TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

END OF TERM 

Ah. End of Term. Time to brush off the stink of the school year and dip our toes into summer vacation! Yahoo!

The Winners of the House Cup are... COMING SOON!

The Winners of the Quidditch Cup are... SLYTHERIN

A big thank you to everyone who has returned the Member's Satisfaction Survey. There were a lot of great ideas that we're slowly working on to help improve the site.

With that being said, there were also some things people pointed out that are already in existence so this is just a friendly reminder to familiarize yourself with the site. Two things that were mentioned were a Member's list - this can be found in the "Character Information" board and is updated every time someone makes or deletes a character. The other was a timeline of events which also exists and can be found in "Rules and Announncements."

As always, please don't hesitate to contact any of the admin team with questions!

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CHANGE OVER

Everyone who passed (made their 3 class posts or completed an Internship thread) has been placed into their new year group or graduated!

Congratulations to all those who made it!

New Prefects have been updated.

All clubs, including Quidditch teams, have been cleaned up and new sign ups will be posted for them. Priority goes to members who played Quidditch this term and then will open up to the rest of the site.

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GENERAL SITE UPDATES

New Theme: If you have not already noticed, there has been a new theme added called Steel Eloquence. Nana worked hard to make this for us and it's stunning. The new theme layout is exactly the same as the current, it's just darker for those who have eye strain from the light theme.

Apps: The character application has been modified with some new requirements. The addition of extra likes and dislikes as well as a family section and more detail for history depending on the age of your character.

Rules and Guidelines Updates: Keep an eye on the rules and guidelines because we are slowly updating things. 

New Boards: A new board has been made for school clubs, located as a subboard of the Ground Floor Board. This board will be utilized for club sign ups and for RPing any club related threads to eliminate the confusion of “Where do I put this Duelling Club thread?”

Activity Requirements: The requirements for clean outs have been updated to 3 posts in 3 months per character. A friendly reminder that the next clean out is at the end of Dec.

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CLASSES AND PROFESSORS

All class threads and sign ups from this term have been locked and archived. They are still accessible if Professors need to reference something under the 2022 class archives.

Some new classes have been added to the list for next term. Music Appreciation (Professor Needed), Art and Ghoul Studies

Professors - We have made some updates to Professor expectations and some guidelines to help in running your classes. Please refer to the rules and guidelines. If you have any questions, contact Elizabeth Kingston

You may begin preparing your classroom for the new term but please ensure all threads are locked until the term starts on Jan 1, 2023.

The position for Headmaster/Headmistress and Deputy Headmaster/Headmistress is available by application. Characters must be 30+ to be Headmaster/Headmistress and 27+ to be the Deputy Headmaster/Headmistress. Applications will be open for the month of IC July and the recipient will be notified in IC Aug of their success.

New Guidelines for becoming a Professor have also been updated for any character graduating Hogwarts and wishes to become a Professor once they reach 22 years of age.

We've created a grading system based on how many times students post in classes overall to help in determining passes and for NEWTs upon graduation.

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PLOTS AND EVENTS

In the after math of the sitewide plot, the Dungeon Master (Lou), has a few ideas that were brought forth by various members for people to play with as they navigate their recovery.

1. Revenge Groups Forming – while there are few members of the Cremation left actively in play, small groups might decide to seek revenge on those responsible for what happened throughout the sitewide plot. Feel free to form little groups and do some mini plots! Don’t forget to PM details to Rita so it can make the papers.

2. Ministry Reforming – many members of the Ministry lost their jobs, their houses, their livelihood when they were forced into imprisonment. Kingsley Eggleston will be returning as the Minister for Magic until the next election. Ragnar Keeling will continue as Interim Senior Undersecretary as Nathaniel Kingsley will be taking a leave of absence. Other Ministry Officials will be slowly returned to their positions and members can use this as character development and personal plotting.

3. The Department of Magical Education – this newly formed department will be overseeing things at Hogwarts to ensure students and staff are safe secure. They will be responsible for security at the school, assisting with hiring of staff to ensure those hired are clear of all criminal charges and will do monthly inspections of the school for student and staff safety. If your character would like to be a part of this new department, you may consider switching careers.

4. Magical Law Investigations – Aurors and Magical Law Enforcement will be responsible for rounding up Cremation members involved in the prison (mostly NPCs left) and can use these as something to RP together. There will also require investigation into the prison after it has been cleared out of all prisoners. Interviews with prisoners to determine what went on in the prison. Confiscation of evidence. Interviews with Cremation members captured or those who unwillingly participated – there’s a lot Aurors and Magical Law Enforcement can do with the aftermath of this whether it is individual threads or small group threads.

5. Cremation Members Outstanding – Members of the site are still welcome to make characters in relation to the Cremation as they will not be extinct just because the plot has ended. Smaller groups of Cremation members might decide to continue the work of the former large organization. Members who didn’t get a chance to get as involved as they like might be able to take this opportunity to do more with the wrap up of the site wide plot.

6. Further Research – The goal of the Cremation was to eradicate creatures and while the Pure Eternals wanted to eliminate mudbloods and cure squibs by removing/giving them magic via science. There were some successful-ish experiments and some experiments that have backfired and created instability within the prisoners. And of course, the eventual discover of the altered abilities of vampires and werewolves. All of this will require research teams working together with volunteers from the prison. This will be a long, ongoing mini plot due to the guidelines for experimental creatures to discover and utilize new abilities.

There’s a lot that people can play with, and it is not limited to just those ideas if members have other ideas they wish to spin off with.

With summer coming, there will also be some site-wide events going on. Most notably, Nana has already created a Graduation Ceremony for the Graduates, their families, friends and significant others to have fun with.

A few members are planning on throwing parties come the summer IC months so be on the look out for those! They are always a lot of fun.

The Hogsmeade Festival planning is underway and will open in IC Aug. Planning for this is in the plotting board.

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TAGGED ACCOUNTS: @riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie  @romeo  @pandora

TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

NEW ADMINISTRATOR

With the site growing in numbers, and the work load increasing on the staff, we have opted to divide the work load up into 5 categories and hire a fifth admin. Please welcome, Remington Grebe , to the admin team! The consensus was 100% that Remy would be perfect for the job because he is reliable, welcoming, easy to approach, active on site and in the discord.

Remy will be in charge of all things Quidditch related as well as helping out with general site maintenance such as accepting applications and updating app related rosters.

In addition, Ruth, Serena, Nana and I have all taken on our own rules in addition to general site maintenance. Going forward, the admin team will be responsible for the following:

Site Design and Coding - Nana

Classes and Professors - Serena

Clubs and Internships - Ruth

Plots, Events and the Daily Prophet - Lou

If you have questions about any of these categories, your first person to ask is the admin in charge of that area. You can continue to utilize the questions channel on the discord or the thread on the site and we'll answer accordingly.

Again, BIG welcome to Remy!

TAGGED ACCOUNTS:
@riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius @cue Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie  @romeo  @pandora

TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

SITE-WIDE PRISON WRAP-UP!

Site Wide Prison Wrap-Up - this is only a guideline to help the creative juices. Please feel free to use the ideas, not use the ideas, or come up with your own stuff!

With the Mass Break Out Thread happening, members can begin reunion threads. Some things to keep in mind while RPing post prison that you can utilize:

- Following the breakout, injured parties will be transferred to St. Mungo's and their families will be contacted. Students will return to Hogwarts and their families will be contacted. Adults are free to go where they want.

- Kidnapped students can decide if they wish to remain at Hogwarts for the rest of the term or to go home to their families to recover.

- Many adults have lost their jobs (they will be reinstated) and by extension may have lost other things like their homes and other equity. This is optional and you may use whatever you want for character and plot development. Maybe some Inn and Pub owners will offer to house your characters until they can rebuild or whatever. It's up to you!

- Your imprisoned characters have suffered a lot and therefore should not return to happy-go-lucky live life normally.

- Programs will be set up with St. Mungo's, Hogwarts, and the Ministry (once things are resolved and the proper authority is back in place) to help with healing the prisoners of physical, emotional, and mental health disorders. Do what you wish with this. It's up to you!

- Moonacre Sanctuary has been rebuilt and re-opened with stronger wards, etc. Werewolves are welcome to stay there.

- The Eventide Vampire Academy will offer refuge for vampires to recover and rebuild their lives. You can even take adult classes!

- Some ideas about how characters might be affected include: increased anger, withdrawal from friends and family, night terrors, social anxiety, distrust, mood disturbances, and inability to control power whether it is basic magic or their creature abilities (accidental meta changes, accidental fireballs, accidental animagus transformations or inability to turn back, increased blood lust for vamps and wolves, etc.)

Feel free to reach out if you need more direction, brainstorming or just have questions, etc. 

TAGGED ACCOUNTS:
@riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius @cue Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie  @romeo  @pandora

TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

SITE WIDE UPDATES/DISCORD UPDATES!

It was brought forth on the discord, and this is not a new issue that has been brought up and addressed, that there are members feeling left out of OOC and IC goings on around the site. This is not okay. It is not acceptable. It needs to change and in order to do that, every member, whether you are a direct culprit or not needs to evaluate their behaviour and exclusiveness to all members. I do not believe it's intentional but it's a problem regardless.

In light of a recent discussion in the discord that many members participated in about the above concern brought forth, some interventions are being put into place and while they are not going to resolve all the problems, I am hopeful that they will help alleviate some of the discomforts brought to other members of the site.

Most of these interventions are IC, but as mentioned in the discussion, people have a tendency to flock to those they RP with a lot and this develop OOC relationships, and there is nothing wrong with this. By implementing the items below, we are hoping members feeling left out can become more involved IC and that will hopefully translate to developing better OOC relationships and diminishing the feeling of being left out.

It's not a perfect solution, there isn't a solution. This sort of thing is always going to exist no matter how hard we work on keeping it away. Our job is to do our best to recognize our behaviors, discuss it openly and be able to come up with ways to prevent it.

Interventions:

1. We have an IC discord where a lot of members like to RP quick things or 18+ things, and while it has been a part of the site since it's opening, we are going to trial it's use in a different way so those who are not a part of the IC Discord can b involved. The IC Discord now has it's own board on site for rapid fire posting. If you are unfamiliar, it's what we do for Quidditch where we set aside 4 hours and just spam like crazy with short posts usually 1-3 sentences is the minimum requirement. This new board will be for members to use to rapid fire threads or plot ideas that members want to get through quickly. It can be also good for quickly throwing 2 characters together to see how they mesh and for testing out characters. The rapid fire board will not could for overall activity and members will still be required to RP regularly. Anything that can be RPed on site should be RPed on site either in regular threads or rapid fire threads.

3. Re-evaluate criteria for making new characters. It was brought up that it can be frustrating for some member who have few characters to RP with members who have lots of characters and might favor certain characters. We're all guilty of this. With this in mind, the changes in criteria include the following:

Members must now wait 2 weeks between characters if they have more than 10 characters.
The activity check portion of the application will remain but it is expected that members are not posting all their required posts in the same day as this poorly reflects your activity.
Your overall activity will be checked and your application may be denied even if you have passed the activity check because the admins may feel you're overall activity is not efficient for handling another character. We do ask that members be aware of their limits and not bite off more than they can chew.

4. Introduce RP with someone new/someone you haven't for house points. This can be found in the More Ways to Earn House Points. We encourage all members to utilize this to help their house win the cup!

5. The plotting channels in both the IC Discord and the regular Discord have been removed/altered. We encourage members to only use the one in the regular discord for posting open threads, want ads and plot ads and then to direct people to DMs or threads on the site.

6. It was suggested we trial a monthly thread sign up for character roulette where you get assigned a random person to RP with and you guys can plot stuff.

7. Remove channels in all discords that lead to plotting talk. And remove the general chat in IC discord.

8. Wrap up sitewide plot. I will be PMing the infiltration groups shortly with details and then letting everyone know the plan for this. I know it's been both rushed and dragging in aspects and people are anxious to get their characters out of the prison so, I'm working on it.

I think that is all for now so please, please, be aware of your actions and the reactions of others to make this place feel homey for everyone again. Love you all.

PS: If I missed you in the tags, shoot me a DM or message on the site!

It's really important to communicate with each and every member you RP with and transparency is the key so any time you are changing something that might effect others, please give them a head's up! 

TAGGED ACCOUNTS:
@riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius @cue Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint @xayah Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie  @romeo  @pandora

TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

CREATURE UPDATES!

HEY!
After some consideration, we have amended the rules for Werewolves and Vampires.

Going forward, adult characters can be created as previously bitten.

Once you have reached your 50 posts requirement, you fill out the application as per normal.

Vampires can be up to 250 years old.

Werewolves and Vampires coming in as adults must be traditional and bitten by an NPC.

Students must be bitten on site by an NPC or another member.

Questions? DM me.

TAGGED ACCOUNTS:
@riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius @cue Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint @xayah Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie @romeo @pandora

TERM 2 ANNOUNCEMENT
. . .

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS!

HEY!

Everyone with International Students, y'all have probably been wondering how you pass since you can't attend classes at Hogwarts! Well, I finally put together an end-of-year Exam. It's 12 questions, pretty simple ones. The answers are no-brainers and if you struggle they can be found easily on-site or in any HP wiki out there.

Please PM the exam with the questions and answers to me and once corrected you will go on the pass list for your year.

EXAM:
1. What are the four elements of Alchemy?

2. Define Runology.

3. Calculate your Life Path Number based on what you learned in Arithmancy.

4. What is a black hole?

5. Explain the different X ratings for magical creatures.

6. What charm do you find most useful in every day life?

7. Define the Dark Arts.

8. How do you defend yourself against a Boggart?

9. What is your life line?

10 Which potion would you take to cure the common cold?

11. Why do you need to wear earmuffs when working with Mandrakes?

12. What might happen if you brew the Draught of Peace incorrectly?

TAGGED ACCOUNTS:
@riley2021 @christopher Dionysos Amadori @feemaccafferty @marcarius @cue Esmeralda Belmonte @jose @corvus Tae-il Chae @jax @clint @xayah Gianni Amadori Levi Hilfiger Dean Stewart @gemini @maia --- @ethan @hyejin Remington Grebe Rosie Huntington @fluer Elizabeth Kingston Sally Byrne @callie @bowchuckle @qzhang @raven @lexie @romeo @pandora