Alfandria

Alfandria is the name given to the community which formed around the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.dragons. It is considered the origin of the draconic community. After the newsgroup, the members also founded a MUCK, an IRC channel, a livejournal community, and a hub website. Most of these spaces still operate today.

History

Creation of alt.fan.dragons

The alt.fan.dragons newsgroup was established on December 1st, 1993 by Existing Phantom as a place to discuss dragons more generally. Phantom was "a starving dragon fan in a dragonless internet", and posted to Usenet asking if any others were interested in creating a group. In the proposal for the creation of the group, its intended uses included discussing ideas about dragons and depictions of dragons in fiction, and sharing art and creative writing related to dragons. It was created under the alt.fan.* namespace, which represented fan communities.

People who identified as dragons began to appear somewhere between September and November of 1994. Phantom names Blackburn as one of the first people to self-describe as such. He initially tried to stem the posts about dragon identity, because he was concerned it would put off other posters. Eventually, he stopped when he realized the group was more popular than ever before. Jenna Hegler states that over 160 self-identified dragons revealed themselves to the newsgroup in the months after Blackburn's introduction.

As the number of dragons grew, some members jokingly began to refer to the phenomenon as the "dominance of dragons". The phrase began to be used, capitalized, as a proper name for the group, and was soon shortened to simply "the Dominance".

Later a member derived the name 'Alfandria' from the newgroup's name, and it quickly became the predominant name used. The name was also given to communities on other platforms which served the same members.

Creation of other spaces

Dalvenjah FoxFire, founder of the DALnet IRC network, was also a regular of alt.fan.dragons. In 1995, he created the #afd channel. As a result of technical issues caused by malicious users, the channel was recreated on the SorceryNet network in 2003.

In 2001, a Livejournal community was created for the group. This community was used to organized in-person meetups in the mid 2000s.

A MUCK was also created; the website appears to still be online. It was noted as being reasonably active as lately as 2013.

Book project

As poetry and art were posted to the newsgroup, Quelonzia and Existing Phantom began a project to publish an anthology of members' works. The proposed title was Soaring Heart and Soul: The Stories and Poems of Dragons. Significant progress was made, progressing to the point of discussing publishing, paying contributors and copyright registration. A user named Walkfar offered to bring the manuscript to a publisher's convention in August of 1996.

However, the project was stated as being 'on hold' in 1999, seemingly related to the unauthorized republishing of contributors' works.

Culture

Alfandria has developed a rich culture and extensive body of jargon over its history.

Elder members of alt.fan.dragons are called 'old fruits', and newer members are called 'young nuts'. A person was typically considered to become an old fruit one year after their first post, so the anniversary of that post is known as their 'fruiting day'. Karenji remarks in Draconic Dictionary that some people were 'early fruiters' or 'insta-fruiters' - they fit in so well with the group's culture that it was as if they had always been a member.

Many newsgroup members utilize the Dragon Code in their post signatures. The code was created by Baxil as a means of condensing information about one's draconic form into a series of letters and symbols to save space. Responsibility for maintaining and providing information about the code was transferred to Wyrm on July 20th, 1998.