Dark greetings and welcome to the first full and post-war Headmistress Report! In keeping with the recent “reorganization” of the Nesolat, the Shadow Academy’s departments are seeing some renovations of their own. Today, we’re announcing three new courses alongside a new degree and a new department altogether. We’ll also celebrate some accomplishments, take a look at what’s next and ask for your help!

Quick Links

• New Department
  
• New Courses
  
• Accolades
  
• Current Projects
  
• Help!

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New Department: Character Creation & Development

Our new department is the result of feedback from members that our 28-course Fundamentals Department was becoming a little too large and the desire to consolidate information regarding the popular pursuit of Character Creation and Development into a single location. As such, this department is largely a reorganization of our current courses, including Character Sheets 101 and 102, Wiki Basics: Character Creation, and all of our Society and Order courses, which offer members the opportunity to develop their characters within those different fictional frameworks.

New Courses, Degree and Organization: Fundamentals Department

The Fundamentals Department is gaining three new courses to complete a series introducing our members to the three primary activities in the Brotherhood: fiction, gaming and graphics. These courses are designed to encourage members to feel comfortable jumping into these different kinds of competitions by providing an explanation of how each type of competition/activity works, how to find them, how to compete and how to submit. We hope they can also serve as resources that members can return to as needed as they try out various activities.

These courses will precede the Vendettas course we released prior to the GJW and constitute our new Competitions Pundit Degree as follows:

• Competitions 101: Fiction
  
• Competitions 102: Gaming
  
• Competitions 103: Graphics
  
• Competitions 104: Vendettas
  

These courses also allow us to retire Gaming 101-103 and Graphics in the Brotherhood, and the organization of the new department allows us to streamline the Fundamentals Department into just 15 courses broken into three series: Essentials (basic organizational introduction to the club), Communications (how to connect with other members) and Competitions (how to get involved in activities).

There are a few more refinements planned to bring our older Fundamental courses in line with some of the thinking introduced in these new courses, but we hope these changes will make our content much more approachable for new members already!

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Accolades

Since my last report, we’ve had a few former and current Shadow Academy staffers awarded for their work in and outside of the Academy, so I just wanted to formally congratulate former Magistrate Xantros and current Praetor Erinyes on their Amethyst Kukris, as well as current Magistrate Aru Law on his Steel Cross and promotion to Mystic!

I can’t say enough how much I enjoy working with all of you. :)

Decathlon Winners

Congratulations to everyone who topped the decathlon leaderboards in July and August!

July Winners

• 1st Place: Commander Von Ricmore
  
• 2nd Place: Savant Korvis
  
• 3rd Place: Seer Raziel
  

August Winners:

• 1st Place: Seer Raziel
  
• 2nd Place: Adept Orv Dessrx
  
• 3rd Place: Major Nobu Tek
  

Remember, we run these decathlon competitions every month, so there’s still a chance to get on the leaderboard for September.

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Current Projects

Combat & Warfare Department

For some time, our “Gaming & Combat” Department has included only a single true gaming course amidst a host of other combat and warfare related courses that lent themselves more to writing about warfare than gaming itself. With the introduction of our new Competitions: Gaming course, we were able to retire that course (General Warfare) and refocus the department. As a result, you’ll see that this department has been renamed the Department of Combat & Warfare, and it will now also house our ACC courses to consolidate all combat writing resources into the same space.

Our Combat & Warfare Professor, Captain Crysenia Orainn, is also hard at work revamping the courses in this department to modernize them with current canon and integrate them with relevant DJB systems where there is natural overlap. At least one of those courses is very near completion – so stay tuned!

Leadership, Law and Communications

We have a few things in store for our Leadership Department, as well, including a series underway now by Professor Declan breaking the current Leadership Management course into three courses covering the same topic more specifically at the Clan, House and Battleteam level. We’re also looking at offering a similar breakdown of Leadership Competitions to cover tips and nuances on hosting and organizing competitions of each of the primary types - fiction, gaming and graphics.

Writing Department

We teased this before, but it’s worth repeating – we’re working on writing new, focused courses for this department that will ultimately allow us to improve our current Writing Degree offerings and bring back the Writing Sage!

Competition!

Ssh, I won’t spoil it yet, but we’re planning a … [redacted] competition. Be ready.

New Member Resource

Finally, we are working on creating a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) resource to help members quickly find answers to common questions about the club and getting started.

This is where we need your help! Whether you’re a new member who has/had questions you had difficulty finding the answers to or you’re someone who gets asked questions frequently - we’d like to hear from you! What questions should we cover in this resource?

Let us know here.

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Darkness guide,

Ciara Tearnan Rothwell Tarentae
Headmistress of the Shadow Academy