Fencer Archive

Raphayl was a she, firstly.

A very thorough correspondent, who brooked no nonsense, and always performed everything to the best of her ability. She had no qualms asking for necessary assistance on large projects, and never discounted the research of others even when it contradicted her own findings.

She was a kind person who tolerated even the most callous of commentaries with a kind word, and usually a self-deprecating quip. A friend to fencers since the very beginning, I had the pleasure of working extensively with her on many of the testing sessions for the posts that fencers and many other professions use today.

Raphayl worked tirelessly (I know, because she convinced me to spend literally four hours a night or more with her) to make fencers work, and work well. She finally stepped down (apologetically even!) when her family and work required more time (understandably) and she couldn't perform as thoroughly as she would have liked.

Raphayl was lost in a tragic accident a few months ago, and this hit the fencer and the whole SWG community harder than one might have thought. This is a game, but we all come here as people, with lives and loved ones that are so often not considered amongst our bickering and selfish desires. The fact that Star Wars Galaxies is truly a community game means that we have the added burden of the potential loss of many of our favorite in-game friends, or even our favorite in-game nemeses. The code doesn't change, the servers still run, but you and I are SWG, not machines and scripts. We suffer, and thus the game suffers.

I hope this makes clear both what Raphayl gave, and was lost when she was taken from us.

Thank you, rather. I'm sure several people were still unaware of everything she did for us. It was so much fun to work with her (even through those tedious, grueling tasks) and then watch her take what we had tested and make it into a much-lauded update.