Fantasy Faire: all the way around

The last two sims of my initial traverse of the Fantasy Faire, here.  Last time, I was sure that something Steampunk was about to happen.  And indeed, when I went to Asperatus (sponsored by NeoVictoria), it duly did.

Asperatus is a giant airship, floating over the clouds, with a whole city complex suspended beneath it.  Made me all nostalgic for the glory days of Caledon Steam SkyCity, it did.

At the landing pad, there's a boiler room, where the city appears to be powered by a vaguely feminine idol with a fire burning in her crotch.  You can get ointment for that, you know, dear.

 

I duly cranked my draw distance out to suicide level and took a shot of the whole thing.  There's the blimp, we will be visiting that thing sticking out at the back later.  But what are those yellow things for?

Oh.  OK then.

The visitors' centre, with information about the NeoVictoria RP setting, and a view of the shops.

There's a sort of tram affair with teleporters to bits of the build.  Like that thing sticking out at the top that I mentioned, a landing pad for this... futuristic... umm... vehicle, I guess.

The other destination is this lookout pod at the lower front.

There are rusty pipes and narrow gangways and unsafe stairs.  It made me feel at home, I can tell you.

Stairs go down to Medhir Woods.  They're not grey at the bottom because the textures haven't rezzed, they're just sort of lost in the mists and clouds.

I should show an actual shop at some point, shouldn't I?  There we are.  (The tenants include some Steampunk staples - Unzipped, Lassitude & Ennui, and Grim Bros. among them.)

And, on the other side, the sim crossing to the last one, Wiggenstead Mooring.  Dare I...?

 

 

I dared.

 

Wiggenstead Mooring is sponsored by Tiny Inc., and has a lot of tiny/petite/etc themed shops on its floating islands connected by walkways.  At a shade under seven feet tall in my socks, I'm not massively into tinies, but there's no denying the ingenuity that goes into these builds and these designs.  Wiggenstead Mooring, in itself, is darn cute, and well worth a look around.

 



 

This innocuous looking store, though, contained something that made me blench.  "Tiny Kajira Dancer Fatpack" - yes, folks, we have Gorean tinies.  I predicted it a while back, but was still appalled to be confronted by the hideous reality.  (Am I being silly?  Possibly.)

 

Although the main shopping action is on the floating islands, there's a fair amount of stuff going on down below too.

The shop is a shop, though attached to some sort of RP area.  The campfire area turned out to be something to do with the Faire Hunt, of which more anon.  I don't know what the ominous dark cave is for.  Perhaps it is a metaphor for the heart of darkness that lies beneath the Tiny exterior.  Everyone in SL knows you should never cross a tiny.

Finally, here is the Jolly Crocodile, where you can talk to an NPC and start the Faire Hunt, which goes on across all the sims, and where I should, therefore, have gone when I started out.  Yes, folks, I have done Fantasy Faire in the wrong direction.  Never mind.  I had a good time anyway, I bought some stuff, thereby contributing to RFL, and I took in some pretty amazing sights along the way.  And will continue to do so, since I have various bits of hunting still to do....

 

Fantasy Faire - two more sims

When last we left our dim blonde protagonist, she was being impressed by the Hope's Horizon sim, sponsored by Dwarfins, and... well, basically, it's an attempt at Gondor.  And by no means a bad one, given the constraints of a single sim (full of vendor objects) in SL.  Not a bad one by any manner of means at all.

 I had to up my draw distance to "cause of death" levels to get that shot in.  Some of the textures are probably blurry.  Blame my connection.  Don't blame the designers.  This is impressive stuff.

Get past that gateway arch, and you're on the shopping streets and face to face with the Dwarfins main store.

The ground level features spacious boulevards, and shops, and, at a couple of points (like, next to Talevin's, there - that store gets a namecheck because I have tons of its stuff, mostly pillaged from Lucky Chairs and mini-mania boards, but tons of its stuff anyway)  there are stairs!  Which go up!

And up

And up

And, you guessed it, up.

 

Until you get to the top.

 

Which is, like, all Gondor-esque.  Complete with a White Tree, even, and - what?  That red and orange stuff?  It's... err... a JPEG compression artefact.  That's what it must be.  It is definitely not me putting on a bunch of particle poofers that make me burst into flames, and running off that promontory to re-enact the death of Denethor in The Return of the King.  Because that would be silly.

 

Moving on, we come to Medhir Woods, sponsored by Solarium, who, if I remember rightly, did a build last year that was very similar in tone.  Nice designs, peaceful summer-evening sky, all very calm and quiet and sedate.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It just fails to grab me because I am a shallow silly person who wants bam and pizzazz and gosh-wow and spectacle.

So anyway, there's me on the mean streets of Medhir Woods, and there's Solarium's central store, and there's a shot of the streets with the ground fully rezzed (it is my connection's fault and not the designers', let me be quite clear about that).

 

Still, the build does have some nice little touches about it.  Like this seating area behind the arrival point, or the painter's gazebo on the bay.

And then I made my way to the next sim boundary, and saw the sign for NeoVictoria, and the giant airships, and many, many, oh so many cogs!  Something Steampunk is about to happen.  And I figured that if I tried walking across that boundary, something horrible would happen to my viewer, so I refrained.  Until next time!

 

 

Fantasy Faire, continuing on!

I'm told by a friend (the excellent Vulpine Eldrich) that there is good stuff to be found in a Steampunk-themed sim... which, if I continue on my current path, will be the last one I get to.  So I suppose I'd better continue moving on, then.

Next up is The Faery Court, sponsored by Cerridwen's Cauldron.  Their sims in past Faires have been pretty spectacular, and this one is well up to standard.  I swear I could actually hear my graphics card scream in pain.  (Pain is good, graphics card!)  But anyway.

Here we are - well, I am - arriving.  You will note the different coloured lamps to right and left.  This is because the sim is sort of divided down the middle, into the Seelie and the Unseelie Faery Courts.  I don't think it counts for much besides colour scheme, but it's a nice touch.

 

 

Looking the other way from the arrival point there.

Here's the Cerridwen's Cauldron store, where - among other things - you can buy copies of the buildings and general sim decoration.  I'm not sure I have the money, or the spare LI, to indulge in that.  But I would if I could.  Oh yes.

There's me looking at one of the smaller store buildings, and climbing to the top of another one.  The textures are much crisper than that when they finally rez, by the way.  As you may guess, I was having problems by this stage.

 

For the second evening running, I could see the next sim from some distance away, but when I actually got close to the sim crossing, it winked out... and, when I tried to teleport there, I  winked out.  So, once I'd relogged, I found myself teleporting from dear old Pooley to the next sim, Heavenslough.

 

This one's sponsored by Creators of Fantasy, who are new to me, at least when it comes to putting Fantasy Faire sims together.  I have to say, they've done a bang-up job on this one.

Yes, I was moved to take quite a number of pictures.  There's a definite structure to the build, with the main store and the arrival point up at the top, with those nearby large tree-stores, and then you go down lots of stone stairs to a sort of swampy level with wooden paths leading to the adjacent sims.  And there is lots of interesting detailing along the way, like those little archways shaped our of living wood, or the occasional giant gem glinting in the undergrowth....

 

... and the windlight settings are moody and atmospheric, and the textures are deeply and richly detailed, and the twisty-turny layout means there's something new to explore, half-glimpsed through the foliage, with every few steps you take....

 

Um.  Basically, I was impressed.  I was wandering along, snapshotting away, and murmuring to myself, "well, this could very easily be this year's standout build".

 

Then, for once, I made it through the sim crossing intact, and found myself standing next to a pretty respectable effort at the city of Gondor.

 

I mean, I might still end up rating Heavenslough as the stand-out build of the Faire.  But it's got competition.  Oh yes.  More of this in our next.

Fantasy Faire: sim the third

Didn't get terribly far with Fantasy Faire last night, as SL was being very iffy - for everyone, I think, not just me.  Lots of messages were flashing back between Tali and myself, along the lines of "are you offline?"  "no, I thought you were offline"  "I was offline, but now I'm not, but it says you are" and so on and so forth.  It's all very trying if you're wandering round sims

Anyway.  Mourningvale Thicket is sponsored by Roawenwood, who do all sorts of detailed Gorean and fantasy stuff, and it is shrouded in mists and has lots of ruins and dead trees.

 

 Atmospheric.  Not a hundred per cent cheerful, but atmospheric.  That round thing you can see in the middle distance in the last picture is the entrance to the next sim.  I was going to go there, but I turned around, and when I turned back the next sim wasn't visible any more, and then I crashed.  Iffy.  It's all very iffy.

 

Sadly, I can't blame SL for today's misadventures, which involved the Great Race around Caledon.  Tali had said she was thinking of trying it this year, but decided not to in the end.  So, in a fit of enthusiasm, I turned up instead, paid the (very reasonable) 50L$ to RFL to join in... and set out.

 

Well, dear readers, you know about me and SL viewers, so you can guess how well it turned out.  The race started out on foot, and I dropped significantly behind when I got tangled up in the first sim crossing, lagwalking appropriately across Tanglewood... and things just went on from there.  Making my way at last to the start of the next stage, the ground vehicles one, I rezzed the Steampunk Giro-Cycle - a hunt prize from L+N Signature designs, a picture of which appeared on this blog many moons ago.  It looks great.  If you're lagging, though, it oversteers dramatically, as I demonstrated by crashing into every building in Victoria City....  By the time I made it to the water stage at Port Caledon, the expert racers were already approaching the finish line.  So I took things easy, first in a Dragonfly Boat (one of many 7Seas gadgets I acquired over time) and then in the Weka Air Ferry that was a prize from the last Steam Hunt.  And, apart from getting a bit caught in the rotors at Steam SkyCity - oh, and being savaged by an air kraken in Middlesea - I managed the flying part reasonably all right!

 

I finished dead last, of course, and about half an hour after everyone else.  But I finished!  The honour of Caledon Burroughs was upheld!  Sort of.

 

Anyway.  It is an Event, the Great Race is, and one's thanks are extended to the organizers (principally the estimable Miss Solace Fairlady).  But oh my, either I will practice with vehicles a lot, or I will cheer from the sidelines next year!

Is this just fantasy?

Fantasy Faire is back for 2014!  Yay.  This is of course a good thing from the viewpoint of raising money for RFL, and also from the viewpoint of impressive designers making wonderful builds in SL.  So I and my recalcitrant viewer are making tracks around it once more this year.  Runs from May 1st to May 11th, it seems.

We have a sort of swampy place for the Fairelands Junction this year, with obligatory portals to the various Faireland sims.  As with last year, no use of the "experience tools" to send visitors packing to other regions via the portals, just trad-SL "open the map and click" things.  Am I a shallow person to be vaguely disappointed by this?  Probably.

 

 

Anyway.  I started off in the Sanctum sim, sponsored by Fallen Gods, and with their definite style plastered all over it.  Two years ago it was classical temples rising out of the sea, last year it was classical-style buildings in a sort of everlasting autumn by a river... this year it seems to be Romanesque churches around a central plaza.  It's kind of restful, actually.  Or would be, if all those high quality textures didn't take an awful long time to make it to my laptop.



But it's serene and peaceful and completely realistic... umm... except hello, what's this?  It's... your actual stairway to heaven.

Ends at pearly gates.  Well, gates, anyway.  I didn't get in.  Apparently, Heaven has a dress code.

Moving north, we come to Blackwater Glenn, sponsored by The Looking Glass.  Lots of shacks in swamps.  Very impressive swamps, with glowing mushrooms to add an eldritch touch.  As with some other Faire sims over the years, some of the set decorations are up for sale in the central shop.  I bought some glowing mushrooms, on the grounds that RFL ought to be supported, and I can always find a use for glowing mushrooms.

This is the tasteful arrival point.  I got a little bit further than the tasteful arrival point before I crashed for the first time.  Bet it won't be the last.  Anyway.  We shall see!