Welcome to the Brotherhood!

We’re happy to have you! The Brotherhood is an international community of Star Wars fans and we’re excited to welcome a new member to the fold. Read on for a quick introduction to who we are, what we do, and how you fit in.

Who We Are

The Dark Jedi Brotherhood (DB or DJB) was founded as a club for playing Star Wars computer games in 1994. Since then, it has expanded to include the full breadth of Star Wars fandom—although we remain the Dark Jedi Brotherhood for historical reasons, our member characters represent all walks of life in the Galaxy Far Far Away.

By joining the DB, you’re gaining access to an established community of Star Wars fans, fanfic writers, gamers, artists, and nerds. You will create one or more characters to represent you in the Star Wars galaxy and watch them grow in power and develop a unique story in our shared setting.

Although the community primarily comes from North America and the United Kingdom, we have members scattered across Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and Africa.

What We Do

The DB covers a wide variety of activities. While you’re free to participate only in the ones you find interesting, we encourage you to sample everything we have to offer. Many of our members have discovered new passions and hobbies through the club.

Chat is arguably our primary feature. The club has a Discord server where we talk about club activities, Star Wars in general, and our lives. If you’re already familiar with Discord, you can get access to the server here. We also have an explanation of how our server specifically works here.

The club has strong fiction and roleplaying elements and even members who don’t write much themselves often develop their in-universe persona and character sheets. You can learn more about our setting here. You can learn more about how fiction works here and about how chat roleplaying works here. Our member-created characters have character sheets and a vast selection of weapons, armor, droids, starships, creatures, and other possessions.

Gaming remains a core part of our activity, but we’ve branched out beyond Star Wars games. Our Discord server is a hub to help you find people to play with. Although it’s easier to find parties for our supported platforms, you should feel free to ask around on our server for whatever games you’re interested in. You can learn more about gaming in the club here

Art in the Brotherhood ranges from stick figure comics all the way up to gorgeously rendered digital art. Whether you’re interested in creating art or just sitting back and enjoying other members’ beautiful creations, you can learn more about our approach to graphics here.

The Shadow Academy features almost a hundred courses, including this one. Depending on what you’re looking for, the SA can introduce you to new club features, give you a crash course on Star Wars and Brotherhood lore, or train you in real-world skills like leadership and writing.

The club Discord server hosts regular trivia sessions using Quizbot. Keep an eye out for events on the Discord server, and make sure you enable the optional Quizard server role to gain access to #trivia. You can learn how to do that here.

The DB hosts regular competitions covering all of the above activities and more. In addition to fiction, gaming, art, and trivia, popular competitions include browser and mobile games and jigsaw puzzles. Other competitions have included everything from cryptograms to developing recipes and playlists that fit your character to poetry to frighteningly addictive button games on our Discord server. You can find a list of running competitions here.

How You Fit In

Your Dossier

Now that you’re a member, you have a dossier that contains basic information about your club activity. You can choose custom art to represent your weapon, armor or clothing, and accessory. Additionally, you can fill in other information like your gamer handles, social media accounts, country, timezone, and pronouns. Our Website Navigation course explains how to customize all of that.

Your Character

Every member has a character, though it’s up to you how much effort you want to put into developing them. You can create a character sheet that covers their appearance, personality, skills, and loadouts containing their possessions and equipment. You can create a wiki page to host their backstory and any art of them that you’ve made or commissioned. As you participate in club activities, you’ll unlock more features for your character and earn more credits to spend on their gear. Eventually, you’ll unlock up to four additional character slots.

Your Clan

New members are sorted into one of our seven units, called clans. Each clan has its own history, culture, and identity. Clans run their own competitions and events, have their own storylines and Discord channels, and generally support each other as smaller, tight-knit communities within the larger club. Your clan’s leaders, called the summit, are responsible for providing content and ensuring you have a good experience. You can learn more about the clans’ fictional identities here and more about the summit roles here.

Most clans are further divided into subunits called houses or battleteams, although what that division means in practice depends on the clan.

Although you were automatically assigned a unit based on your choices during the Test of Identity, you are welcome to transfer into whatever unit you like at almost any time. The one exception is that sometimes transfers are forbidden during major competitive club events to keep members from switching teams midway through.

Remember: clans exist to add to your experience, not limit it. You are welcome and encouraged to associate with members of other clans and can join their Discord channels by enabling the Tourist server role (you can learn how to do that here.)

Where to Go from Here

If you haven’t already, join our Discord server, link your account, and say hi! You should also feel free to have a look at the running competitions to see if any catch your eye.

Another option is to continue to explore the Shadow Academy’s Fundamentals courses. These are designed to explain various features of our club to new members to help you get to the fun stuff as quickly and easily as possible.

The Essentials series covers high level topics. You’re already mostly done with Essentials 101, but the other courses in this series are:

• Essentials 102: Progression covers how to advance in the club and unlock new content for you or your character.

• Essentials 103: The Brotherhood’s Galaxy covers our fictional setting. It explains the different in-character groups in the Brotherhood and our rival factions.

• Essentials 104: Structure of the Club covers the various leadership positions and units within the club, letting you know who is responsible for what.

• Essentials 105: Member Conduct covers our expected behavior. The DB is a friendly place overall and this course outlines the rules in the Covenant that help keep it that way.

The Comms series covers our three main communications platforms: this website, Discord chat, and the DJB Wiki.

The Activities series covers how to participate in our four primary forms of activity: Fiction, Gaming, Graphics, and Roleplaying.

You can see a full list of Shadow Academy courses here.

How to Get Help

The Brotherhood has been around for over 25 years—and some of our members have been here almost that long! So naturally there is a lot to take in when you’re just getting your feet wet. The important thing to remember is that there are plenty of people around to help you out if you get overwhelmed, lost, or stuck.

When you joined and completed your Test of Identity, you were automagically sorted into a clan. Someone from your clan should reach out to you by email shortly if they haven’t already. Your clan’s leaders, called the summit, are there to assist you. They may also assign you a master or mentor.

The Headmaster is in charge of all Shadow Academy content and helping new and returning members get situated. You can reach the Headmaster via email here or on Discord by tagging @Headmaster.

The Exam

Every Shadow Academy course, including this one, has an exam. If you don’t want to take any more tests, that’s ok. You will always have access to the course notes. However, do keep in mind that SA exams are open-notes, designed to be fairly quick, and will earn you credits, items, and experience points.

The exam for this course is three questions long and there are no wrong answers. Completing it will award enough experience to unlock your first promotion. To get started, simply press the blue button below.

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Image Credits

The Mando Bros: Koda Kendis, Idris Adenn, Zxyl Bes'uliik, Appius Wight, and Korvis Manda'vod by Koda Kendis, commissioned by Zxyl Bes'uliik

Ankira by Aylin Sajark