User Name and Avatars: Origin Stories

[R_J_K75]

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

A Buh....No a BOMB....But that's not important right now....

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As people may be able to see, I've switched avatars to Elsbeth Tascioni from The Good Wife/Fight, a character I feel some kinship with, especially as she clearly has ADHD of a somewhat similar kind to me, and loves to find holes in things other people ignored. Not entirely sure about her new show yet, especially this attempt to pretend being a cop is good or about "truth" (my ass it is), but I dunno, the Kings have never entirely screwed up a show yet that I've seen, so I'll give it a chance!

 

[Horacio]

As I wrote 22 years ago, my user name is simple my given name. Well, technically my second given name...

And my avatar is a Fighter version of me in OOTS style. I have been doing avatars in OOTS style for too much time too

Damn, I feel old now...

 

[pukunui]

As for my avatar: I used to have a picture of Pukunui (among other things). Currently, I've got a picture of Sam Vimes from Discworld - the inspiration for my most recent PC, Hannibal, the crossbow-wielding, cigar-smoking veteran of the Last War I've been playing in a long-running Eberron campaign. We'll be starting a new campaign soon, and I'll swap out my avatar for an illustration of my new PC once that's been determined.

My new PC is Otto the Autognome, an aberrant mind sorcerer. He was built as a bartender on the Rock of Bral. In the performance of his duties, he was infected with a "virus" that awakened his mind to the infinite possibilities of the multiverse. He ran away aboard a spelljammer, eventually finding his way to Toril.

(Otto will, unfortunately, be a short-lived PC as this is a short campaign the DM is running to teach a noob how to play D&D. Once this adventure is finished, the DM is going to run us through a modified version of Dragon Heist using the 2024 revised rules, at which point I will have another new PC!)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Fitz is a character of mine from the late 90's. Probably my favorite character - a charming rogue and highwayman. My avatar is what he looks like, though he often changed his hairstyle for disguises - I had many little drawings of him on the back of his character sheet. A Ruke was a sort-of Romani-inspired culture (heavily mixed with Irish) that was his ancestry.

@Snarf Zagyg I always assumed that you were Frans Gygax - Gary's long-lost cousin! (I'm kidding, of course).

 

[Ondath]

As I wrote 22 years ago, my user name is simple my given name. Well, technically my second given name...

And my avatar is a Fighter version of me in OOTS style. I have been doing avatars in OOTS style for too much time too

Damn, I feel old now...

I remember when GitP forums were massive and people would regularly make avatars for each other! Those were the days...

As for me, my username is my name translated into Elvish. Because I'm an elf nerd like that. The avatar itself is a picrew my wife drew for me before we started dating (which, in hindsight, I should've taken as a hint but it took me way too long to realise she is as into me as I am into her). I have way less hair than what is shown hair, though my mustache is more majestic.

 

[Mannahnin]

I couldn't decide on an avatar at first, and that at some point I found a Lego Robin Hood/Archer which seemed fine. And then I saw there was an actual freaking Disney one - so I ordered that and switched. It isn't an all time great movie, it isn't my highest rated Disney movie - but it holds a special place in my heart.

Disney's Robin Hood is far, far better than it has any right to be. There's a YouTube video essay about it, and the nature of legends, and the entire cinematic history of Robin Hood and how everyone keeps screwing it up in the decades since Disney nailed it, and despite being nearly FORTY-SEVEN minutes long I've watched it multiple times. It's a really poetic and insightful piece.

I'm looking forward to finding out, I'm going to a screening in two weeks.

How did you like Streets of Fire?

 

[Mannahnin]

Name: Mannahnin.

I had a variety of different user names online starting in the late 80s on places like Prodigy, and dial-in private Bulletin Board Systems, but I came up with this one originally for DakkaDakka.com and the Dakka Dakka forums. Which became a pretty sizable international website for GW and other wargames, miniatures, and related subjects, but was originally local and created to serve a Warhammer 40k league of the same name based in Nashua, NH. I joined the league in April or May of 1999 and created a user account for the forum. At the time many of the existing users would issue challenges to games, write battle reports, or boast of victories in character, and would use the name of their army general/HQ as a user name.

My first 40k army was Eldar, and I created my own craftworld and wrote my own background and fluff for it. Taking my cue from GW's use of mangled Irish names (like Biel-Tan and Saim-Hann), I called mine Maen-Lir and named the farseer who led my army Mannahnin, a deliberate and attempted phonetic misspelling of Manannan Mac Lir.

I was very active on the Dakka forums (moderating for around a decade, I think). I'm still in the top 30 users by post count, with 24,364 posts between 2005 when there was a board reset and 2017 when I last posted, though only five or six posts in the 2015-2017 period. So I got very accustomed to the name and carried it over into a few other forums and venues.

Avatar: This is an image I trimmed from the cover art of the 1991 Ace paperback edition of Jack Vance's Madouc. I believe the figure pictured is intended to be the magician Shimrod during a period in his life when he "...wandered the Elder Isles as a vagabond, sometimes posing as a peasant, more often as a peregrine knight in search of romantic adventure." to quote the novel's first chapter. I've also used Shimrod as a pseudonym in a few places, including my old Livejournal account back in those halcyon days of yore.

Shimrod is the scion/simulacrum of the archmage Murgen, and for any interested in the context, here is a longer excerpt from chapter 1.

For many years the Elder Isles were ruled from Castle Haidion at Lyonesse Town, until Olam III, son of Fafhion Long Nose, removed the seat of government to Falu Ffail at Avallon, taking with him the sacred throne Evandig and the great table Cairbra an Meadhan, ‘the Board of Notables’, and the source of a whole cycle of legends.
Upon the death of Olam III, the Elder Isles entered upon a time of troubles. The Ska, having been expelled from Ireland, settled on the island Skaghane, where they rebuffed all attempts to dislodge them. Goths ravaged the coast of Dahaut, sacking the Christian monastery on Whanish Isle, sailing their longboats up the Cambermouth as far as Cogstone Head, from which they briefly menaced Avallon itself. A dozen princelings vied for power, shedding muchblood, wreaking much grief and bereavement, exhausting theland, and in the end achieving nothing, so that the Elder Isles became a patchwork of eleven kingdoms, each at odds with all the rest.
Audry I, King of Dahaut, never abandoned his claim to sovereignty over all the Elder Isles, citing his custody of the throne Evandig as basis for his assertion. His claim was angrily challenged, especially by King Phristan of Lyonesse, who insisted that Evandig and Cairbra an Meadhan were his own rightful property, wrongfully sequestered by Olam III. He named Audry I traitor and caitiff; in the end the two realms went to war. At the climactic battle of Orm Hill the two sides succeeded only in exhausting each other. Both Phristan and Audry I were killed, and finally the remnants of the two great armies straggled sadly away from the bloody field.
Audry II became king of Dahaut and Casmir I was the new king of Lyonesse. Neither abandoned the ancient claims, and peace between the two realms was thereafter fragile and tentative. So went the years, with tranquillity only a memory. In the Forest of Tantrevalles halfings, trolls, ogres and others less easily defined, bestirred themselves and performed evil deeds which no one dared punish; magicians no longer troubled to mask their identities, and were solicited by rulers for aid in the conduct of temporal policy.
The magicians devoted ever more time to sly struggles and baneful intrigue, to the effect that a goodly number had already been expunged. The sorcerer Sartzanek was one of the chief offenders; he had destroyed the magician Coddefutby means of a purulence, and Widdefut through the Spell of Total Enlightenment. In retaliation, a cabal of Sartzanek’senemies compressed him into an iron post which they emplaced at the summit of Mount Agon. Sartzanek’s scionTamurello took refuge at his manse Faroli, deep within the Forest of Tantrevalles and there protected himself by dint of careful magic.
That further events of this sort might be avoided, Murgen,most potent of the magicians, issued his famous edict, forbidding magicians employment in the service of temporal rulers, inasmuch as such activity must inevitably bring magicians into new conflicts with each other, to the danger of all.
Two magicians, Snodbeth the Gay, so-called for his jingling bells, ribbons and merry quips, and Grundle of Shaddarlost, were brash enough to ignore the edict, and each suffered a severe penalty for his presumption. Snodbeth was nailed into a tub to be devoured by a million small black insects; Grundle awoke from his sleep to find himself in a dismal region at the back of the star Achernar, among geysers of molten sulphur and clouds of blue fume; he too failed to survive.
Although the magicians were persuaded to restraint, travail and dissension elsewhere were rife. Celts who had been placidly settled in the Daut province Fer Aquila became inflamed by bands of Goidels from Ireland; they slaughtered all the Dauts they could find, elevated a burly cattle-thief named Meorghan the Bald to the kingship and renamed the land Godelia, and the Dauts were unable to recapture their lost province.
Years passed. One day, almost by chance, Murgen made a startling discovery, which caused him such vast consternation that for days he sat immobile, staring into space. By degrees his resolution returned and at last he set himself to a program which, if successful, would slow and finally halt the momentum of an evil destiny.
The effort preoccupied Murgen’s energies and all but eliminated the joy in his life.
The better to guard his privacy, Murgen set out barriers of dissuasion along the approaches to Swer Smod, and, further, appointed a pair of demoniac gatekeepers, the better to turn back obstinate visitors; Swer Smod thereupon became a place of silence and gloom.
Murgen at last felt the need for some sort of alleviation. For this reason he brought into existence a scion, so that he might, in effect, live two existences in tandem. The scion, Shimrod, was created with great care, and was by no means a replica of Murgen, either in appearance or in temperament. Perhaps the differences were larger than Murgen had intended, since Shimrod’s disposition was at times a trifle too easy, so that it verged on the frivolous: a condition which was at discord with current conditions at Swer Smod. Murgen, nevertheless, cherished his scion and trained him in the skills of life and the arts of magic.
In the end Shimrod became restless and with Murgen’s blessing he departed Swer Smod in all good cheer. For a period Shimrod wandered the Elder Isles as a vagabond,sometimes posing as a peasant, more often as a peregrine knight in search of romantic adventure.
Shimrod at last settled into the manse Trilda on Lally Meadow, a few miles into the Forest of Tantrevalles."

 

[Vael]

After enjoying being an Owl with a top hat (art from the new PHB), I'm back to my Vorlon self.

How did you like Streets of Fire?

Awesome movie. Willem Dafoe ate, but the sleeper hit for me was Amy Madigan's McCoy. So good.

 

[pukunui]

I am not currently playing a PC, so I have switched my picture to the actual Pukunui.