Last chance to figure things out

Oh, will you fail to answer when your body can't stay still?

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Click to expand

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Cuts Marked in the March of Men:

Bridge of O.U.S.C. Medical Vessel ODN Vokara's Grief,
Equatorial Orbit, Quermia
Quermian System, Nilgaard Sector
43 ABY

The command staff aboard Vokara's Grief traded unsure glances over their shoulders to one another as the Pelta-Class Medical Frigate waded towards the Vauzem-held blockade, under the Alderaan and Yavin Accords, medical vessels should not be utilized as warships or used for military purposes beyond triage and recuperation of armed forces, yet a gnawing suspicion had grown among the senior leadership on the front. A lot of tonnage had moved to and from Beldroth's Respite, coupled with peculiarities around the ship's adherence to wartime Medical Vessel's required paint schemes, registry codes, and tracking plans, Grief's crew were more than worried that if the Vauzem were not utterly incompetent, then they were walking into a trap.

"Commo, get me a direct communications channel and a wideband. If they're not going to accept direct communications, we'll communicate across the entire fleet so someone knowledgeable might be able to explain the situation and procedures to them." Captain Iohmar ordered as he placed his hand on the dataslate containing the information forwarded to the rest of the Third Fleet by Rear Admiral Tevil.

"Attention, Beldroth's Respite, this is Fleet Captain Haw Iohmar of the ODN Vokara's Grief we are a likewise Medical Vessel in service of the Odan-Urr United Space Command in service of the Vatali Empire. We're broadcasting our formal, unencrypted, application for inspection for your vessel and asking permission to recover any of our wounded aboard, in exchange for transport of your wounded from the frontlines, according to the armistice." Captain Iohmar's spoke, sitting straight-backed in his command seat as he looked out over the bridge.

"Captain, I'm seeing turret movement on every vessel in proximity, including the Respite. I'm seeing increased heat along their hulls as well." The Operations Officer shouted from the back of the bridge, staring into a camera feed focused on the further ships of the belligerent fleet.

"Shields full. Helmsman, full forward. Everyone, brace!"

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Residence of Duke Evran Anasaye
Undelm Domain, Kiast
Kiast System, Nilgaard Sector
43 ABY

An unlikely gathering had formed in the Shattered Hall, a habitation center of Undelm once deemed unlivable after Operation: Vanguard, as collateral damage to the structure above the block had allowed toxic gasses to seep into the city block. Duke Evran Anasaye stood beside his cousin, the Empress Kaltani Anasaye, surrounded by her Royal Guard, a mix of native Sephi and recently promoted O.U.S.C. soldiers in their bespoke golden armor, with two of her most trusted advisors Celevon Werd'a and Turel Sorenn standing in the wings. The High Councilor of the Acolytes of Urr stood behind Turel, and nodded as their guests arrived, representatives from the Burmessian Republic, a small collection of habitable planets and moons that orbit Kiast β in the outer reaches of the system.

"Your Majesty and Grace Anasaye, please forgive our tardiness. We ran into a few instances of— I do believe your tour guide called them "Guerilla Infrastructure" along the way." A well-dressed Sullustan piped up as he took two steps towards the Empress and offered his hand.

Kaltani took it and gave a firm shake, her cousin following suit meekly.

"I see you've brought guests of your own, were I to hazard a guess, private security, engineer, and a Jedi Archivist to record our historic plans to rebuild these despondent cities, for posterity of course?" The man asked as he pointed to Celevon, Turel, and Masahiro respectively, before he motioned to the men and women who had traveled with him. "I thought much of the same, though, not so much about private security, I figured the standard detail would do in case we ran into a burglar on the streets at home or here, though to be fair a Monarch is a lot less expendable versus a simple prime minister, I'm simply an elected official from Clyra, who was put on a pedestal by his peers after all"

A chuckle broke out from one of the trio, only to silence when both Kaltani and the Prime Minister looked to see just who had broken character.

"No, well, yes after a sort. You're right about the private security, he—" She motioned to Celevon "is a close friend and trusted personal friend, and so too is Turel. The Sephi gentleman here, however, is a Royal Advisor and High Councilor of the Jedi Temple. Though, I doubt he'd take umbrage with being called an archivist, far too often do I find him buried, researching some esoteric eccentricity.

Failure by Design:

Some hoped the war would come to an end over the festivities and short-lived peace born of Life Day and the armistice brokered over the observation of the holidays. Instead, it merely served as a pretense, one which the Vauzem separatists utilized to smuggle fresh armaments and soldiers to the war front through ships marked as medical vessels. Their underhanded tactics have not gone unnoticed, however, and the O.U.S.C. has authorized expanded operations in the system to compensate for the expanded oppositional forces and to break the planetary blockade.

On the ground, the conflict has caught speed again as the recuperated Vatali-Odanite forces clash against a replenished Vauzem host. A success, before the armistice, against one of the Droid Manufactories coupled with a lack of raw materials stemmed the tide of droid forces, though questions remain if the replenished forces brought workers and material reinforcements to reactivate the manufactories.

The Outsider:

With the Undelm Domain now returned to the control of the Vatali Empire, the restoration of their floating cities and the mining platforms beneath falls to the Crown and her citizens. Such a massive undertaking is another strain when coupled with the current outpouring of funds placed in the reconstruction of Daleem's surface and the O.U.S.C. forces to Quermia. Efforts to ease the burden have been made, including actionable efforts to open the Aldeberan Station and Gateway through the hole punched in the protective Nebula surrounding Kiast to open up easier trade and controllable tourism checkpoints. As well, relations with the Burmessian Republic in orbit of Kiast β have been a topic of considerable debate, with the Prime Minister and members of their Cabinet offering to aid in reconstruction efforts, in trade for access to the Aldeberan Gateway.

War:

As we return to The Western Marches, I want to reiterate that the narratives of this event start and end with you. The Conflict on Quermia, the center point of The Western Marches is entirely driven and affected by what our members submit to the competitions. The canonical outcomes, chapter by chapter, are driven by a concept that was designed to have plenty of adjustable narratives for anyone to quickly pick up on, making it easy both for you as members to jump into at any point, and for us as the admins to run for you. A double-edged sword of the way we ran the current Campaign system, up to now, was that it allowed us to place major focus on our separate narrative factions, using them together against a common enemy, however, it became incredibly easy to overload you with the amount of content and we were seeing that we had instances where there were cases of heavy prioritization for easier or eye-catching competitions versus the potentially mundane. Going forward, with this campaign and Campaign #2 on the Horizon, especially now with House and Battle Team Competitions becoming more frequent, we'll be refocusing the overburdening scale of the competitions to focus 1-3 competitions per month to the factions on a cycle, instead of 3 separate factions 6-8 Competitions each, per month then giving the other 3 theirs the following month. This way we're looking at 6-9 competitions each month for our War-based storyline if we stick to 3 focused factions each month, instead of 18-24.

I know that there's been a bit of a drag with the later edge of the Western Marches, attributed in part to content fatigue, combat and contention are not fun storylines for everyone. Taking this into consideration, while keeping the ongoing narrative on board for what it is to the narrative direction of the Clan has hastened our plans to activate our secondary Clan-Level storyline. More about that in a minute.

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Before we get to that, a refresher as to how everyone's actions, or rather relating to how much effort Odan-Urr puts in as a whole will affect our inroads into the Conflict on Quermia. We monitor various metrics, gather them throughout the phases, and use them to determine how our factions sprawl out and gain territory. And sometimes, this can result in a negative net if there just isn't enough activity. With recent changes to how many competitions will be hosted in this event series, however, bonuses applied have been increased going forward.

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

Imprinting:

Have you met our new Battle Team Leader? Her name is Syrena Valkar and she's pretty great. She's the current leader of the Knights of Allusis, a talented artist, and just wrapped up a team competition series. She's also a regular participant in most House and Clan-level competitions, and if my inbox is to be believed, a lot of you out in the rest of the DB have seen her in more than one of your competitions as well! SHE EVEN WRITES REPORTS! I'm so proud.

Scimitar of Lord Hoth:

December:

Wait... Who left that cage open? WHY IS THERE A TIGER IN HERE? Somehow, Turel managed to slide his way into Odan-Urr in the waning days of December and absolutely annihilated the leaderboard for December with Nero barking at his heels, but like any good feline, the Tiger just found his way to higher ground. In all seriousness though, welcome home and a hearty congratulations to you on taking the December victory.

Yearly:

The course of the year proved a unique one, with four figures absolutely demolishing Odan-Urr's activity charts over different periods. Albrecht von Weissman (Nero) topped our charts out through a massive run of gaming that started when he came to us as our Magistrate of Gaming back at the end of January last year.

• Scimitar Standings: December 2024
• Scimitar of Lord Hoth 2024

One Headlight:

Alright, I promised I was going to talk about it, and while I touched on it earlier in The Outsider that was a very brief synopsis, here's the rundown: The second Clan-level narrative is coming online. The fiction and first competitions for the long-term have already gone live in An Empire Reunited. Odan-Urr and the Vatali Empire are not without their own sins, in the process of ensuring our own survival and quelling an uprising or two, long-lasting effects were left in the wake of our decisions, consequences which may have been at the forefront for some, but once they were out of sight, they were out of mind for others. Much as the Noble Houses are helping the reconstruction efforts on Daleem, recent events have drawn attention to the dire state of the Undelm Domain, the former home of the Vauzem Dominion, much of which was left devastated after Operation: Vanguard and years of corrosion floating beneath the toxic cloud layers of Kiast.

As the Empire's reconstruction efforts for another massive part of the system were underway, questions of their financial security were drawn. As the House of Lords met with The Empress, to discuss matters of security, projections on Daleem's reclamation, and fiduciary obligations. Various answers to how they might tackle the problems were discussed, circling the same internal strategies, while the Councilor of War, Mihoshi Keibatsu, proposed a novel solution; abandon Kiast's isolationist policies and utilize the hole punched through their protective Nebula as a trade gateway.

This is part of a series of further developments which will be led by our Proconsul; Odan-Urr has previously toyed with a series of Tourist and Trade Destinations, but up to now we have not committed any significant amount of time to fleshing out the resources and articles behind them. As we've discussed the efforts and logistics behind a lot of what we hope to see from COU narratively as well as a lot of what kind of destinations/events/activities you've asked about and most often participated in over the last year, we've decided to follow up on this tangent finally.

Some of the things we're hoping to see over the next few months are the reconstruction of the Undelm Domain, expanding information about locations like Is Brea, Baime, and our other "Tourist" locations, as well as making writing in those locations more accessible, expanding information about various Civilian Trading Authorities, Industrial Titans, and Companies coming out of the Empire, and establishing relations with our neighbors in Kiast β, the Burmessian Republic.

Clan Awards/Promotions/News!

My favorite part of these things is the part where we get to shout out all of the people who got new shinies recently.

• Syrena continues to steamroll her way through the club and has blasted down the doors to Equite.
• Frenek trucked his way through to JM4.
• Asani Armis hopped on the bandwagon and hit Equite 2!
• Tisto Kingang boxed his way to Equite 4!
  • and got himself an Amethyst Kukri to boot.
• Neko clawed their way to Journeyman 2!
• Tarvitz got himself a shiny new knife Amethyst Kukri!
  • he also managed to dig out another Dark Side Scroll!
• Harper Starmonger got themselves their first Dark Cross!
• Junazee was awarded a Blue Stabby Sapphire Blade!
• Len Iode was awarded a Scroll of Foundation!
• Mihoshi Keibatsu (Old Man Jack) was awarded a Scroll of the Master!)

Closing Thoughts from the CON:

But first, I must apologize.

Last month you guys didn't get a report out of me and for the last few months I haven't been sending out the mailers I had promised to send at the middle of each month detailing what was going on. There are a few reasons for these things, some of it's excuses, even with ADHD I should have some better time management skills than I have to push out a simple email detailing our current narrative, and competitions, not to mention reminding you guys that I still cherish the time you choose to spend with us here. The part of it that's reasoning comes down to, the back-end of the year is extremely hard for me. I've never had much of a problem talking about it, but there's a lot of loss for me that starts around September and carries through to the end of the year, getting progressively worse the closer to December we get. As we get into the swing of the New Year, I'll be back into form, and hopefully, I'll have a better presence and have my game in order to be ahead of the curve and have things planned out ahead of time for next winter season to keep from being in this funk again.

Ever onwards, folks. The only day we can take for granted is yesterday, and every day forward is a new challenge. Let's meet them together.