'Origin' of Your User Name

[Henry]

My real name is Algernon Q. Thristwhistle, but when registering on these boards, I picked the most exotic, fantastic screen name I could think of.

 

[Videssian]

Mine is from Harry Turtledove's Videssos cycle.. it's a very neat set of books, worth checking out.. he's one of my top 3 authors.. Anyway, Videssos is the capital city of the Videssian Empire, and someone who is a member of that empire is a "videssian"..

 

[Clear Dragon]

At one point I was explaining the alignment difference between chromatic and metallic dragons to someone new to the game and they asked me what the most dangerous color of dragon was. I chose my response to be my user name.

 

[Arnwyn]

My handle is the name of my favourite NPC in the very long-term campaign I run - and it's never taken anywhere else on the 'net.

 

[Wolfspider]

My user name comes from the name of a drow assassin I ran as a nemesis for my players starting in the early 80s. I even got a chance to play him a couple times (the most memorable being a juant through time and space to the world of Athas).

These days Wolfspider is manifesting in the current rule set as a 30th level ranger with his black heart set on making my current (18th level) PCs miserable.

Heh heh.

 

[Moxie]

Moxie was a popular soft drink in the 30's and 40's. It's still around today, but very limited in distribution. Some times you can still hear someone say "You've got moxie!" Their ad campaign seems to have outlived the product.

It's also from Bored of the Rings. Moxie and Pepsi were the names of two of Frito's companions.

It's also the name of one of my cats. The other one is named Pippin. Three guesses where that one came from!

 

[fusangite]

Well, my signature line pretty well covers it.

I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia, one of the most Chinese cities in North America. On Canada's west coast, aboriginal people had contact with Chinese explorers hundreds of years before Europeans. The royal house of the Gitksan people, for instance, have a Sung dynasty Chinese coain as one of their heirlooms.

In the 19th century, European scholarship discovered a Chinese court record about a group of Buddhist missionaries who sailed to a land west of Tahan (the Kamchatka Peninsula) to the land of Fusang. Fusang, in the description sounds like a weird amalgam of every civilization in Pacific North America -- coffee beans growing on cedar trees, etc.

Essentially, I live in Fusang as much as I live in the Americas. Also, a favourite tradition in my GMing is fantasy versions/revisionist histories of the Americas. So far, I've run a quest for the Holy Grail set in a mythic version of the Americas in 1237, as well as a game set in 1990 and an alternate version of 2002 and a short Gamma World campaign based around the reservoir on the Peace River in Northern BC.

Anyway, my handle keeps the idea alive of me running a medieval Pacific Rim game and reminds me that I live as much in Fusang as I do Vancouver.

 

[Oni]

I would also like to add that having lived in New England I can say with first hand experience that Moxie is one of the most vile drinks I have ever encountered.

 

[0-hr]

Since my real life name is Ryan, I used to use "RYN" as my initials on video games. Online, that became "Ki-Ryn" simply as a variant on the oriental unicorn name (Ki-Rin).

 

[Sir Hawkeye]

Rale Hawkeye is my oldest D&D character that "stuck" (I created one of every class I think. I was 11 or so at the time.) Half-elf Ranger, now level 11. You say you want a revolution? Hawkeye's your man.

"Sir" was chosen for euphony mostly, as he doesn't have knighthood. I suppose once he builds a castle he can call himself "Sir".