Role Playing and displacer dragons

    So, I figure that at some point, someone is going to go 'what the heck is a displacer dragon?'  Well, to be honest, I ended up with this because every other name I tried was already taken.  Almost every blog I peeked at had one post to the tune of 'check it out, I started a blog.'  I say most because one of them had no posts at all.  First of all, here's a close up look of the art in my icon.  Of course, once I change this page up some, the icon might be different.

You can find the artist of this picture here.

  This is Ivory.  She has a complicated history, but I suppose I should start back a bit.  When I was younger, I was a tad depressed.  I still have issues on and off.  Back in 1995, I started out using this new thing called AOL.  I poked around here and there, met some people.. then I was introduced to the idea of role playing.  I had always read books a lot.  I suppose it's one form of escapism, and this was a more direct form.  My first exposure to RP was in Star Trek 'sims'.  Short for Simulations.  It was a group called the UCIP, United Confederation of Interstellar Planets.  Because, I suppose, just calling themselves the United Federation of Planets was too obvious.  Even though it's been a long time since then, this group is still around!  You can find their webpage here if you are curious.

This is my very first role playing character ever, in Star Trek Online form.

    My very first character ever was named Blake.  He was a Sivaoan, a feline race from a Star Trek novel.  In Star Trek Online, he's a Caitian, close enough.  So, how do I go from Star Trek to tentacle dragons?  Well, part of that is Lunar: The Silver Star.  Lunar was a video game that was first for the Sega CD, but it's been remade a few times since then.  I don't believe it ever became a very 'big' game.  I was chatting with people who also liked Lunar on some message boards, when one of those weirdos said he wanted to run an RPG based off of it.  So I applied a character and got in.

This is Ebony 1.0.

    My character was the young Black Dragon of Lunar.  While I was a fan of Star Trek, of course, I was always more into fantasy than sci-fi, and I was quite in love with dragons.  This RPG took place on IRC, which introduced me to the whole concept of IRC in the first place.  Lunar: Middleground is a story for another time, however.

    So now I knew about the existence of IRC.  So I started peeking around for other places to role play, and I found some fantasy places.  This led me to a channel called the #BlkDragon*Inn, and that place still exists, too!  Webpage found here.  So, now that I was in a fantasy setting, of course my first character was a dragon.  At first he was simply known as 'baby black dragon.'  Shockingly, my first time RPing got the interest of another player there, who surprised me with this art.

This is Ebony 2.0.

    Now, I didn't plan to be unimaginative with names.  My screen name was something along the lines of 'bb_dragon', but there ended up being some confusion with the guy who started the channel, who was BlkDragon, as such, I spontaneously named him Ebony after my Lunar character.  Ebony, seen here, was very young at the time.  And he aged in real time.  He's a character I've played for more than 10 years.

They grow up so fast.

    Now we're getting close to the whole point of all this.  See, during one of my plots, an Ebony from an alternate dimension appeared.  That Ebony had grown up living a worse existence and left his universe because everyone he knew was dead and he was likely to be next.  While pondering how odd my plots can be, one has to remember that, over the course of playing a character for years, a lot can happen.  This Ebony saw the relatively happy Ebony of the 'normal' universe and was upset and disgusted.  Why does that Ebony get to be happy and have a family?  The new Ebony did not wish to be like Ebony Prime.  So, using magics, he turned himself into a white dragon.  When he felt it wasn't enough distance still, he became female and started using the name Ivory.

    Ivory still felt like she had a lot to prove.  She became friends with rougher types than Ebony.  Perhaps a bit out of spite.  This led her on a variety of adventures until she was bitten by a were displacer beast.  Because who says those aren't a thing.  She embraced the change, finally feeling like she was her own person and not just 'the white Ebony' or something along those lines.

    As is a habit with me, Ivory became a more major player than Ebony was.  I suppose she had issues to work through, and that gives you things to RP.  It seems lots of the characters I made up on the spur of the moment end up pushing the characters I put real thought into aside.  There's a few details missing, but that's how the displacer dragon came around.  Through random combinations of plots happening over the course of years.

    I wonder if any people out there will be all 'oh hey, I remember you.'  Feel free to leave comments if so.  As I go, I'll leave you with this.  There's many universes and possibilities out there.  Ivory eventually ran into another version of herself, who took her pain and bitterness to different levels, and decided to just claim the planet in the name of dragons.

Vote Lady Ivory for Queen of the Planet.  Or else.