The Augustus Times is New Rome’s newsletter. It preserves official editions, public notices, and the stories selected for the chronicle. Roman activity and raid reporting are maintained separately in Roman Activity Reports.

The Augustus Times

Obsidian Issue, Article I

Author: Tribunus Brian30 Cortes (Paladin Reese)

Editors: Tribunus Rai Grau, Tesserarius R3D Emerald

===Preface===

It was spring of 2006, Second Life, to the public, was three years old, getting off its feet as a sandbox virtual world for the masses. There was an individual, only a few months old in Second Life, being his creative self, practicing his prim building in the sandbox of Lewis, when he came across other like-minded Second Life users. These users befriended the individual and thus, sparks were formed. The group of friends were still learning how this newer virtual world worked: they tested scripts, broke scripts, built armor, weapons, and accessories.

His name was Darckk Trilam and thus began the long and arduous history of the New Roman Empire.

New Rome, like ancient Rome itself, went through many different eras, from the Emperor being banned for being too powerful in the Second Life Military Network, to his brothers betraying him, and to something no one expected: to someone hacking his account. Just like ancient Rome, our New Roman Empire continued to persevere, even without the Emperor there guiding us. Our enemies relentlessly fought dirty, trying to destroy the Empire with any means necessary. They failed, time and time again.

Other Second Life groups have come and gone, but one has always been there, either up front and in everyone’s faces, or dormant, waiting in the shadows for its perfect time to strike.

It was sometime around June of 2026, when Dreadspyke was working on a prim build for his weekly Prim Building Competition that another community had, when he met another fellow Roman…in a sandbox. Krypt Hax. They spoke, they built, they scripted, they planned, and thus the age of Restoration was among the New Roman Empire: the Obsidian Era.

===Editor’s Note===

There were a few Issues of the Augustus Times back in the day, and I’ve decided to bring it back. This first issue I have done myself, with a few interviews from my fellow Romans. I currently do not have a team set up, but for any Romans reading this, if you have any ideas for future issues, please contact me in Discord or Second Life, as I am here to listen or collaborate.

Like older issues, we will be discussing what has happened in current times in the New Roman community: Domestic and Foreign Affairs, Raid Reports, Interviews, Technology. On that note, let’s get right into it!

NEW ROME TURNED 20!

This past spring, it has been 20 long years of Roman history throughout Second Life!

===Domestic Affairs===

June 16th was the start of the restoration era of New Rome, with its acquisition of its parcel in Tremelo, coined as the Obsidian Era by Emperor Dreadspyke. On July 12th, New Rome had its first State of the Empire (SOTE). In less than a month, we’ve had land acquisitions, Arcanii reports regarding the current state of the SLMC, the growth of a new Archivist, promotions, and new goals.

“But Brian, a new archivist, weren’t you archivist back in the day?” someone may ask. Yes, you would be correct, but there has been a lot of down time, and this Roman has proven to be deserving of the role. In the short last couple of months, he has found the lost history of New Rome, as well as the many current events of New Rome as well as the general SLMC, and fed it into what we know as Atlas, our Roman AI archiving system. Atlas takes, stores, and learns from this information. Although it is not a living, breathing being, Atlas is still a Roman.

Centurion Hax has been named The Archivist of New Rome by Emperor Dreadspyke.

“What other promotions were there?” Good question, young Roman. Samgame Bertrand returned to this era as Centurion. Proving himself to the Emperor with all his hard work and achievements, he was promoted to Praetorian by the Emperor and named Omnissiah, the Head of the Mechanicus. Praetorian Bertrand now has a lot of work ahead of him. Farragut Resident was promoted to Tesserarius.

Besides territory, there has been internal growth as well. By this SOTE, we had several Veteran Romans return:

1.  Praetorian Samgame Vertrand
2. Decurion Kecskeshajt Corvinus
3.  Tesserarius Farragut
4. Legius AyaKOG
5. Centurion Krypt Hax

Decruion DJ12 begins the lead on recruitment and training, recruiting a few new Romans who have made their way to Legius:

(And yes, if anyone cares, a little fun fact: Jaylin’s display name is in fact named after Cherrygrove City of the Johto Region in the Pokemon universe!)

We continue to grow expanding new territories, development of new technologies, updating old technologies, group growth and expanding into new parts of Second Life every day, but I will get further into that under the Technology section of this Newsletter.

Legius Barnstormer was promoted to Principes during our August SOTE.

Former Discen Dinaptero was promoted to Legius on 8/11/26.

Former Chaos member, and now Discen Nasku was promoted to Legius. Nasku was an unexpected, but welcoming addition to the Brotherhood.

Congratulations to everyone on their newly, and deserved, acquired ranks! May you continue to serve the Emperor and strike down his foes. Semper Fidelis!

===Foreign Affairs===

Emperor Dreadspyke has been assessing the SLMC, noticing that the community has been transitioning to the implementation of Combat 2.0. This assessment was relayed to the Mechanicus, and weapons put into production to match said assessment.

Currently, the SLMC remains fractured, although does seem to be improving a little bit. Emperor Dreadspyke is in a constant political fight with many different leaders of foreign groups, and their subordinates. Our biggest contenders right now are Chaos, GLC, and AN, however we continue to show that Dreadspyke and his Romans are a force to be reckoned with.

While our main base of operations was in Tremelo, former Roman Kion Kuhn (now known as Astra Amour), attempted to wreak havoc on our land and our personnel. The sim was constantly DDoSed at times when New Roman activities were at all-time highs on the parcel. Our evidence continued to point at Astra Amour. While collecting this evidence, Astra had Krypt Hax mass reported, attempting to scapegoat the causing of the Tremelo sim crashes on to him. Krypt proved to everyone that the reason he was banned was not because of the sim being crashed, but due to billing issues of previous accounts, which he rectified quickly. Astra and his group of friends continued to harass Dreadspyke and Krypt, but we continued to preserve and ultimately won this unnecessary feud.

Although we got off to a slow start, relationships with foreign groups continued to get better every day. At the August SOTE, Emperor Dreadspyke created a goal: to raid five times by the next SOTE. This was done within the next five days of the conclusion of the SOTE.

GLC continued to believe that New Rome was the bane of the SLMC’s existence, that no one wanted us here, and that no one wanted to play videogames with us. We’ve continued to prove them wrong. At one point, all New Rome was banned from Chaos’ sim, but that has been since undone.

Recently, Alliance Navy visited our parcel in Huntingdon. Initially their Officer was a bit rude, telling me to “shut up.” The nerve of them, and on our property nonetheless! After a few minutes with Praetorian Bertrand greeting them to the base as well, it was discussed that both us and them were still under construction, that they were about finished updating all their equipment to meet the Combat2 and LBA standards of the SLMC and that they should be opening this week (week of Sept 14th). We’ll see in time if this remains true, especially with both Dreadspyke and Krypt being banned from their sim.

Since Emperor Dreadspkye made our goal of 5 raids before the September 19 SOTE, we have raided 19 times at the time of this newsletter being authored. This is 380% over Dreadspyke’s goal of 5 raids for the month.

===Technology===

Our technology continues to grow each day. Within the last month Mechanicus has upgraded our armory (or plans to, with stuff still under development!)

-          Dreadspyke released the Meltor on the Marketplace, which deals small amounts of LBA damage and leaves a path of fire behind for 20 seconds.

-          Samgame released the Roman Prowler, an armored jeep that carries up to three passengers and blasts music.

-          Rai and Brian re-released an updated version of the Chainsword, which now deals Combat 2 damage (it no longer has to rez a kill prim), and allows you to turn the blades on and off.

-          Samgame re-scripted the Gladius, with LBA dealing grenades and upgraded weapon core scripts.

-          Samgame sets weapon standards:

o   Weapons now use a Primary, Secondary and Tertiary swapping system. Other weapons that use the same, you will be able to “Add” multiple weapons to the same avatar attachment spot and hit 1, 2 or 3 to choose what weapon to use in battle

-          The Vox Marketplace is up and running, where Roman creators can use a distribution script supplied by Omnissiah Samgame to upload their creations to the marketplace and create listings

===Vox Network===

Vox Network has a new website! voxnetwork.co.uk

The Vox Network, originally starting out as an honor/credit system, where Romans can earn Denarii by being active on Roman land and performing in raids or defenses. Romans also had to manually keep track of the battles and how long a person was in it. This changed with the new Vox Network. A Decurion+ can start a battle through the website, where it then keeps track of who took place in the battle, how long they were in the battle for, and their KDR throughout the battle. Denarii is awarded based on the number of kills and the amount of time in the battle.

Please check out the future Augustus Times Article based on the Vox Network, as there have been *massive* updates lately.

Omnissiah Bertrand is the master engineer behind this expansive network.

===New Rome Website===

https://newromegaming.com

There is now a New Rome Website that was created by Brian30 Cortes. This is different than Samgame’s Vox Network, as the Vox is an internal component of New Rome, that is not open to the public. This website acts as the front end of New Rome. It is an attempt to engage with the general members of Second Life and anyone on social media. The attempt is to give many people as possible knowledge about our Civilization. Make sure to keep an eye out for a future Augustus Times Article on everything New Rome Gaming.

===Interviews===

Each Issue of the Augustus Times, I am going to try and get the perspective of different Romans, by just asking them their perspective of what’s going on in Roman life. Unfortunately, I cannot get to every single Roman, this would then become a book, rather than a Newsletter, but I will switch up who I talk to each issue.

###Decurion Kecskeshajt Corvinus###

When thinking about what to put in this issue, I remembered we did some sort of interview process at the time. I decided to ask Decurion Corvinus his perspective of the last month:

Decurion Corvinus stated that this comeback of New Rome is one of the greatest stories of recent, that he doubted any other group was reactivated this fast, bringing back many veterans and recruiting many new members, and that the Mechanicus are producing all sorts of new tech simultaneously. He also stated that our continuous raiding brought life back to the SLMC. This is something I can personally confirm with him as well.

###Tribunus Morpheus###

Although Morpheus cannot join us right now on Second Life itself, he still joins us in our day to day group activities in Discord:

“This new era of New Rome is exciting. We have all the major people coming back, from different eras. All of us with unique skills that contribute to the development of the empire. I’m excited to partake in this. The possibilities are endless and the future is bright. Thank you to all the Romans who readily accepted my return to the brotherhood.”

###Ominissiah Samgame Bertrand###

“The Empires armoury grows each day, our technological prowess knows no bounds.

Development continues on the vox network, but is largely complete, enjoy earning your combat badges!

Many vehicle systems are soon coming to the marketplace, keep your eyes open for new releases

Glory to the Empire!”

===Schedule===

-          DJ12 Paine is working on bringing back the Opus Hub, work is in progress for that front of New Rome

-          Samgame Bertrand continues to expand the Vox Network, there are some other future features in the works for training, recruitment and possibly an armory help page

-          Like DJ's Opus Hub, R3D Emerald and Brian30 Cortes are also working on a new branch of New Rome. Named "Adventurer's Guild" this Guild attempts to bring a whole new and different experience to Second Life users who are not always into the SLMC. It is an adventure/crafting system, separate from users building in Second Life. It's goal is to open up the New Rome Military into a New Rome Civilization

-          Huntingdon castle continues to be worked on by Emperor Dreadspyke.

===ANNOUNCEMENTS===

-         There is now a reporting system set up on the New Roman Website. Labelled Community Intake. This is one form set up for the current 3 branches of Rome (New Rome Legio, Adventurer’s Guild, Opus Hub), also branching in to Feedback, Suggestions, and Reports

-          Samgame sets weapon standards:

o   Weapons now use a Primary, Secondary and Tertiary swapping system. Other weapons that use the same, you will be able to “Add” multiple weapons to the same avatar attachment spot and hit 1, 2 or 3 to choose what weapon to use in battle

-          There is no date set for the October SOTE at this time. Check the New Rome notices and Discord for when the next SOTE will be!

-          There are currently no set dates for when the Augustus Times will be released. However, there will be a few released within the next couple of weeks: this current one, one on the Vox Network and one on the New Rome Website.

-          If you wish to help out in any way wit the Opus Hub, reach out to DJ12 Paine for further information

-          If you wish to help out in any way with the Augustus Times, reach out to Brian30 Cortes for further information

o   There will be a section on the website for “members” only, similar to how Vox works by saying “.web” in Second Life. This section of the website will house a Augustus Time submissions form as well as house various documents for New Romans.