Timothy Lawrence Morgan, aka TimPendragon, was a Star Trek fan who began a PBeM simming career in 1997 (or late 1996) and remained consistently active until 1999. When "real life" issues began to intrude upon his time, he withdrew from active participation, though he had sporadic sim experiences in subsequent years.
Personal history[]
Records indicate he was born on 22 June 1983, though there has been some dispute over this date. His birthplace, and most other facts from his early history have been lost to the mysts of time and bureaucratic assininity. However, what is known is that he has lived most of his life in the state of Maryland, neighboring the state of Absolute Confusion.
He was a second-generation Trekkie (preferring that term over Trekker), inheriting the unfortunate condition from his mother and taking it to uncharted heights of unhealthy obsession. He prided himself on the fact that he was one of the last people to become a fan of Star Trek before any of the spinoffs. That was in September, 1986, a full year before The Next Generation aired for the first time. He regretted that his first-remembered exposure to Trek was "Catspaw" (TOS), but nonetheless was glad that his three-year old brain overlooked the inanity and became enamoured with phasers, tricorders, and Spock's ears.
In the years following, he became known among his friends - and even total strangers - as a font of knowledge of all things Trek, and film lore in general. His obsession for Trek was rivaled only by his (longer-standing) geekdom for Sherlock Holmes, and his late-coming-but-still-way-off-the-deep-end dive into Lord of the Rings fandom.
Sim experience[]
His first sim experiences were in the Starfleet Sim Group Email Division, during the "Entity" or "Where Angels Fear" storyline, most prominently on the USS Hunter sim, playing as Ensign (later Lieutenant) Alan Taylor, a human/Bajoran science officer. He also briefly played Lieutenant Zachery Carter aboard the USS Wraith.
During his time in SSG, he also played characters in several independent sims, including Starbase 416, as Commander Sean Ellington and USS Ulysses as Ensign Tyler Garrick. Starbase 416 collapsed quickly, and the Ulysses proved too time consuming for Tim.
After the change in leadership on the Hunter sim prompted his resignation, Tim attempted to find a place on the Epsilon Fleet's USS Explorer sim, but soon left when it became clear the GM was, in Tim's words, "incapable of forming a coherent sentence, let alone an intelligent plotline."
Tim discovered Allied Electronic Simulations, and joined the Kal-Dixas sim, during the time when Chirstyn La Chance was GM. He "imported" his character from the Explorer sim, Commander Jay Allen, giving the character amnesia and having him resign from Starfleet to live on the independent colony and find himself again. Tim grew to love the atmosphere of the Kal-Dixas sim, and was one of its longest running personalities, eventually sending Jay Allan off and bringing in the new character of Drake Mallory, private investigator. Tim became a prominent member of the group and when Chirstyn stepped down as GM, he was appointed her replacement. During those times, he experimented with other sims and formats within AES, including one based on seaQuest DSV, but they were all short-lived. He also briefly GMed a Romulan sim, the IRW Sunheart.
Shortly afterwards, real life issues began to take their toll. In a very complex set of circumstances, Tim nearly lost his own life defending his younger brother from a street gang, and went into hiding, living "everywhere from Boston to Dublin to Melbourne." Through a friend, he turned the GMship of Kal-Dixas over to Joe Miley, and disappeared from the online community.
Cut off from online Trek fandom, Tim began to write tales of his own crew as Star Trek: Pendragon, a series which he still writes today.
When life settled down in 2002, Tim decided to region the PbEM sim world, and eventually found Junction Point, an independent offshoot of the Federation Game Network, created by Thys van der Merwe and Barbara Horwitz. Tim created the character of Daniel Sean Bryce, who became the station's Tactical officer. Junction Point fizzled after a few months of Tim's joining, due to Thys' mishandling of many elements of the group, and most of the players left to form Typhon Station, a game set on Starbase 185 and the USS Odyssey. Rather than bring Bryce over to Typhon (the setting of which jumped from 2380 to 2400), he created a new character, Adam Mallory, science officer, and eventually also played as Samok on the Odyssey. During that time, he also attempted a character in The First Era group, but it didn't pan out. After about a year of gaming as Mallory and Samok, Tim's health began to decline and he had to withdraw from the Typhon sims, though it was the most fun he'd had since Kal-Dixas, and he'd forged an excellent rapport with Barbara and several other players.
Once he got back on his feet, he attempted a character in A Call to Duty, and several non-Trek related games, but once again, neither seemed to take off, and he withdrew from active simming again. He was stunned to find out that Dr. Barbara Horwitz had passed away shortly after Mother's Day in 2005.
Over the years, Tim tried to resurrect Kal-Dixas on several occasions, either as by joining the sim as a new character during its active periods, or trying to revive it when it was inactive. None of these attempts were successful, but he hopes to one day return to Kal-Dixas, or to Typhon Station, the two sims where he felt the most at home.