House Drakonan Report 01-16-11 Dark Greetings Everyone, It’s time for the weekly report, there’s a promotion, a medal awarded, some fun news, as well as the new feature of reporting House activity. So, read on… News There were two new free missions released this week: XvT free 239: The Pirate Supply Base by our own SBM Dempsey and TIE free 282: Starfighter Histories: Assault Gunboat by MAJ Mark Schueler. I haven’t gotten my copy of XvT running again yet, but I had a lot of fun flying the Starfighter Histories mission myself, even if I did have to fly a Gunboat. J As some of you may know, outside of Star Wars I have another great and abiding passion: killing zombies. It is rare when these two interests come together, but this week they did. I’ve been currently obsessed with the game Killing Floor and this week I found two Star Wars goodies for that fine game. The first is skins for the game that transforms the Agent Wilkes character into a passable Republic Commando/Stormtrooper, or…Boba Fett (give me a minute to recover from a minor aneurysm caused by sheer Mando joy). The second Star Wars flavored treat I found for Killing Floor is a new fan made location: Mos Eisley! When you get these working together its actually kind of fun to watch stormies and Mandalorian Protectors running around with guns killing zombies in the streets of Mos Eisley. I know a few of you in the House play Killing floor so I thought I’d pass along these finds for your enjoyment. Promotions Tuba was elevated from Jedi Hunter to Dark Jedi Knight this week. I have been consistently impressed and pleased with Tuba’s activity and enthusiasm in House Drakonan. He not only fully participates in activities geared towards his Order, but goes beyond that to participate in fiction, run-ons, and graphics design. He is a constant and cheerful presence in our House on the Message Boards, irc, and in other communications. This is a well deserved promotion and those of you looking for an example of what it takes to get promoted, need look no further for an example. Everyone please join me in heartily congratulating Tuba for his achievement. Drinks are on him in the bar this evening. J Awards One award this week, and once again Tuba’s name comes up. Tuba has been awarded a Dark Cross for designing and submitting a banner for Stingray. The banner is on display here, in the House Drakonan gallery and should be available on the main EH site soon as well. Well done Tuba, it looks good and I appreciate the effort. Competitions An Image of Darkness Start Date:January 9, 2011 End Date: February 11,2011 Groups involved: House Drakonan Awards: Crescent-Sapphire Star (Cr-1S) for 1st, Crescent-Emerald Star (Cr-1E) for 2nd. Description:Time to make pretty pictures! We need a banner for the House. I\'d like to use it for the House Drakonan Website. Design to your heart\'s content but I\'d definitely like to see something appropriate to Dark Side Jedi as a whole or something that includes an image reflecting each Order. (i.e. a banner that features a TIE fighter might be great for Stingray, but not the entire House.) In addition to the medal I\'ll make sure to credit you on the website when it goes up so everyone can recognize your work. Submit all entries to ascottcampbell7@aol.com. Debriefing Start Date: January 9, 2011 End Date: February 11,2011 Groups involved: House Drakonan Awards: Crescent-Sapphire Star (Cr-1S) for 1st, Crescent-Emerald Star (Cr-1E) for 2nd. Description: In our wonderful Shadow Academy we have a course available on Writing Debriefs. If you haven\'t taken a look at it I urge you to do so. The idea of this competition is to bring back the practice of writing debriefs about the combat our members engage in. The rules are simple. Fly a mission (any DB platform) or fight a duel in one of our FPS games (since MP is problematic for the older games I will accept entries that used \'bots\' in an MP arena) and then write a debrief about what happened. I won\'t repeat the course notes here, but specificity and good description are the keys to a good debrief. Let me know what your goal(s) were. What strategy you went in with, The way you carried it out, etc. (i.e. I was to destroy a Rebel corvette and decided my best method of attack would be to approach from the rear and employ a loadout of advanced concussion missiles. As I closed with my target a flight of X-Wings moved in from 8 o\'clock high, etc.) When you submit please include the mission you flew or arena you dueled in, what platform you played on, and the mission/arena name. The winning entries will eventually find a home in the fiction archive. Send all submissions to ascottcampbell7@aol.com. The Uses of Power Start Date: January 9, 2011 End Date: February 11,2011 Groups involved: House Drakonan Awards: Crescent-Sapphire Star (Cr-1S) for 1st, Crescent-Emerald Star (Cr-1E) for 2nd. Description:This is a fiction based competition open to the entire House. I hope that this can become an ongoing competition if there is enough interest to merit it. The basic idea is that I will select a power from the list in the Dark Side Compendium and you write a story or essay about one of three things: 1) How your character first learned the power. 2)A unique story where you put the power to an interesting or unconventional use during a past mission. 3) A story from the early years of the Old Republic where a Sith or Jedi \"discovers\" this power and how they did so. The entry should show that you have a familiarity with the power\'s DSC description and limitations. At first I will be choosing more commonly accessible powers, available to lower ranks. If at some point in the future I choose a higher level power that may not be available to you at your rank, you can write a story where you observed its use by another dark jedi or even an enemy. Be creative and have fun. The object here is to explore the possibilities available with the Force as our ally. I\'ll give you fair warning, stick to the DSC and its descriptions and do NOT tell me what \"Starkiller\" can do. I enjoyed the first entries quite a bit and I’m really looking forward to reading the entries in the next round. This time I’ve chosen Farseeing as the power for you to weave a story or essay about. I\'ll be saving the winning entries to add to the EH fiction archive when it is operational and (if possible) add to the House website when it is completed. In the meantime there are medals to be won. I\'ll accept entries of 1 page at minimum to a 6 page maximum. Submit all entries to ascottcampbell7@aol.com. Activities In addition to the competitions available currently, Xantros has a run-on available for everyone to participate in on the Message Board. If you’re having trouble finding it, it was started in the “Fiction” section of the MB rather than the House Drakonan area where everything else is located. Keep in mind that if you are a pilot, Battles and missions can be submitted as both TC and DB activity for the same mission, so be sure to deluge your BTL (and me) with cc: s of anything you fly. I know I said this last week as well, but the House run on should be starting this week. There are still a few details to be hammered out to get things ready, but I have faith that they will be sorted out this week. There are always courses available to be taken in the university of your choice for activity. Activity Tracking I thought I’d start reporting activity in the House report so everyone can see what their peers are doing and so that in case I’ve missed anything you can email me and correct any oversights. QUA/KE Monnte – Worked on Drakonan website, flew TIE Free 282, helped restore Tuba to EH reality after he somehow disintegrated himself (true story folks), email contact with multiple House members, etc. BTL/DJK Tuba-Wrote fiction for DJK trials, created banner for Stingray, wrote Battleteam report, participated in “Weird Biography of Dath Vader run-on, email contact, disintegrated himself J SBM Anahorn Dempsey- email contact, completed an amazing 11 courses this week and kept the TO staff hopping, BTL/GRD Jade Knight- email contact, wrote several competition proposals, irc contact DJM Exar Kit- email contact KAP Xantros- email contact, participated in “Weird Biography of Darth Vader” run on. Now if I’ve missed anyone for this week, let both myself and your BTL know (if applicable) and I’ll be sure to update that in my report next week. Final Thoughts I was very happy to see some increasing activity in the House this week and to hear from some of you. I’ll repeat the call for graphics for the House site. If you are interested there will be rewards for this. Also, if you have any graphics you’d just like to have displayed that are DB relevant forward them to me and I’ll see what I can do about getting them posted in the Gallery. I’d also like to see some more general activity on everyone’s part if possible. Start a discussion on the MB or irc, fly a free mission, etc. Get to know one another. Also, please get in touch with me and your BTLs and let us know if you have an idea for an activity, competition, etc. We want to do things we all enjoy doing if possible. Darkness Defend, QUA/KE Tomaas Montte/Drakonan House (GC)(SoP)(DC-K)(Cr-D-Ax2)(LSS){SA:CORE-G:AT1-G:LST-H:INTEL-S:ESET-S:ISET-K:GMR}