What's that, Furcadia?

This is the first of what I hope to be many informational messages about various different kinds of guilds, dreams, and groups on Furcadia that would like to make a little bit more known about themselves. Kaelin’yFiae sat down with me to talk about her dream, “Draygan’s Hollow”, in the hopes that the information shared will help gain her some new players.

Kaelin’yFiae: I’m alive. XD My eyes are burning because I got the wild idea to sprinkle baking soda all over my floor, but I’m ALIVE.
Damadar grins. “So, what would you like to say first about Draygan’s Hollow?”
Kaelin’yFiae: “Weeeell, I guess the first thing to say would be a little bit about what Draygans Hollow is. It’s a roleplay guild, and a pretty laid back one. We don’t have a lot of standards that have to be met before going IC. The dream looks medieval fantasy, but we have elements from sci-fi and modern settings too. We’re all pretty friendly, too. Some of us are a little shy and sometimes players need to be coaxed IC, but we’re working on that.
Damadar: How old is the dream?
Kaelin’yFiae: We’ll be celebrating our fifth birthday come June 2008. (With a festival! Which’ll be the cap-off to our dream-wide storyline).
Damadar: Ah, so you run a continous storyline?
Kaelin’yFiae: We started a dream-wide storyline earlier this fall. It was kind of on whim at first, but it blossomed after the first couple of events and we dubbed it ‘The Burning Year’. The Burning Year is about the Hollow’s history coming back to life. (Not literally, but you get the idea). About twenty-eight years prior, the village burned down, and now impressions of what happened the year the Hollow burned are popping up at random. Accompanied by magical ‘backlash’. (Which is a phenomenom that changes the behavior of objects, making them fall through tables..chairs melting into the floor, black ink turning yellow, that kind of thing along side some considerably less harmless side-effects). I am narrating events and clues, and it’s to the villagers to find out for themselves what happened, what’s causing it, and how they can make it stop before it gets worse. (The storyline has been designed to keep players from claiming single hero or single villian roles, the fun spreads >
Kaelin’yFiae: to everybody.)
Damadar: Are you the one writing and working heavily on the storyline? If so, how long’ve you been working on it, and do you miss being an unconscious part of it?
Kaelin’yFiae: Sometimes I have to carefully throw in my own characters to get the storyline moving forward. (In the storyline, the original residents of the hollow had either moved on or died a few years after the burning, save one or two characters I already played (Draygans Hollow has been part of my roleplay experience for almost as long as I’ve been playing, so when I started the guild I already had a little history with it). It was important that there be no historical records of what went on, so it would be harder for the characters to figure things out. ). To tell you the truth, I’ve been making a lot of it up as I go. I could say I’ve been writing the storyline, but the truth is, these players are hopping in and a lot of the time they guide it themselves. I make decisions depending on what’s already been written and logged away in my mind, and depending on how the characters are moving forward/reacting IC. So I haven’t been an unconcious part of it, I’ve been just as involved.
Damadar: Ahh, so the ‘conclusion’ as it were isn’t really planned out, you’re leaving space for your players to come in and really twist the storyline around?
Kaelin’yFiae: Yeah. I have a general idea of what happened, and how the storyline can conclude. But I want the players to have the freedom to change the outcome. So nothing is set in stone.
Damadar: Are you planning to continue having dream-wide story arcs in the future, or was this a one-time plan?
Damadar: brb, going to go get a soda. #SD
Kaelin’yFiae: I’d like to continue doing it. I’ve really enjoyed narrating this one, and it’s given the Rp a boost that it didn’t have before. (You can only have a plain village-roleplay for so long before it gets unbarably boring). So I think there will be more storyline’s in the future.
Kaelin’yFiae: Next time, I might pass the torch over to another player. It just depends on the circumstances, what the story is, that kind of thing.
Damadar: So, tell me about the map and the design.
Kaelin’yFiae: Design.. Pffft. I’ve thought about rebuilding the map from the ground up so many times, but I can never find the time to do it. We have a little bit of a problem there. You get lost on our map, easily. Nothing is really where it should be. But on the up side, I try to keep the areas unique, and I try to provide a lot of variety in places to roleplay that still have practicality IC(also, there are shortcut commands for every area). We have summer, fall and winter versions every year. Weather conditions and night and day patches. (And bats that fly out of our well! .. No one drinks out of it anymore.)
Damadar: Interesting. And you did most of the patchwork yourself, right?
Kaelin’yFiae: Yeup! As far as I can remember the patches in that are currently in there (that aren’t default) are my work. But I can’t remember for sure…

You can find Draygan’s Hollow’s website here.
Their forums are located here.
Information on their current storyline can be found here.

Kaelin’yFiae is a 22 year old female who lives in North Texas. She’s the Co-AIC of the Masons and Pixels. She likes chatting with her friends, working on patches, and occasionally roleplaying.