. Kuro - Plagueis 5. Vexatus - Naga Sadow

Run-on 1. Plagueis 2. Disqualified

Fiction: Infection 1. Solus Gar - Plagueis 2. Arturis - Plagueis 3. Vexatus - Naga Sadow 4. Sanjuro - Naga Sadow 5. Ronovi - Plagueis

Fiction: Assault 1. Ronovi - Plagueis 2. Vexatus - Naga Sadow 3. Sanjuro - Naga Sadow 4. Arturis - Plagueis 5. Macron - Naga Sadow

Plagueis did some serious damage on Athiss, outscoring Naga Sadow 105 to 60.

Ashas Ree (Special Forces):

Poetry: 1. Shaz'air - Taldryan (9193) 2. Quejo - Taldryan (4215) 3. Scion - Tarentum (9335) 4. Xen’Mordin - Scholae Palatinae (3783) 5. Halcyon - Taldryan (43)

Gaming 1. Quejo - Taldryan (4215) 2. Ernordeth - Tarentum (13560) 3. Keirdagh - Taldryan (83) 4. Frosty - Tarentum (4017) 5. Rathus - Taldryan (13437)

Graphics 1. Jac Cotelin - Taldryan 2. Shaz'air Taldrya - Taldryan 3. Archangel - Scholae Palatinae 4. Rian Aslar - Taldryan 5. Mayda Ferium - Scholae Palatinae

Run-On 1. Taldryan 2. Scholae
3. Tarentum

Fiction: Infection 1. Jac - Taldryan 2. Archangel - Scholae Palatinae 3. Yacks - Taldryan 4. Xenmordin - Scholae Palatinae 5. Halcyon - Taldryan

Fiction: Assault 1. Halc, taldryan 2. Yacks, taldryan 3. Jac, taldryan 4. Oberst, tarentum 5. Hades, tarentum

Taldryan finished with a score of 130 to Tarentum's 25 and Scholae Palatinae's 20.

If you're looking at the math, first place wins were worth 15, second place was worth 10, and third place was 5. Fourth and fifth placings were included for informational purposes.

You'll notice that 20 points were left entirely on the table by teams who didn't even qualify on their runon event.

Raken will be releasing the participation numbers and the novae winners from the general population competitions in his coming report.

---

Vendetta stuff!

Next month on the Dark Crusade...

We're going to be running three planets again, as we did this month. We'll be running fewer competitions, and starting the montha bit later than normal. The plan right now is to launch on August 18th. This is due largely to my being out on vacation (wot's dat?) for two weeks.

In discussions with members, I've also decided to switch things around a touch. The original plan had several more months left on the docket. Taking months off for sanity reasons and the Independence Games both pushed back that time table. Rather than keep us running ragged for the next year, I've pushed three planet months for July (and August), and relegated one more three planet month to 'special events' to be run between the 'end' of the dark crusade but before the start of the next Great Jedi War (tentatively coming next summer, but tied intrinsically to the Dark Crusade).

What does that mean?

There's only three months of full-on Dark Crusade left. There's some killer planets coming up, and it should be a mighty interesting time.

Raken and I are also working out some rewards for participation levels that aren't quite all the way to 1.5 (which is where you need to be to get the ninth man on your special forces team right now).

We'll let you know when we come to a decision on that.

---

Ask the GM time.

Anubis asks "I understand that we're getting new character sheets, which run off a system that many of us are unfamiliar with - how is the new system going to work? Will it lead to IRC roleplaying?"

Without stealing any of mav's thunder, it will work on a system similar to an existing rpg game. It's not exactly the same, since we needed to modify it for our purposes, and it was pretty foreign for me, a guy who has done RPGs since AD&D. It's pretty elegant, but very personalizable. It doesn't presume ineptitude, which many systems do, so that's pretty neat. I imagine that some people may do ad hoc or even somewhat organized RP things on IRC and what not. It's up to the members. We're just building the system, and it won't be 'Just for the ACC' (and yes, I know we say this every time).

Keirdagh asks "Will we be looking at using a new forum system/integrating the forums better with the new website in the near future, or at some point?"

Great question, and one I don't know the answer to. I'll make sure that our Forum Queen Soccora and Seneschal see this and get some feedback going.

Xenmordin asks "Muz, would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?"

One horse-sized duck. I'm great with a sword in RL. I'd own that abomination all snicker-snack. Probably wouldn't even break a sweat.

That's about all for this time, until i figure out how to link images and such on this sexy new site. If you need anything, shoot me an email, look me up on TOR or PM me on IRC.

-- Muz Ashen Dark Lord of the Sith