"It takes a great deal of courage to accept the beard we have. It takes even more courage to let go of the plans for the beard you planned to grow."
-- An Excerpt from the Bearded Tome: Chapter 16-2, Verse 19
Part of the job of any leader is to recognize their own shortcomings and to take a step back and honestly evaluate their own selves. More than that, it’s important to remember the old adage that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Such is life both in the real world and in this our bastion of Star Warsy goodness. Lately, I’ve been dwelling a bit too much on the fact that my plans got blown up, and I was running out of ideas to replace them. That hasn’t gotten us anywhere, so rather than keep trying to plan it out, I’m going to take my father’s advice and just wing it for a while, and see where everything shakes out.
- State of the Clan Address
- Taldryan Intelligence Directorate Competition Continues
- There's been a few Awards and Promotions recently
- There are Positions open throughout the Brotherhood
- There's a lot of competitions for you to do!
Well, it’s been awhile since we’ve had a formal report from the Clan summit, and for that I apologize, from both Howie and myself, we recognize how badly we’ve been half assing it of late. We’ve never let our gazes drop though, and we’re constantly on the look out to try to figure out where we can pick of the slack, and put new plans into effect. It’s a rather famous military quote that no battleplan survives contact with the enemy, and that is pretty true for life. It’s been here that I have most failed this Clan over the last few months.
When I took the job as Consul I had a plan. The plan was to be retired as of November. It was contingent on a few things, and milestones that we needed to achieve. A bunch of those milestones disappeared, people became unavailable, and suddenly my well-crafted 8 month plan was down the shitter. So, when I should have been picking up the pieces and moving on from Plan B to Plan C and D and all the way down to Z, I instead sat around feeling sorry for myself that Plan A and B didn’t work out, and didn’t even start working on Plan C: and Taldryan suffered because of it.
But, this is changing. Between Howie, myself, and the worst jackass in the galaxy we’ve been putting together a plan to jump start ourselves, and get Taldryan moving in the right direction again. But it’s not going to be easy. Thankfully, I’ve had a lot of help from the House summits in the last couple months especially, so we’re not going to be starting from complete scratch.
Right now, there are no concrete plans beyond bringing back a sense of routine to the Clan. Summit reports are going to become a regular thing again. As one of the biggest proponents of the values of reports, my inability to get these out for the last few months is a matter of great personal shame for me.
The next is going to be the creation of more regular competitions, both themed and one-offs like the Introduce me fiction comp I ran last month. Again, the House summits have been doing an admirable job taking up the slack here, but we need to do more; and not only just the summits. Aiden Lee recently ran a couple competitions, and to the rest of you I say this: I want your competitions. If you have an idea, ask. If you want to run a competition, do it. Howie and I are more than willing to help you design comps and we’d like to see you guys putting out competitions as often as you’d like.
Finally, I’m going to start pushing some of what we’re doing into investigating Taldryan’s fictional place in the Brotherhood, and why we occupy the role we do. We’re the Clan of balance in this Brotherhood. We alone represent the full spectrum of alignments, and I want to explore what exactly that means in the coming weeks and months, and I am going to do my best to make it possible for all of you to help us explore it.
In closing to this brief address, I just want to say I am sorry. I have always been honoured to be a servant of Taldryan, and I have been even more honoured to be your Consul. It’s not a responsibility that I take lightly, and of late I have not been worthy of my brothers and sisters in this Clan. Hopefully though, I will be able to make it up to you and repay your patience with me.
The first round of competitions has come to a close, and the second round of the Taldryan Intelligence Directorate series of competitions has begun. Bobecc and Omega are leading these in continuation of the now somewhat ancient Masters of our Fate competition plotline begun early last fall. In this round we’re taking the fight to our enemies on their homeworld of Orron III. Be sure to check out the link and subscribe, and start getting revenge on those who would attack us.
I am not normally one to list the accolades of our members in the reports. It’s not that I don’t think you all deserve the extra recognition, but it’s more that I find that sort of thing to be a bit gaudy and have always preferred personal congratulations over listing off medals and awards in a report. But in the recent past Taldryan has recognized quite a few of its members for their stellar contributions to the Clan, and I would like to diverge from my normal path and call their achievements to light.
Raistline has been a rock within Taldryan's summit for nearly a year, rising up through the ranks (again) from Battleteam Leader all the way to Quaestor. He's been constantly there to help me and Howie over the last little bit, and for all of his work we saw fit to award him a Sapphire Blade, his very first sacramental award.
Along with Raist, Omega has been my other deputy within the Houses. Since his return to the DB from the nether regions, Omega has been a constant and reliable presence for us, and he's become someone Howie and I can always count on. Congratulate him on his promotion to Battlemaster.
To round out the awards from the summits, Howie and I were extremely pleased to grant Bobecc's promotion to Warrior. Bob has been a force within the Clan over these last few months, as we can all witness with his taking ownership of the TID comps current. His Aedile counterpart in Dinaari, Nero, was also awarded a Steel Cross in recognition of all he does for the Clan and his House.
Everyone who has been in Taldryan for more than a year knows just what an influential and amazing servant of this Clan that Rian is. It was our great honour to see Rian elevated to the rank of Augur in recognition for everything that he has done, and continues to do for us.
Ringer Klang returned to us recently from a long time in the Rogues, and those of us cursed to be on the receiving end of all his many achievements within the Shadow Academy and elsewhere are now well acquainted with seeing a flurry of emails concerning him. Just in recent days, Ringer was awarded both a Steel Cross and promoted to the rank of Knight. Join me in congratulating the newest Knight of Taldryan!
Finally, but certainly not least, we also saw the promotion of Aiden Dru and Kooki to the rank of Battlemaster, and the awarding of a Steel Cross to Mark. These three members exemplify what it means to be an active contributor to this Clan, and this club, and I thank them all for their hard work.
Congratulations all of you, and thank you again.
There are a few positions open for application throughout the Brotherhood at the moment. Some of which have application deadlines fast approaching.
Obviously we never like seeing any of our members leave for other Clans, but we definitely want to make sure you have every opportunity to advance within the Brotherhood as a whole. If you do want to apply for any of these positions and want advice, or help forming your application, just ask!
That's it for this report folks, it's been a bit too long since the last, but hopefully that's all going to change. Feel free to mock me mercilessly over telegram, irc or email if it is.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/news/reports-taldryan-consul-report-prepare-the-rebeginning
