Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the post-GJW update for the Guardian Corps. Given we had to put a fair few ideas on hold for the last two months so consider this a chance for a series of updates and plans on what we are doing.

We’ve got a sizable number of opportunities, but let’s start with the obvious one:

New Quaestor Wanted - Apply Within!

So Gui has gone off to kill people for credits - not much different to what we tend to do at the end of the day - leaving a vacancy in the House’s leadership. While we do have a short story arc which we’re hoping to have tied up soon, we are looking for people to put forward ideas, help found story arcs, and shape the Guardian Corps’ future. Really, if you have any ideas at all that you’ve been looking to pitch or even take a general shot at leading a House, consider this your golden chance.

You can find out a lot more about all of this here, and if we’re not of interest, then the Consular Conclave is well worth a look as well.

Volcanoland No More

When the House was founded, we were given Daleem as our major homeworld to work with. While we ran a couple of minor events there, we’ve in truth done very little since it was restarted, and part of this was down to the state it arrived in. A few years back, terraforming equipment went haywire, and it was turned into lavaworld. While Morotheri - who is responsible for just about everything on the planet’s Wikia page, and has done a fantastic job with it - did rework some things to set up this fresh new start, we’ve just not done anything with it. We’re looking to change this somewhat.

You can see on the wikia that a sizable chunk of the planet has been fleshed out, and it’s in a prime state for new elements to be added or ideas put forward. We’ll be speaking to a few members and considering how best to expand upon things in the coming months.

Now, nothing is set in stone at the moment. We’ll be speaking to a few people, but we do have a few clear points in mind:

1. We want this to be there for story opportunities and ideas to be built upon first and foremost. If you’re adding something to the planet, we want it to be a resource and location for storytelling, both for individual and Clan-wide tales.

2. Daleem itself is a contrasting series of elements and it is heavily evolving. While speaking to him about it, Morotheri drew specific comparisons to Mass Effect: Andromeda, specifically Eos, in terms of the world’s structure. A sizable part of that is down to a lot of contrasting elements and ambitions. The planet itself is a potential paradise, but between certain settlers jumping the gun and trying to set themselves up in uninhabitable areas, people pushing against one another, and some ambitions overriding others, it’s a case of keeping the peace. We’re happy to allow some considerable variation on this and for people to pitch their own concepts, as it is supposed to help people have a playground to work in and develop their own stuff. This is meant to help keep a guideline on what to do though.

3. If you would like to add something to Daleem, please run it past the Summit first, or get permission. We’ll be varying exactly how we handle this, but we don’t want a repeat of the problems we saw on New Tython. For those not around then, there are a lot of stories going on at once and we don’t want anyone clobbering each other. Also, things might change over time, so keep that in mind.

As a final note, while I’ll be handling some of it myself, a large chunk of Torden Base also remains unfinished, so you’d be more than welcome to put ideas forward for it and if you would like to help write something up for it all the better!

Streets Painted Crimson - Part 2

Look, I had to get that one in here somewhere.

So, prior to some religious fanatics with glowing minerals sticking out of their heads dropping out of the sky, we were running a murder mystery as you might recall. As we had to put it on hold for a couple of months to deal with the zealots, we’re hoping to get right back to this now.

You can actually see notes on how things developed right here, and what has happened up to this point. We’ll be taking a lot of what was outlined in that run-on to further cement some details and then push for a second act, and then a final act to tie everything up. We are taking a lot of your ideas on board with this, and we will be using them to shape how things pan out, who is involved, and what happens at every stage here.

We’ll also be keeping this one short more than anything else to avoid it outstaying its welcome or being drawn out too much here. Expect a launch for the next part sometime next month along with a fiction update to keep things on track.

Episodic Events

So, this is something we settled on recently to help further offer variation alongside the above direction. A lot of you are tired of Vatali politics, Quorahi strife, and Extreme Mass Bloodshed 2022 storylines. So, to keep things interesting, we’ll be continuing with more one-shot episodes of stories, as we did with House Sunrider. Those events saw us pioneering missions and answering calls for help, and were typically one-and-done affairs, and these are going to be the same. However, you can expect more slice-of-life content shaped up as some events or House-wide competitions, just to give some much-needed variety to our output.

I won’t say much more, but expect an e-mail in the next day or so relating to this matter.

Questions and the Aedile’s Answers

Adenn “Yuki” Werd’la - “Where do babies come from?”

Essik - “Eggs mostly.”

Creon de Neverse - “Now that we've seen the Children of Mortis with crystal enhanced weapons and armor, we can be assured the next threat will use all advantages allotted to them. How will the Guardian Corps compensate in order to stand against these threats without compromising the moral philosophy of the Odanite Jedi?”

Essik - “That is down to the individual members I would say, but much of it would come down to exploiting obvious weaknesses and turning their strengths against them. They are heavily reliant upon using creatures as cannon fodder in their assaults, have a single substance they favour for their technology, and need to tap into the Force to power most of their designs. Find a way to either make the crystals more trouble than they're worth to use, or a way to destroy them en masse, and that would be a good start.”

Aura Ta’var - “What events do you have planned for the guardians?”

Essik - “We do have an ongoing story (the murder mystery that the GJW forced us to put on hold) that is being shaped heavily by the contributions of members. A lot of what we offered initially were breadcrumbs and points thrown out in a run-on, and the answers of our members and what they found are going to heavily shape where it will go. While we had a general framework in mind, it's where we wanted members to have more impact on what went into each tale and some elements of it. This will be shown more in our next update and we'll be incorporating a sizable chunk of what was explored there.

Besides this, we do plan upon having a number of more isolated cases floated about this from time to time. This could be individual police actions or slice-of-life events to break up what we have. Although we will be keeping these limited so as not to drag out the bigger story, it's a way in which to try and give everyone a chance to see what they want.

Atop of this, we're looking into fleshing out Daleem. The last anyone saw of it, the planet had been turned into a magma-planet, and there are a few ways in which we're seeing this as a chance for a fresh start on several fronts.

There's a few extra points I'll be getting into in my report about this as well, things we had to put on hold for the past two months. However, atop of this, expect an e-mail to go out to each of you, as there are some questions I'd like to ask on an individual basis.”

Creon de Neverse - “What is the House's greatest need? And what's it's the current primary focus? Asking both fictionally and actually.”

Essik - “At the moment, just to have active more than anything else for both what I'd like to see of members in fiction and life. More about this in my response to Blade's question above as these link together.

As to our focus, we will ultimately be sticking primarily to the Guardians' role as a peacekeeping force, but with some variety beyond simply throwing ourselves headlong into wars. That's going to be something I'll be examining over the course of the current story and a few possible events. I'd rather that our members were given some kind of variety beyond Murderfest 2022 storylines, and given that we just went into a massive carnage event, I'm hoping to offset that with a few tales that still see the Guardian Corps carrying out its role as a peacekeeping force, but without being purely tied to one-note violence.”

Elyon de Neverse - “How would you imagine the cooperation between the Guardian Corps and the Consular Conclave?”

Tarvitz - “Simple really, both Houses have their areas to focus upon clearly outlined. Exchanging information as needed and working together when required. It does leave plenty of opportunities for crossovers or House competitions even with that clear divide, which is always a positive.”

Final Thoughts of July’s Report

This is going to be a month of changes and updates, as I hope the points above have proven. There’s little else I can add here at the moment but, if you have an idea you want to pitch or a concept you wish feedback on, my door is always open.

Also, if you’re having a bad day, here’s Patrick Stewart putting his skills as a theatre actor to their best use.

That’s it for July, expect another one next month.