For the 2397 Fleetwide awards ceremony, StarBase 118 unveiled a new award aimed at recognizing the highest level of staff in our organization. The Elinor of Kanist Order of Excellence is a staff award and is named for one of StarBase 118’s most significant founding members.
This award recognizes those who have served the fleet as a staff member for at least five years, attained the rank of Rear Admiral or higher, previously been awarded the Picard Award and Staff Member of the Year Award, and continue to serve the fleet to the betterment of all members. This is the highest staff honor, celebrating longevity, dedication to the fleet, and the perseverance for wearing the Admiral’s belt. The first winner of this award is Vice Admiral Quinn Reynolds.
But who was Elinor of Kanist? Her character was a Vulcan Admiral from the province of Kanist who had a medical background in cardiology. Her player was a founding member and a noted mentor for future commanding officers. She started The Reporter, a monthly group newsletter that was the precursor of the Community News articles you read today. One of the traditions contained in The Reporter was monthly plot summaries from each ship, something which has become a bedrock of StarBase 118 fleet communication. The Reporter also covered promotions and interviews which have become long standing traditions for the fleet. She commanded the USS Centris until her retirement, and her work helping to found the StarBase 118 training team is why the academy training vessel is named the USS Centris-A
Today we are joined by our founder, Fleet Admiral Tristan Wolf, to learn more about Elinor of Kanist, her role in founding the game and his memories of working with her.
Taybrim: Thank you for joining us, Fleet Admiral Wolf. What is your strongest memory of Elinor of Kanist?
Wolf: Oh gosh – the bulk of us working together was over 20 years ago now, and I was a teenager, so lots of those memories are lost to the sands of time! She did return for a brief while in 2012 but didn’t get to stay for too long.
I have lots of vague memories from the early days about projects she wanted to do, like starting The Reporter (the precursor to our current Community News) or how she started innovating the training program out of nothing. She was really my partner in creating the group that you know today, outlasting the other earliest members and being the person who took the premise of the community most seriously.
Ironically, one of the strongest memories I have is a disagreement about the fact that she wanted to take a summer off and decided to bring in Brian Kelly as a sort of “pinch hitter” for her as captain of her ship. As a group, we were just beginning to formalize the process of promotion and making it clear that there were you had to work your way up through the ranks, so I remember being like, “He doesn’t know anything about us!” He ended up being one of two players who jumped into command ranks (the other being Alexander VonGrippen, of the Excalibur-G; Ciara Randor brought the StarWind – a ship she was running independently – into the group, but she had been a member up to that point already). And he wrote the UFOP Constitution! So it all worked out in the end, but this goes to show that we didn’t fall fully formed into the universe, and there were lots of disagreements about policy and process along the way!