I was in my early teens at the time, and attending a two-week camp session. One of the other students attending the session wanted to introduce us to the game of Dungeons and Dragons, and it sounded interesting... since I'd loved fantasy for years, I dove in and rolled up a character. When our fledgeling DM asked me what race I wanted my character to be, it didn't take more than a second to make the decision: Jendar quite simply had to be an elf.

Once camp was over, though, no one else I knew of in my small hometown played D&D. Rather than let them languish for lack of dice-rolling campaigns, my best friend and pen-pal from that session and I continued the adventures of our characters through a story-by-mail process. Since they needed a base of operations, I created Laranica: a city built and run by elves, quite likely the only city of its kind. The cast of characters rapidly expanded on us; not all of them were player characters (PCs) -- in fact, very few of them got any actual game-time. But we happily proceeded to turn their lives into an epic rivalling a 1980's nighttime soap opera anyhow ("Dynasty," eat your heart out!). This continued through high school, although it gradually tapered off... by the beginning of college, my elf clan seemed to have gone more or less into hibernation.

Skip forward -X- years (no, I'm not saying exactly how many). I moved to a new area, and into a household with two friends whose interests match mine quite closely. I got involved in any number of things again, including RPGs... and the elves made a quiet reappearance in my life. They had quietly gotten on with their own lives in the intervening time, and while a few of them surprised me with changes in habit or outlook, it wasn't hard to catch up with them again.

The crew even developed several new additions. The only problem was, now none of them would shut up. I warned them -- if they didn't keep quiet, I was going to post them on the Internet where anybody who wanted to could see them and take a poke through their personal lives.

...you can see, since you're now reading this website, how well they listened. I hope you enjoy the results!