Otherworldly

The best time of the year for lovers of all things fantasy in Second Life is here, Fantasy Faire 2022 has opened. From now until May 8th you have 20 fabulous Fairelands to explore, filled with both shopping and all kinds of entertainment. The best way to experience the Faire is to wander through all of the regions, but if time and/or lag makes that hard, there is a list of all participating stores with slurls to their booths. There’s also a

Shopping Guide which links through to galleries on Facebook where all of the RFL items are represented. Because as always, the Faire is raising money for the American Cancer Society through the Relay for Life.

I’ve battled a bit of a cold to pay a quick visit to most of the sims and put together a bit of a teaser video. There’ll be more in-depth posts and hopefully more videos in the days to come, once I regain a bit of energy. You’ll find photos of the two outfits shown in the video below as well as credits for those.

When she entered the castle, rows of ice sculptures of strange creatures greeted her. She wandered among them, marvelling at how life-like they were. Not until it was too late did she realise why they looked so real—they were not sculptures at all!

The stunning Sarah Ball Gown by HEXtraordinary looks absolutely amazing and based on the brands first forays into clothing I cannot wait to see more. The texturing is top notch and the meshes beautifully made. This particular gown is of course inspired by the gown worn by Sarah in the dream sequence masquerade in Labyrinth (raise your hands everyone who has that as a favourite scene!) and at first I wanted to capture something of that in my photos. Alas, while I know a replica of the ballroom was made in Second Life, it was many years ago and I did not buy it at the time. But then I got the idea of instead using the ice sculptures that were also made by HEXtraordinary, creating something a little inspired by Narnia instead with the help of the imposing Stalker Castle from Fanatik.

Another great release from the Engine Room is the Monarch hair by Magika. This is a beautiful updo with long tendrils framing the face and a dramatic crown with tall spikes. The latter can be turned off for a more casual look. This round of the Engine Room closes in ten days, so don’t miss out!

I’ve featured the Ludus Magnus from Del-ka Aedilis before, but what better build to use for a bad-ass battle pose? This is another pose from Be My Mannequin?‘s set of poses for Enchantment’s Iliad and Odyssey round, this time using the included prop sword. The Ines set from deviousMind for We Love Role-Play is perhaps not standard-issue gladiator wear, but this leather-and-feather set has such a fierce attitude. The hair from Analog Dog is currently a free gift in the mainstore, in the Freeball (you need to cam around a bit to find it). I also like how the Ashlynn head from Slink came out with this expression from Vista’s Facial Bento hud.

To show off the Ludus more fully, I built up a small mountain with the help of Fanatik’s Lofoten set and placed it on top, with one of the sim surrounds from Landscapes Unlimited providing the dramatic backdrop.

The ancient ruins, perhaps the last visible remnant of a long-lost civilization, were surrounded by towering ice bergs and miles upon miles of frozen ocean. Whatever else the people who built them had left behind was buried deep beneath the ice, erasing almost every trace of them.

Fanatik has continued their winter-themed releases (which started with the Ice Plates) and added Glaciers (which include cliffs, chunks and paths) and Icebergs (which include both regular and scripted versions). As with the Ice Plates, the scripted version of the Iceberg falls apart, though not from collisions but rather over time. With these three sets, all with beautiful textures and materials, you can create fantastic winter landscapes. The ruins are also from Fanatik, the older set which comes in a summer and a winter version in separate packages.

The pose comes from Be My Mannequin’s Matrix-inspired set and includes a bullet wall prop, but the outstretched hand was just what I needed for the astronaut carefully touching the ancient ruins. The spacesuit is an older release from Anachron,  a former brand from the Dreaming Thicket.

(Also, if you haven’t read The Book of the Ice by Mark Lawrence, do. But maybe start with everything else by him first, they read best in the order they were written.)

It started with the second of the two images popping into my head when I tested the “Little Drummer Boy” pose from Be My Mannequin. I liked the idea of showing that amidst a waterfall, and fortunately I was sitting on an excellent one from Fanatik. No clothing needed meant I could break out my favourite body, Slink Physique Original, and I am wearing an older DeeTalez skin since it is so hard to find good skins for an SL UV mesh head. The hair Yelena, the latest style from Wasabi which you can get an Anthem. Yelena also includes unrigged bangs which I am not wearing for this photo.

From the 3rd to the 10th of January there are great savings (up to 50%) to be had on many Fanatik items in the main store.  Fanatik has almost everything setup for viewing on their sim and you can also see several of their castles as well as many other of their sim building blocks (such as the very handy Lofoten cliffs) in use on our sim. For this image, I used the Lofoten cliffs to create a great ice wall and added a little village in its shadow using the Medieval Village set and pieces from the Wood Works set.

Today I am out on thin ice. Specifically, on LR & Fanatik’s new Ice Plates, a cool product that includes scripted, breakable ice plates. To give a sense of how they work, I did another video!

I also talk a bit about my new outfit from R3D Studio, a viking-inspired dress and cloak. It looks very warm and sturdy, just right for a cold, northern winter. For full credits, go to the end of this post.

You still have a couple of days left until the SL Christmas Expo closes on the 14th of December. My final post from the event takes a look at the latest Teeglepet release, the majestic Andalusian horse.  And of course he gets a little video to show him off. Apologies in advance for my steering, apparently I can’t ride and talk at the same time in SL. ;)

In the video, I mention that there is a One of a Kind Andalusian up for grabs at the charity auction, and if you want to know more about that, check out this link. The auction ends tomorrow, Sunday the 12th, so don’t miss your chance to bid!

Below the video I’ve included a couple of shots of the horse on its own, to give a better look at both him and the beautiful Cantara tack set from Cheval D’or. And the full credits are at the end, of course.

The Fantasy Room is a new event focusing on fantasy-inspired items, from accessories to buildings and everything in-between. For the first round, I am showing one of two releases from Del-ka Aedilis. The baker’s table, part of their series of medieval kitchen furnishings, features a nice setup of ingredients for baking and an in-progress dough. There are no animations loaded into the table but I used one from another kitchen set to give the appearance of kneading the dough.

My dress is from Tres and I love the little details on this style, such as the wrinkling of the bodice at the clasps and the fine embroidery along the neckline and at the cuffs. It is both rustic and pretty, something for a reasonably well-off farmer or a merchant. The bodies supported are Kups, Legacy and Maitreya (including Petite), but with the right alphas it should work on Slink too.  The dress was available at the previous round of We Love Role-Play, but should hopefully be in the mainstore for Tres soon if it isn’t already there.

When you blog events it sometimes leads to you discovering creators you have never come across before. My personal find at the SL Renaissance Festival is Wythburn Fine Furniture. The two pieces I am showing here are both nicely modelled, with good choices of textures (and you get a lot of options, too) that look extra nice with advanced lighting on and, on top of that, a selection of animations that for the most part fit historical or fantasy roleplay very well. The sits for women, for example, work well with gowns and skirts. Such as the lovely Carnation gown from the Dreaming Thicket, another release for the SL Renaissance Festival. The building is Fanatik’s imposing Stalker Castle, which has a great grand hall lined with torches on the first floor.

Remember that the SL Renaissance Festival is a charity event, raising money for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. All proceeds from the furniture is donated and the gown varies between 50% and 100% depending on colour.

With new and old items from the Dreaming Thicket, a tattoo from Fallen Gods and a pose from Be My Mannequin? I created this scene of a guardian of an enchanted wood. The gown as well as the tattoo are from the Age of Avalon event, which inspired me to think of a secret haven which not everyone could reach. The amulet—available in sun and moon versions—went well with the priestess/enchantress image and the forbidding stance of the pose makes her seem like she’s not going to let just anyone pass. The landscaping consists of items from Fanatik and Studio Skye.

Journeying alone, she keeps to the less known roads, always with her bow and arrows within easy reach on her horse. The slight, elegant mare is a little too fine to pass as a common traveller’s horse and her own garb might also arouse too much interest. On this evening, she passes near the eastern shore of the peninsula. Some distance out into the water, a pair of houses on tall stilts are visible, their lights beckoning in an inviting fashion.

Still on vacation and on a laptop, so keeping things a little simple. But it suddenly struck me that this pose from Be My Mannequin? would work nicely together with the latest Experience Portal from Fanatik. I wanted something eerie for the EEP setting and green is always a good choice is the colour of sorcery. To match this, I edited the crystal heart prop included with the pose to be glowing green rather than red. I also raised the poseball off the ground, making it seem as if the magic is levitating my avatar.

I picked up both my hair and the outfit from the Wanderlust Weekend sale last weekend; that’s what I call great finds! The hair is by No.Match and the robe from 1313 Mockingbird Lane. I love the fact that No.Match has so many unisex hairs and longer styles for men, I definitely have to get Ran to shop there soon.

Fanatik has one recent and one brand new set out to help you build cool medieval/fantasy structures. The first is the Breakable Gates set, a collaboration with LR Weapons that provides physics-enabled gates that can take weapon damage and break down. The second is the massive Castle Builder set, with walls, towers, columns and other massive stone structures (as well as some wooden elements that integrate with the stone).

You can preview both sets and what can be done with them on the Fanatik sim, linked above. I have also done a brief video, just showing some of the contents of these packages as I haven’t had time to build anything of my own as of yet. Read on to take a look at it.

I’ve tried doing portrait series before, but I always get too ambitious and too caught up in making them feel similar. So, we’ll see where I end up with this one. The genesis of the idea was to do some nice portraits for our game to spruce up the website a bit. Here, I am trying to portray Melissa “Missy” Blackwood, one of King Aegon IV’s mistresses.

To create her look, I am using LeLutka’s Erin head with alaskametro’s Ingrid skin (using the flat chest add-on since Missy was supposed to be quite slim and flat chested), which I think gives her a sweet sort of beauty that suits the description of the character. The hair is one of F&M Oblivion’s releases for Hair Fair, a style inspired by Giulia Farnese, also a famous mistress. It is a very elegant, ladylike style with a silk cap at the back. The raven jewellery is a nod to the arms of House Blackwood and I thought that the Heloise gown from Junbug could fit into Westeros well enough.