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Blueberry as in my Watership Down character arrived on the online world way back in 1998.  It was when I discovered the Watership Down eGroup list by accident and having watched the movie a lot of times to the point of wearing out my first copy, I joined up in haste.  I got to meet a lot of other fans of the book and movie who were very well educated on Richard Adam's works.  There were a few posts advertising Watership Down RPG on Yahoo Clubs.

So Blueberry made his cameo appearance back in January 1999 on Honeycomb RPG club and as you can say the rest is history.  I like to think that Blueberry back then was one of the well known people within the Watership Down community as well as the other well known characters and people that posted on the email list, made posts on the various RPG clubs and made websites.

Back in those days I went through a few different website designs, first concertrating on the movie before working on a website that dealt with Watership Down, Farthing Wood by Colin Dann and Hunters Moon by Gerry Kilworth.  (I recommend reading The Welkin Weasels by the way)

However it eventually all merged to making a website to be known as The Watership Down RPG Information Site.  A place where at the time it was the main hub for all players and non players to go and catch up with what was happening on any given main club at the time without having to log into the main Yahoo club site which at the time did go down quite a lot.

By then I had already found Redwall and met the future Watership Down head wizard on there before he actually made the muck.  I also was looking at the various Redwall style club websites which had people send in written works, art etc to gain points and other freebies.

Eventually after the time that the WD RPG site was starting to lose visitors and the lack of any input from various club owners and finally having far too much to do, I decided to try and bring back my enthusiasm for the genre and started up a short lived Watership Down RPG of my own.  Members could join, write stories based on missions that were given out by me, gain points, awards such as different coloured carrots and eventually compete in a league based system.

Eventually though I did see that the golden age was about to end on the internet as it was ending in quite a lot of place and by 2001-2.  I had slipped from the radar on virtually all Watership Down matters.

That was until 2004 where I came back into the fold again slowly.  Which in turn brought about this website.

The Character

Blueberry was back in the day a offspring of Bigwig in the Watership Down RPG world since it all takes place a long time after the original cast were alive.  The character is mainly Bigwig in style, brave, naive, big headed, short tempered, etc.  The only major big thing that he did was attacking the current Efrafa captain of owsla in a plan to catch someone.  He became his own chief when starting his old warren that had died from the white blindness, but eventually was murdered by another rabbit who wanted the position.

Since Blueberry's demise on the WD RPG clubs there have been other characters that have come and gone.  The main one that was very popular on Efrafa was Norflay, who ended up being Campion-Rah's captain of owsla.  Eventually though it got to the point of keeping him alive for far too long and instead of making it silly in escaping all the time, I came to the decision to kill him off after fighting a adder in a typical Efrafan way of dealing with Elil to save others.

Blueberry and Norflay are nearly virtually identical to each other but they still have small differences to keep them seperate from each other.  Norflay didn't have the bad history that Blueberry did when he was trapped within the evil warren known as Darkclaw Warren.  It was much like the WDTV's Darkhaven warren but with some differences and it happened long before Darkhaven even reached the TV screens.

At present I am playing a very toned down version of Darkclaw within Blackthorn who is in a way another Woundwort type rabbit but can't get his footing within what he wants to do with Willow and a few others keeping too close an eye on him, so I don't think I will ever reach the point in where I want to take that character.

Blueberry in the Present

Blueberry and Norflay though are the main two that will always remain with me and will show up again and again in various stories or roleplayed given the chance.  So there is always an opportunity to get to roleplay with Blueberry in any sense as even though he's died and come back in other forms, he's basically the same type of person that I want to be as much of him is me before I ended up moving over to being an otter.

Blueberry in the Future?

Who knows?  He's presently on a muck now, also the main character in the current story that's being written.  He's kinda come back with a bang and a rush dash after a long holiday away from things.  I think Blueberry is one of the many different animals that resides within me so whether or not he becomes the main identity for me within the furry fandom is questionable at the moment but it is a possibility.  Whether or not anyone would want to see him back in complete form is another mattert as it's a completely different thing altogether.

But I think regardless he be popping up now and again, even more so that there's a website about him now and all things Watership Down.  It's good to be back, same goes for Blueberry and well hopefully I can give something back once again within the Watership Down community. :)