Is This Thing On?

Hello yes, this is Arch. Greetings, Sunriders!

I’m delighted to be back on COU’s summit after nearly two years away. Odan-Urr has been my home since August 2015. I spent my early days in House Satele Shan before moving into clan leadership as PCON and eventually CON. I’ve also spent a good amount of time on the ACC staff as a judge and Combat Master. I’m generally around on Telegram as @Archenksov and you can find me on Discord as Archenksov#2230. If all else fails, you can reach me via email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses]. You might be picking up on a theme here.

I’m excited to get to work with Raz, Jon, and the clan summit on making Sunrider the preeminent house in the Brotherhood.

I’ve spent the weeks since my appointment looking at the house from two different angles. First, I reached out to every member of the house for a brief chat about what you’d like to see going forward. Second, I dove into the activity for October and November to get a feel for what Sunrider’s baseline looks like. I’d like to share some thoughts on both.

What Sunrider Says

The members of the house are a diverse lot spanning four continents and, naturally, people want a lot of different things. However, a couple of themes did pop out. We were asked for more graphics comps, more trivia and puzzles and light fare like crosswords, and for more focus on getting to know other member characters. You should expect to see all of that, if not this month, then soon.

On the fiction side, some people want a Force focus, some want NFUs to get more love, some want to venture outside the system, and some want to keep digging up cool stuff in Kiast. Fortunately, for the past year the COU summit has been running a variety of events to cater to people’s different interests. Raz and I are developing a new house arc to follow Vatali Unsettled and you should expect to see more peacekeeping events, more Seven Pillars, and more Tython Squadron pirate-hunting.

What Sunrider Does

Sunrider is currently sitting at 23 members. Let’s take a look at the last two months’ activity and see what the baseline looks like.

Activity	October	November
Competition Participation	78%	82%
Any Cluster	65%	43%
Cluster of Ice	35%	13%
Cluster of Graphite	30%	17%
Gaming Clusters	26%	30%

So we have a bit of a mix here. The raw competition participation is excellent. You guys are engaged and doing things and it warms my cold, dead heart. Competition participation is also the primary metric for merit awards and I do love writing award recs, so keep it up.

The last house event, which finished off the Vatali Unsettled plot arc, was the most successful house event since 2017 with 59 entries. This is a major increase over previous Sunrider events and most of the old Hoth and Shan events as well. The average comp saw seven entries and the average participant submitted to 4.5 comps, both of which are historic highs. I’m going to take that as a good sign that Sunrider is hungry for events and will do my best to keep them coming.

The one thing I’m not so happy about is the lack of clusters from fiction, graphics, and to some extent gaming. Granted, the number of members who did fic and gaming last month would have doubled if we included the anniversary competitions. Sunrider has some of the most talented people in the club and I want everyone else to know it. The first step is making sure that you guys have opportunity to do all the graphics, gaming, and writing you can. The second is, of course, for your summit to get down in the trenches with. I’ll be participating several of the competitions below this month and you’d better believe I’ll be spamming Sunrider chat with my godawful stick figures inspiring artwork and depressing smut uplifting fiction.

Step three will be our first house event, which will kick off in January. I’ll be teasing that as Raz and I get further along in development.

This is what happens when I don’t have report graphics.

November Bragging

Note that this only covers the month of November. I will brag about all the cool stuff you did in December next month.

• A'lora Kituri: Participated in 5 comps and earned a crescent and an LoS.

• Takota Okami: Joined Sunrider and did 3 comps.

• Celevon Werd'la: Earned 23 CEs and participated in 6 competitions.

• Yuki Suoh: Participated in 3 competitions.

• Len Iode: Did 11 comps and earned a crescent, an LoS, and 50 gaming clusters. Most importantly, he finally gave into my nagging and joined Sunrider. Oh, and he got EQ4.

• Jafits Skrumm: Earned 6 crescents and participated in 21 comps

• Raziel: Participated in 10 comps and won two crescents and put up with both me and Revak in the same month.

• Gui Sol: Promoted to EQ2, for starters. Participated in 14 comps, winning an LoS and a crescent. Earned 72 CFs. Recruited six new Odanites. Brought Jim Nova into our lives and then just as quickly took him away.

• Agate Gua’lara: Earned 7 CGs and 8 crescents (including a Diamond Star for art) and was the only one to beat Jafits with 22 competition entries. Promoted to EQ2 because she is awesome.

• Jon Silvon: Participated in 3 comps and earned a CI. Jon has also been busting it as BTL and I encourage all Tython members to check out the December comps and the run-on.

• Ryan Hawkins: Participated in 12 competitions, earned 4 crescents and an LoS, 78 gaming clusters and 2 PoBs, and then reached EQ1 in case all that wasn’t enough.

• Elyon de Neverse: Participated in 17 competitions, earned 4 crescents, 4 CGs, and 7 CIs, and was promoted to EQ1 as well as just being a sweetheart. Special shoutout for recruiting Eva and taking her on as a student.

• Talis Kor-Zar: Participated in one competition.

• Revs: Promoted to EQ1! Revs also participated in 7 competitions.

• Zanothi Nightblade: Promoted to EQ1! Zanothi also did 2 competitions.

• Tassk Adroc: Earned a Legion of the Scholar and did 6 competitions.

Competitions

There’s a whole bunch of competitions going, so no matter what you like to do there’s something for you this month.

Fiction

• In The Feels: Gui is weird and wants to see your character happy for some reason. If you’re going to indulge him, act now: we only have until the 14th.

• Crossover is fun: What exactly makes a screwdriver sonic? Maybe you can ask the Doctor when he pulls you into his timey-wimey nonsense. This one ends Monday, so unless you have your own TARDIS you best get to typing.

• Among Us Fiction, The Infiltrator and The Investigators: These two comps run through the end of the month and take the paranoia and stab-happiness of Among Us in a new direction. In one prompt you’re sabotaging your clanmates, while in the other you’re trying to sus out the infiltrator. See what I did there? Sus? I’m hip kids, I promise I am.

• Praxeum: Are you a master? A student? Want to be? This isn’t a competition, but if you want to do a little writing with your clanmates Gui’s run-on is the place to be, with 20 posts in a week.

Art

• Lightsabers of Epic Proportians: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to draw your character “doing normal things while wielding their lightsabers in epic way.” This closes Saturday, so hurry up!

• Bloodline: Draw your character with a member of their family, because Gui is conspicuously into the Life Day spirit this year. This one closes Sunday, so get to it!

• A picture worth a thousand creds: Draw one of your clanmates for this one. I’m going to draw Gui like one of my French girls. This one closes Monday, so you’d better break out the crayons or go whine at Raz to extend it.

Gaming

• Antilles Classic, Round 3: Permission granted to hop in an X-wing and blow something up. Submit your highest scoring screenshots for dogfights and fleet battles.

• December 2020 GMRG Competitions: You have three chances for glory this month, with dedicated comps for Diablo III (Stepson of Diablo) and Heroes of the Storm. If neither of those tickle your fancy, there’s also an all-purpose cluster race.

Misc

• Odan-Urr Comedy Series: Caption Me!: Revak’s long-running meme comp has two more images for you to caption before closing on the 20th.

• I Thought This Was Speed Dating, Club-Wide and Sunrider-Only: Our Dear Leader is running Star Wars trivia on Telegram on Sundays. Watch Telegram and Discord for announcements on when the sessions will start and then come at me, scrubs.

• Sunrider Puzzles, Penny for the Gui (48 Pieces) and The Entourage (96 Pieces): These two will run through the 13th, with more to follow. Puzzles were the #1 requested comp type last month and I intend to deliver. If you have art of your character you’d like featured, hit me up.

Yeah… I’m gonna have to do some art comps.

Hugs and kisses,
Arch

Alethia Archenksova
Quaestor, Sunrider