Hello Scholae Palatinae! The end of February is upon us, and with it a slew of major news and updates. But first off, I want to take a moment to recognize the milestone we passed this week. February 24th. One Year. A Clan.

Happy Anniversary Clan Scholae Palatinae.

Below you will find a State of the Empire Address from myself, followed by comments from our Rollmaster, and then our House Quaestors. Also included is the opening fiction and competition listings for Subterfuge, a house feud.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - State of the Empire

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. - Henry Ford

Here we stand, one year following our reclanning as a healthy and bustling unit. I look back the long, hard, and absolutely amazing five years I have spent leading this unit and am astonished by how the members here continue to develop, push forward, and grow.

This last year has been full of changes for us. The addition of two totally new houses, a mix of leaders coming together to push the clan together, old faces returning from the rogues, and new friends joining the site. With the new canon underway and the release of a new and epic movie, we are in one of the strongest positions I have ever seen for our clan.

This coming year brings with it a lot of work as we move forward, but that is work that is rewarding and lasting as we develop into the new canon. More than that it brings us closer as a unit, as friends and family. Last year at this time, IRC was the king of the club, but now I see and interact with so many more of you on a regular bases with thanks to Telegram. We have our old veterans returning to the fold, some excited for the first time in years over the prospect of more Star Wars. And we have many wonderful, talented, and amazing new members who have joined us over the last year.

In addition to the new and huge things coming from the DC this year, yet another SW movie in the form of Rogue One, we have our own things to be excited about. A new house feud has just opened for the clan. In the coming months, we will see a proper and full clan feud against Clan Naga Sadow. We will have another chance to claim victory in a GJW over the summer/early fall. The start to our next clan campaign (which I am particularly excited about, as we have been building toward this plot line for two years now) with some new style formats and plots. There are endless opportunities for growth, development and fun coming at us this year.

The single most important thing I want to make clear is that we are a family here in CSP. Go and do, push your boundaries, make something of yourself. The only reason I continue to lead Scholae Palatinae, despite frustrations, set backs, and all the hard work for it, is because I love it. And I love it because of you guys. From the newest Novitiate to the crankiest Elder, you have given me so much over the last several years. Lets make the next one amazing.

And to those outside of the Clan, I want to thank you as well. Sure we may try to kill each other in character, but the friendships made and efforts made have strengthened all of us. We may all have our own unit loyalty, but we are also parts of the whole. Parts of a Brotherhood.

Now let’s go kick some ass.

• Xen

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. - Henry David Thoreau

From the Office of the Rollmaster

Much thanks to the efforts of Landon Cruise before me, Scholae Palatinae has seen explosive growth in the last year. In terms of new recruits, we had steadily been growing over 2015. Landon's recruitment efforts from Star Conflict had been drawing many new members to the clan. Kyo Akumu joined us last summer and recently reached the rank of knight. The clan also attracted ready-made leaders in Rosh Nyine and Lexiconus Qor. Since the turn of 2016, we attracted one of the brightest cohorts of new members that I can remember for a long time: Alara, Blade and Zehsaa have fit in seamlessly with the Scholae Palatinae community and have been advancing rapidly up the ranks. 2016 has also seen the transfer of club legend Cyris Oscura. I have no doubt that those who joined us in the last few months will lead the clan to glory in the next big competition.

We have been working on fostering talent within the clan's both experienced and newer members. The quality of submissions to my monthly topic in January was outstanding, from members both new and old. I'm hoping we will soon see similar improvements in our abilities in all aspects of the db. It's been great to see the activity in the clan run-on too, with newer members getting involved and leading the story.

The Empire's appearance on the wiki is something we have been working on over a long period of time, however uncertainty over the Dark Council's plans for changes to the dominion and military of the brotherhood have presented many barriers. Regardless, many new pages have been developed and others have been scrapped as we strive for consistency and concise information that's easier to access.

• Elincia Rei

From the Office of House Imperium

For the Empire! This statement represents the heart and soul that go into what House Imperium has flourished and been designed to represent. It’s not for the Imperials, or for the Force Sensitives, but for the Empire in its entirety. We uphold a high standard of respect for all members; from Adept to Apprentice, from Sith to Jedi and from the soldiers of Imperium to the spies of Excidium. We want to assure you that without the aid of Excidium’s activity and morale, Imperium would have a hard time being a strong house. Gaming has become a vibrant community within the house. From within a year, Imperium has seen many members join together on servers such as Star Conflict, Battlefront, Destiny and many more mobile games that we have in Tier 1 lists. Landon Cruise represents the community of Star Conflict gamers, by hosting competitions and retaining this epic community that are self-sustainable. It is with this friendly and approachable community, Imperium have become a sanctuary for gamers.

Our wiki pages were lacking the updates needed as being a very young house part of reclanning, it was obvious there needed to be further work on the history and origins of us. Through the hard work of notable members such as Delak, Dek and Elincia, our wiki pages are starting to look like a sub­unit worthy of joining. With detailed descriptions on what our settlements are like, background history on the foundations of this house and recent facts about what happened in Monstrosities. The isle our house is based on has been updated to represent the changes House Imperium imposed on it, as well as the recent clan event. Without volunteers and regular members, the wiki pages in our house wouldn’t be this detailed and expansive.

Shadow Guard is a recently rejuvenated battleteam that came to life at the hands of its Battleteam Leader, Delak, and his active members. Together with Chrome, Zagro Fenn, Landon Cruise, Kyo, Sim, Sparky and Arthadonis, the battleteam has brought activity, progression and attention towards Imperium from curious members. Known at the Stealth Infiltration Unit, their lore represents the shadows behind the light of Imperium’s justice. As the sword of Scholae Palatinae, Imperium represents strength, valour and honour in our hard work. We are for the Empire.

• Lexiconus Qor

From the Office of House Excidium

The state of House Excidium is in an age of prosperity and continues to rise with triumph. We have seen the events of a Small Spark introduce a glorious campaign on a defector of our dark house beneath the shadows. This also set our first storyline in stone based on the fictional identity of the house as a specialty group of Clan Scholae that operate unofficially to do the Emperor’s bidding without anyone knowing what happens with members on their own to survive the mission.

Participation has been extremely high with too many crescents that I am able to sum up in this address but I won’t bore you with all the data sets. We have had many promotions within the house as well to cap off a spectacular finish of the year for the house. Both Promotions and participation of membership has been spread out across the board with both equite ranks and journeyman earning crescents and promotions for a strong class stratification of the house. We have been able to retain members as well as recruit new members making a stable population with a rate of positive growth.

There is a new battleteam within the House headed by Shadow Nighthunter with a full complement of members that have already jumped on board. The Team has already made a name for itself as Battleteam Tacitus Athanasius with all ideas in store. The team is also in the works for a motto and beginning work on its history tied to the house. More anticipation is to be seen with the emergence of the Battleteam.

Another campaign has started up to further strengthen the house with more lore of its history. Stunted with low participation, drive will continue into the transition of other events. We will see an upsurge of motivation and activity in the following days and weeks to get hyped for the Clan feud as well as inter brotherhood events with Excidium to surge forward to be the best it can be and hopefully the top.

• Lucyeth

Intel: Brotherhood Wide - The New Day

The biggests news in the club comes from the Grand Master. He has released the first of our new timeline fictions along side the announcement that we are officially moving into Episode 7’s timeline of 34 ABY. This knocks us all back a little ways, so everyone from the club wide history to individual’s character histories will need some tweaking to fit. Sarin’s report has more information about specifics of both this change and the plan going forward. I highly recommend reading the fiction (as it is awesome) as well checking out the details of this move.

For the clan lore this means pushing back the fictional date on a lot of things, as well as cleaning up our bits with canon approved information. The T:Wiki Report has a lot of good further information of how the wiki will be transitioning into this new timeline.

Basically the most important bit of all of this is we are now in 34 ABY. No deus ex machina plot device getting us there, we are just saying that is what it is and having it be done. It will take some effort but everything will be moving to fit this timeline.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Changing of the Guard

As announced in several emails over the last few weeks, there is some changes coming to Team Kickass. But fret not, for the great wheel of awesome work in the clan halts for no one.

Our faithful Proconsul, Eetherbiail Zarih'Taen, has decided to resign. With coming months of very exciting real life developments, he made this difficult decision after several conversations of what is to come in the club as well. Eether, just as passionate as a leader as he is a member, it has been a great thrill to see your efforts as a leader in the Clan. Thank you for your service. The announcement of the new Proconsul will come in the next couple of days.

This weekend also marks the end of “The Old-man”, Kell Palpatine Dante, run as Quaestor of House Imperium. Dante remains one of the established members of the clan, and I want to thank him for his long standing efforts for us all.

Replacing him is current Aedile, Lexiconus Qor, who has been slaying it these past few months. Joining Lexic to round out the Imperium summit is Blade Ta’var. She is bringing in some great ideas to the position and I am very excited to see what these two do to further Imperium’s epicness.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - The Subterfuge

Emperor’s Chambers
Imperial Palace
Ohmen, Judecca
Cocytus system

Ja’ak. Vexok savaka.

Xen’Mordin’s eyes snapped open.

“My lord, the files you requested,” the courier repeated timidly. It was his first time even being in the presence of the Emperor. Beads of sweat rolled down the boy’s soft and youthful features.

“Put them down and leave. This request never happened,” Xen commanded, his voice sharp and threatening. The courier jumped slightly and threw the physical copies of the files onto the nearest table. The boy turned and bolted without so much as another glance. The pathetic lad already forgotten about, the Emperor reached for the pile of papers. He paused just short of them, hand hovering.

He recalled no such request. He was surprised to even see paper was still in use for anything more than those ancient, dusty tomes that lay forgotten by time itself.

He slowly lowered his hand to the cover page of the report. Curiosity getting the better of him, he flipped the page.

His brow furrowed, eyes moving rapidly along the page. For a the briefest moment, his eyes went wide. Then came the clenched jaw and intense gaze of deep and urgent thinking. He knew what had to be done.

Imperium Headquarters
March Isle, Judecca

The Quarren, lost deep in thought, stroked one of the many tentacles protruding from his chin. Settling into his new role as Quaestor of House Imperium had been easier than anticipated. Surely there was nothing that could stop the Battlemaster’s relentless push forward for greater power.

“Ah yes this will do nicely,” Lexiconus said to himself, plopping up one of the many delicacies set before him. His thin tongue watered at the thought of indulging himself with such a tasty morsel, mind contemplating what other perks he would discover as Quaestor.

The door to his office swished open, and an intelligence officer came bounding breathlessly into the room. The intrusion caused the Quarren to drop his meal to the ground. Before he could lash out over this annoyance from the officer, she spoke.

“Priority 1 message coming in, sir. It's…” the woman trailed off for a second before continuing, “It’s the Emperor.”

Lexiconus dismissed her with a quick wave of his hand. He straightened himself up, not about to look the full before the Emperor himself. Even he knew better than to simply dismiss a message like this. Lunch would have to wait.

Undisclosed Location
Caina
Cocytus system

Somewhere in the middle of the Emperor’s message, Lucyeth had stood abruptly, his chair toppling over. Now that the message had ended he stood still, staring into the blue haze of the hologram’s projector.

The message had ended five minutes ago.

Orders such as this came rarely, and rarer yet concerning issues within the clan itself. Lucyeth knew all too well the disreputable nature of his subordinates in House Excidium. Yet, not even they would tolerate betrayal. They would not sit idly by, and neither could he. He drew his cloak tight around him and turned to leave the small safehouse.

He tapped several commands into his comm as he angled the device to shield his face as best he could from the biting cold winds of Caina.

And with that the news was sent. Within seconds, every member of House Excidium would receive it. It would be be answered without question, and in a matter of hours, they would be in position to strike.

Emperor’s Chambers
Imperial Palace
Ohmen, Judecca
Cocytus system

Xen’s eyes were heavy, his mind fogged. Maybe he had grown too cocky. So certain was he of himself, of his Clan, of his Empire. But he was the Emperor, and even he could not argue with what he had read. Though it bordered on incredulous, he was confident with the ploy he had set in motion.There was more that threatened the very existence of Clan Scholae Palatinae than mere monsters or insurgents. Threats from within were equally real, and there was only one way that he could gauge his followers’ resolve, and most importantly, their loyalty. One final test would yield the answer he sought.

His eyes fell on the open holocron that lay idle on his desk. He had seen the truth. All that he could do was wait and watch.

Transmission
Priority 1
All Members of House Imperium
Direct from the Emperor

Attention members of House Imperium,

Today, the order and stability you have helped bring to the Cocytus system is threatened. Not by some ancient evil, or bold outsider, but from within. These men and women you so deemed to call brothers and sisters, they have plotted against you.

House Excidium, those honorless, anarchistic curs, have been sowing the seeds needed to supplant we loyal followers of the Empire. They perceive our government as weak. Indeed, they seek to exert a far more brutal, relentless form of control and rule over the populace in a regime of bloodshed and terror. Through their secret networks, control of the black market, and decentralized facilities, they seek to tear apart everything that we have built and protected and bled for.

Your orders are to rout out these renegades and bring them to justice. Order must be maintained, for the Empire!

Transmission
Priority 1
All Members of House Excidium
Direct from the Emperor

Attention members of House Excidium,

Today, the networks and power which you have established throughout the Cocytus system faces opposition. An opposition the likes of which we have never faced before. Those we so deemed to call brothers and sisters now seek to overthrow us.

House Imperium, seeks to insure they are the only ones left standing, they seek to overthrow our control of the Empire. Feeling that we grant population too much freedom, they wish to crack down upon those whom we rule over. This ploy has not been sanctioned by my will. Indeed they intended to force the rest of the Clan out of the system, and securely rule alone and uninhibited. Headquartered on the March Isles, they wish to flush Excidium out of your safehouses and into their trap.

Your orders are to rip the foundation out from beneath these two-faced betrayers. Break them and bring them to justice. For the Empire!

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Subterfuge Competitions!

Subterfuge is now live! Like in the past, this is a multi-competition event. Individuals will like always, earn points for participation and for placing in these competitions. However, as this is a feud, both houses will be going at it to earn the most points. participation numbers do count on the house level for overall points! Some of you may remember last time where Excidium took out a win, in part thanks to their great participation numbers. And now for the competitions themselves!

Traitor!: PVP Gaming is here once again. Despite being a house feud, this will be based on an unweighted PVP score from matches against anyone in the club submitted to this competition. This is because I wanted people to be able to participate in this, and not struggle to find someone to PVP against.

Rapture of Battle: This is the feud’s fiction competition. There are two prompts to be found in this competition, one for House Excidium members and one for House Imperium members. Make sure you are paying attention to which one you do!

Smack Talk: Poetry, about bringing down your rival house. There must be some form of poetic structure on these, no free verse prose.

Foul Cur: This is the graphics competition where you are to depect just what you would do to the rival house members to prevent them from succeeding in their “goals”.

The Tomorrow That Never Was: As a bit of an inverse to the graphics competition, this comic maker event has you depecting what your precieved vision of the system would be like if your rival house succeeded in their goals.

The Brightside: This is a caption contest. There is a SW related photo you will see once you subscribe, that you are then to give a funny caption to.

Enemies of the State: This is the trivia for the feud, focusing on both houses and members. This one will give LoS to the top two instead of crescents like the other competitions.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Ask the Xen!

Blade asks: Do we have a force masseuse?

• Of course. All kinds of massages up in here.

Blade asks: are some of these masseuses hot men?

• Of course, we have to take care of all preferences!

Cruise asks: So can we finally add another Clan force power in the future? Taming the wild animals is cool and all, but what about the ability to fly or levitate stuff.

• Clan Force powers haven’t been a thing for a while now. And when they were taming wild animals was never one of ours. Plant Surge and Combustion were.

Archangel asks: does the resurgent star destroyer seem like a good fit for the csp fleet? * Yiss Plz.

Cyris asks: What changes, if any, are planning to align csp with the recent fiction update? Will the results of the upcoming house feud feed into it?

• The House Feud won’t directly feed into it, mainly because I had been working on it prior to the new fiction update dropping, and then being too stubborn and busy to make it more so. But yes, I definitely want to not exist solely in a bubble.

Cyris asks: Also, we have established that I get your goods if you die. Can I also get Consul? If yes, will you sign it in blood?

• Going to have to throw that one to Sarin, not me. :P

Lexiconus asks: what do you like about the fiction updates and timeline adjustments? What is Xen's plan following the GM's Jedi incursion?

• I thought the update was awesome and made a lot of sense given what the club is. COU being part of the “brotherhood” fictionally never made a lot of sense to me. We can all be OOC pals and still want to shank each other IC just fine. Xen’s plan is to toast to the GM’s health and stay the hell out of the way of his lightsaber.

Archangel asks: does xen feel like that he needs the praetorian guard with him at all times?

• I wouldn’t say he feels like he needs them around, but his ego sure likes it.

Lexiconus asks: on a scale of one to ten, how many times a day does he test his food and drink for poison? ;)

• This is what I keep Reiden around for.

Archangel asks: does Arch need to defend you all the time now?

• Looks like we may hit that point. ;)

Lexiconus asks: do you want two adopted squidlings?

• No.

Blade asks: How long do you think the squidlings will live under Lexi's care?

• Longer than with me.

Lexiconus asks: Does Xen need some prozac?

• Probably

Archangel asks: rayne asks why should I come back?

• Because we love you! CSP isn’t the same without you! And Arch starts to smell weird when you aren’t around!

Archangel asks: if you were a pokemon, which one would you be?

• Charizard

Lexiconus asks: fiction wise, what do the Consul-Emeritus do for the Clan?

• Depends on the Consul and how they want to remain involved in retirement.

Archangel asks: scholae is the premier imperial clan in the db. Will this continue in the face of the recent advancement in db lore?

• I can’t speak for directions that the club as a whole is going to take. I can promise you that I am 110% behind maintaining our foundation as the Imperial clan.

Well I think that is enough for this report. Keep awesome Scholae Palatinae!

tl;dr
* DB is now in 34 ABY
* We’ve been reclanned for a year!
* Lexic and Blade = new Imperium QUA and AED
* Many thanks to Eether and Dante!
* PCON announcement is forth coming
* Participate in our House Feud!

And because it is super sick, here is the recently finished commission piece done by Cyris for Lexic, featuring the mini-thulu himself, and “the old-man” Dante.

For the Empire!

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