Greetings everyone and welcome to my #46th report as Grand Master of the Dark Brotherhood. We have a lot of great work taking place and I'll attempt to highlight club wide changes headed your way. TLDR for the lazy:

• Possessions: Updates and Beta Plans
• Possessions: Clan Artifacts and Fleets
• Character Sheets: Non-Force User Disciplines
• Wiki: Format Updates and Personal Ship Removal
• Fiction: Update 2.0
• Fiction: Antei 2.0
• Tribune Recruitment: Open for Applications
• DGM's Overwatch Party: Sunday
• Final Thoughts: Darth Logistics

Possessions

1) The Dark Council, led by the Voice of the Brotherhood, has recently finished their 1083rd item for our possessions system. These items fill ten different possession slots, range across five different quality levels, will be sold in ten unique stores, and utilize a value system that is unique to the Dark Brotherhood. Keeping track of these items, updating their costs, updating their descriptions, and having a GM randomly tell you to remove a bunch of them is a tough task. Please take the time to thank Evant/James/Bubba/Vyr/Atra for the tremendous amount of work and editing they have provided to our club.

2) The next phase of Possessions development will be the mass upload of spreadsheet data, images, and the in-website creation of stores. The following are a few examples of the type of images, data points, and already developed website systems we will be using:

You can see from the images above that we will have ranged weapons, melee weapons, ships, and also the all important Clan level military possessions (more on that below).

-> <- -> <- -> <- -> <- -> <-

Besides seeing that Ninj interrupted my screenshot, you can see that there is a lot of data input, item tracking, and cost analysis that has gone into this project. I wanted to show these brief snapshots to ensure everyone that there is work behind the talk (:p). You can also see the bare-bones store system that we will begin to update following our mass data upload. Also these are beta based calculations if something ends up wazoo, we will fix it.

3) We are scheduled to begin uploading data this Friday and throughout the weekend. We will announce our Beta invitations via email once this is complete. Our intended target audience for the Beta is a wide swath of ranks, experience levels, and member agreeability. That is not a type, we will be picking from a pool of members who are generally very positive and also generally very negative/combative. This will ensure we have a fair degree of skepticism/hatred for the project. :p

Possessions: Fleets and Artifacts

1) The Iron Legion/Stormtrooper image above is an indication that we intend on having Clans purchase their military from within the new possessions system. This means we will conduct Fleet Reset 3.0 following the release of possessions. Mav and I are currently working with Evant and the Consuls to determine a system for how we will purchase these items, but I want to be completely honest. I am leaning towards a very aggressive reset of values associated with the current fleets. Our fleet system is based on years of resets that incorporated past ship awards that have varied greatly in their fairness. This ranged from someone receiving a ship because they wrote a good report to a Clan receiving a ship for winning a GJW. In other words, I truly believe that building a system upon already flawed systems is not the way to go. So....I'm working with all interested DC and Clan types on what will be the most fair (maybe not fair, but the most fair) for everyone involved.

2) I have also decided that Clan artifacts will become a part of the possessions system. Evant and I have recently request each Clans artifact list and have scrubbed it for Vampire Masquerade, Warhammer, Game of Thrones, and other near-plagiarism fueled items. Bottom line....we have some insane items on the books that will either be adjusted significantly or removed entirely. I plan on pitching the collective Consuls on a replacement plan within the coming weeks.

These last two points sound a little negative, but that is not my intent. Bringing our fleets and artifacts inline with the new possession system will streamline and solidify processes and systems that have been informal at best. While I am always cognizant of taking away something you "earned", I am equally cognizant that we have earned various things over the year (I have a G.D. light mace....a light mace. Light mace. It has shooty lightsabers...coming out of a ball.) that might not be in our vision for moving forward.

Character Sheets: NFU Disciplines

1) Wally and his band of merry ACC folks (Abby, Turel, Alaris, Mav, Sarin (just complaining), Arden) have been hard at work on an awesome new array of NFU disciplines. These disciplines will bring very iconic Star Wars archetypes to our club. The scoundrel, the ace, and the scavenger will all make their debut. Wally has done a great job of adding known characters to the disciplines and selecting one should be easy for our members.

2) The new NFU Disciplines will arrive on my desk some time this week for final approval and then we should see their release shortly after. Please take the time to thank Wally-Cat and his team.

Wiki: Ship Formatting and Personal Ship Tagging

1) Slagar has begun working on our Ship Formatting to bring it more in line with non-Xwing video game terminology as well as Wookiepedia style formatting. This effort began on 19 June and has already completed (minus maybe one or two that were hidden). In simple terminology we will now transition the SSD Suffering to Suffering. If we ever had another ship named Suffering, the articles could be Suffering (Imperial-class) and Suffering (Executor-class).

2) A part of Slagar's wiki ship updates will also include the tagging of all personal ships utilized by our members. Those ships will become non-DB canon upon the release of possessions. Slagar has reached out to the active members who have wiki-based personal ships and everyone has been notified of the pending policy transition. We appreciate everyone's understanding on this matter.

Fiction Update: 2.0

1) I am super stoked that our first fiction update has had such a tremendous impact on our Clans and more importantly on our members. I mean, we had people commission art that showed the Inquisitors coming for them. That is awesome! It is also the type of fiction that we want to release moving forward because it has a new and real impact across the club.

2) Fiction update 2.0 is nearing its completion after a series of "who cares about this nonsense" style revisions. I anticipate releasing the fiction prior to 17 July. The update will include the tragic death of a Dark Side legend, retribution for those Inquisitors that think killing Jedi/Krath/Obbies are a suggestion, Clan political drama, and of course a tad bit of Grand Master insanity. Oh, and the Suffering might blow up. TBD on that.

Fiction Update: Antei 2.0

1) The new DJB System is in major revisions as I have just settled on a new name (Arx) and a new design for the entire planet. The system will be released via a member based chose your own adventure scavenger hunt that will take place via an invisible announcement on the website. The member who finds the new system will be credited with sweet DB Canon based glory. Like fiction 2.0, I intend on releasing this update in the next 10 days pending Mav's review of my silly writing.

Recruitment Tribune: Open for Applications

1) Yacks has done a phenomenal job as our Recruitment Tribune over the past year. His work across Social Media platforms has been highlighted in my past reports (Facebook analytics) and is worthy of all of our thanks. Yacks utilized mutliple automated systems that pushed the DJB name out across the internet and made us a lot more recognizable than we were in the past. I am tremendously grateful for all that Yack has done (Long Overdue Promotion from Feb for our club.

2) Unfortunately, Yacks is retiring to be a possessions guru and drink beer. Therefore we are looking (although not set) on appointing a new T:R. This is a demanding position. A position that people have failed out horribly. Therefore, we are looking for someone with real work Social Media promotion and organizational promotion experience. Please submit an application to Mav and I detailing your experience in this field as well as providing examples of how your previous work has benefited an organization with tangible results. If we do not receive suitable applicants, I may determine that the T:R position is no longer needed and place it as an additional duty under an existing Dark Council position. In other words...if you want this job...come big. Applications are due NLT 1 August 2016.

DGM Party: Overwatch on Sunday

1) Mav assures me that Overwatch is worth playing and that we have a tremendous PC community that plays. This community will meet on Sunday at 2PM Eastern Time. Please contact Mav with any questions you may have about playing and assassin with a shiny butt or a rastafarian on roller blades (really Blizzard, really?).

Conclusion

Okay, my apologies for a bit of a break in reporting. I have these awesome plans of reporting a planet update, fiction update, and the possessions release simultaneously, but often that is just an excuse not to write a report (:p). The DC has been kicking ass lately and I am extremely pleased by their performance. I have been in this club a long time, but I have never seen a team that operates like Vyr/James/Evant/Aabs/Mav and the rest of the team. Even the Praetors are exceptionally pro-active and influential in the club. I think a lot of that is owed to Telegram (gasp) and the advantages it has brought to our club.

I am also continuing to reflect on the work our current DC is performing and the potential for a new DC position to handle Possessions/Fleets/Artifacts. Evant has taken on these duties because he is quite frankly very good at it and has done it better than anyone else. The only problem is that the Voice position is not designed for these roles and it takes Evant away from fiction related pursuits (that is not his fault, I tasked him with possessions). So, we should have some clarity on what I want to do with this potential new position by August of this year. Right now...I'm teetering towards creating a new position (Lord 7/11). If we do create this position..it will be painful...very very painful. The initial possessions release and subsequent possessions balancing (you know it will happen) will require a member that is basically a business owner/manager that has OCD like skills (or a professional logistician). Its not a job for everyone.

Outside of the updates above, I want to notify that club that I will be moving to Germany for the next six months. This will mean I am on James/Sildrin/Vyr time and not Monty/Drac US West time. At present I do not foresee any issues with this little move, but if there are complications I will simply hand the club off to Mav...who could be the GM today, let alone a year from now (:p). I don't think that will happen, but trust that we do have a plan if I end up engaged in Octoberfest too much!

That is it from the top. I appreciate everyone's participation in our great club and appreciate the fact that we have all been getting along wonderfully over the past year (check that JST docket!). As always, I'm available via email, telegram, text, or whatever. I log onto mirc every once in a while and watch hours of no message traffic...so you'll have a hard time finding me there :p

Thanks everyone!

• I know there are weird little arrows on my report. James or someone can fix it. They are breaking my brain.