About the Gryphon's Guild
1. What is the Gryphon's Guild?
The Gryphon's Guild is an online association of people who love gryphons, the associated mythology, or who are gryphs at heart. The tagline of the Gryphon's Guild is "The best place on the net for Gryphs and Gryph-Fans to gather." It is sometimes called the Gryphon Guild, GryphGuild, GG or just Guild. The Guild was founded in 1994 by Tserisa (known as "velvetdragon" on the GryphBoard).
The Gryphon's Guild provides forum discussion of anything gryphon related, including the posting of original poetry or fiction, artwork, discussion of literature, mythology, life-cycles, behavior, and physiology, but not limited to these topics. It is also a social community for Gryphs and Gryph-fans to role-play and there are areas for discussing just about anything. The Guild provides discussion and interaction for members through The GryphBoard online forum, various LiveJournal communities, and IRC chat.
2. How do I join the Guild?
First, read our Guidelines for Forum Posting and our Chat Rules. Remember, the Guild is for everyone, so keep the forum and chat clean and family-friendly (rated G to Pg-13). If you are under 13, you must have parental permission to join the Guild.
Once you're familiar with our rules, you can start participating in any of our forums, communities, or chats. You can register on our forum, and join in on the many discussions, games and roleplays. The Guild's IRC chat is a great place to talk to Guilders in real time. If you have LiveJournal, you may want to join the Guild community there.
a. Posting at the GryphBoard
To post to the GryphBoard, first you must register. Registering is easy. Fill out the form with information such as your desired username, a password, and your e-mail address. Starred fields are required. There are a couple of questions in the form that will make sure you are a real person, not a spambot, and make sure that you've read this FAQ. You can choose whether or not to fill out the remaining unstarred fields. Once you have submitted the form, you will receive an e-mail soon after. Follow the instructions in the e-mail to complete your registration.
After you have registered, you are free to post on the forum. To begin, please post your introduction in the Newbie Nook subforum before posting elsewhere. That's the place to be when you're just starting out. There are some great sticky threads and helpful people that will point you in the right direction.
If you have any questions about posting on the board, fixing your signature, HTML, BBCode, posting images, or similar problems, visit Tech Support. You can also test your newfound skills and see how your posts and signatures look in the Is This Thing On? forum.
Read the sticky threads! These threads are marked with a "!" (exclamation mark) or "A" icon and are always at the top in their forums. They are there for your benefit and to keep the Board running smoothly. They contain important information about posting.
Admin reserves the right to delete, edit, or move posts, to close threads, and to ban users, both permanently and temporarily, at their discretion.
I. Pies, newbie greetings, and food fights
You'll find that many people in the Guild toss pies or various other ammunition at each other, and particularly at newbies. This is a long-standing tradition and meant in good fun. Some Guilders have a particular 'signature' weapon, and others will throw just about anything. There is a limit in the Common Room to one pie/food fight or other similar thread on the first page of the forum at one time, so before starting a new one, check to make sure there's not another to join first.
II. Admin and Mods
There are two types of 'staff' at the Gryphon's Guild; Admin and Mods.
Admin (Administrators) are the higher ups; the current Admins are Tserisa, Sparhawk and Indigo Sea. They are here to keep things running smoothly, manage technical aspects of the board, mediate disputes, manage membership, and whatever else they need to do to keep the Guild a great place to be. Their decisions are final on matters relating to the Guild. They also have the power to ban people from the Board if such an action is deemed necessary. They attempt to be fair and take into consideration the good of the Guild as a whole at all times.
Mods (Moderators) are assigned by Admin to help out around the Board (as well as in the IRC chat), monitoring discussions, keeping things on track, and guiding other Guilders. Please respect the Mods and give them your gratitude; it's a hard, demanding job, but someone has to do it!
b. Joining the Chat -- #GryphonGuild on Furnet
Please read the Chat Rules and FAQ for information on joining the chat.
c. What's Netiquette?
Everyone using any of the Guild forums (message board, channel, etc.) are expected to follow basic Netiquette, or internet etiquette. Failure to do so may get you banned, your posts deleted, or at very least a lot of people mad at you. The first thing to do is to read the FAQ and keep it in mind when posting. Please visit this quick Guide to Netiquette to brush up on your 'net interpersonal skills.
3. Character posting on the Board or Chat
For some, character posting in the Guild is roleplay, for others it is not. Character posting in the Gryphon's Guild is not typical roleplay. Many people in the Guild strongly feel that they are gryphons (or dragons or bird-bots or other species) in heart, spirit, or mind. Keep this in mind when posting, or there is potential for strife and hurt feelings. Respect others' feelings and beliefs, even if they differ from your own.
On the Board there are areas for IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) postings. However, the roleplay section of the Board is geared more towards structured roleplay with a setting and storyline, rather than at limiting self expression on the other areas of the Board. For some "IC" is just who they are. You may type as a gryphon (or dragon, or unicorn, or three-tailed clockwork kinkajou) anywhere on the board. However, please keep plots and settings to the roleplay sections.
Please read the GryphGuild Roleplay Rules and Rules Regarding RP Based on Copyrighted Material before participating.
a. Multiple characters
Multiple characters are fine (as are "pets" and "lackeys"). You can have as many as you would like, if you don't think you'll have an identity crisis! However, you must NOT use seperate registrations on the Board for each character -- each "player" is limited to ONE ACCOUNT. People who create multiple accounts for any purpose may be banned. If you have lost access to your main account and would like the password reset, or would like a name change, or have any other problems, please contact an admin or mod.
b. Characters based on books, movies, etc.
Can your character be one from a book, movie or other published media not of your own creation?
Short answer, please don't. First, it's not very creative, and second, you may violate copyright and trademark laws, a big no-no. Also, if you use the name of such a character, you're bound to run into a dozen others with the same name.
4. Is this place just for gryphons?
No, it is not. Our members come in many different flavors, such as dragon, phoenix, robot, chimera, unicorn, human and more. The founder, Tserisa, is a Dragon (though she does have a Gryphon character/form). Another of the current Admins is a kirin (Asian unicorn). It is a place for anyone who likes gryphons or has an interest in them. People who only want to tease, torment and heckle gryphons probably won't be happy here. Gryph slayers and people after gryphon's gold eyries won't find themselves very welcome. A thread on the Board asked for a tally of members' species. The results of this very informal poll can be found here at the Guild homepage translated to a pie chart.
5. What is a gryphon?
grif·fin also grif·fon or gryph·on n. A fabulous beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.
Gryphons are a creature from ancient mythology. There are a variations on the gryphon myth from Middle Eastern and Grecian legends. Tons of information about the gryphon can be found at Eclipse's Gryphon Pages.
a. Is there a "standard" gryphon?
Traditionally, the gryphon is half eagle (the front) and half lion (the back end). They have one pair of eagle talons, in the front; one pair of lion paws, in the back; a lion tail; and pointed ears (sometimes described as the ears of a mule), which distinguish their heads from those of eagles.
It's unlikely you'll find many genuine "traditional" gryphs at the Guild. There are gryphons of all sorts of avian and feline mixes (parrots and ocelots, red-tailed hawks and pumas), as well as other chimeric blends of animals, such as lupo-gryphs (wolf-gryphons) and vulpegryphs. Usually, they are half raptor (bird of prey, such as eagle, owl or hawk) and half big cat (such as lion, puma, or leopard). However, in the Guild you'll find all sorts of variations, and gryphons which seem to have no relation to any mundane animals at all, with fantastic colors, markings, and crests.
Some gryphs you might meet have a scorpion's sting or a snake for a tail, which have been mentioned in some gryphon legends, or borrowed from others (such as the chimera). Others may have horns, lizard tails, four lion paws, feathered tails, tufts of feathers or no ears. Others may be crosses between gryphons and another animal, such as a horse, dragon or a phoenix. Gryphons of legend were rather large, so that one of their talons could be used as a drinking cup. Gryphons in the Guild vary greatly in size from tiny to gargantuan.
b. What's a hippogriff? All those other whatevergryphs and gryphawhats I see around?
A hippogriff is a eagle in the fore, and a horse in the hind. It is a legendary animal the result of a gryphon mating with a horse, which is interesting considering that historically, a gryphon's favorite food is horses.
The other gryphon mixes are modern creations of Guilders with creative imaginations. Some common variants include:
Vulpegryph: avian fore, fox hind
Lupegryph: avian fore, wolf hind
Dracogryph: some mixture of gryphon and dragon; usually avian fore, dragon hindc. How is "gryphon" supposed to be spelled?
Chances are that however you've seen it is a proper spelling. Griffin, griffon, and gryphon are common spellings these days, and all are correct.
Other spellings of gryphon, which may be archaic or from other languages, are: Gryffen, girphinne, greffon, grefyne, grephoun, griffen, griffion, griffoun(e), griffown, griffun, griffyn, grifon, grifyn, griphin, griphon, gryffin, gryffon, gryfon, gryfoun(e), gryphen, and gryphin.