So it’s this time of year again Fantasy Faire is upon us. Another week and more of exploring beautiful location, roleplay and shopping in aid of Relay for Life in Second Life.
Last year I visited the Faire and for the first time was able to follow their week-long roleplay storyline. That was great fun and I wrote about it in my Bubbo Owls post. This year it appears the RP is called the Grizzly Cubs and I look forward to following this years adventure.
As I’ve mentioned previously, last year I attended a Meet & Greet with the lovely folks from the NeoVictoria Project. I submitted a character and became an official member of the community. They’re holding similar Meet & Greet sessions this year, so I shall be present for at least one of them to help out. I’m also possibly providing a freebie to be given out at the NeoVictoria location at the Faire.
What else is new this year is that I applied to be one of the Official FF Bloggers. However the applications are now closed and my names not on the list. I suspect this is probably due to the quality of my regular images, admittedly lower quality, but it’s usually because they’re un-staged and my focus is the RP or story. (I’ll be remedying that for the Faire) So instead I’m going to try and complete some of their Blogger Challenges which I’ve copied below:
Faire Folk – create a character from the Fairelands
On the 1st of April I attended a Townhall meeting of the NeoVictoria roleplay members to discuss ideas of what we/they will be doing for Fantasy Faire 2020.
It was last year that I met with them at their Meet & Greet events at the Faire
I won’t spoil things by revealing the plans, but there was talks of possible roleplay ideas, freebies and sale items for the charity the Faire supports. They’ll be finalised and released in due time, but they’ll be a lot of fun if everything comes together as planned!
Ava arrived at the venue for the Glitter & Gore festival she planned to attend, to find that the only accommodation left in the area was a very rundown hotel. Having checked in with the rather creepy desk clerk she follows the directions to deadliesther room, deciding it was best she not find out what was making the odd noises in the rooms she passed on the way. She notices the somewhat dubious condition of the fireplace but it’s too cold in the room without it lit, so she sleeps.
She is woken all too soon by the fire having apparently been in worse condition than she thought and was surrounded by flames, she opens the room door and exits the building via a window.
Ava stands looking at the burning hotel
Cranky at having had too few hours daylight sleep and the nature of her waking, she looks up at the burning building. She notices her car has also caught light, but simply shrugs now she won’t have to torch the rust bucket herself for the insurance. Seeing a green light around the corner of the building she heads for it muttering “that is Not normal”.
She follows the light uphill into the woods behind the building
The edge of the forest
and follows the path and the light till she sees a graveyard.
Something large and furry lunges out of the dark towards her and into her path.
Ava’s furry attacker
She raises a hand planting it on it’s chest and pushing it away, thinking it best not to harm the local denizens when not on her own territory. She flashes her fangs in it’s direction and continues on into the graveyard.
Ava is well aware that she is in fact the deadliest thing on the prowl tonight.
Entering the crypt in the graveyard she finds herself in a maze of tunnels,seeing again the green light Ava follows it to a room full of hanging cages.
Hanging cages surround Ava
Here the tunnels divide and she must explore them all to fin the way out, where she comes across several specters haunting the tunnels.
She also encounters one very large living inhabitant of the cave, a large spider
The only apparent living inhabitant of the tunnels
Ava retraces her steps and in the process finds what must have evidently been the former residence of the spider, clearly some had tried to keep it locked up.
Had someone tried to keep the spider in here?
Having found nothing but dead ends, Ava surmises that perhaps the spider is hiding or guarding something, which may include a way out. She returns to it’s cavern looking for a way past it and finds one, passing through a a very gory room, but the lack of cobwebs makes her think it’s not the spiders work.
She proceeds though to the next chamber finding a ritual space with a glowing pentagram on the floor
Beyond it she notices another phenomenon, presumably what the spell was used to create, a glowing portal.
Since she has run out of options for where else to go, she takes a breath and steps in.
After what feels like an eternity of falling, Ava lands in the middle of a cornfield, an unexpected place for such a means of transport would deliver someone,but at least she was out of the tunnels.
She wanders the different paths, finding various sights on the way
Finally one of the paths does not end with a confrontation with something un-dead or un-human and she finds a familiar face and a way out. (I’m not going to spoil it all!)
For more information about the Haunted Motel, read the blog by my dear friend Sheree Honeyflower HERE.
Back in May I blogged about arriving at the NeoVictoria (NeoVic) roleplay region. However despite my enthusiasm at having my backstory and character accepted, everything kinda stopped there. A combination of real-life and mismatched timezones meant I hadn’t even been able to rp my character (Misch) into the story, until recently.
This was rather different to previous rp I have done, in that the conversation is structured. Players must stay in conversation order, not typing a response to something until it’s your turn in the chat order. Which I found rather frustrating to begin with and also leads to big silences in local chat if someone is typing a long response. I have previously been used to typing responses straightaway, big gaps make me wonder if the person is even still at their keyboard or gone to make a snack. (Since sometimes you actually have that much time before it’s your turn to respond when using a chat order).
The advantage I found however was that this gave me time to compose appropriate responses to each participant in the conversation. The result however is that the more participants in the conversation, the longer the chat posts.
For example take a conversation involving 4 people. Player 1 makes a long post addressing all the other players, Player 2 makes a short post responding to the part that was relevant to them. If player 3 makes a short response to player 2, player 2 still has to wait until players 4&1 have posted before they can reply, regardless if the response would have been two words or two paragraphs in length. If player 4 then makes a long post addressing everyone, player 1 will definitely have had time to put the kettle on and come back with a cuppa before its their turn.
I’m sure it’ll get more of a habit and hopefully less frustrating as time goes on.
Anyway, onto what actually happened in the roleplay. Due to the length of some of the messages I won’t copy them all here, instead will give a descriptive summary:
I was seated in the empty tavern having a rest after my long journey from the wilds into the city. I glances out the window and see there a couple of people arrived in the town square outside.
I approached them slowly giving them chance to see me and to not appear to be a threat. One of them was a woman selling fresh pumpkins from a cart. The other appeared to be an odd creature, apparently Fae of some kind.
I said I was looking for somewhere to stay, they both offered up options.
The woman whose name was Annabelle said I could stay at the farm in exchange for helping out.The Fae’s offer was a lot more vague, clearly somewhere outdoors and given I had spent so long, until arriving at the city, in such circumstances I declined the offer.
I dropped various comments about preferring darkness and being stronger than I looked, in reference to my approved character traits. So by the end of the rp I was headed to the farm where I would have accommodation and a job maintaining the mushroom beds, on account of good night sight and a preference for dark places.
If you are interested in the full transcript by Jhaesoph Foxdale you can read it here.
I saw this place on a destinations guide and thought “oh that’s pretty” and thought I’d go have a look. However when it’s come to writing something about the place, I got a little stuck. It does look lovely, it’s well built and laid out and the music stream is appropriately relaxed. However it just feels like just another high fantasy beauty spot from the many linked off the same guide.
So I asked a fellow visitor for their opinion and their response was:
“ohh it is very magic and peaceful here” and that it was “like a few, but not Lots.”(of other places)
So maybe I was being overly harsh. Stop by and have a look, maybe leave a comment if you think I’m right or wrong. Seeing it for yourself will no doubt be much better than my humble snapshots.
So there’s this place that once existed, by the name of Goatswood. It was formerly a roleplay sim created in 2013. Recently it has been revived by the original creators on a homestead region. So I went and had a wander.
It’s a lovely sim and I wish I could have seen the original, although the owner claims they prefer this newer version. I love to roleplay and this looks like the kind of place I’d like to. According to the welcome notecard there is a detailed backstory, but how much you choose to involve yourself is up to you. It explains the setting and scenario and there are story notecards you can collect if you choose to follow it.
So my character application at NeoVictoria was approved! Below is the character profile I submitted:
During a vampire turning when the female candidates heart slows and the vampire notices a second heart beat and realised the woman is pregnant. The mother is miraculously brought back from the brink of death by her would-be maker. The child born subsequently has some traits similar to twice-born. Her mother being weakened by the attempted turning died in childbirth.
During her early years she suffered from bad thirst cravings, but these subsided as she matured. She is mostly human in appearance though a red tint to her eyes can be seen sometimes, usually when angered,scared,aroused or otherwise exhilarated. She has enhanced speed and strength advantages over the average human, but due to her regular birth, they’re merely equivalent to those of the fittest human athletes. She does not require blood regularly,but it is a pleasure to drink it. Because of the circumstances of her birth the vampires accept her one of their own.
I decided to name my character “Misch” from “ein Mischlingskind” half-breed in German. (I did try other translations of half-breed, but none of them made for a good name.)
Now to go by and have an explore. The aerial arrival point has lots of info and you are shown more as you wind your way down a semi-transparent ramp (watch your footing!) Each little landing has info about each of the different races you will find below.
Once you’re down there’s another corridor of information that leads to a room where you can get advise on appropriate clothing (if you don’t have any) and ladies and gents changing rooms.
Beyond this you enter a larger room detailing different locations within the sims.
There’s also a vendor for the roleplay hud
and after such a long walk, finally the tp door to the rp area.
After reading Strawberry Singh’s blog post featuring Alpha Moon I just had to go and explore the sim. When I arrived there was a greeter waiting who gave me a brief tour around the island. I took a few snaps as I went around, it really is quite beautiful. My regular graphics settings don’t do it justice here, so best come check it out for yourself. I also managed to find the same boat Berry did, very relaxing!
Today I met with Leander [MadMechaMessiah], Asil Ares and Jhaesoph Foxdale from The NeoVictoria Project, as well as quite a few interested residents at their Meet & Greet at Fantasy Faire.
It was very interesting to hear about their unique lore and storyworld. I spent some time talking to Leander about a character I might be able to create there. Their lore and mythology is detailed and thorough so I will have to read up on that to fit the character I want to create into it. It seems very promising and exciting, maybe it’s the next step in Ava’s Second Life journey.
I love Fantasy Faire in SL but rarely get to attend or take part in things. This year I decided to try and follow the rp instead of just visiting the empty scenes afterwards. This year one of the RP stories is the Bubo Owls, I kept up on what was going on through the updates page, so I had an idea what was going on when I eventually made it inworld on time.
It was great fun watching the story unfold as the kids explored, questioned and solved their way through the evolving story. There will be a few more twists and turns in the story I am sure!
I took a collection of photos in their base below the flying market and at various places we went to as I followed them around to different plot locations.
