squakhawk

lair update: added the following to 

amendments are in bold

What is it the ST Sects do exactly?

In an effort to increase transparency on the functioning of staff teams, along with providing some insight into how various things work on Story Team, we’ve decided to provide the following to give an overview of the general processes ST and its various subteams carry out when performing their work on the server. This is by no means exhaustive, and prone to slight shifting as needs arise, but should still provide a good idea of how our teams function. The sects go as listed below.

Story Lore (Lore Team, LT) - Primary duties of Lore Voting, MArts, Amendments, Sreqs, Lairs, Lore Enforcement, and Lore Applications.

Story Event (Event Team, ET) - Primary duty of conducting and acting in Events. Some ET may specialize into single-roles of lore sub-teams or builder.

Story Build (Build team, SB) - Primary duty in build requests set up by the story team, story admin, other staff teams, autonomously, or by the player base (under specific circumstances).

Loremasters (LM) - Advisors to The Story Admin and Story Management regarding large implications in upcoming lore or events.

Story Administrator (Story Admin) - A representative of Story Management to the administration.

this whole section is new im not bolding it

Lair Reviews and Voting:

Lairs are submitted by the Story Administrator or a Lore Manager to be voted on by a team of voters for lairs. Players who may have a special interest in a lair (member, adjunct player, or of any "oppositional faction", are discounted from lair votes. Lair approval requires 2/3rds of voter majority and story administrator approval. Lairs are submitted and within three to seven days have voting closed; voters must provide feedback as to why they are voting to accept or deny a lair or their vote is discounted. Feedback is open discourse in the chat, which is logged and wiped with lair votes which may have ST with special interest before they are re-added to the chat. 

Lairs are judged on a variety of factors, though most heavily based on their application criteria (See Lair Rules and the Application for more information). Primarly after this, lairs are judged based on whether they already are/have a cohesive group (in essence, to prevent putting the cart before the horse on a settlement before a group is even roleplaying), if the group has not attempted to / cannot get land under a nation, if the lair members are a part of other groups/lairs, and if the group's purpose requires it to have an independent stature of land. Lairs as well have build requirements, although fairly lax, to ensure a solid build is prepared or in vision to make sure the group fits into the world well upon establishment. 

In total, lairs are meant to be a base of operations of last resort - a group that requires a base of somekind and cannot by any means acquire land elsewhere, or is culturally distinct enough to require its own place of settlement. Lairs however in this regard, strictly do not function as micro-settlements - lairs are designed to be not a tier down from nations, but a separate entity entirely. Groups which hold no claim to hide, actively promote as a settlement, and function similarly to a nation rather than a guild or order are unlikely to be accepted.