Hello Scholae Palatinae! This last month has seen some great activity from everyone. It also marked our second year of being reclanned! Which means it’s time for our annual State of the Empire address! This report also comes with information regarding some very big clan changes, including the destruction of the fleet and the new clan logo. Apologies for it being a little late, but I definitely wanted to be able to talk about the massive new fiction drop and what it means for us as a clan.

The Hellfire

Present
Cliff Edge Near Ohmen City
Judecca, Cocytus system

The city was burning.

This was not the first time it had been assaulted, but it would be the last. A vortex of infernal hellfire coursed upwards from the lowest sections of the city. At this distance the flames and smoke pouring out of the mountainous city could have been mistaken for an active volcano, just boiling to the rim. Through the thick black smoke, flashes of the green laser fire coming in from low orbit could be seen, hurling towards the ground before erupting into more death and destruction.

And the city continued to burn.

Somewhere in orbit, the unseen assailants operated with a clean, precise efficiency. The Cocytus system had been little more than a tribal mess when first discovered by the Palatinaeans and even now, its advancement came solely from the Empire that ruled it, not a major threat for the full might of the Iron Legion to deal with. The Empire was experiencing its death throes in a savage and brutal display of power. There would be precious few alive in the system when fires burned out to mourn its loss.

And the city continued to burn.

The steady cadence of the orbital bombardment provided a smooth rhythm for the percussion of collapsing buildings, cracking vibrato of the flames, and chorus of screaming civilians. Even at this distance, and over the sounds of destruction raining down on the city, the shrill screams cut through the cold mountain air. It was all too easy to make out the panic and agonizing tones of a dying people whose only crime was to live there. The lucky ones died quickly, vaporized in the initial blasts of pure energy from orbit. The unlucky ones, however, were left to burn slowly in the flames, be crushed under the rubble of the collapsing city, or suffocate in the rising smoke. It would do little to comfort the citizens of Ohmen to know the same fate awaited the rest of the system, all condemned to die.

And the city continued to burn.

Xen’Mordin stood unblinking on the cliff edge and watched his home be destroyed. His cloak tugged at his shoulders in the wind, which was luckily blowing the billowing burning smoke away. Yet, even at this safe distance away from the city, he could still feel the lick of heat from the flames. Part of him resented the warmth, oddly comforting in the cool crisp evening air, almost as if he was out camping. His heart ached for what was taking place before his eyes. Part of him wished he had ventured into the city before the attack began, to die with his people. After all, the captain should go down with his ship. It would be a permanent scar of failure.

And the city continued to burn.

For over two decades Scholae Palatinae had called this system home, and with Ohmen as its capital. For over two decades the Clan had worked to bring a group of feudal tribes into a society befitting the legacy of Palpatine, the first to bask in the glory of the new Empire. For Xen’Mordin it had been the sole motivating force in his life for so long he didn’t even remember what it was like to not have every action work towards that end. And now, he stood a lonely vigil as it all crumbled away. His only solace was that the Empire was more than the dirt beneath his feet. Cocytus might burn away, but when the flames died what remained would be pure and undying. A fresh start, born in the ashes of a fallen Empire. History had come full circle for them.

A soft questioning voice from behind him stirred Xen’Mordin from his deep contemplation.

“... Why?”

Click here to read the full fiction update.

This fiction accompanies the club wide update found here

Another year as a clan has come and gone. We’ve seen some big changes and are sitting on even bigger ones launching us into the future. Changes in leadership, major clan events, massive clan feuds, possessions launch, logo change, a fleet destroyed, and now our home of many years, the Cocytus system burns. Let’s rewind the clock. A year ago at this time, we were in the early stages of the second house feud we’ve had since being reclanned. We were facing the changes of a new Proconsul, Cyris, joining our ranks. Both Houses hit it hard to win bragging rights. Led from the front by great leaders, both Houses had something to be proud of in their efforts. While Imperium took home the gold, we saw 25 separate individuals comes out to participate.

Then came the epic clan feud, Shattered Ties, against Naga Sadow. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into getting it going, and through the efforts of 28 of you, we were able to secure victory in the first real clan feud we had experienced in years. We then went on to round off the year with two acts of the Order Campaign, featuring some of the biggest sets of competitions in clan history.

While as much as my ego would like to take credit for the kickass progress we’ve made over the last year, I can’t. When it comes down to it what makes CSP great is each and everyone of you. As a clan I’ve seen just so much active bonding and friendship develop this last year it blows my mind. Y’all are what make this job so worthwhile. Thanks for being awesome Scholae, and here is looking forward what the next year brings us, together, to rock.

For the Empire!
Xen’Mordin

From the office of the Proconsul

We’ve seen numerous changes to CSP in the last year at all levels, structurally and fictionally. We began March with a change in the Proconsul role, as Cyris Oscura stepped into the position, bringing a wealth of talent and experience. Shortly afterwards, we entered and won the feud with Clan Naga Sadow, requiring an excellent performance on the part of every member that participated. The feud showed the club what we can do as a clan, with us dominating the team based events, and scoring well in competitions across all areas of the club. In August, Cyris stepped down as Proconsul, prompting the shift in summit to the one we have now, with myself as Proconsul and my master, Mune, as Rollmaster.

I feel as a group we’ve accomplished a lot since then. Fictionally, we embarked on a new adventure, with Xen, unknowingly under the control of Darth Fallax, sending the clan to Aesirus to make space for him to move in his own men. For the first time in our history, Scholae Palatinae lost control of the Cocytus System, and Xen lost control of his body to the Sith Lord. While a successful counter-attack resulted in the death of Darth Fallax, Xen was critically injured, leaving the clan without an emperor to rule it.

One of the highest profile changes to the clan is the military. Although this hasn’t been implemented fictionally yet, the details are public on our possessions page and the wiki. This was a massive challenge to design a fleet that accommodated the feedback of many who had conflicting opinions over what a Scholae Palatinae fleet should look like. Our two co-flagships, a Victory and a Venator class Star Destroyers should serve the clan well and also provide a great venue for future fictions. We held a naming competition and many of you came up with excellent names which will be used when we really flesh this out, following official fictional implementation.

This leads on to the most public change of all: the logo. For quite some time, the clan logo was displayed poorly on the dark brotherhood website. A detailed proposal outlining why we need a change was accepted, prompting Xen to send approximately seven trillion ideas at my telegram inbox. Eventually, we agreed on the imperial cog at the centre, with a background reminiscent of the Death Star window, combining two iconic aspects of the Galactic Empire we fictionally try to emulate.

From the office of House Imperium

When you look at the Cocytus Empire and the Clan in order to see what it is truly developed into in 2017, you will start to notice slight segregation between groups of people. You’ve got artists who share their trade secrets and methods, as well as showing their WIPs. You have the hardcore gamers, prodding and poking and urging their squadrons on, just to get that one more game in before midnight reset. You will have the IT coders, who like to share their techniques in dissolving bugs, working their way around server errors, or how to simply switch environments.Then there are the authors of writing, which I can honestly say resides in all of us. We discuss realism theories with each other, converse the difference between a blaster and slugthrower, we toss the hot potato of canon between the experts and new members. This diverse and collective group of members, can simply flourish on a typical Tuesday morning. This is the life that we, in Clan Scholae Palatinae and House Imperium, are accustomed to.

If you want to look further at what Imperium do, you only need to see what we have achieved in the past year. We’ve had the Subterfuge event, where Imperium and Excidium were pitted against one another in a fight to the death, and Imperium came out on top. We’ve had the Rollmaster Monthly Topics from former Rollmaster Elincia Rei, who took in your feedback and gave suitable competitions for you to enjoy, we’ve also enjoyed the Character Development Workshop from our former Proconsul Cyris, who edged us on and stood by us when we needed help writing stories. We also had the massive Shattered Ties event, which totalled with Seventeen competitions!! All against our rivals Clan Naga Sadow, and with the help of Excidium, we won! Then we came across operation Starfall, as our Consul began to show his sinister side further, and we gave Excidium a run for their credits. We truly did. Then finally the dancefloor opened up to Midnight, the biggest and most heavily active event in the Clan’s history! With a whopping Twenty-two events, that was hard work! But Imperium pulled through, and we always will.

As the knowledgeable, the loyal and the formidable force behind the Clan’s might, we represent an influx of progressive talent, enthusiasm and genuine passion for Star Wars because like the Jedi and Sith, we fight in wars and on the front lines. And it can only grow better in 2017. I look forward to watching you, Clan mates.

From the office of House Excidium

Our House has undergone some dramatic changes in the past twelve months in leadership and identity. I apologize that those changes will not slow down in the coming year. I do, however, believe that our best iteration of ourselves is yet to come throughout this year. Already, we have taken steps to solidify our House by appointing new leadership in preparation for the year. We have both a Quaestor and an Aedile. We have a Battle Team at full capacity with members that are both active and communicating on a daily basis. And this has sparked conversation to consider a second Battle Team for Our House. In addition, to our current leaders, we have appointed both a Fiction Captain and Gaming Captain to help us shape the landscape in 2017. These non-leadership, servant roles were created exclusively to give our members the best assistance and tutelage in the coming months; these individuals even have Lieutenants who are participating and learning the ropes to succeed them. They will help you shape competition ideas, prepare them for submission to the Master At Arms, teach you policy and best practices, while ensuring our House has competitions ran by you.

This House will be driven by its members, not its leaders. Your House Leadership - Braecen, Alara, Shadow, Rasilvenaira, Xan, Kylex, and Derek - will support your every endeavor. This is a place for growth, fun, and fandom. It is not a place for politics, pettiness, or hoarding. You will have a voice in what we do, where our journey takes us, and the activities we do to get there. We will create opportunities for everyone to achieve their goals for promotions and awards. We will also do our very best to set you up for eventual positions in leadership or support throughout the club to the best of our ability. With all of that said, it does come at a price... you must put in the work to attain the reward. We cannot do it for you, but you have us every step of the way - at your side, ready to help.

As you read in the opening fiction... our world is changing. And so is the shape of our mission, our leaders, and our members. Keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks as we vault House Excidium into the upper echelons of the Brotherhood. Together.

Intel: Brotherhood Wide - Justice, Education, and Games Galore

Several things of note have gone on for the club since our last report. First up is the biennial confirmation of the Justicar. With the release of the newly ratified Covenant at the start of the year, one of the things added was that every two years, should the sitting Justicar wish to remain Justicar, the electorate must vote to reconfirm him. The vote reconfirmed Grand Master Jac Cotelin unanimously.

The Shadow Academy has gone through a reorganization consolidating a lot of the department halls, and reducing the number of overall staff required to managed the exams. This restructure also gives some logical oversight from the relevant DCers over certain departments (Voice over writing courses, Fist over gaming and combat). If you guys haven’t checked out the SA recently, you should! A lot of exams have been audited and reworked over the last while.

Finally, there has been an addition of some new acceptable gaming platforms. These come in the form of Titanfall 2, which is available for PS4, Xbone, and PC, along with Star Wars: Force Arena, which is a mobile game. Both of these have proven to be fairly popular so be sure to check them out if you own them!

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Hellfire

Hopefully by this point you’ve had a chance to read Wally’s most excellent club fiction update and the accompanying clan fiction, which has been in the works for quite a while now.

So to start this off - Yes. We really did destroy all of the Cocytus system.

Everyone has known for a while that the next fiction update for the club would see the remainder of the clans’ fleets destroyed. This largely was fictionally necessary to explain the sudden smaller fleets we were able to purchase in the possessions system. Along with the fleet nuke, we were presented an option for system damage if we so wished it.

For me, this was a pretty easy decision to make. I have a great deal of love for the Cocytus system, and it really has been the clan’s home for a long time now. But the opportunity of being able to develop a new system for our use, and all the massive amount of fictional directions we can take it was just something too good to let pass. Destroying the system has actually been an idea I’ve been floating around with the summit team for a few years now.

So what’s up with the scene with Evant and Xen?

They know something is going to happen. The scale and details of it aren’t known, but the threat is imminent. Evant is there both to warn Xen that something will happen, and to do something about it so the clan can survive. Good thing he did, because a day later things were very much on fire.

So where do we sit now?

The Clan is chilling on a medical station. We have the Sidious. We will be running a few competitions around this turn of events and obtaining the bulk of our new fleet to give the ships a bit more history to them. And then we will strike out to find our new home.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - New Logo

We finally have a new logo!

Mentioned in a Herald report a few months ago, it was brought up that it is now possible for a clan to change their clan logo if there was a good reason for it. Our much beloved old logo, was quite badass, and had some great links to our past (The Dragon, The Sword, The Sun). However, there were quite a few issues with it as well. Firstly it was a very detailed piece, which when shrunk down like it commonly is on the site, made it very difficult to tell anything in it. Second, the symbols it used it just aren’t reflectively of the clan today. After a fair bit of internal discussion on this, Elincia put together this great proposal about why we wanted it changed.

Both Sarin and Vyr quickly agreed that a change was warranted. In that proposal you will see a couple of the initial designs I made to start the ball rolling on this process. What followed was what I am sure was a very annoying couple of weeks for Vyr, Elincia, and the rest of the CSP leadership team. Dozens upon dozens of logos and looks were designed and I was sharing with all of them to get to where we needed to get.

If you look at images in the proposal, the initial idea was to 1. Include at least part of the imperial cog logo into the design. 2. Make something a fair bit more simpler, and unique to stand out on the site.

Eventually I recalled reading an anecdote about RotJ. A designer talked about how Palpatine’s throne room window was designed to look like a spiderweb. So I made up a design that was manly a straight on replication of that window.

And that gave us what was the real foundation of where we ended up. Following some feed back from Vyr I made the cog element more pronounced, and reduced a lot of the just white noise in the image. Many, many, many revisions later, we ended up with a logo we were all very happy with. It is something I hope you all enjoy as well as we continue to look forward and develop deeper as a clan.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - #AskTheXen

Katyusha asks: can i worship you IC as a god?

• Well nothing is stopping you from doing that, but I don’t think Xen is really at a level people would ever do that.

Dek asks: For Jurden's fiction comps he seems to be involving himself in many alternate dimension activities. Has any move been made to...expedite...the bringing forth of health potions from alternate dimensions to heal the Emperor?

• That is a good idea to get Xen back on his feet. Though I’m pretty sure all of us lack the power to break the interdimensional wall and obtain them.

Alara asks: how did you manage to get out of potato form? Is your skin peeling?

• As funny as the potato jokes have been, Xen hasn’t be literally a potato. :P That said the cold weather here HAS made my skin super dry and irritated in places.

Wagglehorn asks: Speaking of spuds, how DO you like your potatoes? Fried? Mashed? Twice baked?

• Yes. Potatoes. I love me some potatoes.

Jurdan asks: what alternate universe would you like to get the medical help from?

• Is there one that comes in the form of Emma Watson? Cause I would pick that one.

Xan asks: do you prefer your skooma delivered by sock, or saran wrapped and stuffed inside a loaf of bread?

• por que no los dos?

Katyusha asks: If you could go on vacation on one planet, which would it be?

• Hmmmmm. That is a tough one. Probably Coruscant, Naboo, or the non-cratered parts of Scarif would be pretty nice to go to for some vacay.

Shadow asks: would the empire be interested in a bar and club room located in a cave chamber full of giant, bio-luminescent mushrooms and crystals?

• That sounds like a cool idea. Though I would hope the mushrooms don’t smell weird. If they could be the trippy kind of mushrooms that would be really amusing. :P

Lithar asks: Could me and Jorm 'borrow' ICN Sidious and make a TV show with it? :P

• No.

Kylex asks: how does TA and SG respectively affect the decisions of the summit?

• Both teams have specific functions. Those functions are utilized by the summit as needed. If they didn’t exist, the Empire would have to find other resources to accomplish the same/similar objectives.

Kylex asks: how long u gonna be a potato?

• Read above.

Reiden asks: now that signs of life from Dante have been seen, any news on potential new Palpatine(s)?

• Dante isn’t the single deciding factor. And just because he hasn’t emailed the clan in a while doesn’t mean we haven’t seen him or talked about it. :P There is no set schedule to naming new Palpatines. We discuss and name when we feel it is merited.

Derek asks: Would you be open to using Black Eagle's twin as a higher up in the CSP military? (In a couple of years of course)

• If there was a reason for it maybe.

Lexiconus asks: do you have any vital tips to give someone who desires a CON-level position?

• Stock up on caffeine. On a more serious note, get comfortable making choices that will piss people off, learn to clearly explain why you are doing things, and be prepared to have to to always be 'on'.

Katyusha asks: do you have any info on how i can be a successful sith in DJB?

• Don't steal people's alcohol. Find your biggest passion and own it. Find your greatest shortcoming and own that too.

Derek asks: What word in the english language makes you mad?

• Moist.

Rasilvenaira asks: Can I have Ptolomea back?

• Errrrr about that… No. Its dead.

Jurdan asks:who is your favorite once upon a time character?

• I don't watch this show so I dunno.

Wagglehorn asks: what type of potato would you most identify as? Sweet? Idaho? Russet?

• All potatoes are good enough to identify with.

Lexiconus asks: How would you describe Xen's and Stana's relationship?

• We’ve been asked to keep the club PG-13 ;)

Phew. That was a lot to cover. Hope you all are as excited for what these recent developments mean for us as a clan, I know I sure am.

tl:dr:

• Two years reclanned!
• Cocytus Burns!
• New Logo!

For the Empire!

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