An American board member, formerly known as “Benkarnell” (this is more or less his real name, i. e. Ben Karnell).

Along with Marc Pasquin, he contributed greatly to the growth of the Ill Bethisad worldbuilding project before both of them joined AH.com. One of his many contributions to IB was the invention of the alternate sport Whummlin.

On AH.com, he spends much of his time posting flags, roundels, and coats of arms, despite not being a terribly skilled graphic artist.

His one (unfinished) timeline is called Ethelred the Pious, based on the idea of a Viking England. It was first developed on the infamous AH Wikia site, where it continues to find a home to this day.

He was a member of Map Continuation III before it gradually died.

He recently made up his mind to leave AH.com, but was enticed to stay, in turn, by the Rising Empires nations game and the beginnings of a career in politics. He left the former when he found he could not keep up with the pace of the game (which had, by the time he left, already led to the beginning of the era called in-game the “Decline of Genoa”).

He is currently (2012) participating in the map game Countries of An Alternate World 2*.

He had become interested in politics in the run-up to the alsace-lorraine_vicariate_estates_election_2009, briefly joining the boring_bureaucrats_party. However, he joined the escutcheonist_party soon thereafter, being named one of its two Members of Parliament for 2009. Known as a “moderate” in Parliament, he resigned from this position as well, during the early stages of the implosion of the political system, though he remained a member of the ESP and a citizen of Lesser Latvia and Lesser Lithuania until both were shut down by Ian. Unfettered from these two time bandits, Benkarnell's activity level has dropped off considerably, but he has not left for good, as he had once planned to do.