Dinosaur Hunting at Khol Dracys

Hunting huge reptiles is a tricky business. Some of them are slow and easily escaped from, others will outpace you in seconds. They also have rather tough hides that are definitely more like armour than skin. So you need a strategy, you need somewhere you can get close enough that you can almost look into their eyes,since that’s where you’ve gotta get your arrow. Then somewhere you can retreat to immediately so that any others in the area can’t chase you. So this particular foray is extremely risky, I’m likely to be exposed for longer than I’d like and the entrance to the Scrimshaw Warrens caves behind me is futher then I’d like as well.

Credits:

Note on the sandals for Maitreya users, if you haven’t upgraded from 5.1 to 5.3 they won’t fit properly. So I now have a lot of outfits to update!

Location: Khol Dracys

Personally I think the best arrival point though is approaching from the Scrimshaw Warrens HERE, where you are greeted by the native animesh inhabitants.

The Magicians of A’dracunas

A year has passed since the spectacular explosion among the stars that was the self destruction of our sister planet, Cassiopeia (a Faire Folk story I wrote last year) by its remaining inhabitants. We mourn their loss but they had let the memories of our origins be forgotten. They had stopped performing the rituals that kept the subterranean beasts of our twin planets where they belonged, underground.

They had become shallow lip service festivals instead of a nescesity for survival. These rituals reinforced the spells of magical confinement enforced on the reptilian beasts that would consume us all.

The responsibility for this fell to the descendants of the original spell casters, that were marked by brightly coloured patches on their skin. It was a pale remnant of ancestors whose bodies were covered in such and could weave great magic. Strangely this didn’t always follow in families, sometimes an unrelated child may be born with the marks, the dormant powers floating around in the population gene pool to surface randomly. Some saw it as blessing others as a curse, but regardless, all knew the child would have to seek us out and be trained for the sake of our races survival.

Most of the time we wore long hooded robes and kept to ourselves, some among the population resented the power we could wield, even if it was much diminished from our ancestors. But twice a year at the Solsices we emerge and perform the required ritual to reinforce the magical barriers that keep us all safe.

Image from Gyazo

Location: A’Dracunas

Credits:

Valhallah – The Ritual

 

Ava reaches the valley of Valhalla weary but energised by the sight of the great waterfalls and towering statues, she is home.

Rounding the bend in the path she sees the waterfall in it’s full glory and the platform at that top which is her destination.

Her destination awaits
Glad to be home

She scales the mighty steps for the first time in a long time and enters one of the great halls.

She takes a moment to refresh herself and change out of her travelling clothes before taking a seat in the hall.

She doesn’t intend to spend long there, she knows she has a ritual to prepare for! Once she feels rested somewhat she leaves the hall and makes her way to high platform of the tree.

On her way down she pauses to admire the valley in all it’s glory.

Credits:

Location: Valhallah

Travelling clothes:

Ritual Outfit:

This post was featured on the  SecondLife Community Blog

 

The Auction – Fantasy Faire Roleplay 2021

The children of SEE attend the auction to bid against the Rift Knights for the Horn. In the preceeding discussions and during the auction, things get particularly tense and friction rises between all present.

The Rift Knights said they would listen to the Childrens evidence about the Fractal creature, but ONLY if they handed over the horn at the auction, otherwise they would no longer be allies and they would consider the Children theives for bidding against them for the stolen horn.

The Children countered that they would hand over the horn if they won,ONLY once the Knights had listend to the Fractal creature and their evidence.

So a stalemate. When the Children won the auction the Knights still pleaded with them, like sore losers, to hand over the horn claiming it was a simple matter of Right and Wrong. The Childrens point was how can it be Right to destroy a creature they believed was an emodiment of the Knights ancestors.

The Knights departed with threats that the ritual to destroy the Fractal creature would go ahead swiftly with no delay.

Credits:

Remembering The Fantasy Faire 2020

While in 2019 I was able to follow the annual Roleplay, it wasn’t til last year that I was able to explore much more of the Faire. What is tricky though is trying to find one particular highlight, almost impossible given the size and marvelous works of creativity we were presented with!

I thought it would be more realistic to go through my snapshots and pick out a number of them instead. One region that’s missing here is Kurak where the 2020 Roleplay took place, well that’s still to come in another post, because there so many they deserve a post of their own.

The White Warrior Witch of Petrichor – Scrimshaw Warrens

Each year Fantasy Faire presents a number of Blogger Challenges. This is my attempt at “My New Shiny”, finding a new shop/creator you love.

This one isn’t *entirely* new to me, it’s more a revelation of discovering how much more they create and its amazing!

I liked the look of the eyes and skins that were generously left in the blogger room so I thought I’d have to check out their store. There was a couple of things I didn’t realise however: 1. I’d been to the store on my marathon lap of the Faire on Blogger day and said I’d come back. 2. I already had some of their creations in my inventory.

The prefix of all their items “:[P] :” nagged at me seeming familiar so I searched my inventory and came up with this outfit. I was very surprised since I’d acquired it at Cyber Fair 2020 and hadn’t realised they did other fantasy genre stuff. These “Angelic” bracers also showed up, again another surprise.

So off to their Faire store I went and found some more lovely items this staff, spell book and beautiful skin.

I’d already decided I was going to go with a light look for this when I’d put on the armour and found it was set to white. This skin was just perfect match, since the outfit can be made sheer, I could show it off wonderfully.

This hair is also available at their Faire store, in association with TRAP (who I confess I don’t know of, so something else to check out!). It comes as a single rigged piece or multiple parts you can position yourself. It comes with multiple huds for colouring differed parts and metals.

Location: Scrimshaw Warrens

Credits:

Main Store Items:  

Faire Store Items:

  • Eyes: :[P]:- Eyes – Pauian
  • Skin::[P]: & []TRAP[] – Amatheia Skin (Femme):// Aleatrice (WHITE)
  • Hair::[P]: & Trap:// Kalari Hair [Rigged-Unisex]
  • Book: :[P]:- Sumoni Books [Blogpack FF 2021]
  • Horns: :[P]:- Verosh RFL
  • Staff: :[P]:- Yaize Staff

Fantasy Faire 2021 Masked Ball

The First of two Fantasy Faire Masked Balls that will be happening during the Faire. A great time was had by all I’m pretty sure! I captured a collection of some of the weird,wonderful and fantastic avatars that were in attendance.

My Solo boogying (outfit as credited)

Centaur family dancing:

Image from Gyazo

Mermaids Damcing:
Image from Gyazo

Stunning collection of characters you only see in SL and only ever at the time at Fantasy Faire!

Location:Paer Thura

Credits:

  • Earings: ~L/Fx~Animated Potion Earring – Electricity 4.6 – Faire Store
  • Necklace: ~L/Fx~Animated Potion Necklace – Electricity 4.6 – Faire Store
  • Tattoo: ArtToo’s Ryoko – Assassin White Bright – Artoos Faire Store
  • Hair: Raven Bell – Celeste Hair –Raven Bell Faire Store
  • Mask: Wicca’s Originals – Adeline Mask – Engine Room 2020
  • Dress: Blueberry – Breeanya Dresses – Black
  • Shoes: Marli Risque Style – Brii Underground
  • Body: Maitreya Lara
  • Head: Genus Project– Strong Face

Petting the Dragon – Interview with Fiona Fei – Ling Xaio Long

I attended the interview with Fiona Fei, creator of the Faire Region Ling Xaio Long, being interviewed by Zander Greene and what a fascinating story it was.

Fiona was born in China, but moved to the USA when very young. One lasting memory of her childhood in China was of lotus blossoms and this love of the flower stayed with her through school.

Comment from Fiona: My thesis was on charcoal shaders in graduate school, which inspired the art currently in Second Life. The lotus blossom imagery stayed with me till now, being featured in my ShuiMo art in SL.

Trained as a painter, she starts with sketches and translates them into the 3D environment. Many of the textures that make up the region she physically painted and scanned for use in the build.

Comment from Fiona: I sometimes use photography of my 3D art installations to play with the illusion of 2D paintings. I try to present them on traditional Chinese scrolls to add to that effect.

She likes to play with the transiton between 2D and 3D, not just making environments such as this one, but also then photographing them making 2D art of something that’s actualy 3D.

The idea of the region is based on a Chinese proverb:

“Painting a dragon and dotting it’s eyes”

The Chinese version of the proverb is Hua Long Dian Jing (画龙点腈)

This is the story of an artist that was so skilled at painting dragons he didn’t finish pictures, he always left the last brush-stroke unmade, for fear that the dragons would come to life.

She used the limited pallette of white, black and red partly because in this form of physical painting, dyes were originally scarce, but also because it focusses on the form. There are large areas of white because it’s how chinese artists show distance or space. The choice of red was deliberate because of being important in China. Red represents luck, good fortune and overall positivity.

She saw an advert for Second Life years ago that said it was a place where she could create or be anything. The draw was the ability to create in real-time, spending a lot of time in sandboxes, challenging herself and later others in building competitions.

In my pictures I took inspiration from the white background of the region and made my avatars body the canvas. I created a plain white skin on which to apply inks, in the form of tattoos.

Location: Líng xiāo lóng 灵霄龙

Credits:

Remembering The Fantasy Faire 2019

2019 was the first year I was able to attend any of the organised events at the Faire.

I decided that year that I’d like to try and follow the years organised Roleplay story. I thought today on the eve of the 2021 Roleplay starting would be a good day to rememberit.

That year told the story of The Bubbo Owls and their adventures around the Fairelands. I did write a blog post at the time, but remembering is such fun!

Purple in Paer Thura – Fantasy Faire

I am not a “pink” lady, anyone that knows me, or just a glance at my flickr or past posts will testify. However I’m not adverse to a bit of purple now and then.

This post was going to be called “Pretty in Purple” when I was putting the outfit together and I thought I’d find a suitable setting in the Faire. When I found myself in Paer Thura and felt this was the perfect place.

This ripped denim outfit from Dark Fairy Fashions seemed to hit the spot. Rough around the edges like me and in the right colours for when I’m not feeling so dark and inspired by the bizarrely beautiful location!

It leaves plenty of skin on show which just begged for the right tattoo. Fortunately Nefekalum has just the thing also at the Faire.

Credits:

Location : Paer Thura ~ Sponsored by Safe Waters Foundation