Inspired by the example of Brother Demetrious and partially by a Proboards thread on fond AA memories, one morning before 8 am in 2007 I decided to log some words about my list of alts. Because exhibitionism is fun, and particularly because I found I enjoy reading about other people's characters. I don't expect to keep the page particularly up to date, but much of the history is there already anyway.
My alts, after I got back from my hiatus and hit Creator (i.e. got back the right to have multiple alts as a wizard) in 2006, are Fir, Otter, Azaphael, Juniper, Kataja, Lehmus, Ragnhild, Saarni, Sallow and Tirfest. My very first alt was called Maggot, but she got lost in the woods. I'll present them in semi-chronological order just to be confusing.
Once upon a time, around the bend between 1997 and 1998, an AAer called things like Gambler* (Eldar), Chislev* (Bear) and Alessa* (Chaos) told me about a world called Ancient Anguish. It's the trusted friends who get you hooked, I tell you. I first logged on a Guest through the web interface, by myself, and was immediately overwhelmed by the Inn alone. I read some help files and was generally thoroughly confused, and logged out to digest it all.
*) Gambler, Chislev, Alessa and Maggot are no longer among us, and any coincidingly-named people should be considered pure coincidences.
But it wasn't for long before I was logging on to create a character under Chislev's instruction. I had no idea whatsoever what to be yet, and I was confident I'd manage to piss people off by being clueless, so Maggot was really a trying-it-out character for me. She became a human (versatile) ranger (Chislev's class). The name doesn't refer to worms primarily: it's "an eccentric idea", the 2nd meaning of Webster. And it makes me think of pet names like "squirt".
Chislev and alts weren't on all the time, so I found more helpers: Iorek and Bobek (also both gone AFAIK). Iorek in particular was an instant hit since I'd read Pullman's books, and I joined Bears after him. Bears were a bit too big for me, since I was a sensitive youth and brooded over being told off about spamminess once.
Luckily, I had been learning the way guilds were for a few weeks, and picking fights with elvish Chaos mages like I was born for the task. I was just drawn to being a tree-hugger Eldar half-elf cleric. And that's where Fir came in.
I picked out Fir's name from a dictionary after noting that 'Juniper', my occasionally-used 'net handle, was taken at the time. As said, her nature was clear from the start: a wee castoff creature balancing her weakness out with a heap of righteous distaste for Scythe and the religion-wise misaligned Chaos. I once doodled a picture of her, taking strongly to an image of Zelda.
Of course, the personality of main characters seldom gets to express itself in peace, particularly since after wizzing it's not really been much of an option to bait her natural enemies. But I just love a good in-game guild friction nevertheless.
Wielding an orange toy hammer that goes 'beep', Fir of the House of Amros adopted Dracul as her father, and ended up a part of a truly strange family tree dating back to grandpa Tandara's illegitimate affair with Lars. Dracul's later union with Tamaryn added a stepmother into the picture as well. She (or Maggot, but I somehow doubt it) got briefly married with the late Sephiroth for being asked nicely and then lost him to the wanderings of the Real Life wood. Later she was married with Eivind (who I also lived with for 2 years, until our breakup lead to in-game divorce). After that she's remained unmarried; I beat her to marrying my husband in 2007.
In the professional side, I spent a long time thinking about wizardhood and why not to do it, having watched Daddy Dracul struggle with the requirements of wizardhood combined with perfectionism. However, it was clear that wizzing was the only way to really starting to look after The Canticle, then editored by Scarecrazy who was eager to hand the job over to the enthusiastic scoop submitter. I finally gave in to the urge around early 2001, after setting my mind to designing an area that should get me past education, approval and balance quickly to get Creator. (Pfft. It took me a couple years to code and until early 2006 after my 1-year hiatus to get approved. The approval process is quite a bit more predictable these days.)
Fir ended up running The Canticle behind the curtains from around Volume 6.0, with Thaddeus consistently acting as the Editor-in-chief, until a little scandal cast Fir to ultimate power - within the paper at least. Later it was claimed that she had plotted to destroy the Dalair paper with the help of Erin, and Thaddeus took over again (this coincided with my leaving for hiatus - most of the spectacular editorial news are excuses for why the paper is late, and it's fun to come up with new ones ;)). In the next volume, Fir resumed control post haste as Thaddeus had left the offices on a matter that turned out to be the discovery of his son, Thaddeus Jr., who promptly inherited the paper. Fir is back working behind the curtain, until a new excuse for a truly late paper is needed...
Since baiting Chaos mages was not enough to attract trouble, Thyme was born. An elf street-rat rogue, she spent some time in Eldar before finding a true calling in the Society of the Raven. Thyme talks big and runs fast. If you believe her, there's no end to the number of lame, glass-eyed, dim-in-the-head relatives she has to care for with your money. Oh, and her friends will stab you on a dark alley if you don't pay up.
I struggled with the dilemma of wanting to be killable through a bounty on one hand, and being convinced that a bounty would be a boring one-two-you're-dead experience instead of the creative adrenaline-filled drama that's fun to read about in stories and live in dreams. (These are fun dreams. When I get shot in the head in a dream, I get proof of something continuing after death and feel victorious over it. That's my subconscious for you.)
My drive finally got me in trouble with the Raven GM, who, when I asked, judged it was not quite ok to do the thieving routine at a guildmate friend with the full intention of getting caught. Thyme left the Ravens voluntarily to avoid getting banned for life for it later. She got purged during Fir's early wizhood and later recreated only to return to Ravens; these days I make sure to only risk getting randomly bountied by someone who sees her "stealing" from friends. Fun command, that.
After Maggot had wandered off to woods unknown (I forgot to log her on), I felt a need to return to my roots to rangering, and Ragnhild, the dwarven Bear ranger lass, was born. She is a merry lass, always interested in experimenting with interesting things to distill. After Fir hit Creator, Ragnhild was reborn into Knights to try them out.
Ragnhild is a Nordic, viking-sounding name. I picked it up from Edda, which I had read a bit earlier.
Wizards who are not yet creators are allowed one alt. So I froze all of my existing ones and created the human girl Azaphael to carry me through the madness.
I had a spectacularly bad idea for her: a pacifist paladin.
It would not have been half as bad if she wasn't also my only mortal for many long years, or if she were of some class that could do something interesting without killing stuff. I'd work on her exp with unusual means, and by the time she was past level 6 it was too late to turn back: she's now level 12 and hasn't gotten there by killing (although the occasional hit-back to forest aggressives I haven't avoided). I also couldn't bring myself to swap alts since it required bothering Law folk and might have meant killing her off in the freezer.
Azaphael is a gentle character, a Monk who'd go fishing (for my boredom) but use a net and let the fish jump back into the water. She was also my alter ego to take a vacation from the occasionally strained social composition that is Eldar, although the Monks were rather quiet at the time. Her name's faintly angelic nature comes from a character-limited bastardization of Aziraphale, a character in Good Omens. Such a sweet girl, that Azaphael. Not very smart in the brain, but sweet nevertheless.
Created around my wizzing, Tirfest's not a regular alt of mine, but a wizardly "test character", which means that you might catch Fir and Tirfest online at the same time. Test characters are people who get killed, maimed and humiliated a lot for the education, benefit and general amusement of their wizards, and they get paid really badly for it. Tirfest is no exception.
I logged back on in Christmas vacation of 2005-2006 after being out for a year, and realized how much I'd missed everyone - the splendid social side of AA is the one you forget when wizhood stress or exp loss brings you down, which is a shame. I chatted for a while and got anxious to stay, but also saw that Infidian (and hence my area) was still not installed, which meant that I couldn't play without doing something to Azaphael. I managed to convince Malire that my approved but uninstalled area would be installed any minute now, and that I would not play Azaphael until then if I got a fresh alt slot to play with. And he said yes! Yay! If his voice was a bit hoarse at the time, it was because because he was just about to cough up a little hairball called Otter.
Well, Otter didn't really bounce out of Malire's stomach, but judging by her fixation with her own stomach it wouldn't be completely unbelievable either. I had seen shapeshifters get installed during my wizdom, and had seen both my sister and Eivind play them. I was so envious! So the choice of class was clear, and I went for human to be versatile.
Otter grew her own character out of my crazed joy at everything (I hadn't seen a "Yes, yes." since 2001, and thought it was hilarious all over again), like I had been let out of a dark prison to run free again. Her name, picked thinking of the young Lutra lutrae I've seen in Helsinki Zoo, had its own effect. And the feline primarly clan, definitely.
As I cast her in a Canticle story together with my later, more scholarly alts, Otter turned out to have mixed herself up with the panther she spent a lot of time as: her main interest towards the fascinating new animal life they run into was on whether or not she could eat them.
Otter started out in the Eldar, but when the new guild, The Snowfolk, went in, I decided to move her over - I still had two Eldar, and the guild sounded like a lot of fun. I violate against the "kill no sentient beings" directions kind of much, but blame it all on panthers not considering humanoid beings really sentient. Or much anything else than themselves, to be honest.
Otter is the only AA character I have actively dreamed of - in a non-AA world to boot. My other AA dreams generally feature the nameless me.
After Infidian went in and I was finally a Creator, I drowned Law in alt names to register. I recreated my old alts (barring Maggot, who I wasn't attached to), and then stopped to ponder. Fir was a tree. Thyme was a plant. Otter was an animal running around in the forest. (Azaphael and Ragnhild were freaks of nature, but at least Ragnhild was a lass of the woods.)
I noticed the name 'Juniper', which I might have been if it had been free, was freed up by now, and I lunged to take it.
Juniper became the second Fir: An Eldar half-elf cleric. With Otter as my main mortal, I have not spent a whole lot of time as Juniper beyond working her up to a level where she can be useful to the world around her, i.e. a service alt. After a while, she moved to Monks.
After deciding on Juniper, I decided I had pretty much covered the fun English tree names I would, and turned to the Finnish ones. Kataja means 'Juniper'. She's an Eldar elf transmutation mage. She's grown up to be a perm mage, but it'll take me some more work to actually get her the various spells that need perming. In the meanwhile, she'll use Calandryll for the brunt work and then provide the finesse into the perming service.
Kataja appears as the frustrated brains of the party in the aforementioned Canticle story. She does not exactly warm up to Otter's tendency to think with her stomach. Kataja's from a good family, and knows her worth.
Lehmus is the linden tree. Linden sounds too much like a Swedish surname, hence I didn't pick it for a character name. Lehmus hasn't really found her place in the world; I made her my fighter but found the idea of collecting mad weapon skills to be able to do serviceable evals worth delaying somewhat, so she got delayed. I also planned to put her into Scythe, but that turned out to be troublesome. And later Sallow showed up and took over the Scythe fighter role more naturally.
Lehmus spent a while waiting for a new class to show up where she could find herself, but after a while I started to feel like I need an SK alt too. And if I'm to make an SK alt, it's not going to be for successfully killing someone. Hence Lehmus was transferred to be a trainee cleric, and got informed that she is to get herself to some suitable fix/purge/such level and be the True Field Cleric. For now, she's in Snowfolk, but I guess she'll have to go take Juniper's place in Eldar when she joins the Society of Kindness.
In the meanwhile, I've just been feeding Juniper to various predators on anarchy on occasion.
Saarni is the ash tree. I might have used ash for a necromancer or Chaoser, actually, but it's reserved so no. Saarni is a dwarvish Knight paladin, and full of lawful righteousness. She'd challenge her fellow Knight Chewbacca into a duel for him making fun of King Drin - and lose spectacularly, for she is cursed with an evil player. She'll work hard to get a nobility title eventually, anxious to prove that a dwarf fresh from the mountainside can walk into the human capitol of Anguish and make a honourable living as a Knight.
Unlike Azaphael, Saarni doesn't have the slightest drop of pacifist blood in her. There are limits.
Pihlaja is the rowan tree, also known as mountain ash. I live in a suburb named after rowans, and they're kind of cute, not to mention that they have a nice-sounding name. Pihlaja became my artificer; a dwarf Bear, she's willing to kill anything that moves if it's useful for her experiments. And experiment she does, with all her spellficing might.
I seem to recall that it was around this time when I went strongly into coding mode again, after having a good breather from anything smelling of AA work. Hence Pihlaja never got quite to a level where I could use her for rendering services, but that can be amended later.
After I had all the other classes covered, I finally decided I'd have to make a necromancer. And what better name for a Chaos necromancer half-elf than a needly tree that is pronounced [pain]? To be sure, it was a pain to aim for a low alignment for the first time in my life, but I made it and got sponsored into Chaos as well.
Pine is the dark side equivalent of Juniper: A fiercely loyal servant of Chaos who loathes all enemies of Chaos ... which seems to cover just about the entire world outside The Courts.
Never did I imagine I'd go "Awww!" excitedly at the first time an undead intoned "I HEAR AND OBEY, MISTRESS" at Pine. Or giggle in delight at it cackling evilly, reminding its young mistress that it might not remain obedient for the entirety of its unlifespan. Got to love pets with attitude.
I was setting the description of some alt of mine, and spotted a skin colour called 'sallow'. I found it fascinating for two reasons: it both looks like and connects to willows (it's a willow family besides the colour word), which is among the coolest remaining tree names I haven't covered. Willow itself is, luckily, taken by someone else, so I don't have to ponder if I'd really want to get a character too connected to a Buffy the Vampire Slayer one. Another thing that caught my attention was dreadlocks - I love the dramatic English word, and a weeping willow and dreadlocks connected in my brain. I had to have a character with sallow skin and dreadlocks.
I had to have an orc fighter. Called Sallow. I simply had to. But I couldn't and still can't imagine an imposing orc woman. Scythe is also the most misogynic guild on AA I can think of, and participating in such discussions as one of the underdogs really didn't tickle my fancy. So I made my first male character ever.
Sallow showed up, beat Lehmus by just staring at her for a while, and took what she was supposed to become when she grew up. She'll thank him for it one day. When she finds the courage to climb down from the tree.
I've been strongly influenced by partying with Boron the orc, who was with me at the body shop as well. I got the Stan Nicholls book "Orcs" and convinced myself that orcs don't have to be brutes. Sallow's a level-headed fighter. Just because he berserks around waving a two-handed axe doesn't mean he's a bright son of an orc. He's already driven a fellow Scyther to madness just by arguing with him in the only kind of English I know - book English. I honestly wouldn't make a convincing testosterone grunt, so I opt for the intelligent beast. Who will balance out Otter nicely too. ;)