Hello Scholae Palatinae! September is coming to a close, fall is here, and a great many awesome things are coming your way! No, not just the availability of pumpkin spice for everything you are eating, but a coming final Fading Light Round, stuff for the last round of the LHC and more.

Intel: Brotherhood Wide - DC Changes and Cool Things

There were some pretty big changes in the DC this last month. Raken stepped down as Deputy Grandmaster after a hard working run. He was a great guy to work with and I want to thank him for all his tremendous efforts as our DGM. Stepping up as our new DGM is Darth Pravus, aka Sarin, who is no stranger to the role. This left the position of VOICE open to be filled, in this case by our Combat Master, Mav, who is going to fill both those positions for the time being. Sarin and Mav are both most excellent leaders and I’m more than pleased to get to work with both of them.

The DC changes hasn’t slowed the work flow forward either. A great deal of new stuff has been announced and in some cases released. Firstly, we are inching closer to the long awaited possessions system. Many of you probably noticed secret developmental section on your admin menus and the credit history. There is now a new credit thing to look at. After logging into the site you should see a “Credit Accounts” button in the “Your Character” section of your admin menu. Clicking on that should take you to a new page where you can see what your total amount of accrued credits are. You can also see how those credits were earned, based on different medals earned, time in ranks, and positions held. It is all super cool so go check it out. This is all part of testing the system, so remember numbers are subject to change, but it is still very exciting to see whats going on with it. Muz announced in his GM report, that we will continue to see a slow release of parts of this system as it moves along instead of just an all at once dump. Also important is that Muz announced in his report that the goal is by the time a member reaches DJK, they should have earned enough credits to buy a ship. Now at that point it won’t be very upgraded (which is also a planned part of the system) but getting your own ship is a pretty freaking awesome thing. So keep your eyes peeled for more information as it gets tested and phased into usage.

Along side the possessions tease, Muz also teased the plan for an achievement like system for the club. A “badges” tab on your dossier which highlights achievements you’ve earned while in the club. Achievements have become a pretty common thing for games ever since Microsoft added them to the X-box system. Since then Sony has followed up with “trophies” on the playstation system, and a great deal of mobile games even have unlock-able achievements. They never really add anything but the bragging rights of “look what I did”, which as it turns out, is a really good motivator in getting people to do things. Why else would someone go to the trouble of collecting all 500 of random object in a game? There weren’t a lot of specifics on they types of “badges” we can earn, but Muz did say the list is growing quite rapidly. Should be a cool thing to see implemented.

There is some new SA news, with a awesome new Graphics Journeymen Hall available for you to enjoy. There has also finally been an update to the old Dark side Order CORE exams in the Core Studies Hall, making it finally completely updated. DB Basics, Dark and Light side Core exams are now all updated and ready to be enjoyed. Core exams have been a staple of the SA for a very long time, and if for whatever reason, you’ve skipped doing them, now is a great time give them a look over and see what all the different orders have to offer.

As Mav has announced/teased some new types of ACC battle formats. Warzone venues drop you in the middle of a large conflict. Unleashed venues let you access force powers as if you were a Master, and Co-Op venues allow people to take on an NPC instead of just trying to kill each other (a concept I really would like to work into a future HSP House event, so get qualified people!). Mav also acknowledges that a dogfighting venue is a possibility if enough people want to write up some space combat. While all these give some different takes on ACC Combat, Mav is also offering for a limited time Dark Side Scrolls for well written venue ideas. You can check out his report for more information about that.

Aabs, our wonderful MAA, released quite a lengthy report detailing some new MAA policy changes. The QUA Quicknotes version is firstly, there has been an update to the crescent tiers, putting Independent Houses on the same level as Clans for awarding 3rd level crescents, which means we can award even better base medals for all of the competitions we run in the house. There was also a change to the “upgrade” policy on tiers, so upgrading from 5th level to 4th level happens with 5 participants in the competition (making it better for battle team run stuff wink) while the rest of the tiers sit 10 participants. Don’t forget that upgrading is possible for nearly all competitions (especially ones here in the house) so the more of you participating, the more likely it is we can get a medal upgrade! The second major policy change is all fiction/poetry/runon will award Clusters of Ice. Up to now it has just been Voice co-run DJB competitions. This is a pretty awesome policy change, and something you should keep in mind if you are running a competition that can award CIs, to make sure you keep track of word counts and email Mav about it when it is done. If people earned CIs, they very much should get them. Also Aabs’ report had an excellent section about writing recommendations that I think everyone should read, doubly so if you want to work as a leader in this club. It had very critical and good information about the recommendation writing practice.

Intel: Brotherhood Wide - War!

I know the current running ACC round of Fading Light has left most of the house in a state of forgetting about the end of the crusade efforts, but fear not, it is coming to an end. Currently the Final Round is underway in a battle between Aiden vs Timeros. I hope you all go check it and other battles of the Fading Light tournament to see just how awesome the ACC is and how skilled some of the members of this club are at it.

With the ACC coming to an end, the final round of Fading Light has been announced and prepped with a start date. October 10th will find us once again competing against our fellow club members on Nicht Ka with more traditional competitions such as fiction, gaming, and graphics. The last fading light round will conclude on November 2nd giving people that extra weekend on top of its 3 week runtime to get submissions in. Expect a great deal more information as it is released.

But Xen, what about the GJW? I am glad you asked. As of now, the GJW is currently slated for a early January start date. It will be super awesome so make sure to use October’s Fading Light round to get some more practice in at kicking ass. For the Empire!

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Awesome Members and ! A Family Heirloom

Firstly I want to recognized once again our two newest DJKs, Zagro and Delak, both of whom successfully completed their knighthood trials this last month. Getting to DJK is a massive accomplishment and these two did it with some amazing activity. Congratulations guys!

Yesterday saw the ending of our MMO themed Heirlooms event. Grading obviously hasn’t gotten done on it yet, but it will be quickly worked on. I hope you guys enjoyed the more silly nature of this event, as well as the opportunity to compete against the other battle teams in the house. Expect to see results, including which Battleteam gets the honor of being number one in the next few days. While the grading gets taken care of, I invite everyone who participated to shoot an email to Evant and myself about things you liked and more importantly didn’t like about this event. We did some rather different stuff with it, and we would like to know if people enjoyed some of that, or would rather we just went back to some of the more regular kinds of competitions we see. As always our goal is to give the most amount of awesome stuff we can, and if you think something fell flat, tell us. We want to know.

Intel: The Imperial News Net - Looking Home Campaign

The current goal is to have our epic finale to the Looking Home Campaign run through the month of December. Now I know pretty much everyone has a combination of school things to worry about, as well as family obligations due to the holidays. That is something I’m very much aware of (so much so I was one of the people who lobbied for the GJW to get pushed to next year to avoid a December run time), however its going to run for the full month. I know from personal experience that around day 3 of dealing with families in the holidays I’m looking for some excuses to get away and do something fun, so this is going to be a great thing for you to look at. :D

You are going to see several fictional updates from me throughout November as we lead up to our final show down against Zhan. There is going to be a lot of having you guys show off being awesome, and so I hope you guys get really excited for it. I’m also hoping to make it the biggest round of the LHC yet, with even more fun events for you to participate in. As it is a House only event, there shouldn’t be the stress of competing against other brotherhood units so you guys can focus on just being awesome and having a great time with it. It also will be the last real change you will have for practice on events before the GJW hits early next year. I think this LHC round is going to be an epic way to close out the year and I hope you all are excited to see it happen.

As part of the lead up for it happening, I have finished putting together a new wiki page for The Scions of Cocytus the villainous group Zhan is leading. Lots of informations about Zhan, the group and their exact involvement in our previous LHC rounds can be found within. As always if you want an even bigger refresher on the LHC, the event fictions are archived here. As I mentioned along side the Heirlooms informations, if there is any stuff you particularly love or particularly hate, please let me know because I want to make sure this last round is crazy epic and fun for each and every one of you. Things I find epic and fun aren’t always going to be what everyone else thinks so come poke me if you have anything you are just dying to do.

Okay, I think this massive wall of text is more than long enough. I hope you all are excited for the last few months of the year and the cool HSP and DJB-wide events that are coming to close it out. As a reward for sticking it out this far here is a joke. I took the shell of my racing snail thinking it would make him go faster. If anything it made him more sluggish.

Till next time! For the Empire!
Xen'Mordin Vismorsus
Quaestor of Scholae Palatinae