For
months I have been sending out notecards to individuals on various lists of
Beta and early users, without any responses. This scattershot technique has not
resulted in a single hit. Luckily, I happen to be in Second Life™ enough for
serendipity to take effect. I was dancing at the Second Life Universe 10th
anniversary party, when I started looking at profiles, and following the chat.
I asked innocently (hehe) who the oldest person was at the party, and Caliandris
Pendragon said she was one of the oldest, so I passed her my notecard with the
oldbie questions on it. I was staggered when I received back her answers while
I was still at the party. Cali is no stranger to the press, and just recently
figured in a story about Second Life™ that was on The Verge (http://www.theverge.com/2013/
Caliandris
has a blog (http://caliinsecondlife.
SL Newser: How did you find out about
Second Life™?
Caliandris Pendragon: I’d been in the
closed Beta and then the open Beta for Uru (an MMO). When it closed one of my friends told me
about There and SL..
SL Newser: What are your earliest memories of Second
Life™?
Caliandris Pendragon: I remember being
confused by the leader boards, and they fooled me into thinking this was a game—
having been used to challenges and games in Uru, I took the suggestion that I
find Ben's Auto as an instruction. I
spent my lindens on a motorbike I didn't want because I wanted to win.
I
found it necessary to explore from the hub in Ahern and easily got
disorientated. I worried about being
lost and unable to find my way. People
hanging out in Ahern in those days were more benign and helpful.
There
were only about 100 sims when I joined, and about 1,000 accounts, although I
kept bumping into the same group of 20 or 30 people over and over at
events. The Lindens announced all events
just before they happened when I first arrived, then at the top of the hour and
gradually they abandoned that.
I saw
quite a lot of the Lindens. Partly that
was because I was making an entry for the game development contest, but also because
they used to run training and mentor events.
I became a mentor fairly early in my SL career and feeling that I was
helping people kept me coming.
SL Newser: What kept you logging back in during the
early days?
Caliandris Pendragon: Initially I had
been seeking to replicate the community I found in Uru Live, and even for a way
to remake the places I had known there.
I quickly recognized how much more was possible in SL, and I wanted to
make my own stuff and build. I could see the enormous potential for creation
and it absorbed me with the limitless opportunities to make things.
SL Newser: What are your fondest
memories of the early days?
Caliandris Pendragon: I entered the
Game Development contest within a week of joining SL, and won a place in the
contest, having first checked I could use as many helpers as I could find. The team that developed on that project was
much more than the sum of its parts and they achieved amazing things.
SL Newser: What are your funniest
memories of the early days?
Caliandris Pendragon: Oh, really hard to choose! I bought myself a vagina and then found that
the box was stuck tight to my head when I'd TPd to the most interesting party
(and most of my friends hadn't got into the sim). I made the box transparent as I couldn't take
it off, but I spent the party sure that the Lindens at the party were seeing
what the box on my head was!
Some
friends and I made a party for Ratt Foo, the scripter who did most of the work
on our game. I made a giant rat, and
then my friend put remote control scripts into them. He spent ages making numbered tabards for
everyone and writing out instructions and made a race track with a bridge for
the players to stand on. He tried REALLY HARD to get everyone to get set up,
but we weren't very adept at the remote control thing—rats went shooting off
everywhere. Then one of them realised
you could sit on the rat and not lose it that way, and it was chaos... rats
with people going in all directions.
I
tried really hard to do what we were supposed to, but in getting on to the
bridge I knocked a group of people off again.
I’ve never laughed so much in my life—it hurt!
SL Newser: Did you fall in love in
Second Life™?
Caliandris Pendragon: Yes. We are still together and have spent a lot of
time in real life too.
SL Newser: Who was your favorite
Linden?
Caliandris Pendragon: Ekim. (ED NOTE:
Ekim was one of the managers of the Moles and the Department of Public Works,
thus Cali’s boss when she was a mole from 2008-2013.)
SL Newser: What were your favorite
activities?
Caliandris Pendragon: Building. Building games.
Caliandris Pendragon: Do you still log
in? If not, why not? If yes, what keeps you coming?
Caliandris Pendragon: Yes, to meet
friends, to build.
SL Newser: What would you like the world
to know about Second Life™?
Caliandris Pendragon: It has the
amazing ability to make you feel you are in the same space at the same time
with people who are in very different places in Real Life.
Nautilis,
some Linden Homes, Pyrii Peaks, Cape Ekim, parts of Linden Realms, The Sea of
Fables, and those fabulous SL10B fireworks I have—all are the work of Cali as
Misty Mole. Sometimes she did the builds, sometimes the music, but always a
valuable contribution to the feel of Second Life™. If you have not seen or
visited these builds, please make an effort to do so. While you are looking,
try to imagine what SL was like before flexis, sculpts, and mesh. That was the
original world of Caliandris Pendragon, and she has grown with it.
Image Credit: last two pictures by Marianne McCann
DrFran Babcock
