The World of Avlis

Dear Avlis players and fans,



Since the birth of my twins, I've been able to average a healthy 20 (chaotically spread out) minutes a day on the boards, and I'm very happy about that. Of course, that's not enough time to do any administrating, but I do get to post once every couple days or so. Believe me, I'm grateful for that.



Anyway, this post is more of a business post than a personal one, so let me cut to the chase:



Blackparadox Enterprises, LLC, which is the company that runs Avlis, would like to have a charity drive to raise money for the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. As many of you may know, two hurricanes have hit Florida, USA in the last three weeks, and a third big one is on the way. Large parts of Florida are damaged. Some are literally in ruins. We have Florida residents who play Avlis, and I think many of them could elaborate further.



The Red Cross is heavily involved with relief efforts down there. They bring food and water to people who've lost it, and they run shelters for those with no homes left.



So here's what we're gonna do. For every person that joins our fan fiction site over the next two weeks, Blackparadox will donate $2.50 to the Red Cross Disaster relief fund. That is half of the $5 it costs to join the site at http://fanfic.avlis.org.



So, I repeat. If you make a new fan fiction account for US$5, Blackparadox will make a one-time contribution of $2.50 to the relief fund. In my mind, this is a way to make Avlis do something other than offer you hours of mindless entertainment. It's a way to make our community work towards a more realistic good. If you feel the same, and would like to contribute, please do.



To kick off the drive, Blackparadox has already donated US$100 of its own money to the fund. Our goal is to raise another US$50. It's a modest goal, and I think we could surely meet it.



As people join, I will be taking what little time I have on these boards to post a tally of the donation, in order to keep you informed, so you can see how close we are to our goal.



At this time, I will not be funnelling money from non-fanfic donations into the Red Cross. So for example, if you do not join the fanfic site, and instead you just give $10, then $0 of it goes to charity. It's gotta be a fanfic subscription. That's the only stipulation of this charity drive so far. Yes, it does limit the amount of money we can raise, but I want to let it go this way for a while because fanfic memberships help us pay our bills much more than straight donations do.





Thanks in advance to everyone!





(PS: Only amounts of donated money will be given. Names will not be named.)