Greetings all,

Today, I’m pleased to officially announce the upcoming Great Jedi War XVI: Transcendence! This post will detail the event start date and timeline, announce two key changes from past GJWs, and briefly discuss how the small team run on event will work.

Start Date and Timeline

We are on schedule to start the GJW at the end of the month: it will begin at site time on Saturday, August 26th, which means it will launch on the evening of 8/25 for those of us in North America. Competitions for Phase 1 and the Event Long phases will go live at that point. The Phase 1 fiction may be released earlier--and expect to see the prologue fiction later this week.

As always, the Sixteenth Great Jedi War will award the top three Clans the titles of First, Second, and Third Clans of the Brotherhood! We will also award Hero titles to the overall top scoring members, and some of the other top-scoring members will be written into the closing fiction! However, based on feedback from the last few vendettas, we have decided to break with tradition in two main ways.

First, unlike every other GJW in the past decade, scoring will be evenly weighted between placement and participation. That means participating in all bins will be more important than ever! Second, not only will the top three placements in each competition award gold, silver, and bronze novae, but placements 4-10 will also receive crescents (Diamond for 7th down to Quartz for 10th), so there will be more shinies, credits, and XP available than in any previous GJW!

For those of you who have participated in the last couple of vendettas, the structure of GJW XVI will look familiar: 1) there will be three Bins per Phase, and 2) we will try to offer at least one "low effort" competition in each bin to encourage participation and accessibility.

The GJW will last roughly five weeks. As with our past major events, there will be competitions offered in (approximately) two-week Phases, as well as in an Event Long Phase. We believe the number of Bins will be sufficient to provide ample opportunity for members to complete at least one competition in each Bin, even with limited time. Completing at least one competition in every Bin will earn you the maximum available participation points for your team. But we encourage everyone to participate in as many competitions as they have time for!

Phases 1 and 2 will be approximately two weeks, ensuring that each Phase includes multiple weekends , with a one-week break between Phases 1 and 2 to allow people to focus on the Event Long comps and decompress a bit. The schedule is as follows:

Phase 1: Aug 26 - Sep 10 (15 days)
"Rest": Sep 11 - Sep 15 (5 days)
Phase 2: Sep 16 - Oct 1st (15 days)

Rewards

In addition to Hero titles for the top three scoring members and the usual novae and credits, dossier art will be awarded based on the Herald Vendetta Dossier Skin Guidelines:

1st Place Clan: Robe & Weapon 2nd Place Clan: Robe 3rd Place Clan: Weapon

And all participants will receive one Seal of Transcendence per competition participated in.

Additionally, like last year, Clans will be granted Clan Fleet Upgrades from a pool of available upgrades. In order of Clan score, each Clan will get to select one item from the list. An item, once selected, will be removed from the list and not be available for other Clans to choose in this vendetta.

Our First Small-Team Discord Run On

Last year we put Discord to use as the location for our Clan-wide Run On event. The ROs went very smoothly (mechanically, I know clan-wide ROs are barely organized chaos :p), so we've decided to do it again--except this time the RO event will be for small teams of 3-5 members (same Clan only). Unlike last year when I spun up each Clan's [IC} and [OOC] RO threads, this time each team will have to create and run its own RO session using our #rp-lobby features.

The Exarch team will be available to help answer any questions about how to set things up but the best resource is the excellent and up-to-date SA Roleplaying Course, which should tell you everything you need to know! Be sure to read the competition rules when they go live next weekend.

On the Vendetta Transfer Ban

• The clan to clan transfer ban will be enacted one-week prior to the start of the GJW, on August 19 at site time. No members will be allowed to transfer between units at that time, but rogue transfers are still allowed.

• To quote the Vendetta Wiki Page:

To prevent abuse of the transfer system and to prevent the problem of people moving into clans solely for the purpose of participation in one large event, it is hereby ordered that all inter-clan transfers stop one week prior to any DB-wide event (including the competing clans during a Clan Feud), and continue that way until the event's end.

• Rogue members may still transfer into Clans during the transfer-ban-window, and may participate in the event as Rogues. Members participating as a Rogue will not transfer any points earned while a rogue to a Clan should they join a Clan mid-event. However, once a Rogue transfers to a Clan, any competitions the member enters while on a Clan roster will count for that Clan.
  

Remember what the Panda says: Have fun in the coming weeks, and do all the things!

A few additional notes

If you've never participated in a Great Jedi War or Rite of Supremacy , or perhaps not one in the modern era, you might want to check out our Vendetta course.

Finally, I will be on vacation from 8/23 until early September. If there are any vendetta issues, please direct them to Evant, Atra, and the competition organizers--but please also copy me, I will be checking my email and may also pop into Discord periodically.