Ancient Web: SunBlind’s 1997 Realm of Myth and Fantasy Kept Growing

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

SunBlind did not build a normal index of fantasy creatures. She built somewhere for a visitor to arrive, look around, and be greeted by a dragon.

Enter the Realm of Myth and Fantasy

The homepage names different destinations as though they were places on a map: Unicorn Island, Dragon Mountain, Pegasus Heights, Gryphon Cliffs, and the Plains of the Mystical Horses. Other doors lead to a library, original writing, awards, adoptions, and webrings.

It is a personal website that asks the reader to play along. In Dragon Mountain, an opening vignette describes a shopkeeper showing the visitor a crystal ball, followed by a journey into snow-capped peaks and an encounter with a speaking dragon. Below the scene are links to stories, poetry, songs, quotations, and dragon-related websites.

The design is heavy with illustrated navigation and short prose introductions. This was not a fantasy encyclopedia assembled from neutral article templates. It was an environment designed to reward wandering.

A homemade world with its own timeline

The homepage gives its creation date as June 1997 and records moves in May 2002 and May 2026. Dragon Mountain retains a more specific timestamp: created in December 1997 and last updated in August 2003. Those separate dates show a site that grew section by section instead of appearing all at once.

The author's old About Me questionnaire, created in July 1999 and updated in July 2006, is equally revealing. SunBlind describes herself as a Canadian computer-engineering graduate and software developer who likes horses, science fiction, astronomy, anime, and spending weekends on her webpage. Myst and Riven appear among her favorite games.

The questionnaire is a time capsule of ordinary old-web self-introduction. You learn what is on the mouse pad, favorite sounds, and what is under the bed. None of this was required to understand a dragon. All of it helped readers feel there was a real person keeping the place.

The Realm has moved and changed, but it still presents its imaginative geography as an invitation rather than a stream of posts. Its lasting quality is not technical sophistication; it is an author's willingness to make a small fictional world navigable one link at a time.

Start at the Realm's gateway and visit Dragon Mountain.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.