Aeotheran surface
The Empiricalum
High Containment Lab

“What did you find?!” he asked, the words escaping his mouth before the thoughts were fully formed.

“Sir, I don’t know how to explain it… this virus shouldn’t be biologically active. It’s a random jumble of unstable isotopes, rare and heavy metals. It shouldn’t interact with any of the biology found on this planet by any known mechanism. It’s completely incompatible,” Sera finished, a quizzical look in her eyes.

Aul stood more still than he’d been afforded in many, many weeks. His eyes locked on Sera’s, a look of wild, fierce life returning to his gaze. He slowly, measuredly closed the space between them with surefooted steps, reached out and gently pulled her head towards his with his hands behind her neck, under her head tails. He planted a deep, passionate kiss on his trusted companion and, quelling any fear he had in the action, found the kiss returned.

Pulling an inch away from his lips, Sera looked into his eyes and gave no attempt to hide her shock, “Aul… um, what… what is it?”

“Sera, you’ve done it. You beautiful… you,” Aul said, a grin as wide as he’d ever had in his life spread across his face. With one more kiss on the Togrutan’s forehead, he shouted aloud, “Complex chelation therapy! It’s the cure. You’ve done it!”

“By the light of the Core, you’re right! We’ve been trying to treat it as a virus, because that’s what it appeared to be on the microscope... but to our bodies it may as well just be a heavy metal toxin. It never showed up in blood tests because it infected like a virus and remained inside cells. But when the virus sheds out to infect other cells…”

“We can capture it with chelation, and render it neutral,” Aul finished Sera’s sentence with exuberance.

“It’s so simple! And with a broad cocktail combined with mineral supplements we can deploy the treatment immediately!” Sera said, giggling with excitement.

“Sera, this is it. You, me, all of us… we have a future, now. Send word for Lilith and Firith right away.”

Inside the Empiricalum
Inner Sanctum
Some Time Later…

“Hello there,” Marcus replied. “I’m .. well, it doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is who you are.” His horned captive didn’t reply, merely observed the shrouded individual in front of him.

Drawing the icy coldness of the dark side into his voice, Marcus continued. “You know what we want to know, but you refuse to give it to us. You think yourself safe. You might even think that we know very little.” He stood up, and started pacing around the chair.

“There are always those that know more than you do, you know,” he stated, all iciness gone from his voice. “The trick is, to always be the man holding all the cards. If you can do that, well then you end up being like me.” Spinning the chair around, he stared hard into the Iktotchi’s bleary eyes.

“Does that frighten you? No? Hmm,” the Praetor mused aloud. “I guess it wouldn’t. After all, I haven’t told you that we have found your sister.” Marcus’ green eyes seemed to draw in every single detail of the Iktotchi’s face as a flicker of doubt shot across his pinkish face. “You can’t have. You’re lying.”

“Ah, you think I am. But you cannot be sure, can you?” Marcus’ face split open in a demonic grin, the dark side of the Force egging him on, drawing on his target’s despair. “You’ll have noticed that I’m a little different from your last interrogator. Hard to tell truth from lies, when you can’t get inside someone’s head, isn’t it?”

The only tell that the prisoner gave was a widening of the iris, which disappeared as quickly as it had come, but Marcus had noticed it, and stored the flicker of doubt and of recognition away in his mind.

“Tell me. What is To’ka’s favorite color? Blood red?” Marcus almost failed to keep his glee from spilling over into his face as his captive’s face drained of all color, leaving him ashen-faced.

“Y-you can’t have, she g-got away! N-no! She’s s-safe!” He began yelling, and fighting his restraints, which began to rattle as they were pushed to their limits.

Marcus smiled briefly, then that smile turned into a snarl as he grabbed the Iktotchi’s throat and forced him back into his chair. “Listen to me you pathetic quim,” he said threateningly, pouring all of what he could draw from the dark side into his voice, “I have eyes and ears everywhere. If you think I cannot find one pathetic little Iktotchi, then you are wrong. Now you either tell me what I want to know, or I will take the greatest of pleasures in tearing every last shred of sanity from your sweet little sister.”

The Iktotchi still struggled, fighting against Marcus’ grip to draw breath. “Of course if you prefer, we can always kill you now, and see how she feels about switching sides. I can be very persuasive, and papa always said she was extremely gifted in the Force,” he mocked.

The captive alien stopped struggling, realizing that there would be no way out, and no way back. He would spill every last little secret he knew to this monster to keep his sister safe. Slumping against Marcus’ grip, who immediately loosened his grip, he began to mutter. Marcus had to lean forward to hear what he was saying..

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Several hours had passed when the door to the control room finally opened, with Marcus in the doorway. He turned towards Darkblade with a look of disturbed happiness, having heard all that the prisoner had had to give. “I know where the plague came from,” he said triumphantly. “It came from,” and whatever was said next, was drowned out by the gurgling sound of an airpipe filling with blood, as from behind the Praetor a form stabbed a piece cold hard metal into his neck, twice, thrice.

As Marcus collapsed on the floor bleeding out as his carotid artery excised as much of his life force as possible, Darkblade deftly stepped forward, his lightsaber in his hand instantly and carved upwards, clean through the middle of the Iktotchi. There on the floor, lay both Marcus Kiriyu, and the Iktotchi prisoner. Dead. Pride had become the cause of death for both.

Hello everyone,

I hope you all have been having a great month. The fiction above was supplied by Marcus and Aul and is but a small part of a much larger fiction. Usually, we try to keep these short, but in this case, the plot ran away from us and it got much longer than intended. You can find the rest at the following links, and I'll talk a little bit more about it later.

Fiction: Part I: Antithetical Encounters
Fiction: Part II: Causality
Fiction: Part III: Denoument

First, I'd like to talk a little bit about some recently awarded or promoted members of Naga Sadow. Our members have accomplished some great things and I sometimes feel that goes unrecognized. While this isn't everyone, it is a few recent, notable things that I'd like to give a shoutout too. Without further adieu:

I first want to highlight some recent awards and promotions. These members have a large part of what has made CNS the great Clan that it is today. We wouldn't be where we are now without them.

In Shar Dakhan, Evelynn Wyrm has been appointed Aedile. Evelynn - probably better known as Aexod - has already proved to be a valuable member of the Summit. He brings a lot of valuable gaming experience and know-how to our mostly-writing Clan and together with Darkblade I know I can expect to see some creative things out of HSD. Aexod has already proved to be a creative leader, proposing many ideas we had not thought of prior.

Darkblade has been awarded a Grand Cross. Darkblade has been an exemplary Quaestor. He has been instrumental in the creation and running of multiple creative events, including the recent Project S.P.E.C.I.A.L, which was an astounding success. He's also been adept at developing new leaders. Finally, Darkblade has a whole 'nother wiki career next to this. He took it upon himself to categorize all of Naga Sadow's NPC wiki pages, and there were quite a few. This was a total of 106 pages that he categorized, and at least an additional 20 that he wrote entire biographies for, from scratch. NPCs may not seem all that important, but they provide a lot of very useful background lore and this was a huge category that the Clan had not touched in a long time, so we are very grateful to Darkblade for taking the time to investigate it.

Bentre has been promoted to Equite 3. Bentre is a wiki staff member and a member of the Shadow Academy staff, and this is reflected in strong recommendations he received from both Selika and Farrin & Marcus. These recommendations discuss how he is a key member of each of these staffs. In Naga Sadow, he is also occupies the key position of Rollmaster. Bentre has updated multiple key wiki pages in his time in leadership, including the CNS Master-Student page and pages for various CNS events, including Operation: Firestorm and others. He organized a solid 28 competitions of his own, but has also participated in a massive 207 competitions in the time covered by this award. We're extremely happy to have Bentre on our team.

Aul has received a Steel Cross. Aul has been both a BTL and Aedile recently. He has participated in a whopping 75 competitions, and in addition to that, helped run Project S.P.E.C.I.A.L. with Darkblade. His unique ideas helped the event be a great success, and he's an awesome, well-rounded member to have around. Under his leadership, the Devil's Shroud Battleteam flourished, as did his House.

Riku was recently awarded his first Sapphire Blade. Both Aedile of Marka Ragnos and a Shadow Academy staff member, Riku has a lot on his plate. Still, he has found time to reach 100% participation in each event CNS has had at least back to the feud with CSP last year. The recommendations from his leadership and from the SA attest to the amount f work he puts in to help not only the clan, but also the club in general. We're proud of Riku's efforts to make the club a better place, and of his dedication to activity.

DarkHawk has been promoted to from Warrior to Battlemaster (EQ1 to EQ2). This has been a long time coming, as DarkHawk returned to us after a long hiatus from the club. In that time, he has become a member of the HMR Summit as BTL of the Night Hawks, and earned several Crescents. He also writes a lot for fiction and runons, totalling over 25,000.

Last, but not least Sabe Baize, otherwise known as Inyri, has earned their first merit award - an Anteian Cross. This cross comes not only from activity, but also from Sabe's efforts to develop a fictional Intelligence division for CNS, one which we sorely lacked before and which will be very useful in upcoming fiction. We're really glad that Sabe not only pointed this out, but also volunteered to develop it, all along with his usual activites.

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As I mentioned, this isn't everyone. If it were, this would be a really long list. But when we give a reward, it's not just because we have to or it's our job. We really do appreciate what everyone does.

Clan News

On the homefront, the event, Sands of Time, recently ended. I believe we are awaiting the final fiction for the event, but we already have the results. I'd first like to thank Bentre, Riku, and Muz for running the event, writing the story, and creating the competitions for us. Especially because I'm about to steal their thunder and announce winners.

Firith was first, Tasha was second, and Ashia was third. We saw a lot of activity in this event from members we hadn't seen much of for awhile, and it was fun competing alongside them.

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In the future, in March, we're going to have a cooperative event with the folks over in Tarentum. Our goal is to have a little friendly competition and to enjoy some time together before we all go head to head in the upcoming Great Jedi War.

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Additionally, we bid farewell to Qyreia, who has accepted a position as Quaestor in Arcona. While we're sad to see him go, we wish him luck...and I personally can't wait to fight him in the ACC! (Here's hoping that as a judge he can't really compete)

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Fiction-wise, the above fiction covers a lot of things. We've had a few threads floating around in CNS that we wanted to settle down so we could focus on what's going on with the whole club. We had the Karashi Void (a virus kind of deal that drives people mad), we've had the Dominion as enemies for awhile, and we've also lacked a strong, central cover identity foundation. Thus, in this fiction, we've cured the virus. We've discovered it originated from the Dominion, but decided they're not a major threat at the moment. Finally, we've cleared a path for the Dlarit Corporation to return to power in our home system.

Why Dlarit?

We had a discussion on our mailing list about this awhile back, and the majority seemed to come to the conclusion that going back to the Dlarit Corporation would give us a lot of operational freedom. The Orian Assembly (the representative government that we pulled strings for to run the system) will still be there, but as a foil to Dlarit.

Also, if you hate evil corporations, don't fret. This is mostly background fiction and you will rarely have to think about businessy things. No writing about stocks and bonds and business deals for you, unless you want to.

Overall, the intention is that now we have freedom to do our Indiana Jones in space thing. It's pretty easy to tell civilians "oh, we represent this corporation, stay out of our business." We'll still be keeping the Warhost and the rest of our command structure, and we'll show how this meshes together in future fictions. Right now, we just wanted to lay the groundwork for what's upcoming.

This fiction was the work of four members aside from myself, including Aul, Bentre, Sang, and Marcus.

It ended up being pretty lengthy, due to all the stuff we covered. This was honestly my mistake, and it probably would have been better as smaller parts, but I wanted it all released and everyone was like "fine Locke, have it your way!" so they left it up to me to figure out how to shove a square peg through a round hole.

In the future, I'm hoping to have shorter, more specific fictions that flow better. The flow of this one has nothing to do with the authors, and everything to do with how I managed it.

That Question I'm Sure Everyone Wants an Answer To

Oh, here's a question I know you're asking:

Locke, where the heck is our fleet?

Well, I had a funny idea about this one. A long time ago, we had a fictional identity, a theme, a goal, and a military that all meshed together because they were designed together. We didn't really do it exactly the same this time, but I wanted to have the fictional angle (the Indiana Jones in space, artifact-lore hunting stuff) and the cover identity (the Dlarit Corporation) all settled, before deciding on the fleet. So that's why we're here, and why we're the only Clan without one yet.

However, that is about to change very, very soon. I'll be emailing ya'all.

Conclave of 1/29/17

For those of you who don't know, for CNS, 'Conclave' is a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of Sadow (Clan Title holders) and Summit members. It's a chance for these two often vastly-different groups to meet and talk about things, like how the Clan is running, what new ideas we could have, and things like that. We hadn't done one in awhile, so it was overdue, and the time reflected that (this one was two and a half hours long…)

I want to be more transparent about what we discuss at these. I'm not going to be too specific, but at this one we talked about areas we could generally improve in, as well as future ideas. There were a lot of questions, and some interesting ideas came out of them, which are currently in the early germination stage. We talked about the upcoming event with Tarentum, as well as other plans for the year, up to and including the Great Jedi War. We discussed diversity in our events, as well as what our members would be interested in moving forward.

I know that isn't much, but there's a lot I don't want to be too specific about...yet

The End?

That wraps up this report. I didn't do a Q&A, again, but I think we're going to handle that a little differently in the future. I still want to have them, because it's always a good idea to listen to feedback from membership. You'll be hearing from me in the very near future about this.

Signed,

Augur Locke Sonjie
Consul of Naga Sadow