Question Hey there. I'm new, sort of.

Long time reader (kinda) new time poster. I used to read the stories on the old Crystal Hall site all the time, back in 2010 or so up to around early 2015 I THINK, maybe before. Seemed to be a long hiatus between releases and I fell off the wagon, as it were. Started running low on stuff to read so I figured I'd come back and...wow, things have changed. I thought you guys were shut down for a bit since the old domain redirects, but a quick search turned you up.

It looks like I've missed a lot. Whole new generation of stories and a backlog of old ones that goes back I'm not sure how far. Anybody mind giving me a good jumping back on point? It looks like all the characters are new just about (though Hank's still tooling around, which is nice). Any new stories for Ayla, Hive, Eldritch, or Bladedancer I should know about (those were the most interesting ones a lot of the time to me)?

Is the storyline still basically Fey-centric?

If it helps, the last story I definitively remember reading had something to do with Kodiak's spirit actually being a malicious entity of some kind? And then Fey did something to fix it, I think? That whole story was really unclear, I remember that much.

Sorry for the barrage of questions right off the bat. Just a little lost.

It sounds like you were in the middle of Whilst Any Speaks. Which makes sense, because that was around about a posting gap partially caused by the old site being semi-inaccessible to Kristin and Warren.

Then Elrod and Morpheus were added as canon authors, and they and EE pulled Whateley out of the slump.

You can probably pick up right where you left off. I'd start at the beginning of Whilst Any Speaks, and go from there. Most of Morpheus' stuff can be read independently, but Elrod and EE's main lines are pretty closely intertwined.

Any new stories for Ayla, Hive, Eldritch, or Bladedancer I should know about?

Ayla One by Elrodw and a number with him showing-up around Charge

Hive Sadly No... I know Warrren's given it some thought but nothing's been published

Eldritch YES, Joe came back and has wrapped-up a good number of loose threads around Eldritch and the Outcast Corner Characters

Bladedancer YES, Elrodw has had her cameo some with the Kayda stories and Heather came back and wrote us a story about what happened over summer.

Other than that, Most of the on campus storylines consisted of EE and Elrod's characters for a fair bit with Bek writing off-campus stuff for the most part and Morpheus writing some off-campus and now on-campus stories with the new schoolyear starting-up.

and You've seen Phoenix Spiritus has written some Hank stories and that has helped show more of the rest of Team Kimba as well.

On top of that we've had a few other authors contributing here-and-there to the Original Canon timeline and elsewhere but the big news is we jumped 10 years into the future with the Gen2 timeline and have all new stories containing a fair number of new characters and some serious changes in the status quo for the school.

Welcome or welcome back, whichever you prefer. I think I have gone through nearly the entire archive and I still find myself lost a good bit. It is hard to keep so many story lines and characters straight...

I wouldn't say it is Fey-centric these days. She puts in lots of appearances, but many characters (both old and new) have been much more fully fleshed out and are putting their own stamp on things as well. I would almost say that the Whateley Universe has become multi-centric as far as main characters go. It is almost impossible (for me, but that might just be my mind set and reading style) to follow just one character at a time now as they have become very nicely entwined with each other.

OMG. That Avatar... I didn't know they could get that tall...

They can get plenty tall (or short, for that matter, if you use a wide image). I experimented quite a bit with various versions of my avatar until I found one that I was happy with.

Sir Lee wrote: They can get plenty tall (or short, for that matter, if you use a wide image). I experimented quite a bit with various versions of my avatar until I found one that I was happy with.

And a very respectable avatar at that.

Thanks for the answers, everybody! Glad to hear some of my favorites are still getting spotlight time.

Should I change my avatar? I have a few I cycle between. I figured this one would shrink to fit or be cut off at some point, not stretch the portrait to the image size. If it's obnoxiously huge I can fiddle with it.

I think it just surprised people. You get used to seeing things of a certain size and shape and then something different shows up and everybody has that natural, "Hey, that's different!" reaction. Sort of like if you are at a place that is "coat and tie" then you see someone wearing Navy Dress Blues walk in, everyone stops and stares for a moment. Nothing about it is wrong or inappropriate, just different.