The young Mer goes about her weekly chore, she knows it’s important but she still finds it tedious going up to the temple to collect the artifacts and bring them down to the pedestal that marks the leyline. If the location is so vital, why didn’t they build the massive temple directly over the leyine? So now because of some architectural miscalculation from a distant ancestor she has to bring the Sphere and symbol of the Gods out and place them on the pedestal and watch it as..nothing..happens. After the prescribed amount of time she carries them back to the temple where they are secured once again, til next time she has to do her duty.
It was hard work sorting through the layers of mythogy and history layered on the site of the ruined Chapel. So many peoples had held this spot sacred and look at it now, crumbling stones. This being the latest addition to the place, attempts by modern religion to stamp out worship of the Old Gods.
I was here though for something that was far older,long forgotten and should not have been. No doubt below the earth there would be remnants of other buildings or worship structures, likely circular.
The significance of of circles had become distorted over time, commonly accepted as reference to the planet or the cycle of life, death and re-birth, it formed the basis for many variants of nature based religions. They were of course wrong. Old tales and legends talk of circles, but it’s a mistranslation. The correct term is Sphere. They did not refer to theoretical concepts, they were physical objects and I’d found one.
Looking at it now I can understand why there were misunderstandings. Demons had called it the “Zygot”, meaning egg. Which makes much more sense when it’s seen closed.
This particular relic and its accompanying symbol of the Gods was entrusted to my race, Demons. Legends told that each race had been entrusted with one, I’m sure somewhere they might be a Dryad or other fae sat in a comfy chair in the warm, unlike me in a draughty ruin. Regretfully my people had neglected their duty of protecting it. Or had they?
As I sat on the bed in the ramshackle shelter I’d built inside the ruins to provide some shelter, I thought how better? People can’t destroy or steal something if they don’t even know it exists, let alone where it might be found.
So some rather smart soul in the last couple of centuries had buried it, but not just anywhere. The legends also told that these relics needed to be near leylines to serve their purpose and this site was at a junction where two lines crossed. They must have had some human help obviously, the ground would have been freshly consecrated back then and no Demon could have got near the place, let alone bury something in the crypt.
Perhaps maybe that’s exactly where it belongs, or thereabouts. The Human Relations Department may have to try and officialy obtain the land, since the place is long abandoned, but that’s fortunately not my job.
There’s a whole collection of eggs available at Fallen Gods, in 100% RFL Donation Vendors.
Credits:
Skin: HEL female + Fallen Gods Inc. FF2021 Ragnarok/Jail n Bail Exclusive
Sphere: ~Libertine~ Collectable Egg 59 “The Secret” – Fallen Gods
Dress: SF:: Uitzuger – Scarlet Fey
Eyes: [n.a.p] Hoard Eyes – Fatpack – Not a peep
Boots: //R3D// Boots Runar – maitreya – R3D Studio
Hair: Raven Bell -Luxe Hair Front [F1-1] Long -Raven Bell
Wooden Chest: Icealand – Chest – Iceland
Ruins: TLG – Chapel Ruins – The Looking Glass
Shelter: TLG – Dead Mans Island Castaway Camp – The Looking Glass
Wandering through the greenery she passes almost unnoticed except by the wildlife. Her dappled skin was perfect for remaining hidden from unwanted intruders.
There’s been a lot more of those in recent times, the humans massacring vast swathes of the precious forests. So many dryads have had to flee their homes to the cries only they can hear of their beloved trees before they are promptly silenced forever.
Little do the humans know that despite these great losses the Faire Folk will survive as they always have, more and more retreating to the Faire Lands each year to rejuvinate them. But would they care if they did know?
One of the keys to keeping the magic of the Faire Folk alive is the Spheres. These artifacts created long ago are sources of great power and different ones were distributed among the different fae races, both light and dark. Apart but connected at a spiritual level with simple instinct to survive.
As far as she knows each race of Faire Folk keeps their Sphere safe and secret place below or next to the symbol of the Gods, as close to a leyline as possible. This is the tradition they were taught and have followed it for generations. She has no way of knowing if they did or not, or if they remembered the importance of the relics, but she prayed they did.
Today she did something that she knew she shouldn’t, but did it anyway. She took the relics from their hiding place and sat with them on the table in front of her, the glowing letters of the symbol of the Gods and the moving tree inside the Sphere calmed and reassured her. She certainly needed that today with the news of another woodland lost.
There’s a whole collection of eggs available at Fallen Gods, in 100% RFL Donation Vendors.
Location: The Seventh Valley
Credits:
Skin: [Stargazer] Variety Skin Set BOM – Envy SE
Tattoo: *Rainbow Sundae* Dryad Skin Overlay 02
Hair: Raven Bell – Nereid Hair [Fatpack] -Raven Bell
Dress: (*<*) 1313 Jasnah Dress – Olive – 1313
Necklace: [+Oblivis+] Gehenna Key – Oblivis
Sphere: ~Libertine~ Collectable Egg 61 “The Golden Leaf” – Fallen Gods
Throne: Forest Throne – Wythburn
Table: Forest Table: – Wythburn
Symbol of the Gods (Faire Symbol) : Deluxe Quest HUD Box from any Arrival point
I was walking through the Wandering Woods region of Fantasy Faire, having a browse of the stores, when I came to the statue. I’d seen it before of course having done a marathon run through the Faire previously. However today I just had the urge to pose for a snap with it..just because. This is a massive masterpiece of creation, but trying to get all of it *and* an avatar at ground level is almost impossible. Almost. You can just see little ol me at the bottom of the photo below and get a grasp of the scale of this thing!
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.
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.
Location: A’Dracunas
Credits:
Skirt: ::GB:: koshikimono (F) / – Gabriel
Gauntlets: ::GB:: Cross obi tops & Gauntlets / Black – Gabriel
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.
Elemaria
Elemaria
Fairelands Junction
Fairelands Junction
Ambigula
Autumnia
Auxentios Pass
The centre of the Region features a massive drill
Auxentios Pass
Auxentios Pass
Auxentios Pass
And I see several of tese beautiful creations
Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia
Isle of Shadows – Such detail on a massive scale
Isle of Shadows
Isle of Shadow
Isle of Shadows – The sight of this creation is breathtaking
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.
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)
FF Underwater Ball
Centaur family dancing:
Mermaids Damcing:
Stunning collection of characters you only see in SL and only ever at the time at Fantasy Faire!
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.
FionaFei
Fiona and Zander Greene
Plenty of interested fans
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.
Dancing in the street
Dancing with the Dragon
Petting the Dragon
Location: Líng xiāo lóng 灵霄龙
Credits:
Face Tattoo:[n.a.p] Prophet’s Vision – Red – Not a peep
