No introduction needed here.
-Lemming
Q: Hello, fiend. How are you today?
Lemming: Hi, Q:. I'm fine. And how are you?
Q: I ASK THE QUESTIONS!! And I know you know that, so behave, will ya?
Lemming: Yelling at me, Q:?
Q: I ASK THE QUEST-
Lemming: *hurls a flask of liquid paper at Q:*
Q: Aaahhh!!!! *vanishes*
Lemming: You're always so funny when you panic.
Q: I hate you.
Lemming: Bad Q:! Next time you forget to ask a question it's the paper shredder for you!
Q: At least bring me back, ok?
Lemming: Well, since you asked nicely... Wait, isn't that stuff flammable? *INFERNO*
Q: AAAAHH!!!!!
Lemming: Q:, you forgot the question again!
Q: AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!
Lemming: *grabs Q: and stuffs him into a paper shredder*
Q: Grafggle! *SPLURK!*
Lemming: *collects the fiery strips of Q:*
Q: Un...safe...work...conditions...
Lemming: *deposits the Q: strips in a stream and watches them float away* Don't worry, folks. He'll be back.
Q: *sploshes onto the table*
Lemming: Welcome back, Q:. My, you're looking rather moist today.
Q: *doesn't respond*
Lemming: You must be water-logged. *calls up Pepin*
Pepin: I came as quickly as I could! Is he dead?
Lemming: Gosh, I hope so... Err... I mean, probably.
Pepin: We must dry him out and then resurrect him! Quickly, help me dry him out! *picks up Q: strips and begins wringing them out*
Lemming: *sets a small fire wall near Q:*
Pepin: No!! We mustn't burn him to cinders!
Lemming: Damn... err... Ok. I'll use Flame Wave instead. That never kills anything anyway. *FLAMEWAVE*
Pepin: AAHH!!!! *flees in flames*
Lemming: Oops.
Q: *coughs up water* I... I'm alive!... AHH!!! NOT YOU AGAIN?!
Lemming: Close one, Q:, but I'll let it slide.
Q: Can we just do this damned Q:nterview and get out of here?!
Lemming: I'm only waiting on you.
Q: *grumble* Ok, so who are you?
Lemming: I'm Lemming.
Q: I mean, tell me something about yourself that the readers might not know. Ok?
Lemming: I'm a Diablo gamer and have been since June of 1997. I started playing Diablo on Battle.Net in September of 1998 and have been hooked ever since. Like most public gamers, I got started cheating early on, but after awhile it was just stale. Lots of people didn't want to game with me just because I cheated. While that didn't seem fair at the time, I couldn't see on the other side of the fence. I had a friend who basically got me off cheating by suggesting we start up two legit characters just to "see what it's like." Well, a few weeks after that I entered the Sorcerers Tower and found lots of people who were highly supportive of NOT cheating, and through their example I soon discarded my old, crappy characters (within two weeks, basically). After that Diablo was a whole different game.
It was around that time, I believe, that I met Xandar, who you see credited with helping me with the Lemming variant and some others. He introduced me to a mind-blowing style: the Beyond Naked Mage. At first I thought it was amusing, but insane. After awhile, however, I found more and more cursed items and started thinking "Oh, what the hell? They're going to waste anyway..." And from those words my BNM was born in the spring of 1999. A few months later I decided to write my own variant... one based on something I saw rampant in the Tower: Golden (3 Dot) Mages. I figured, if everyone's so eager to get that nice golden suit, where are all the people who DON'T want dots? Everyone wants to KILL Diablo, but where are the ones who want to be killed BY Diablo? Ah, and from that came the Lemming! I turned to Xandar for commentary since he was the only variant person I knew. So I started up "LemmingofGlory," a clvl 1 mage whose char pic would never get dots or turn golden. As something of a send-off, various tower folk made clvl 1 characters with a Lemming-themed name. It was quite amusing. :) Anyhow, within a month or so Lemming had risen to a level that I had previously only dreamed about: Clvl 45! (It was quite a hike for me at the time.)
By that time is was August, and by the end of August I'd started to visit and sit around in the channel "Variants." The people there were nice enough and had all sorts of ideas for roleplaying characters and whatnot - something pointedly missing from regular gameplay. By November I'd written a second variant, the Hamster, got up the nerve to post it on the Asylum Message Board. I was blown away by the positive response! Woody even liked it! I mean, WOODY! The (in)famous WOODY! Known throughout Bnet as variant guru and mastermind behind the BNM! WOW! :) That really encouraged me to keep writing variants. Following that was the Lemming (1st time posted, and better rules), the Squirrel, and others. I continued playing and writing, eventually getting Lemming to clvl 50 in the spring of 2000.
And then in June came Diablo 2, which is (IMO) inferior to the original game, but I played it anyway. Eventually, December came along and the RBD's variant section was still quite bare, and I wanted my variants on a website somewhere. I gave myself a goal: Create a website for my variants. And by the end of December The Sylvan Cliffs was online. Afterwards, I noticed that nobody seemed was interested in hosting the variants on the Asylum backpages. By the end of January, I'd added around 60 variants I'd found on the Asylum backpages to the Sylvan Cliffs. Since then I've added other features, most recently The Variant Archive, a downloadable database of over 150 variants from the Asylum, RBD, the Cliffs, and Charis' old site. If you're looking for a specific variant, you'll probably find it there.
Q: Good grief, man! You ramble more than Cain! Is that a medical condition?
Lemming: Dunno...
Q: Oh, no! Not another word! End of Q:nterview! That's enough! You're not gonna ramble anything else! Ok? Bye?
Lemming: Bye.