Some time around June of 1999, a 16 year-old girl
named Simone created a website for fans of Watership Down which was titled
"Posy-rah's Warren". At the time, the site's main purpose was simply
to bring together the fans of this remarkable novel, and it included a
message board. People could sign up to play in there as characters
of their creation, with Simone playing the cheif rabbit, Posy-rah.
On August 9, a separate role playing board and a chat room were added to
the site.
********************
Drawing by Kylen Miles.
Posy-rah's Rabbit Bio, as originally written by Simone:
Age: 11 months
Gender: Female (doe)
Physical size: Medium-sized
Current rank: Chief rabbit and founder of the warren
I'm a pretty friendly doe, but I can be a bit headstrong
when it comes to getting it done my way. Don't let it get to you, you just
gotta push me around a bit. Although I won't always follow it, I always
appreciate advice from others.
More About Simone, as originally written by herself:
I have read Watership Down and Tales from Watership Down
. I also like Star Wars, Monty Python, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, writing,
reading, my dog Auggie, Renaissance faires, making movies, and acting.
I hope to someday work for George Lucas as a director, producer, actor,
writer, or special effects technician. (Gotta keep my options open. ;-)
)
********************
On September 5, 1999, at the urging of her best friend
Carrie, Ally (myself) signed up to join the warren as a character named
Gelphi. Gelphi started out as a sentry in the Owsla, and through
her acts of courage and selflessness was able to gain the respect of her
peers at the warren.
Gelphi and her friends had many adventures and were
joined by many new rabbits whose players had decided to join the warren.
Although Posy-rah was unable to get into the role playing board for some
reason, everyone had lots of fun. I was appointed as the role playing
board moderator so that I could delete posts that were spam or innapropriate.
One day, a strange new rabbit named Caliber-rah showed
up. He tried to gather rabbits from Posy-rah's warren who were willing
to come and join his. All of us started to become suspicious.
Who did this guy think he was? He didn't have a member page, so we
didn't know. But we soon discovered that in real life, his warren,
which he called Nepenthes, had a website which was almost an exact replica
of Posy-rah's website. We made posts on the message and role playing
boards demmanding to know who he was. Some of us also sent him e-mails.
In the meantime, I sent multiple e-mails to Posy-rah explaining the whole
situation since we figured that since she was almost never able to be around,
she was clueless as to what was going on. We never would have guessed
what we soon found out was the truth of things!
Meanwhile, (I don't recall the exact details of this,
but oh well), I got in touch with Caliber-rah, who was
played by a guy named Bobby. He had been in contact with Posy-rah
about creating a new warren which would be an enemy of her warren as far
as role playing. Both of them hoped that this would spice things
up in the RPG. Posy-rah allowed Bobby to make a copy of her website
that he could then make new images for, and Bobby created his own message
and role playing boards for it. This way, Caliber-rah would have
a warren to return to with the rabbits he gathered.
I then received an e-mail reply from Posy-rah, who
explained that she had been unable to let us know out of character what
was going on and that Bobby had her permission to be doing this, and she
was very sorry. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
Bobby didn't understand why we were all so upset since he thought that
Posy-rah had told us what was going on. We were all ready to kill
off our characters and leave the warren we were so distressed. Unfortunately,
a couple characters, including Carrie's doe Cherry Blossom and her mate
Hawthorn, who was played by Colin Morell, were both killed off.
I was ready to kill off Gelphi as well, and I even had a post in which
she was killed by a badger prepared. Fortunately, before I posted
it, I realized that we couldn't just give up on our beloved RPG.
With the help of a couple others, we devised a plan to carry out in character
which would at least give our warren some stability and put Caliber-rah
in his place. Gelphi and Thlay-elil, who had gone to Nepenthes to
check things out, returned to Posy-rah's warren in character and announced
to the rabbits there what they had found out about Caliber-rah, who in
character planned on taking over their warren. Some of the rabbits
who had gone with Caliber-rah to his warren returned home, and those that
stayed with him threatened to desert if he didn't change his ways.
So, in character, Caliber-rah did change his ways (for the most part),
and over time things settled down at Posy-rah's warren. It took quite
a while for the bitterness to subside and for things to get "normal" again,
though.
At that point, Posy-rah knew that this had happened
because she was not able to be around. She felt pretty bad about
it. (She took my suggestion for a name for the warren in the meantime.)
She decided that it was time for the warren to have a new rah, in character
at least. She chose Gelphi, saying that it was because I had been
"very helpful and loyal to the site." As she once said to me, "It
was heartwarming to see how mad you got when you thought someone was trying
to rip the site off!" Posy-rah said that she would just be the administrator
of the web site.
However, Posy-rah mysteriously disappeared, so the
web site was lacking updates for over a year before I set up our new site
(not the one you're looking at now, but the one before this one ;-) ). If you'd like to take a look at the old
site, which is basically frozen in time, you can find it here,
but keep in mind that it's really nothing more than a museum exhibit now,
and the REAL action is at this site. ;-)
Today, of course, everything's just fine here...
for the most part ;-) We still wonder about Posy-rah (Simone), though...
Where is she now? Does she ever think about us? Is she all
right? Does she plan on coming back someday? We wish her luck
on all her future endeavors, and we hope she's in the best of health, and
that wherever she is, she's happy. If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't
be the role players and friends we are today.
Addendum: December 4, 2001
On December 4, 2001, Gelphi-rah recieved this e-mail
from Simone (Posy-rah) which affirms our belief and hope that she is
alive and well:
Hey there!
Wow, I must say that I never expected anything like your site to spring up from my lil' site. Yup, it's me, Simone Chavoor-- Posy-rah. I was talking to a friend of mine, and he was describing all his old websites to me, and I thought-- hey, I haven't looked at my old Tripod pages in a while. So I did, and I went to Posy-rah's site, and through the RPG message board I found my way to your site! All I can say is: whoa. Great job, I must say. And the bit about the old site was interesting, and it spurred me to writing you this email. Yes, I'm alive and well. I'm actually a freshman at San Francisco State University as a cinema major. Believe me, I've read many books since the first time I picked up Watership Down, but it always will hold a special place in my heart. Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line, let you know how I was doing, and to tell you what a good job I think you're doing. And hey, if you don't believe it's really me after all this time, go ahead and em
ail me, and I'll prove it to ya. :-P
TTYL,
Simone Chavoor
simone@lycos.com
