How I was introduced to Rhy’Din

Welcome back everyone! I know it has been a long time since I talked of Rhy’Din last, but I am aiming to rectify that as I get back into my writing. I let my health stop me from doing a lot of the writing I loved, and now I am going to use that writing to keep my spirits up while I go through more health issues. Right now, I want to talk about how I was introduced to Rhy’Din and all that went with it. Some of my fondest memories come from the days of AOL RP that I spent in Rhy’Din. From wars, to finding an internet family I would do anything for even offline, to finding loves for my character who also captured my heart and became some of my best friends, to some people who even saved my life… Rhy’Din brought many joys but also many sorrows but one of the biggest things wrong is that it is now gone. But let’s not let it be forgotten shall we?

When I was first introduced to the online life my parents asked me what service I wanted to be on. A lot of it was because we heard it would be good for schooling and such but I also had heard there was a good online community of Role Players and I figured if I could find one then I would love to be involved with them. My parents were fine with this knowing how much I loved D&D and knowing that the Role Play had gotten me good friends and helped with writing and my imagination. So first we tried CompuServe. While it had an interesting interface that was simple it had no real D&D things. The closest RP I could find was this text based map that used ASCI language to make maps and then you had to type in commands for your character that was a little X in the screen. This just wasn’t going to do it for me.

So we went to AOL and I found they had a TSR area complete with text chat room based RP! I had my dad make me a screen name right away which was Talon DS (my dad said it stood for Dumb Shit though actually it stood for DrachenStalker). Talon was born online sometime in 1994 I believe it was and one of the older AOL’s (2.0?) I think it was which is the second place Talon had life. Talon had been created for a D&D campaign one year before when a friend of mine wanted to run a campaign to make a character into an immortal. Talon is now a piece of Rhy’Din History with a huge clan and is the main character of a novel series I am writing.

So as we got into the TSR community on AOL under the Entertainment tab we found they had chat rooms with live RP that was a lot like doing Tabletop RP but in text. It was a simple system with no dice but just pure storytelling. Many people made profiles that instead of talking about themselves told who and what their character was and I did the same. I remember fondly talking to OniDen and OldOne and many others. It was a tavern for heroes that had doors open to all the many realms so anyone could go there and it is there that I started to learn of Rhy’Din. People that played in Rhy’Din or the Red Dragon Inn would come to the TSR area and try to recruit others. For a month or so I was comfortable there in the Crossroads Inn but eventually as I made new friends I also branched out. This is when I decided to find my way into Rhy’Din as one day I got a mail from someone in a guild called the Silent Legion of Death.

The SLoD was a training guild for the dark guild Darkness of Death run by Sonya. I was intrigued that this dark guild would send an application to someone who was as light sided as my character. I thought this could be cool for a story to have my light side immortal immerse himself in this dark guild and try to convert some of the members back to the light. So, I filled out the application and got accepted into the SLoD. I made great friends with Ebony Hart, Dec, Elaith Cral, Ldy Dayna and Annenka. Many of these I even eventually met in real life. The bane of our existence was a recruit known as Gohan101 who couldn’t spell for anything and so when typos hit we would say we contracted Gohanitis.

This was my start in Rhy’Din…something that was a permanent part of my life for more than a decade and at least in my life part time for at least 20 years. Very few things have lasted in my life this long, especially when it comes to games. I just wish this ever expanding game and storyline had never had to end. But I will always have the memories and it will always be alive in my mind and the fond memories I have associated with Rhy’Din and the people who made it all possible!