I was born and grew up in Mid-West England in a hospital only ten minutes walk from my house. We moved when I was seven, a whole 300 yards up the road to a bigger house. The area was beautiful with leafy green woods and huge cow-pat-filled fields covering the rolling limestone hills. Our second house was in the last street before the fields began, so we could just walk up this tiny muddy alleyway and be at the start of a number of hilly walks. We used to go sledging up there if it snowed as well - something I found highly overrated due to
many painful crashes.
 

Ella aka Rookie Brownbark

At school I was always a bit of a goody-two-shoes, which paid off once I got to the later years of secondary school. It's surprising how many times you can get away with giving in homework late when they know you as the good one! Anyway, I discovered a passion for the challenge of languages, possibly due to a ready great (though completely crazy) teacher who spent most of the time he wasn't giving us excellent grammar lessons singing and dancing around the classroom.

I continued with my French and German to A-Level, where I can say they are both much harder than doing Maths, and managed to just about get the required Bs for my uni course. I took Art as well in the first year, and Maths for both years, both of which I got top grades in with far less effort.

So, I went north to University, still taking French and German. I think it was the summer before I started my second year that I first discovered Santharia. I had been looking for a good rpging site for a while, as although I had done a bit when I was younger, I'd kind of outgrown those crowds. I spent a week or so writing out the character, but then wandered off again when I went back to uni. However, I remembered the site, and later came back to the rpg side, slowly building up a wealth of characters and finding some great friends too.

It wasn't until almost a year later that I decided to try my hand at the development side of things. After showing a brief interest in Brownie-related things, I was very much encouraged to begin updating and adding to that race. So I did. And I haven't really stopped.