Greetings all,

This report would have been posted earlier, but my power went out, and I had to go to bed before I could re-type it. This report announces my first Magistrate, broadly covers a few of the projects my office works on, mentions a new Dark Council policy, and finally, I delve into some bits of information from around the club since my last report!

Meleu as Magistrate

I received a wealth of great applications for my Magistrate position, but ultimately I felt that Meleu had the best application. He brings a wealth of wiki knowledge and experience to the table, which is an area I am particularly light in. Overall, he'll be a great help to our office, and he has already begun contributing, with a timely update to our Clan and House Policies. He's currently working to remove references to Independent Houses from the Wiki (or archive, as needed), as these entities will no longer exist. For now, Meleu will help me with wikifying the various updates to policies that the Dark Council enacts in the coming months.

Projects Underway

My office is engaged in a variety of projects, and I thought I should outline just a few of them here. Some of these projects relate to something very specific, such as working on a new test of lore, while others relate to broad, ongoing projects, like possessions and policy revamp.

• Test of Lore Rewrite - Some time ago, I took on a re-write of the Test of Lore. The goal was to transform this test into initial character creation. The function of this test was basically just to see if someone was alive. Now, we accomplish that by a set of simple choices related to basic character generation, then provide the member with unit information. The goal here is to mimic the early parts of a game in character creation. We are hoping here that we can hook members to their characters early, and make them want to expore all the Brotherhood has to offer.
  
• Possessions - Several of us are hard at work on specific tasks related to Possessions, as the Grand Master recently mentioned in his latest report. Make sure to check Kir's post on the subject, as we're looking for data from members in terms of items you fictionally think your character possesses. My primary role in this project so far has been to develop solutions to helping us adjust credits to be more in line with the purchasing power we want members to have at various ranks. Our overarching goal is to make sure this system is fun for all members and usable for Journeyman and Elder alike. To that end, we're having to adjust credit values from what they were when Pravus took over the project, as he mentioned in his latest report.
  
• Policies Cleanup - The first task of my Magistrate is to help assist with Policies Cleanup, addressing old policies and updating them, as well as making sure the wiki has the most up to date information. This is an ongoing process.
  

I also have plans in the near future to begin work on the teasers our Grand Master dropped relating to Clans with additional Path options, and non-Force users as choices for members.

A Change to Magistrate Policy

Following a brief discussion, the Dark Council decided to pass the following Magistrate policy:

• Magistrate is considered a secondary position in that it may be in addition to another position a member hold's elsewhere in the club, but the duties and projects assigned to this magistrate are typically things that need to be done or worked on daily or several times a week.
  
• A Dark Councilor will regularly report on the actions of his or her staff to the membership as a whole in reports.
  
• Magistrates should ideally be trained in various activities of the office to which they serve, but they do not necessarily need to undertake all of those roles.
  
• Magistrates may have other top level positions in the Brotherhood, but in general, it is discouraged for a member to serve on more than one Dark Council staff unless there are no other people to fill such a role.
  
• Dark Councilors may appoint up to 2 Magistrates at their discretion. A third Magistrate - including a Special Magistrate (SM) - may be appointed, but it must be specifically explained why this additional Magistrate slot is needed above and beyond the first two.
  

This policy is a bit of a return to past policies, with a bit of flexibility allowed for differences in workloads between offices. The hope here is that the restriction on Magistrates will actually encourage some turnover, and we will see more members gaining the chance to help Dark Councilors work on projects and duties. Furthermore, this is a reclassification of the position away from "part time," which implies that the duties associated with it sometimes need not be done; instead, it is more that the duties associated with the Magistrate position should not take up all of a member's Brotherhood-related time.

Happenings around the Brotherhood

I'll be using this section to highlight major DB news, appointments, or things I thought were cool and worth mentioning from around the club. It will appear periodically, and may cover more than one week.

• Wally was appointed to CM, and Halc to T:Wiki.
  
• Montressor was named Left Hand of Justice.
  
• The Lightsaber Guide, and subsequent HTML version, were both released. The Voice staff is working towards Wikifying it.
  
• The Herald's Office has added a new form accessible from the Admin menu of the site to allow members to request new graphics related to positions and units.
  
• Valhavoc has proposed the use of HipChat as a mobile solution for helping connect members, especially for casual, non-competitive games - basically an alternative to WhatsApp, as it doesn't require a phone number, and you can use a "fake" name to sign up! Either join up at this link if you're interested in the beta test, or check our his news post for more information!
• The Grand Master has started a Discourse thread for his communiques, so that the membership can read what updates he is sending the Dark Council.
  

TL;DR

• Meleu is my new Magistrate
• Upcoming projects, including a revamped "test of lore", possessions, and more.
  
• New Magistrate Policy announced
  

Telaris "Mav" Cantor

Deputy Grand Master