Guardian at the Gate

As previously noted, I have a little stall at the Halloween Festival over in Mieville Shelley.  (The event as a whole is well worth a visit.  Particularly if you are into pumpkin orange, there's a lot of that about.  But I digress.)

Since I'm not around all the time, or anything like as much as I'd prefer to be, I have left the day-to-day running of the place in safe hands.  Or, I thought, in safe hands... those of a gadget of mine, the amazing Hieratic Skull.  This thing sits on the stall, and you can talk to it, and it will respond.

Oh, yes.  It will respond.  Here's an example.

[14:55] Hieratic Skull whispers: Speak, O perplexed one, and hear the wisdom of the Hieratic Skull.
[14:55] Glorf Bulmer: Anybody stopped by yet?
[14:55] Hieratic Skull: Thus the Hieratic Skull imparts the sage counsel of the aeons.
[14:55] Hieratic Skull: The wise one holds no money while the osprey is on the ground.
[14:55] Hieratic Skull: Such is my answer; give heed and comprehend!
[14:56] Glorf Bulmer: Oh, thanks.

So there we are.  It would be a safe pair of hands... if the Hieratic Skull (object description "It's incomprehensible, so it must be oracular!") actually had any hands.

More commercialism incoming

Ahem.  Yes, I'm being neglectful again.  Terrible, I know... but I'm having trouble just finding time to get inworld, so finding time to get inworld and blog is even harder.  Besides, I'm sure I don't know what I'm doing inworld that's worth blogging about.  Well, apart from... no, not that, this is still Not That Sort Of Blog.

I had a point when I started that paragraph, where was it?

Oh, yes.  Anyway.  Back again, and on the Hunt again.  I'm in the final throes of finishing the fourth Renaissance Hunt, so expect more posting here shortly as I open up its gift gargoyles and describe the contents.  Fills up space, if nothing else.

On a related note - and this explains the title of the post - my insignificant commercial efforts are up and running again.  Strictly speaking, my little shop "Hebe GBE" didn't vanish entirely when Steam SkyCity got redeveloped - it has a mainland branch, and is still there, although in these days of mesh, my gadgets mostly look sinfully outdated.  Never mind.

Persuaded by the silver-tongued Mayor of Mieville, the estimable Perryn Peterson, I have taken a stall at his Halloween Village, with a small selection of products on sale (at, in most cases, a considerable discount.  Though I've also included a couple of my freebies, and it is not arithmetically feasible to discount those.)

I also stuck the Hieratic Skull on the stall, for a laugh.  This thing was made for a Halloween bash in Caledon quite some time ago, and was supposed to be a one-off.  Like many of my gadgets, it says silly things when you talk to it... in this case, it responds in chat with oracular-sounding sayings of quite astonishing portentousness and meaninglessness.

 

That's me, setting up the stall.  The pumpkin-orange marker boxes will be gone when the event starts, and the other stalls will be full of good stuff (Pierre Ceriano has the booth across the way from me, for instance, and Izo Ryba has a booth nearby too, so that's two bits of class right off the bat), so, y'know, drop by and see what's on offer.  I accept no responsibility, mind, if you listen to the Hieratic Skull and take its advice.

Gloomy prognostications

Having bought that extra plot in Kuhrang, I felt I had to do something with it... it was the work of mere moments (OK, about three-quarters of an hour) to put together a small building and copy across all my vendors from Steam SkyCity - yes, folks, Hebe G.B.E. now has a Mainland presence!

By way of product demonstration, I rezzed an Infallible Divinatory Sphere.  And then curiosity got the better of me, so the following exchange took place:-


[12:51] Infallible Divinatory Sphere whispers: Give voice to your dilemma (in the form of a yes/no question) and the Infallible Divinatory Sphere will answer...
[12:52] Glorf Bulmer: Will this place turn a profit?
[12:52] Infallible Divinatory Sphere: No, no, no, a thousand times no!  Or at least probably not.
[12:53] Infallible Divinatory Sphere whispers: Give voice to your dilemma (in the form of a yes/no question) and the Infallible Divinatory Sphere will answer...
[12:53] Glorf Bulmer: are you sure?
[12:53] Infallible Divinatory Sphere: I wouldn't bet on it.  I wouldn't bet on anything, not the way my luck's running.... you don't have any spare change, do you?

So there we are.  Not the most promising of signs, but we'll see.

Open for business!

The little shop in Steam SkyCity is finally done.  Mr. Alastair Whybrow had the dubioussignal honour of being my first (and so far only) customer; to be honest, I am not expecting any great rush!

Between that, though, and this thing, I am feeling more involved with SL, all of a sudden.  Flogging and blogging, evidently that's what it's all about.  (I mean flogging as slang for selling things, of course, I'm not talking about... well, never mind that.)

I suppose I should be all commercial and put out a SLURL ... and I should say something about the stuff I've put out.  Let's see...

There is the reduced-impact Lightweight Hall I talked about a couple of blog posts ago.

There are two packs of sculpt maps - one for laboratory glassware, one for drinking glasses; I suppose it's best not to get the two mixed up.

There are three freebie items, which most of my friends and acquaintances will have seen before, in my Christmas giveaways if nowhere else.  There's a scripted Oil Lamp with three light settings (four if you count "off"); there's the Confrontational Hexapod which suddenly appears to scare off visitors when you walk into his range; there's the Cavorite Personal Levitator, a steampunky backpack with a simple built-in flight assist.

If the free Confrontational Hexapod doesn't scare people off, his big brother the Slumbering Guardian Heptapod is now up for sale.  This one is bigger, and wakes up to wave his tentacles and throw Linden damage prims at you when you trigger his sensor.  If you prefer tentacle monsters smaller, friendlier, and sitting on your shoulder, there's always the Cthuddly Pet, which I think a lot of people have seen before, too.

There is plenty of weird lab equipment for a weird lab; an Experimental Aetheric Power Supply to power it, an Infallible Divinatory Sphere to provide advice, an Electric Pentacle to protect you if you brew up something nasty, and of course a big red button marked Do Not Press which you should absolutely not press under any circumstances.

If you still haven't seen off any intruders with the tentacle monsters, you can try to hypnotize them with the colourful Hypnochromatidromeon, or zap them with the (arguably) deadly Grindell-Matthews Death Ray - though the hand-held Elephant Gun might prove more effective (use only the elephants provided with the gun).

Or if you don't mind visitors, there is a Radio Cooker with which to feed them, a Drinks Dispensing Decanter for liquid refreshment, and an Antigravity Stool for them to sit on.  If they want to announce themselves in a civilized fashion, there are Doorbells for them to ring, too.

Finally, a couple of personal attachments; the Momentary Lightbulb (which also appeared in a previous blog post, I'm such a huckster) and the Mk XIII Aetheradaptive Backpack with its multiple functions, some of them sensible.

So there we are.  Commercialism.  I guess, if I'm going to maintain any sort of momentum, I will have to come up with new gadgets to add.  Actually, that's fine - the shop may provide me with an incentive to complete some projects and/or experiment with learning new stuff, and both of those are Good Things.  I'm not expecting to get rich off this thing - I'll be surprised if it even pays its way, to be honest - but if it gets my lazy bum in gear to get creating, that will be quite enough.