History of the Guild
Chapter 1 - Beginnings

This guild was founded January 13, 2002 but the makings of the Silver Lined Clouds Guild started long long before...

Flash back to the summer of 2001... dlfreak had already been playing on Neopets for about seven months and was looking for something new and exciting to do on Neopets. He would often see advertisements and invitations to join guilds but was never quite interested... until one day something clicked in his (my) mind: "Why don't I see what all this guild talk is about?"

Zoom on down to the Guild Headquarters. I loved the Neopets faeries (back then they were still faceless) so I decided to look for a guild themed to the faeries. I flew on up to the Air Faerie Cloud branch of the Guild Headquarters. I started at the top reading each guild's description... this was quite a while ago you see and guilds used to be listed by number of members, from highest to lowest. On the first page, the top guilds had about 300 members in them. Angel Avengers, Cotton candy Faeries, and all kinds of other guilds with odd names were at the top of the list but none of them sounded too uniquely special until I came upon a guild with a rather catchy quote. I can't quite remember it now but I can butcher here for you; something like: "Eyes to the east, the silver lined clouds rise." It didn't have the faerie theme I was looking for but, mysterious-sounding with an interesting description and a nice layout, I decided to give the guild a whirl.

Wait a minute... dlfreak JOINED this guild? I thought he CREATED the guild, did he hack the silvercloudsguild account?!?

Goodness no, sit tight kiddies and don't get ahead of me here... silvercloudsguild isn't the guild I joined... I joined the "=*=Silver Lined Clouds=*=" guild which belonged to the user silver_lined_clouds which as co-owned by two people. You'll find out how we got where we are today in just a second. Let us proceed...

I don't really remember what went on in that guild while I was a member there but I became the owner the guild Discount Petpet shop. And for the record, leighacrystine, who eventually took over the discount petpet shop keeper did a 10 times better a job than ever I did while I owned it. But I digress... I did not run anything in the guild as there was nothing really in the guild to run besides a discount shop. Little by little, I climbed my way up the council ladder and got to second in command on the council. By this time, I had become good friends with the owner (sunflower682 who was later known as crystaline_lupess). I had access to the guild front page and all administrative powers. In fact, I was given the password to the guild account to make changes whenever needed, as well. (This was before it was a big no-no to share accounts, of course!) Things were going quite well; I had the power to make authoritative decisions (with an OK from sunflower682, of course) after all, she was the owner of the silver_lined_clouds account.

I don't understand why did you leave that guild then if all was good?! And didn't you say the guild account was co-owned by two different members? If sunflowr682 was one of them, who was the other?

Hush now, what did I say about getting ahead of me?! I had only been in the guild for about 4 months by the time I had worked my way up to second in command and no sooner that I was enjoying the highest possible rank in the guild comes a dark cloud across the sky. As if in a flash of lightning, I had lost all of the admin powers I'd worked to earn and without warning the guild account password was changed.

Was it Jhudora? Was it Dr. Sloth? Was it the powers of all evil in Neopia?!?

No my friends, it was the OTHER co-owner of the guild, sunflower682's friend who helped her create the guild: angelic115. ::shrieks with terror:: It turns out that angelic115 had gotten fed up with the guild a few weeks before I had joined and left it in the hands of sunflower682. Well Miss Angelic115 (and boy was that name a misnomer) decided one day that the guild is good again (after all the work I'd contributed) and, in a rage of power-hungry madness, decided to take the guild over again. She refused to give me any powers (or return my administrative abilities) and told sunflower682 not to give me any access. She changed the guild front page, deleting the one I'd crafted, and decided to run things her way. Within days, guild membership dropped. Still, things were (just barely) tolerable.

Much like a scene from a Shakespearean tragedy, everyone on the council (except for some odd reason one person) despised the ruler and on several occasions plotted to try and take over, but to no avail. There was nothing that could be done to stop this bull-headed egotistical guild ruler and the guild suffered. It was now September of 2001 and soon the guild account became frozen. Then, just as quickly as she thundered in to the guild, angelic115 left the guild again. If memory serves correct, she had broken some sort of terms and conditions which lead to the freezing of the guild account. I later learned that this was not the first time that the guild account had been frozen and that sunflower682 had pleaded for the account to be unfrozen which actually worked that first time. But, alas, no such luck would happen again. Some vicious words were traded between she and myself as well that one council member who didn't dislike her--I later found out that member was angelic115's own mother!

 So there I stood with sunflower682 by my side with a guild torn to shambles and inaccessible because it was frozen. Sunflower682 and myself got together with our guild members and emailed Neopets to unfreeze the account but to no avail they would not unfreeze the guild a second time! So we humbled on, unable to change the guild front page, upgrade ranks, or do any guildly duties besides chat to each other on the message boards. Three whole months passed and the guild survived--frozen and a mess--but, still, it pulled through thanks to the dedication of its most active members including: 666_alice_666 (I don't remember her original screen name), krisconcepcion19, blzer76 (aka shinfae), angelfromheaven127, and jclocke_iguana.

I could stand it no longer. Everyone still looked to me as the guild leader and I was going daft not being able to make any changes to the guild. That's why I secretly began the task of creating a new guild. I'd created a guild website, hosted on geocities.com, and used the screen name of silvercloudsguild. To make things consitent, I created a new account for the guild and called it the same name: silvercloudsguild. I created the guild on January 13, 2002 and was still fixing it up and prepping it as a new guild. Later that day, I made the official announcement that the =*=Silver Lined Clouds=*= was no more (at least not to be run by me) and that any brave soul that would like to join me on this new journey to the Silver Lined Clouds II was welcome to join. (That's where the little celebrated 'II' in our guild title comes from) Sure enough, all of the active members joined our guild at the location it is currently located at today.

There were about 25 of us in the new guild who had made the move. The guild sparkled with a new color scheme, a fresh front page, and something the guild never had before: Faerie Guardians (as you can see in the picture to the right, they were drawn in my early stages of Flash knowledge--you'll notice they all have the same bodies and wings just painted a different color.) The guardians also did not have personalities or names as they do now. They were simply symbolic figures for the guild. Anyhow, I finally was able to get the faerie theme I had been looking for in my earlier guild searches incorporated into the guild. The guild was mine, I was free to run it as I pleased. Still reeling from the horrors of the previous guild experience, I vowed to make this guild as democratic as possible; to be run by guild members and their ideas. Also, still weary from the tragedy that befell the United States on 911 (just three months previous) I made the guild's new slogan: "Unity in All Forms." It was supposed to be a temporary motto but it has since been adopted as our official guild motto.

Things were great but the guild wasn't really growing... we remained at about 30 members for exactly two months until two great members joined our guild: white_lily and kissis81. Together, they amazingly managed to raise the guild's membership up to about 150 members. Fresh faces and new activities began to spring up and the guild began to mature into a more professional guild. Slowly over the months, our guild membership grew up to 260 and slumped off again. It took a nearly a year and a half but thanks to donations by kind and generous members we managed to raise 1.5 million Neopoints to advertise our great guild on the Notice Board. We all hoped that our ad would do the guild some good but we never dreamed it would bring in nearly 550 new members!

And from there the guild flourished. And so the Silver Lined Clouds Guild (with the rarely celebrated "II") was. Is. And continues to be.

But wait... there's more! Proceed, if you dare, to Chapter Two!