Introduction

A Message from the Quaestor

Things are starting to pick up around HQD, and it’s beautiful to see. We’ve got some new faces, we’re starting to see competitions pick back up, and we’ve got a Club-wide competition going with some more Clan-wide stuff on the horizon. Let’s goooooo!

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. State of the House
3. DB Wide Updates
4. Awards, Promotions and Transfers
   
5. Leaderboard
6. Competitions
7. In Closing...

State of the House

There have been some big changes around the House, the Clan, and the club as a whole over the past month or so, and I wanted to take the time to give some updates and insight into some of these changes.

First: For the time being, House Qel-Droma will be operating without an Aedile. With Doon having stepped down, we opened the field to applicants for the position. In the interest of full transparency, I will let you all know that I received no applications for the position. I discussed it with the Clan Summit as well as our BTL Mune, and while many possible options were floated, the decision we came to was to run without an Aedile for the foreseeable future. There are many reasons for this: we don’t want to shove somebody into a position they’re not interested in, the administrative workload of running the House is not too much for me to handle solo, and it also provides us with a nice slot if we see somebody in HQD (or even Galeres or Arcona in general for that matter) that shows leadership potential to be placed into and “learn the ropes” while not bearing a lot of solo responsibility. That being said, if anyone has any recommendations or is interested in the position themselves, please let me know. We can consider it simultaneously “intentionally left blank” but also “always open to applications” for now.

Item the second: House Activities! You may have noticed that we don’t have much in the way of HQD-specific stuff going on right now. We just wrapped up a Voidbreaker RP, and Mune has told me they have some ideas for a couple more that will be getting underway sometime soon. Other than that, we haven’t had a competition for HQD since I ran the Crime Spree comp back before the holidays. I mentioned this briefly on the Discord, but wanted to go further into explanation here. With the implementation of Seasons, as well as some upcoming plans, I made the decision that I was going to hold off for a little bit on running House competitions. While the intention of Seasons and Cycles is to not interfere with Clans and Houses running their own stuff, the cautious side of me knows that sometimes intentions don’t match up with realities. Following the conclusion of Cycle 1, I’m going to take a look and run some numbers and see how much participation in other competitions may have been impacted by the Cycle. From that analysis, I’ll figure out how much will be good to have running during future Cycles. With that, however, I also value all of your input as my House! Please let me know if you feel like you need more to do even with the Cycle running, or if you feel like there’s already enough (or even too much) going on right now and you’d feel better if we delayed House comps until off-Cycle times.

Third: Some of you may have noticed that, for the time being, the STC has been shut down. This means that new members coming in to Arcona will be placed directly into Houses: either specified if they were recruited by somebody, or by automatic sorting if they just join raw. So with that, keep an eye out for new members as they show up and try to help guide them through the ways of the DJB! If anyone has potential interest in being a Master as we have new members filter in, let me know and I’ll make note of it for future assignments.

With that, I will finally shut up and get to the regular business of the report!

DB Wide Updates

• The first Cycle of the first Season has started and there is so much about it.
• It’s the 30th Anniversary (by best reckoning) of the club! We got a new logo! Some changes were made to Elder XP advancement!
• The Emissary gave a rundown on the numbers from their first year of operation, and laid out plans for the coming year
• The FIST gave some details on the upcoming Battlepass system. There is also a re-evaluation of Clusters for gaming activity going on, so please help them out by filling out their form!
• Applications are open to join the CoJ for the 2025-2026 term.
• The Clan Arcona report has come out, and with it the announcement that our CON is stepping down a bit earlier than originally intended. salute Applications for the position are open for another week, if you think you’re up to the job!

Awards, Promotions and Transfers

With the closing of the STC, we picked up a couple of new members: Malephisius and adriel. Congrats as well to adriel on making NOV2.

Jaygohn Wolfinn has also joined our House, and rapidly lept all the way to NOV3 literally in the time I’ve been writing this report.

Our very own Captain of the Voidbreaker, Mune Cinteroph, earned their promotion to EL2! Be sure to give them your congratulations!

Crescents, Clusters and the Awards!

Alex

• 8 Clusters of Ice

Doon

• A Grand Cross
• 8 Clusters of Ice

Fenrir

• 1 Cluster of Ice

Lucine

• A Sapphire Blade! Enjoy the blue stabby!

Marick Tyris Arconae

• Crescent with Emerald Star
• 17 Clusters of Fire
• 4 Clusters of Ice

Mex

• Crescent with Sapphire Star

Mune Cinteroph

Buckle in.

• An Amethyst Kukri!
• A Sapphire Blade! DOUBLE THE STABBIES!
• 1 Crescent with Ruby Star
• 10(!!) Crescents with Amethyst Star
• 8 Crescents with Sapphire Star
• 2 Crescents with Emerald Star
• 1 Crescent with Topaz Star
• 1 Crescent with Quartz Star
• 11 Clusters of Ice

Orv Dessrx

• 1 Crescent with Ruby Star
• 6 Crescents with Amethyst Star
• 2 Crescents with Sapphire Star
• 1 Crescent with Emerald Star
• 2 Crescents with Topaz Star
• 24(!) Clusters of Graphite

Revs

• 2 Clusters of Ice

Shamiir

• A Crescent with Sapphire Star

Sofila

• 1 Crescent with Amethyst Star
• 1 Crescent with Emerald Star
• 54(!!!) Clusters of Fire

Tali Sroka

• A Crescent with Amethyst Star
• 3 Clusters of Ice

Leaderboard

A bit of shifting in the leaderboard this month. Mune maintains their dominance, but there are some folks coming up fast and hard to break into the top 10 (the difference between 10th and 11th place was 2 points)! Keep at it, and maybe you’ll soon see your name pop up here!

If you don’t want to be featured in the Overall Leaderboard, let your House leadership know.

Name	November	December	January	Total	Placement
Mune	323	45	385	753	1st
Orv	14	4	228	246	2nd
Alex	99	70	41	210	3rd
Sofila	48	68	60	176	4th
Marick	89	10	29.5	128.5	5th
Revs	59	9	4	72	6th
Doon	13.5	28.5	20	62	7th
Tali	0	13	16	29	8th
Lucine	2	8	11	21	9th
Mex	0	5.5	14	19.5	10th

Competitions

As usual, if you want XP and Credits, better subscribe and do these comps below!

Long Running Series:

• Season 1 has started! This will take place across multiple Cycles across the year, with an overall participation tracker between all of it! If at all possible, I would like everyone to try to get in at least one competition per Cycle, as the Clan will get more funding for high participation, but obviously don’t force yourself! It’s about having fun, after all!
• I still do not understand Diablo IV but if you do, good news! There’s a comp for you!
• Write a good haiku. Earn some Clusters and Crescents. This ends my poem.
• The ACC competition is still ongoing! Get out there and kick some butt!

Current Shorter Comps:

• There are a variety of fiction comps being run for a number of topics and styles! Check ‘em out!
• You like gaming? We got gaming! Battlefront 2? Score Attacks? Racing Games? Go for it!
• Our Clan is running some Valentine’s Day activities: fics, graphics, even some puzzles! Check ‘em out!
• We’ve got some DIA Contracts running for February!
• For my fellow tile sickos, Monthly Mahjong continues! We had a pretty solid turnout last month, and I look forward to seeing what we get this month!
• For those of you in to RP, we’ve got an Envoy Bounty competition running right now. There are also Envoy-related “character playlist”, “design an NPC”, and graphics competitions for Envoy locations with it!

In Closing…

Take care of yourselves, folks!

Signed,