I've done a lot of storyline scribbles over the years, and it is high-time I clean some of them up for my own enjoyment, as well as that of my friends. In many cases these stories need further polishing and/or changes due to time, co-authors, etc., etc. However, my first priority is getting them all concentrated into a single spot, to make it easier with regards to editing. (These stories were scattered across multiple URLs, nearly-dead computers, etc., etc.) This page will not only include links to various pieces, but also some of the background that went into them.

The AOL Years

These developed from online role-playing chat rooms on AOL (Red Dragon Inn, Red Star Station), the message boards dedicated to those chat rooms, and/or from email-tag with various co-authors. Some of the segments will be logs of the above, and as such, need cleaning up ... eventually.

• Marlena ...rapidly became everyone's favorite wench in thigh-high boots. Get your mind out of there! Not because of that! She's a warrior-wench with an attitude. One night I, just after I moved to VA, and was quite homesick, I decided to raise a ruckus. Since all my personas were "nice", I created what I thought would be a throwaway character (one that you don't feel too badly about, if they get killed, maimed, etc.). Walking into a space station bar in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots is just asking for trouble, so that's what I did. Of course, I didn't mention that she was a top-rank unarmed combat instructor, did I? Well, when the inevitable pass went too far, she wasn't the one who ended up hospitalized afterwards. Bold, brassy, and not about to take flak from anyone, she was a refreshing change from my other characters, who tended to bend over backwards to help people. She grew on me. Especially after she accidentally ended up on the wrong side of the law, helping a pair of grey-eyed rascals!
• GypsyLynx ... first started out as an alter-ego of mine on Bitnet's Relay (precusor to IRC) in 1985 or so. After a few years, she then went dormant for several years. At that time, she was just a shapeshifting mage, and I hadn't put a lot of work into her background. Then came a casual mention by a friend that AOL had a gaming area called the Red Dragon Inn (RDI) that was a lot like Relay. I was hooked. I ran into some very creative people almost immediately upon starting, and their own detailed backgrounds inspired me to flesh out GypsyLynx at long last ... and to give her a real name! (I've finally unearthed some of the stuff from the Black Iris's Boarding House forum, and hope to incorporate more of it into this collection later.)
• Muette ... came about because I needed a challenge. It was all well and good to play a powerful healer/energy-mage, but could I handle someone more disadvantaged? The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. It was bad enough being half-elven, in a land where many disdained half-breeds. Add in not only escaping from a life of servitude, but the inability to speak, read or write, and the deck was definitely stacked against this nearly-starved bard. She eventually overcame all but the muteness, thanks to the help of some friends. Sadly, during a bout of account-shuffling several years ago, her story was lost. However, parts of her persona and background later lived on as a new persona.
• Anne Nightwolf ... was another disadvantaged one, but only temporarily. Imagine being a crown princess in a land where magic is the norm, and waking up in another sector of space, on the high-tech Red Star (space) Station! No identification, no money, unfamiliar surroundings and technology ... and no memories! (Now, almost a decade after the story was started, my original co-author for this story has found me lurking on the 'net, and, who knows? Perhaps some day this story will be finished ...)
• Chanson ... started after I was introduced to Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing system. A lot of people suddenly started playing vampires in the RDI ... badly. I decided that I was going to do a fun vampire, with a twist. No lurking, brooding, evil thing that messes up everyone's carefully-created personas by killing them off for me! No sirree. The challenge was to do one that could survive without killing, or being killed by overeager vampire-hunters. Chanson du Sang ("song of blood" in French) is musical, maniacal, and a lot of fun! Hold on to those kooshes! Much of her story, and that of the Music is Magic Nightclub, has been found ... in the form of logs of several hundred message board posts, some chat room events, as well as some email-tag between some of the major players. It is going to be a huge undertaking to clean it all up, but I'll get it sorted out eventually!

Along with those major players on the AOL FFGF (free-form gaming forum) scene, I had several supporting characters to add flavor here and there:

• Niami Stoneshaper - a tiny hobbit priestess of Hestia, goddes of Hearth and Home. She started life as a play-by-email D&D character in a campaign that never really got off the ground. I revived her so that GypsyLynx no longer had to run Black Iris's Boarding House alone during the times when Black Iris disappeared. She quickly grew into a fiesty little personality, who loved to cook, called everyone "laddybuck" or "lassie" and was quick to rap the knuckles of anyone trying to snitch still-hot cookies and such with her ever-present wooden whacking spoon ... Those of you familiar with my current-day activities will recognize here the start of what eventually became Niami DenMother and her Rolling Pin of Doom.
• George Talldeer - my first attempt at a more technical character, he was a cyberengineer dealing with nanotechnology. He got thrown through one of the many Gates leading to Arden by a huge explosion on a futuristic Earth, and also settled down at Black Iris's Boarding House for a while.
• Mreean - an escaped Felina slave, she was created to add a bit of tension to Black Iris's boarding house. Her arrival made a bit of fur fly back then! (Some of her story has recently been unearthedd may eventually see the light of day.)
• Ziggy - a very quirky AI (Artificial Intelligence) that was created when Chanson lost her third manager for the Music is Magic Nightclub. It was much easier to just write things off to Ziggy handling them, than trying to find someone willing to manage the place on a regular basis. <g>

The above folks lived in some very interesting shared free-form worlds:

• Arden ... is where most of my personas started off their online lives. Earlier iterations of my stories might refer to it as Rhydin, but in order to keep consistent with some other cooperative efforts out there, the name was changed. (Rhydin is the land surrounding the Red Dragon Inn on AOL, and we wanted a land that was not part of the AOL realm, so we could have slightly more control over the chaos of a free-form shared world). Arden started as a purely fantasy world, where magic held sway. However, it was found to have a propensity for Gates popping up here and there, allowing for many misplaced beings over time. It was also discovered by the technical-types when a space station sprang up nearby.
• Red Star Station ... was the answer to many gamer's prayers back in the 90s. For quite a while, our gaming environment was pretty lacking in anything but fantasy settings, and the place online where we normally gamed was getting filled with people who really didn't know how to interact or game, just roll dice. Things were looking pretty desperate until a friend created a new gaming locale and invited the more creative gamers to visit. Talented writers turned it into a very fleshed-out spot to visit, complete with information on nearby planets, datafiles on some of the more well-known personas, a museum/art gallery and more. Like so much of the "dot com" era, it has since vanished ... perhaps eaten by a wormhole?
• The Kingdom of New Caithness ... was a very fleshed-out fantasy kingdom for those who didn't like the lawless chaos of Arden (where there wasn't a regular police force or recognized leader.) All of my main personas from the AOL portion of my life ended up there at one time or another, and called it home at one time or another. Sadly, it too, disappeared into the mists of time, as I've lost track of the creator, Jon Morse, as well as all the co-writers for the stories.

The EQ Years

I had the great honor, and pleasure, of being in a small role-playing guild in EverQuest, peopled with several friends who were near and dear to my heart. I'll be moving these stories over from some of the old guild pages and reformatting, etc. as time goes on, but for now, here are the links to them.

• The Start to the Journey - Muette meets her teacher
• A Different Type of Harvest- the tale of Meek's rescue from slavery
• A Tangtoungled Lass (expect this section to move/change/etc and be incorporated into a proper story, but here are the original songs that I wrote for my stuttering bard, Meek Tangtoungled)
• The Price of Honor - sadly, the prequel to this story disappeared when the Spiritwalkers site went away. However, herein lies part of the tale of the Lord of the Void, and how he became mortal. (the Sanu and Spyke sections were written by friends, the Ruldari section was mine)
• Voidrunner Bio: Shavanna- a intro to my shamaness persona, Shavanna
• Vision Quest - Shavanna embarks upon a vision quest, and a dance with the spirits
• A Tale of a Tenderizer- Niami confronts the god of Mischief himself, and is awarded a unique weapon for her troubles. (This is the pre-cursor to the RPoD)
• Tickled - Niami casts her first revive spell, Bristlebane-style, of course!
• Family Ties, Family Lies - three sisters, one soul.It's enough to make Triptych go crazy ... if she isn't killed, first! (Triptych pieces written by me, the rest written by Sanu's player. Sadly, the story was never completed)

Oh where, oh where has my little muse gone?

The stories just sort of ... stopped after a while. Part of it was my mom's death, my declining health, my immersion in my EQTC site and so on. Part of it was losing touch with my co-writers as I took a bit of a sabbatical from the game. Whatever the reasons, I stopped writing for a while, other than various guides for EQTC.

Getting back into the writing-thing is hard after all this time, even with tons of stories crammed helter-skelter into my head. There are so many other things to do, especially on the still-struggling EQ2TC site due to a boatload (and then some) of changes to tradeskills that have pretty much made most of the database worthless.

I miss the writing though. I didn't realize how much I missed it until one of the editors from Ten Ton Hammer's EQ2 site asked if I'd write an EQ2-related piece, now and then, as Niami (aka "Mum"). I haven't written anywhere near as much as I'd like for them, but I'm slowly trickling in a piece here and there:

• Spicing Things Up - this Ten Ton Hammer piece was prompted by the addition of provisioner staples to professional society vendors almost a year and a half after launch.
• Adventures in Plant Sitting - Mum breaks out the Rolling Pin of Doom (RPoD) once again, when faced with a neighbor's carnivorous plant.
• Diary of a Compulsive Harvester - The early days of Mum's harvesting escapades, with more installments to the tale incoming ... eventually!