The parallels between Oligard and the former leaders of Taldryan were still rattling around in the Duros’ mind, making it almost impossible to focus on his tedious, routine duties. Kressim had defected to the Collective because Oligard had promised to liberate normal, innocent people from the threat of self-serving Force-users like Taldryan. They were supposed to be the “good guys”, but how could they claim the moral high ground when Oligard was content to glass the entire Taldryan Sector of Chyron and all the civilians within? A few years ago, it would’ve been my family under those guns, Kressim thought.

The door chime sounded from across the room and pierced Kressim’s reverie. “Come in,” he said absently, still facing the window. The office door slid open, and Kressim briefly heard footsteps before it closed again.

“Sir, Colonel Osul’s team has made planetfall on Chyron,” the yeoman reported. “They expect to be in position to begin the assault in four hours.”

Technically, this is old news—Unsteady Ground's second phase began this past Wednesday, but RL prevented me from posting this news until today. Nevertheless, the final phase of this Taldryan-hosted, DB-wide competition has kicked off, with an exciting new set of events! We have solo fiction, team fiction, gaming, graphics, and a word search for you all to peruse and hopefully enjoy.

A few notes about the events:

• There are no hard maximum team sizes for the run-on. Having said that, please keep things reasonable, since I'm pretty sure Howie would frown on having every participant on one team for a default first-place finish.
• Run-on teams are completely open. You don't have to be from the same Clan/House as other team members to be on the same team.
• As of this news posting, the physical descriptions of the two NPCs in the combat writing event are incomplete. I'll have that fixed by the end of the weekend, so please remember to check back early next week if that'll be relevant to your submission.
• If you're completing the word search on mobile and can't highlight any of the words, try changing the puzzle settings from "drag" to "tap" and tapping on the first and last letters of each word. (Thanks to Appius for pointing this out to me.)

Unsteady Ground: Phase 2 runs until site reset on Wednesday, February 5th, after which I'll announce the winners of both Phase 2 and the overall Unsteady Ground competition. I look forward to seeing everyone's entries!