Special Report from the Quermian Front

UAS Kelleran, Mid-Bridge
Equatorial Orbit, Quermia
Quermia System, Nilgaard Sector
42 ABY

“E chu ta. The Vauzem? Here? Of all places, we come as peacekeepers and delegates, only to find that those we’re meant to be keeping the peace with were the selfsame brazen few who survived SenNet’s purge.” The exasperated Sage, Tellah, complained as he tossed a dataslate across the holotank and threw his arms up in the air.

The other Jedi on the ship’s deck stood, looking over the holomap of the planet, slightly disturbed by the dataslate laying across one of the holoemitters. Vauzem ‘forces’ had taken residence on the planet’s surface and reactivated dormant C.I.S. Droid Manufactories to subjugate extant settlements.

“Calm yourself, Master Tellah, our reports have made their way back to Kiast by now, and support from the Council and the Military should be arriving soon. We play for time, seek peace, but be ready to act.” One of the diplomats commented, echoed by their compatriot, Battlemaster Balthier.

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Augustine Company:

First things first, before I get into the nitty-gritty details about The Western Marches. This last month has introduced a lot of changes throughout Clan Odan-Urr, and today brings another; the announcement of our new Proconsul. I could say it’s a decision I languished over the selection process, that the decision of who to take as my immediate Right Hand was a hard decision to make, but of those who have applied, and those who have worked alongside me to put the Clan in the place it is in currently, there are only a couple I would have considered. As such I am proud to appoint Jack (Mihoshi Yukiko Keibatsu) to act as my Proconsul, taking over the seat I filled for the last half of the year, and filling in the duties he helped teach me how to fulfill. Jack has served as an excellent teacher, administrator, and driving force, working behind me and helping keep me on goal, to develop a training program for Odan-Urr, and working behind the scenes with our least vocal members to try and ascertain interests and points attachment to drive their activity.

This appointment will, however, leave House Sunrider temporarily without a Quaestor. Considerations for an outstanding replacement have been made from those who have applied for Proconsul, to help maintain Sunrider’s current planning and development period.

Planetfall:

We’re rolled through the final days of Phase One of the Western Marches and now that you’ve gotten your hands dirty designing some NPCs, touched on the Cluster Races, face-mashed a few puzzles, and gotten a general sample of what is going on, I’m here to explain things in a bit more detail. You know, like the completely reasonable and forethought leader I am, right?

Phase One was a dry-run to see what aspects of the competitions and methodology behind operations would need to be tweaked as we developed future content. It also gave one of our lovely Quaestors, Tisto, enough time to finish designing the hex-grid map we’ll be using to represent the surface of Quermia and the occupations/influence of various forces will have on it, while we worked out exactly which forces and surprises awaited on the surface, how your actions would affect the conflict, and just what would constitute fail conditions in any of these events.

That’s what I’m here to talk to you all about today!

War... War Never Changes | All Around Me Are Familiar Faces:

As some of you may have realized, the common enemy we've come to face on Quermia is none other than the remnants of the Vauzem Dominion, a threat that Odan-Urr and the Vatali Empire had long since believed put to rest after the decisive measures in which most of their leadership, including their heir and supposed claimant to the Vatali Throne, were put to the torch and the survivors outcast. While some remained in Kiast, it was recorded that a handful fled, unwilling to accept the yoke of the Empire nor it's newfound Jedi companions. As of this moment, little context to their actions or answers for how they have managed to amass the kind of forces to stage a planetary insurrection further afield in the Nilgaard Sector have risen, but, three facts remain the Quermians came to us to broker a peace between them and the Vauzem insurrectionists, our appearance has only served to increased tensions, and failure to take care of the Dominion at large before means this is our mess to clean up.

Now the Fun Begins

As I mentioned above, your actions, meaning how much effort Odan-Urr puts in as a whole will affect our inroads into the Conflict on Quermia. We will measure various metrics throughout the phases to determine the sprawl of the various factions in conflict.

These metrics include:

• The number of Members Participating in competitions,
  
• Aggregate number of Clusters (gaming),
  
• Total words submitted (fiction and roleplay),
  
• Average Completion times (puzzles)
  

Each Competition type will spread the influence of the relative faction as indicated:

• Fiction to the North
  
• Gaming to the West
  
• Puzzles to the East
  
• Art to the South
  
• Roleplay/Uncategorized Clockwise around influence zone

But, you can fail, just as well.

Failure Conditions:

This is a thing that nobody likes to think about, but which, I, personally, feel raises the stakes, just that little bit, to make The Western Marches stand out just enough to be memorable. Any competition in which less than 10% of Clan Odan-Urr takes part is considered a Failure, and will not gain any traction towards their objective, barring heroic actions. Any in which less than 5% of our member base takes part will be considered a Route and may result in losing one or more ‘tiles’ of progress.

We All Lift Together

The path forward is simple, work together, reach out and work with your fellow Odanites, and tackle common goals to drive Odan-Urr and the Quermians’ common foe back to the brink, force their motivations from them, and end this conflict once and for all.

Playing Nice with Others:

The Western Marches Campaign was designed before knowledge of other potential events was on the board, such as the looming Probowl, with that in mind, if there is an event that coincides with the Campaign anywhere over the course of the next year, we will adjust the scoring thresholds as necessary. Furthermore, activity in any DB Wide events that take place alongside the Campaign will provide General scoring activity, in the same regard that Roleplays do, spreading influence around applicable groups during their active timeframe.

You Got Spirit, Kid

This month has been extraordinary in terms of how each of you has stood out and represented Clan Odan-Urr, with several of you receiving well-deserved awards, and others striving towards greater heights as you march on towards greatness. I've begun compiling the results of this month's Scimitar, and will work with our new Proconsul to have his report detail your achievements in full, but, I want to take a few moments to recollect on some of our high points for July.

We are maintaining what I had hoped to see, with over half of the clan routinely taking part in activities each month, and while the number of activities for some of us are not high they are consistent throughout and continue to climb. As our newer members grow more comfortable in the systems and begin exploring the community, I hope to see another explosion of activity like we saw a few months ago, but, know that as we are now, we are a healthy unit and on our feet again.

For now, we take our hats off to you, who earned accolades in July!

• Tisto Kingang - Appointed Governor of Kaal (Quaestor of House Hoth)!
• Mihoshi Yukiko Keibatsu (Jack) - Appointed Governor of Tythas (Quaestor of House Sunrider)!
• A'lora Kituri - Awarded a well-earned Sapphire Blade
• Vyrese Palestar - Promoted to Journeyman 1!
• Aurora "Aura" Ta'var (Blade) - Gained an Amethyst Kukri for murdering us all in Jedi Academy... (I still have knightmares)
• Edgar Drachen - Gained some swagger with a Ruby Scepter, which he will promptly shake at the new members. ',;P
• Jafits Skrumm - Also earned a Ruby Scepter this month, and will probably use it to press 'Subscribe' on even more competitions.
• Nikora Rhan (Tarvitz) - Earned themselves a lovely Amethyst Kukri for continued service to the Clan and Club.
• Mihoshi Yukiko Keibatsu (Jack) - Appointed War Councilor (Proconsul) of Odan-Urr

And that is all I currently have! You've all been doing excellent and I hope to see our trends continue upwards Odanites!

(You'd think I'd have made myself a new signature graphic by now, seriously)
(Edit: SIV MADE ME A SIGNATURE, GUYS!)