What you are seeing is a website believed to have been lost in time - it would have if fate had not intervened. One small page of hypertext script on the Internet was found (within a web archive) containing content from this website. It was a frame script. In other words, if you would view this page on a Browser by itself, you could only see three error pages in three different frames - nothing more. Hidden within the script, though, is content for older, outdated Browsers which cannot view frames. Mitth'raw'nurida, the one who created the layout for The Jedi Council, fortunately happened to put the script information for the website within the frame script itself. Not only was information for the main page there, but also information for the title display and the navigation links. This is only half of the story though. There were no graphics for The Jedi Council saved online. By another twist of fate, I was able to unearth four pieces of graphics saved during my stay here in 1999 - the main title graphic, the title graphic with website motto, the navigation graphic, and the chat room "Challenge of the Force" graphic. Acquiring these graphics, one frame script page, and a memory of the past, the challenge of restoring The Jedi Council was set. And with hard work, experience, and creativity, I managed to pull it off.
I can already imagine a visitor viewing this website and wondering, "Who cares about this place? There's no content here!" What really matters is the historical factor here. Realize this website was a start of something which literally helped create the Jedi Community into what it is today. The Jedi Council was put together at a time when only Role Playing websites found their way on the web. All that was known at the time (besides the Council) was The Jedi Academy and The Force Academy, along with two individual sites, Star Wars: The Jedi Academy and Jedi Lore. That was it. As The Jedi Council's main page notes (at the bottom of the page), the starting point of this website was the creation of Mitth'raw'nurida's "The Jedi Alliance" in June of 1997. In 1998, Streen, a friend of Mitth's, created "The Jedi Alliance II." At the end of that year, they decided to put it together and called it "The Jedi Council." The layout you see now was created in March of 1999 - around the same time the current layout for The Force Academy was made. I didn't come around until May of 1999. In fact, this was the first (and only) website I could find actually dealing with realistic practices for Jedi (it took many hours of going on search engines to realize this). So what you are seeing was the first webpage I saw when I started online under my current name. I saw two contacts, one for Mitth'raw'nurida, the other for Streen. I choose to contact Streen first, since, well, he was the apprentice - and I thought I would be able to converse with him better then I would his master. They eventually allowed me to join and I became the third member of The Jedi Council. We did so well together that our content lead to the creation of a new website, The Jedi Creed. The Jedi Council lasted until the opening of Creed, which was on August 6th, 1999. This eventually lead to the creation of The Jedi United, The Jedi Organization, and finally, JEDI.
What we three did here at The Jedi Council was a seed leading to the creation of such concepts as "Jedi Realism," "Jedi Unity," and "Jedi Community." These were the three basic things we advocated during the time this website flourished - a realistic practice of Jedi (letting go of the RPG attributes Jedi websites had at the time), a call for unity (uniting the various Jedi sites on the web), and creating a community (for those sites). This was seen as radical at the time. Eventually though, after three years, the challenge towards facing these goals flourished. To reply the debt I owe to both Mitth and Streen, I hope to make sure their hard work and dedication, spent throughout their years online, has an opportunity to be displayed by those reeping their efforts. I also hope it will inspire you - and help you see how a couple of people can really make a difference. "My work here is done." ...Jedi Relan Volkum |