Eiko toyed with the pommel of his saber as the discussion rose and fell around him. Slices of blue light glanced off the rounded photoreceptors, the fragments of his house. His house, his house, he repeated softly to himself.

He rose gently, clasping his hands in front of him. The other voices in the room, garbled transmissions from faraway stars, shifted back to silence.

"Is this all of us?" Eiko questioned dryly, turning see his former master flicker to life ahead of him. Flickering images stood at intervals around the room, reflecting on the polished black surfaces of the walls - uncomfortably spread out in the darkness.

"Why wouldn't this be all of us? This is more than enough," a voice called out defiantly. Eiko didn't pinpoint it immediately - but it had the timbre of a younger member's voice. Not so different from yourself, then, are they? his thoughts taunted. What right do you have to call this your house?

Eiko's voice disappeared underneath a layer of indignation. "You're a shame. What is this House worth to you - your brothers-in-arms, your allies? This is not Revan. Revan is not blind pride or blind adherence. You choose this House and commit yourself to it. You build yourself into unity with your allies and they will support you."

"That doesn't sound much like a Dark Jedi," Ashia taunted. Eiko grimaced as he stuffed the thought away. "Am I wrong?" he gestured. "What is best for us? We survive because of our unity. We survive because we are Revan, one House devoted to the collection of individual strengths into a stronger whole. Am I wrong?" he repeated sharply, raising his voice to the point that it strained his vocoder.

Thank you to all the individuals who applied for the rank of Aedile - you made the decision rather challenging. All three of you were well-equipped for the position. In the end, OE Callus Bo'Amar will be taking Ashia's place as the House Aedile as we struggle to bring this House back around from the brink. Copy him on all the stuff you'd send to me.

AWOL Check results are in... and you guys almost gave me a full-on heart attack. The House has fewer than twenty members at the end of the AWOL Check - before Ashia, Sanjuro, and Shinichi transfered to Naga Sadow. I hope you all recognize what that number means. I'm not angry - I'm scared.Just in case you all were wondering. I got into Muz's fiction because of you all. I would love to open up more than one leadership position, but it's simply not reasonable when one-tenth of our House is leadership. As a result of the massive drop-off of members, I'll be purging the mailing list to reflect our current membership. Any members who were AWOLed and need to be put back into the group will get new invitations to the Google Group.

Which brings me to the third piece of news for the House.

You saw it in the other reports a while ago: If you want to reach EQ3, you need to participate fully in the Master-Student Program and assist a Journeyman on their way to Knight. If you can take on a student (you're DJK+ and interested), then contact me and we'll start the process. If you're a Journeyman who wants to attain Knight, contact me as well and you can get in contact with an older member who can help keep you on track. There's some discussion right now about how the Master-Student Progam might change in the future, but for the time being, we will work off of the standard model. If you don't know what that is, ask. Ask someone. Ask me.

I mentioned it earlier, but in case you didn't see the emails going around the House, I'll mention it again. Ashia, Sanjuro, and Shinichi Keibatsu are transfering out of the House to return to House Naga Sadow. All three of them will be missed greatly.

Welcome to our newest members: QillerAct and Hzlkia Dark!

Please take some time to introduce yourself to Tyre Arvalis (JH) and Jaecyn Interm (DJK), both of whom have been increasingly involved in House affairs. Tyre is running a Valentine's Day graphics competition as he pursues Knighthood. He's also helping Callus with the upcoming Run-On - check your emails regularly so that you can prepare for that event as more details are finalized.

Many of you have asked if there is something you can do for the House. I'm currently working on a list of projects that I'd like to complete. More than any project, though, there's a really simple something you can do to help Revan: start a conversation with a housemate. I'm not kidding. Your assignment is to email one other member of this House and start talking. Ask them where their name came from, what their favorite movies are. If you're up to it, try conducting the entire conversation in character. Who knows? It might come up in a future competition.

If you've done that and still would like to do something, there are a few options:

Start a discussion about House history and House identity on the message boards or mailing list and start thinking about what Revan means to you.

Acquaint yourself with some of the official House Revan wiki pages - I've recently worked on Revan Prospectus page to reflect the recent changes in the House. Start updating your own wiki pages.

Have a dream for some activity: a fantastic run-on, a brilliant competition, an idea to help bolster activity? Email them to me - I'm open to hearing your thoughts and suggestions. I'd even love to put some of your ideas into motion.

My personal goals for the House right now revolve around defining and starting projects.

We need to:
Improve our member retention (so new people become old people)
Improve our member interaction (so people meet other people)
Improve the amount of participation (so people do stuff)
Improve the quality of participation (so people do good stuff)

Closing Fiction Competition

From now until February 14th, House members can submit short fiction to fill this gap. And no, honestly, it's not because I'm lazy. I want to (a) make sure that people are reading this far down in my post, (b) see if people consider the fiction to be worth reading and writing, (c) help people have an investment in the House's identity and history, and (d) introduce other people and their work into the core of the House.

Can you do that?

One edit to the competition details: You are free to submit multiple entries. If you would like me to comment on your entries, please tell me and I can spend a few minutes talking about English-nerd stuff like word choice and sentence structure and spelling and grammar and the like.