[member="Valiens Nantaris"]
I'll cover those point-by-point, if I may.
1) Honestly, those are the ones that V gave me. As I said, we have many others, if you'd like them. I'll get the others to gather up a few of them and we'll link them back for you.
2) We do indeed have a lot of new members, but that alone ought to highlight the enthusiasm people have for a Jedi Order which acts like a Jedi Order! People are signing up because they want this, not because we're asking them to do us a favour. It's worth noting that we've had three new members join our ranks just since posting the application for Major. There's clear enthusiasm there.
3) Yes, we absolutely do. That part has never been in question, to my mind.
4) We fully expect to be attacked: we don't believe that we won't get involved in the map game, we just know that our approach to it is going to be very different to groups like SJO, or the FO, or TSE. We're not going to maintain an active combat fleet, nor are we going to respond to attacks with force (one of the reasons we believe that some of the other Jedi factions have gone awry from their mandate as peacekeeping factions in the first place): we'll respond through diplomacy and patient negotiation. If we're attacked, we'll defend ourselves, but we have no designs on becoming an offensive faction - our role as peacekeepers doesn't rule out violence, but it does remind us that violence should only be applied if necessary. And we don't see it being that necessary - and, or so we hope, that approach will generate some great storytelling between ourselves and other factions.
Our seperation from governance of the worlds we take into our influence cloud doesn't distract from the possibility of those worlds still being able to defend themselves in their own political rights and any defense towards invasion could be played on our part in conjunction with said governments emphasizing the smaller scale stories of the Jedi rising to support the innocent through starfighter combat or ground assaults.
The more our cloud of influence grows, the more influence we portray across these systems and allow us to further rally to their sides to defend them against invasion forces, regardless of the fact that we are not a military power, as peacekeepers, we can and will stand to defend the worlds within our territories.
5) Not entirely (though it certainly seems to have worked!). Most people who are serious about RPing a Jedi have ultimately always been drawn to a Major Faction, and we felt that we'd done enough preparation to throw ourselves into the mix. More to the point, with the Order of the Sacred Lotus having gone minor a while back, we also feel that there's no Major Faction that fills the niche that we're looking at: that of orthodox Jedi working as Healers, Scholars, Diplomats etc. The GA's Jedi have to focus on their own internal politics as part of the Alliance, and the SJO have very much turned into a militant anti-Sith faction of late. We think there's a lot of room for a more orthodox Jedi faction, and that's why we're putting ourselves out there.
It's true that we've had occasional activity concerns, but it's also worth noting that we're growing as a faction, we have more than enough active writers to qualify for Major, and we're looking to slip into a niche which we think many writers will find (and are currently finding, if today's new intake is any indication!) appealing.