Vortex of Lust – Part 1

I came across Vortex of Lust through a post in the Cyber Alliance discord server,which included the description below.

The refugium known as the Vortex has a wide variety of geographic features, from the familiar to the fantastic.

The centre of it all, both proverbially and literally, is the Free Market, which rests on a floating platform anchored to a derelict mass of rock that floats above the surface.
Above the Free Market the Battleship Aurora rests collided with another splinter of levitating rock, hosting a portal to the Floating Islands, a place of beauty and mystery high above the Vortex.
The surface is a wild and dangerous place with frozen seas, endless mazes of tunnels, treacherous swamps and far more treacherous inhabitants. Travelers to the surface should be well prepared.

This description had me very intrigued and the images more so. The locations appear to range from steampunk through urban and into cyberpunk, dressing for this place could be a challenge!

Given the mention of battleships and ice lakes I thought a full body protective suit seemed the best option, along with a few survival accessories.

First view on arrival

I like a clear uncluttered landing point with clear signage and as little surplus stuff as possible. The Vortex has this, however it also has a lot of information to be shared prior to entering the RP area. Most of this relates to the HUD used here, which auto-attaches as soon as you accept the regions Experience permissions. There is a new players area that talks you through it all. Once you go through there you are guided to an are that tells you about the multiple locations here.

The New Player Area

The different locations

You leave this are via the Vortex at the centre.

You emerge through the Vortex into a new area that feels quite steampunkish at first glance.

A rather impressive portal
You arrive here through the Vortex

This is the area known as  Central Market. Despite modern aspects like the grage door and submarine, inside things are quite antique or industrial.

Behind the garage door is a study type room with old book cases and antique desk, but with a full tech suite upstairs.

Heading over to the submarine it only seems to serve one purpose, the local jail.

Around the corner I find signposted The Jolly Harbor Tavern and The Surface, I take the Tavern first. I reminds me of Drune Diesel in atmosphere for some reason, maybe that’s due to the piano in the corner, but looks like an interesting place to roleplay.

Now to explore in the other direction towards “The Surface”, following the signs direction I see a crashed plane and crane above some kind of gantry.

There’s also a buildy to the left that I thought I’d check out first, I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of the machinery is, but the other peice of hardware in the room hints at some not-so-innocent activities.

Carrying on my journey I head towards the gantry to see what awaits, a lift that descent to the surface.

At the bottom is an interesting place that looks like it’ll be fun to explore, you can see in the first snap that the place extends quite some distance before the view is obstructed by trees, which instantly makes it feel more mysterios.

Since the Central Market is essentially in the middle of the region, in terms of elevation, there’s also the airship Aurora to be explored above. There is a similar lift next to the submarine that takes you there.

I’ll show you some more of the Surface and Aurora roleplay areas in Part 2 coming soon!

Landing point: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vortex%20of%20Lust/59/124/3017

Website: https://www.vortex-of-lust.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/6n7VmeRKtB

Outfit Credits:

The Cyber Alliance

The Cyber Alliance (in SecondLife, not related to the RL ones involved with cyber security) is a growing group of individuals and communities wanting to promote and create roleplay between different Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk themed groups and locations scattered throughout SecondLife. It started with a Discord server and Inworld SecondLife group started by Jadzia (Boont Baphomet) in April 2021. Jadzia is one of the founder members of Hellas Platina that I have mentioned before, born out of the closure of Helix City.
Jadzia describes the goals of the Alliance as folows: 
[10:19:53] Jadzia (Boont Baphomet): 1. To encourage RP and help RP'ers find eachother in the cyberpunk/sci-fi genres. The group is a place to seek out RP situations with other players
[10:20:30] Jadzia (Boont Baphomet): 2. A place for small sims and builders/creators to advertise their spaces and events so that RP'ers can learn about things going on in these specific realms
[10:21:38] Jadzia (Boont Baphomet): 3. Lastly, and most ambitiously, a long term plan for creating a cross-sim 'world' that we can all engage in; finding ways to connect our lore, do missions and quests between places.
[10:22:05] Jadzia (Boont Baphomet): Really it's all about sims helping sims and encouraging RP
Anyone from other Sci-fi and Cyberpunk roleplays groups are invited and welcome to join the server or inworld group and get involved. Now it has grown to have it’s own Website,Flickr gallery and an inworld location is also in the works I’m told.

So far the Alliance includes roleplayers from the following communities:

(Based on list of Worlds on the CyberAlliance website and subject to change.)

Burn2 – Burning Man Festival in SecondLife

Burn2 is the the virtual presence of Burning Man in SecondLife. While it’s been around for many years this is the first time I made it to one of their events.

The event consisted of a torchlit procession around the perimeter amog various diffent community built structures, then a fire dancing performance, followed by the “burning” of a virtual wicker effigy.

People were encouraged totake part in the procession, so I did.

The Fire Dancing..

Burning The Effigy..

With appropriately atmospheric music and dancing following the “Burn”, it was really good fun. They have quite regular events that you can read more about on their website, I’d recommend going along to one if you have the opportunity.

Website: https://www.burn2.org/

This post was shared on the SecondLife Community Blog.

Another Earth

I came across Another Earth while searching for something else on the SL forums. It was an invitation for anyone to come join their cyberpunk dystopian roleplay.

“Enter an alternate reality Earth where magic, high tech, cybernetics, the supernatural, and faith in the gods collide in Chicago, the City of Dragons. We are going to have live events, RP sessions, and book readings from the author, a quarterly fashion event, and so much more!”

Book readings from the author kinda jumped out at me, since I regularly attend the SL Book Club. So I picked out a suitable outfit and headed over to the slurl in the post.

The Arrival point was your standard collection of staff online boards, discord invite etc, but also posters of book covers (with links to their kindle versions on Amazon.com).

You get around to the various different locations in the region using teleporters in the form of yellow cabs, sitting on the one at the arrival point will give you a few destinations to choose from, I chose “Applebriar Square”.

Your transport

It’s a nice spacious city build in different styles in different locations, from shiny corporate to more rundown dystopian feel. Applebriar Square is more the former, lots of shiny buildings and tech everywhere. I explored several of the buildings, making a circuit of the place, around on the roads and then back through some eco domes with connecting tunnels. This route took me back to the cab I’d arrived by, so I next went to Mitchigan Avenue.

This place is more of the latter style, cracked roads and graffiti alongside rundown houses.

As is usual for me when I’m doing my explorations the place was pretty empty, since most of SL is asleep. I was informed however that they have regular rp sessions on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at 5pm SLT.

There’s plenty of lore created for Another Earth (a Books worth!) and the website gives you a brief glimpse of it, indicating that all races not just Humans from Trolls to Faeries to Orcs, Elves and Vampires can be played here. A dice roll system and detailed character stats system has been created and can be found on the site too.

I left plenty of the place unpictured for you to explore and discover for yourself, so go check it out.

Arival point: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Another%20Earth/212/80/1005

Website: https://dellefson1976.wixsite.com/my-site

Credits:

Featured on the SecondLife Community Blog on Tuesday 6th July 2021.

Lost Refuge

This little place is located within the SL18B regions, on Electrify. It’s a collaboration between Solas Enchantment and Silas Merlin.

There’s a circular island at the arrival point, which has rivers running into the water surrounding it.

The place has a very enchanting feel to it, being surrounded by mossy rocks. This area on it’s on is lovely, but there’s more! You might want to take a seat and read through the book on the floor, it gives a clue as to what else may be found.

A small sign labelled “The  Way” becomes a teleporter on first click, so on the second you’re transported to cave down below.

You *could* choose to actually follow the sign and go down under the water on foot, but if you’re familiar with staircases in SL, I’d avoid it.

Down below you’ll find a number of towers associated with the 5 elements and nice little meditation area. If you search around (clues on the book up top) you’ll find a number of circular tablets you can buy for 0L relating to each of the elements. These contain a number of related prop gifts and a copy of the tablets themselves for decor.

Having collected all 5 and a brief meditation, I headed back up, but this time using the spiral ramp instead of the TP because they’re so much easier to go up than down!

Its a lovely little underwater retreat with a nice story to it, so go have an explore before the 18th birthday celebrations end.

Arrival point: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB%20Electrify/130/129/22

Credits:

DJ Anj at SL18B

My great friend DJ Anjoux Herbit played a set at the Second Life 18th Birthday (SL18B) Celebrations on Saturday at Midnight my time, I just had to stay up and attend!

DJ AMaestro himself

A few of his regulars and some new groupies were there too:

Credits:

Hooker Holdup

Inspired by an excerpt from The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller.

Transcribed from the reading by Draxtor, prior to the Second Life Book Club on 14th April 2021.

“In 20 years the railroad will arrive from New York City, heading north for Albany for Canada. Its path perfectly plotted to cut off Hudson’s North Bay crippling the city’s shipping trade, start it’s slow decline to irrelevance. 40 years after that, Hudson will have become the East Coast largest centre for prostitution. Diamond Street whorehouses so notorious they will have to change the name of the streets of Columbia after the governor personally census form of state troopers to bust up the brothels that local authorities have coddled and patronized and exploited for information for decades.”

So I thought it would be fun to put together a cliche prostitute look for that episode of the Book Club.

Book Club Video link: https://youtu.be/DBXpLJjbFVs

Turns out the quote was one of the readings as well, you can hear it at timestamp: 33.38

Of course some location shots were a must, but wouldn’t be complete with an arresting officer too! Which is why it’s taken so long to get around to publishing this, I needed to find one that would let me go afterwards!

Credits:

Rainbow Relay

Yesterday saw the start of American Cancer Society (ACS) Relay Weekend. There are 36 regions in a circuit similar to Fantasy Faire but larger, with a track running through them all.

You can take laps around this track in aid of Relay For Life. There are themed builds along both sides of the entire track (known as campsites) that you can stop and explore, as well as donation vendors everywhere, so you can chip in your own contribution, which will usually also yield a gift item of some kind. I was able to snag one of the Ultra-rare Cancer Aware wishbears from a gatcha vendor.

This is just a sample of some of the fantastic builds by the track, you can see more I took in this Flickr Album.

The scheduled events run through to 5pm SLT/PST on Sunday 13th June, you can see the schedule on the ACS SecondLife website. Update: The track regions will be available “at least” until Thursday 17th so you have plenty of time to get over there and do a lap!

TP for the Fantasy Faire Campsite: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/RFL%20RESEARCH/111/112/24

Edit 14th June:

Why rainbows? I didn’t intend to mix meanings here, wearing a Pride (Rainbow) outfit to a Relay (Purple) event. Its quite simple, I wasn’t originally intending to blog the Relay (just do a lap) until I was part way around and saw all the beautiful builds, it was simply what I was already wearing when I got there.

My outfit Credits:

Celtic Mist – A gallery inside a masterpeice

 

“The Woods were made for Hunters of Dreams”

Quote from a painting in the Castle you shall see.

The arrival point here is a small round tower with not much information there at all, because the place speaks for itself.

You step out into a mystical woodland, large trees and clearings with shafts of light make it feel magical.

The first hints of mans encroachment are some ruins visible through the trees, but before I find my way there I come across a miniature stone circle. Noticing movement near the ruin I don’t want to disturb other explorers, so I go the other way.

This takes me to a small stream that I cross via a log bridge and find myself at the bottom of a set of steep stone steps. I can see as I ascend the steps the looming form of a large castle.

The steps bring me not to the castle itself but a path running below it.

To the left it slopes down towards some kind of habitation, I can see a windmill down there. To the right the path slopes upwards and winds around the castle mound leading to the entrance.

However before I get there, a large full sized stone circle is just off the path at the corner, which is enchanting!

When I reach the castle entrance I discover a sign that tells me there is artwork within the castle created by Cybele Moon. So not only are the surroundings beautiful, but they contain art as well.

I might normally take you step-by-step through the castle, but in this case there’s not really much need, it’s basically circular with a series of corridors throughout (pictures of corridors aren’t that interesting when you’re in an art gallery). I would simply advise taking each staircase, up or down, that you come to and you’ll probably find everything there is to see.

I leave the castle and head down the path to the settlement I’d seen earlier. This seems to be a crofters cottage or similar that you might find in rural Scotland or Wales. It’s in a beautifully picturesque setting, next to a river banked by hills on the far shore.

Its the kind of setting that would make a lovely landscape painting and I felt like I was walking through one.

I follow the shore of the river around to the far side of the cottage that leads me back into the forest and to the ruin that turns out to be an old Chapel.

To be honest I recognised the ruin as soon as I saw it since I have the very same one at home that I used in my post “The Demons Lost Secret” during Fantasy Faire. This one appears to have a resident spirit occupying it.

Definitely worth a visit for both the scenery and the artwork in the castle.

Arrival point: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Celtic%20Mist/128/128/35

Credits:

A Vampires Late Dinner

After a spontaneous snap I posted on Flickr I thought another was in order, but this time with a friend, since we’d been planning to do something together for a while. One snap turned into several and then into a story.

I pace my room glancing frequently at the clock, where has she got to I wonder. I want to take our time to be relaxed, but the longer I must wait, the worse my thirst gets.

Waiting impatiently

Will I be able to restrain myself when she arrives, long enough for her to feel relaxed. A little bit of adrenaline in the blood from excitement is good, but I’m not in the mood for the taste of fear tonight, if I rush, that’s what I’ll get.

When she does arrive she’s very giggly and flirty, almost throwing herself at me, not her usual self. She’s drunk. She knows why she’s come here, maybe she got nervous, I did advise her against drinking, but I guess a little alcohol is better than fear.

Appetiser drinks

A few glass or two as we sit and get comfy, then my thirst gets the better of me. I stand to remove my coat and move in close in front of her, staring into her eyes before taking her hand and a small bite from her wrist.

I slip her off the couch to kneel in front of me and hold her in a tight embrace as I feed from her eagerly.

Devouring the Main course

Sensing she’s getting weak, sagging in my arms, I lift her effortlessly to lie across my lap to few more sips from her chest

Drained Embrace

before I stop and raise her into an embrace, as she passes out.

My Credits:

Victims Credits:

  • Body: Slink Hourglass
  • Head: Slink Becky
  • Hair: TRUTH Rumor (blond /1)
  • Eyes: IKON Sovereign Evening
  • Outfit:
    Moon Elixir x MUSE – Boudoir Secrets -Dress and Thong
    Moon Elixir x MUSE – Morning Glory Shoes and Stockings
    Moon Elixir x MUSE – Penthouse Princess Pearl Necklace
  • *BE Designs Tassels Pasties