And yet it all seemed so simple.
What few people seme to realise is that before knightmare.clara.net (future .com) came along, there were two Knightmare websites - one run by an American kid named Johnny, and one run by a bloke at some uni named Hetein.
Hetein's one didn't work, well it did but he never bothered to update any of his pages, so none of the links worked. Johnny's was not that good, but it was the only Knightmare website on the web. And that was some sort of achievement, anyway.
Enter Paul McIntosh.
He finds Johnny somewhere, who tells him that his (Johnny's) site is 'the only Knightmare web site in the world!'. Paul prints this fact in Issue 9 of The Eye Shield.
Enter Pooka.
Paul points me to Johnny's page, and I contact Johnny. There was a brief glimmering of a friendship - and then Johnny decides that he isn't interested in Knightmare (or he's just a cold-heared git, either way) and vanishes without trace.
Enter Alan Boyd.
Pooka finds Alan Boyd via a web page, and they discuss Knightmare for a while until... UNTIL!...
All hell breaks loose... Enter Nicholas.
And there, suddenly out of nowhere, stands another, better, blacker, raring-to-go Knightmare website. Paul, Pooka and Alan stand aghast. Who is this 'Nicholas'? What is this 'website'? What are its 'contents'?
All hell continues to break loose.
Paul, Pooka and Alan bombard Nicholas with suggestions and ideas for the website. Johnny turns up occasionally and points out spelling mistakes. The seeds of Knightmare.com are being sewn.
Nobody knows exactly how the long and hard hours Nicholas spent in his underground lair slaving away at this 'website' of his warped his fragile mind, but he kept at it, stolid little webmaster as he is, and over time the Knightmare project began to evolve.
Little by little, things began to shape. Paul and eventually Alan faded gradually out of the picture (although my sources tell me they are still alive - somewhere...), an influx of 'outside' readers began to flood in (not mentioning any names like Neil, Alex, Rachel and verious Adams!), an evil man named Forester seized control of a certain chat room and invited people to play in it, and momentous explosions of things like THE EYE SHIELD SECTION!, THE NEW BBK CAMPAIGN!, and even THE KNIGHTMARE RPG! made people quake in their boots, even the infamously unflappable Pooka was severely rattled.
Yet still Nicholas kept working like a thing that works a hell of a lot, and now look where we are. Knightmare.com has a supplement in the form of NKTP, and in itself it is a complete website with a populated chat room, overflowing mailing list and thriving community, we've even brought a couple together... oh yes, and we've got Knightmare back.
For all the people at the start of this whole sordid affair, it is Nicholas we have to thank - for although he may be a mere Illusion, without him it is safe to say none of us would be here, and these discussions would not have taken place.
So I wasn't in chat for the first couple of years, particularly, but I was always watching what was happening, and one thing that has always amazed me is the stalwart work of Nicholas... *crawls*
I didn't see how much he worked on the website, and for this fact, that is why it all seemed so simple to begin with, but then again, while I look back, this is probably becase memory has a way of knocking off the corners.
