Theala Sildorian is in real life Amy Crittenden. She is my Net alter ego--many people on the Net at first thought it was my real name, hence I now tend to use both simultaneously.
Theala was created in the winter of 1982, and was one of my earliest successful characters. At the time I was a senior in high school, and played AD&D almost exclusively. She had successful runs in groups run by several friends before settling down as my primary GMPC in a game I ran for two years in Waldorf, MD. After moving to Salisbury, MD to finish college she languished for several years for lack of a group to play her in. In 1991 I finally started a new AD&D group in Salisbury that quickly self destructed when the four players (two couples who shared a house) had an arguement and stopped speaking to each other. Using local BBS systems in the area, I began advertising for new players, and was invited to join a Fantasy Hero group by Ron Cole (who wrote the Hero die roller found elsewhere on this page), and the rest is, as they say, history. Theala never got run in their group, but a few years later she found new life in a Hero group run by Greg Smith (an artist who has done lots of work for Hero Games). Greg converted her to the Hero System, and I played her for some months as a secondary character to my Technomage character, and later again as my primary when she returned to her home on the World of Greyhawk. With her on again, off again history Theala ranks as my longest running PC character. I'm still very fond of her.
Amy Gray Crittenden in real life is an Emergency Room nurse, currently living in Chico, CA. She was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Southern Maryland. She graduated Thomas Stone High School in 1983. She studied Practical Nursing at the Charles County Community College, and became an LPN in 1985 (Licensed Practical Nurse). That same year she moved to Salisbury, MD to finish her nursing education, but changed majors to History, earning a BA in History in 1988, and a Master's in History in 1991 from Salisbury State University. During that time she split time working as a nurse and working for the Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture as a graduate assistant. In 1991 I finished my Master's Thesis, Southern Sympathies: the Eastern Shore of Maryland during the Civil War. After graduation, however, I continued working as a nurse. In 1997, I graduated from Wor-Wic Community College with my Associate Degree in Nursing and passed the RN boards. In 1998 I moved to North Dakota to finish a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, graduating from Minot State University in 2000. I then took a job with a traveling nursing company and moved to California, living in the Bay Area briefly before moving to Chico in late 2000.
I've always been something of a computer geek, even though I can't program to save my life. But I've always enjoyed being a part of an online community. While a student at Salisbury State my brother and I ran a computer bulletin board service on an Apple IIe with a 300 baud modem. After I started playing Hero System I discovered the old Red October BBS in Austin, TX and became a regular poster. There I met Steve Long around the time Dark Champions came out. We became friendly, and he invited me to join the now defunct Eroica APAzine. Later on I published several articles for the old Adventurer's Club as well as a scenario for Heroic Adventures Vol 2 published by Gold Rush Games. I haven't published anything for a long time, though I occasionally publish something in the Haymaker! and Rogues Gallery APAs. In 1995 I got on the Internet, and started learning how to use this new thing called the World Wide Web. Naturally, the first thing I started looking for was Hero related material. I didn't find much, but I did find some character write ups, articles on rules and other odds and ends scattered about. So I decided to start Theala Sildorian's Unofficial Champions Home Page! to act as a locator for Hero related material on the Internet. The initial response I got was overwhelming. Other Net users began emailing me URL's to their stuff. The Hero Partners wrote to tell me how much they liked my page. Theala's Page became one of the first to join the Circle of Heroes Webring. After awhile it got too big to handle, and with all the complications in my personal life the page has suffered from inattention. There's so much Hero stuff out there, it is almost impossible to keep up with. Still, with the new DOJ breathing new life into the Hero System, I'm trying to breathe new life into Theala's Page.
Thank you all for sticking with me.
Amy G. Crittenden
aka Theala Sildorian
I've also written a number of articles for Eroica and Rogue's Gallery APAzines, but neither of these are publicly available. However, a couple of my articles for Haymaker! are available (issues #13 "Computing in the Hero World"; "The Peasants Campaign in Fantasy Hero" issue #12).
Created: April 21, 1995, Updated: January 13, 2002