Introductions & Renovations

Imperials,

I want to start this report by taking the time to thank Qor and Dek for their faith in me and selecting me as Battleteam Leader. They’ve put a great deal of trust in myself, and I hope to use this position to the betterment not just for the Battleteam; but for the members of it, House Imperium, as well as for Clan Scholae Palatinae. It’s bold to think the smallest unit in the club could impact so many individuals, but as I hope you come to see: I believe that Battleteams can be the most important units in the club.

As was pointed out in the announcement of my selection, I have been a positioned member of several different tiers. And while each of them has a certain amount of duty and responsibility attached to them, there will also be an increasing amount of distance placed between the membership and the positioned leadership. While the mark of a good leader is making sure that they are connected with all those in their charge, each step up the tiers makes it a harder reality. When you have five members under your charge, you can commit more time to each individual compared to being responsible for fifty people. Especially when we all serve in a volunteer, part-time capacity.

This is why the Battleteam Leader position is so important.

The position of Battleteam Leader offers a frontline approach to serving the membership. It is a bridge between membership and positioned leadership, and it has the dual nature of being responsible for encouraging the membership and sharing with the summits what direction the membership wants to take. This is why I personally believe it shouldn't be a junior role, but this is my personal belief - and not reflective in club wide structure. Nonetheless, this is how you can expect my term as Battleteam Leader to be ran - I encourage you to use me as your confidant, your advocate, your Ace in the hole. I'm here to be the first responder of your engagement in the club and it's my hope to build a small community around this concept and encourage other teams to develop this way. But more on that later...

Moving forward I hope to use my experience and passion for this position to create a staple under the Imperium banner, however, I certainly can’t do this myself. You may have noticed I referred to summits as positioned members or leaders. This isn't an accident. The most important thing to know about my views and leadership beliefs is that I view leadership as being more than just a position as Battleteam Leader, Quaestor, or Consul. People can be leaders without a title, just as there can be positioned members who aren’t in fact leaders. Obviously, the second should be the avoided but more importantly; the first should be encouraged, celebrated, and promoted. Despite being a growing club, there is only going to be a finite amount of positions but that shouldn’t prevent people from contributing to the unit, making a name for themselves, or creating merit and consideration for the next time they are up for promotion/or a position opens up.

It shouldn’t be all about the positioned members.

I can’t stress that enough. While we do have to recognize the contributions that a positioned member makes, they really are a minority in the club. So our themes, our lore, our activities, and our commitments should be to the membership as a whole. Yet, we can’t do that if the membership isn’t involved in the conversations. Going forward; know that I wish to hear from you, know that I want to help empower you, but also know I need to count on you to share what you are looking for. It really is a two-way street, and I will help share the road so long as you guys attempt to drive on it.

Let’s do this together.

RK

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What this club means to me:

For the past ten years or so, I have gone by the name Raiju Kang. My real name is Brett, and before I rejoined the club as Raiju Kang; I was known as Warhunter back in the days of Clan Satal Keto and the early days of Plagueis. Over thirteen years ago, after my MSN Gaming Zone club, Corellian Knights (CK), disbanded; I was searching through the Battlestats.net (BSC) website looking for a new Star Wars club to join. For the previous four years I had been a top contender in Jedi Knight and through CK I learned of an earlier SW game; X-wing vs. TIE Fighter. These two games are what lead to my passion for all things Star Wars and they are what lead me to start reading the Expanded Universe, which in turn led me to begin writing fan-fiction. At the time I didn’t know there were clubs for this, but again as I was searching through BSC I found this funny image of Fox McCloud (the Nintendo character) with a lightsaber - likely which was an early concept design of our former Grand Master; Firefox.

I ended up going to the club it linked, found this amazing website with many different units (reminding me of the clubs TFA/TRA, who ran BSC), and discovered not only could I play my SW games but I could do fan-fiction with others as well. The concept blew my mind, I joined that day - being placed within House Kirleta of Clan Satal Keto. Within a week, there was this epic event known as a “Great Jedi War” and it was the first to be done in the DJB since some “Exodus”. The energy and hype lead to an incredible time and I was sucked in, there were nights I’d wait until my parents were asleep and then I’d sneak down to the family computer so I could participate - thanks DJB for keeping teenaged me at home and away from such things like drugs….or girls.”

I like to think the above does well to pay homage to the Brotherhood that I started with and have since grown up with. This club isn’t just about Star Wars, or gaming, or writing fan-fiction. Often I speak to others about what we do here, and many just don’t get it. It can be a little bit hard to explain the value of pounding out dozens of matches of Jedi Academy, researching trivial pieces of lore, or staying up late to see if GJW scores have been posted - but these are just the surface activities of a hobby that has changed my life in many ways.

Since I joined the Brotherhood, I’ve;

• Taken lessons on a number of topics including conflict mediation, grammar studies, proposal writing, and programming
• Become knowledgeable about countries, cultures, and people from place I’ve never even travelled
• Developed my hard skills in areas like photoshop, MS office, computer sciences, and writing
• Developed my soft skills in areas like teamwork, communication, debate, and leadership
• Been educated on literature, class struggles, and social minorities - having first met an openly homosexual person through our chatrooms and learning about some of the struggles
• Developed myself personally as an individual; growing from a bratty, unworldly country boy to a mature, contributing member of society
• Developed myself professionally; first learning here many of the skills I use as a business consultant as well as an owner

I share all this because I think it is important to know who I am is not a matter of what screenname I go by, what unit I come from, or how many positions I’ve held in this organization. I’m a product of this organization as a whole, who has been bettered by the time I invested in this club. I believe in the product we put out, and think that our time invested in this club is meaningful.

At times this hobby has become dangerously close to a lifestyle for me, but whether you come here for entertainment, enjoyment, or even as an escape (as I did at times); there’s a common connection we share and something we hold with high value the outside world may never understand. This is why we are fitting of the term; brotherhood.

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My relationships with the club:

As I mentioned above, who I am goes far beyond what I have done in this club. For a complete understanding of me; my history can be found on my dossier or asking me since my time as Warhunter isn’t listed.

For those interested, I’ve served in every position from Battleteam Sergeant to Consul - and for most, multiple times. I’ve created successful, long standing Battleteams, founded a House, brought in new members and engaged them as Rollmaster, been both an Aedile and Quaestor of sub-unit houses, been Aedile of an independent unit, and lead separate units as Proconsul and Consul. I have been involved in this unit’s development before, once as Quaestor of Caliburnus, while also being involved in the development of many others; and I recognized both the bad and good that has came from my transfers between units. I’ve also been a Professor for the Shadow Academy, a member of the Appeals Panel, and a mentor of several prominent members of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood - and have grown to call on these people as well as others as a mentor to myself.

Most importantly, I hold friendships with someone from almost every unit of this club. I like every unit, and don’t believe in the attitudes certain units have had in the past. I do believe every unit needs to have its own theme (not everyone can be [unit] Darkity-Dark) and this should be a recruitment tool. I believe the MAA staff has a standard to protect, and that’s for the betterment for the club; however, I also believe leaders have the responsibilities to insure their members are properly rewarded and must test these standards, respectfully. I believe the Shadow Academy’s importance is downplayed by some, and it’s potential has yet to be fully met. I think all the Seneschal/Herald/Regent teams are a luxury that no other club can compete with, and that some people have taken for granted. I’m glad to see the Fist and Voice replace the duties Order leaders had. And I think the Chamber of Justice is an imperfect system that is a requirement in our modern era.

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Who I am, personally:

I’m a thirty year old employment counsellor from London, Ontario. Additionally, my family and I have business ventures in winery and cider. I have been living with my girlfriend and our three cats for over two years now, and have been dating for six years - and somehow she’s cool with these magical internet friends I have and strongly believes she’ll never join it.

Over two years ago, I developed a (thankfully, benign) brain tumour that has given me a lifetime label as epileptic. The struggle I had with this robbed me of my job, (temporarily) of my girlfriend, and prematurely ended my term as Consul. #seizuressuck To connect back to why I think all this is important, and to justify the length of this section, I share all this because I believe my role is to head the development of our little community. It’s something we have to put into practice, so to better develop our little club within a club - I think it’s important to know why I find this place important, what I’ve done, what I believe, and who I am as an individual. As always, please feel free to connect with me if you want to know more and I encourage you all to learn from each other how we each stand on these topics.

Character Introduction

Touching on the last bit of who I am, I’d like to introduce you to my character; Raiju Kang. For almost the whole time being in the DJB, I have played as my current character. At times, I have attempted to try something new but I’ve always found myself going back to this character. Likely because I play him fairly close to heart in terms of personality. However, also because he is a character that helps me work through issues in a different capacity. It’s a weird connection we have, and I dream of a day I can make him an canon creature in the Star Wars universe ;)

This is how I hope everyone plays their characters in some capacity. They may not be true to heart, but that they are a loved individual you have grown attached to in some way. And I encourage you to share with me what your character is like, going forward I hope to highlight want I learn above everyone’s character.

Regarding more about Raiju Kang, I am working on a character update to explain his move to Scholae Palatinae and his abandonment of the light side of the force. I hope to include this in a future report, however I want to stress this won’t be a unit update. I believe character highlights like these should be an individual thing and I will share it because I hope to share more about each of our characters; officially unit lore will be inclusive of the team and not an individual storyline.

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The Situation

I want people to truly understand where we are coming from and what I hope to be addressing with the summit during my time as Battleteam Leader. Below is an excerpt from my application about how I view the state of Imperium as someone who is from the outside looking in. This is something the house summit has looked over and discussed. We acknowledge this situation and this is what we are all facing:

1. The Revolving Door - With James leaving so soon after Dek’s rapid move up, the Battleteam has been faced with the awkward issue of having a rotating leadership. This is hard to focus a core team around when the point man is being switched up and whoever comes in needs to provide some stability as well as create a succession plan for their eventual departure.

• Changing identity hasn’t been received well - Accompanying the moving leadership pieces is the fact that the Battleteam recently went through a theme change that wasn’t complete by the time the leading man moved up. This isn’t to say Dek shouldn’t have moved up, we shouldn’t force people to be stuck in a position when their work deserves the rise in station. However, this does create an awkward situation that the invested party has moved on. Couple this with the fact that the new theme was still in the process of working people over to their side and I see the revolving door as causing the new identity to not sit well. Speaking with those I can, it hasn’t created the right buzz internally or externally.

• Shadow Guard was never properly put to rest - Unfortunately it seems like proper administration wasn’t followed by the change of themes and (most importantly) names. One of the reasons the MAA staff doesn’t remove units anymore (and just deactivates them) is to lessen the amount of incomplete data for member’s DJB History tabs. This has also lead to a “best practice” sort of mentality that many House’s are simply deactivating BTs and creating new units so member’s DJB history accurately reflect this. It would be weird for me to have the Old Folks Home listed on my DJB History when I was never apart of them. Shadow Guard didn’t seem to get this respect, nor did it seem to get the proper legacy as the new team started to rewrite the unit wiki with the new theme. Instead, we should properly put Shadow Guard to rest and start fresh. It was the first BT of Imperium after all.

• The removal of BT Sergeants hurt the leadership structure - When I transferred into Imperium I read all of the reports for all the positions. I knew I wanted to make this my home and I wanted to become engrossed in the unit. However, when looking over the Battleteam reports it seemed very clear that while other units had removed the Sergeant and its function; CSP was still using it and had its own training system. Unfortunately, it does not appear we recovered from the removal of the position. Speaking with Braecen about the topic recently I have a fairly good understanding of the path CSP will start taking with their new leaders. I understand this has lead to the recovery of the Aedile position, which I think is really important. To further this we need to show members that it is still possible to be a leader whether positioned or not. And from these seeds we sow will grow our next generation of leaders.

• Lack of compelling identities/rivalries - When I transferred into Scholae Palatinae I asked Xen and Elincia if I could take a few days before I picked a House. I wanted to research the lore as that was extremely important to me. And it should be the same treatment every member receives. We are, afterall, picking a unique identity to add to our own characters. However, once you enter Imperium...what point is there to join the BT? It shouldn’t be to JUST have access to more competitions. There needs to be more choices, more stories, and more ways to develop our interests.

• Removing Aedile position was a mistake - I already kind of addressed this but I wanted to highlight it as its own point. Removing the Aedile position for so long was a mistake. Regardless whether a Quaestor can do all the work for themselves, they shouldn’t and there should be a clear difference between Quaestor and Aedile. I don’t see this in CSP, and that’s a major problem. I’ve spoke to Xen about this recently, and while I see his position, I don’t agree with it. Yet, I’m not one for stepping on toes and that’s why I spoke to him about it and pointed out a few of the many reasons a Quaestor and Aedile should be separate roles, duties, responsibilities, and reports. And he said to share it so it can be discussed so if I’m selected as Battleteam Leader I wish to share my thoughts with the team so we can see the benefits of having a full summit team.

• Position Confusion - Further to the point above, I don’t think Battleteam Leader is being most efficiently used. This isn’t something specific to Imperium or CSP. For a long time I don’t think the Brotherhood understood the importance of the Battleteam unit. However, I have had great success with the position; making it a staple of the House that houses it. For example, look at Knights of Allusis in Odan-Urr. This was my creation, and it has been further upon by so many great leaders that shared my vision. When the Battleteam is ran as it should be, it has the chance of being something great. KOA, Grey Wolf, Old Folks Home, Soulfire. These were all legendary Battleteams for their respective clans. It’s time to make Imperium’s version.

• House and team wiki’s are out of date - New system, new unit, new time. It’s not uncommon for wikis to grow out of date, but the most active units have these updated constantly. We should aim to be the same.

• Oldies need to be kept in the game, but a new core needs to take the lead - This, unfortunately, is something every unit struggles with. We need to respect the vets, but make way for new and fresh ideas. Already the clan is showing this with the new world building, Imperium needs to follow through with this as well. Already we have a strong, fresh House summit. Now we need our membership core to be the same as well. We need to be friendly to this group.

• No concrete solutions to the major issues of member retention and competition participation - an issue all the units must deal with. Since transferring in; I haven’t heard anything regarding recruitment or social media. This is a big issue. Statistically, as I know Mav likes to pound into the Consuls, a recruited member is much more likely to stay then a random join. We need to put effort into this, and when they get here they need to have an experience they can’t find anywhere else.

• Going through a period of transition - Unfortunately, CSP is getting its stuff reset. This is part of a rebalancing act - and that is going to rub some people the wrong way. However, it needs to be reassured to the membership that this is a good thing. New chances for lore development, stories, and most importantly; an opening for newer members to make their mark.

• A club within a club - I love this about Scholae Palatinae and I want to finish this section on a positive hard truth. It’s supported by a strong, passionate core group. Not only this but it is one of the most welcoming groups, and are very good at making new members apart of it. While there are some things to work on, the clan as a whole has something that makes it very easy to get new members that are engaged connected to the unit. In other words, its really good at getting people to drink that koolaid. Which is a good thing when properly focused.

As was mentioned, the above is a excerpt from my application. Many of these issues are being discussed, worked on, or a plan has already been put in place to address them (see the announcement email). However, to get a complete picture of what we will be working on (and to make good on my promises to several requests) I have made my application shareable and have included the link to it below:

Click Here for Raiju's Application

Feel free to check out my application, and of course; I encourage you to contact me and discuss it!

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For the past week, I have been busy with a lot of conversations. Not only has this been with current Battleteam members, but also with other Imperium members, the House Summit, curious folk from Excidium, as well as some of the clan summit wondering what the heck we have going on. This is great, lots of interest and hype.

Couldn’t be happier.

However, we need some action. Already we have been putting some things in place to correct some issues above. However, I want the Battleteam to be well situated for the Great Jedi War. I want us to have a concrete identity to trial against the coming storm and see if it weathers or is eroded; because a grand event like this is a good time to test concepts and themes. But before we get there, we have some clean up to do.

As was announced on the clan and house mailing lists, there was a bit of a goof when it can to some administration changes regarding the battleteams. This happens, it’s not uncommon and it is a quick fit. However, most importantly, it’s administrative. Not fatal, no one died. Just a simple change to correct people’s history tabs. That said, the battleteam recently went through a bit of identity change and it wasn’t fully completed under Dek. In speaking with people prior to my appointment, it seemed like it wasn’t jiving well with people so we have decided we are going to whitewash the walls and give you guys a chance to redevelop the battleteam in our collective image. This in mind, here’s a breakdown on what we are working on:

• Putting Shadow Guard & Imperialis Crusignatis to rest (Progress: 4/6)
  • Correct Administrative Issues (done!)
  • Fix unit name & Member History Tabs (done!)
  • Create New Unit (done!)
  • Move members (done!)
  • Update Wiki articles (Priority #1)
  • Lore Update to explain event (Secondary #1)
• Community Creation (Progress: 0/8)
  • Gathering interest (Priority #2)
  • Understanding Membership (Priority #3)
  • Theme Development(Priority #4)
  • Unit Formation(Priority #5)
  • Lore Creation (Secondary #2)
  • Wiki Development (Secondary #3)
  • Missions (Secondary #4)
  • Competition Planning (Secondary #5)
• Misc (Progress: 0/1)
  • Super Secret House Society Project Interested in proposing writing? Send me a message, happy to include two others on the planning and development for this. Not even the House Summit knows what I’m doing here, let’s wow them together.

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Conclusion

As you guys can see from the list above, we have quite a bit to work on and hammer out. However, I hope to not be doing this alone. Over the next two weeks, I will be sending out a series of BT updates. These will address each of the priorities as we progress forward and develop our new team. For now, make yourself familiar with this introduction, the renovation list, and I highly encourage you to check out my application so you have a good understanding of where we are going with the team. Should you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding the material above, please contact me directly at [Log in to view e-mail addresses]

Raiju Kang