Day: October 2, 2016

Visiting spooky Neverland in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

Once again we are entering the twilight months of the year when the celebrations start to stack up: Halloween, Thanksgiving for Canada and America, Christmas and then the New Year. With so much going on, and themed regions popping up across Second Life, a real highlight of this time of year is a visit to the Calas Galadhon themed builds.

Every October and December, Ty Tenk and Truck Meredith bring us fabulous themed builds under the Calas Galadhon name, which allow Second Life users to fully enjoy both Halloween scares and Christmas good cheer. And this year, we have something very special: not one, but two regions offering a spook-tacular visit for Halloween.

Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

Neverland takes its name from J. M. Barrie‘s Peter Pan and gives it a decidedly dark twist. Yes, there are pirates, Lost Boys, fairies and mermaids, but so too are there spiders, alien-esque jungles, imps, and creepy caves, all wrapped up in a journey of discovery. Spread across the full and Homestead sims of Esgaroth and Erebor – the names continuing the Tolkien tradition of naming Calas regions – Neverland is a place to be experienced, not written about; but you will need time to do so, as there is a lot to discover – more than might first appear to be the case – and an expansive tour aboard an elven boat to enjoy.

As is common with Ty and Truck’s builds, the landing point offers plenty of advice to get you started, and the information boards should be read. You can pick up a torch here as well, which may prove useful in your explorations, and the boat tour is sited alongside the boards. Whether you take the tour first or come back later is up to you – but I do recommend you do take it at some point during a visit, as it will reveal sights and places you might otherwise miss.

Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

Travelling on foot takes you through the Pirate Cavern – complete with the steady tick-tick-ticking of a clock, the shadowy form of an enormous crocodile close by – and then through a dimly-lit tunnel where creepy-crawlies lurk, before pointing the way towards the jungle. Your goal here is to find the Portal, the gateway to the Calas Galadhon Halloween events pavilion (where a whole range of entertainment will be taking place throughout October). Signposts will help you along the way, be sure not to miss the other locations the signs direct you towards, be they up winding paths or ladders, over bridges or across fields of rustling grass. And don’t miss the tunnels under the Lost Boy’s camp (and the Lost Boys themselves aren’t quite what you might expect!

There are numerous places throughout Neverland where you can simply sit and catch your breath: camp fires can be found on the edges of gorges, nestled under rocky overhangs or close to the mouths of shallow caves, benches and seats at the sides of pools or under faery canopies. Ty and Truck’s impish humour is also awaiting discovery, while the Mermaid Grotto and the alien gardens surrounding it offer a burst of colour and light in the midst of the darkness and mist.

Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

While instructions on how best to enjoy the build are available at the landing point, I will re-state some of them, and add one or two of my own. If you take the “journey cloths”, with their Cthulhu-like images, keep in mind you may well hop past places to visit – and when taking the boat tour, keep an eye our for clues to places that might otherwise escape a visit on foot later. Do make sure you have local sounds enabled with exploring (there’s also a carefully selected audio stream), and keep an eye out for ladders and bridges and stairs; not all of them may at first be obvious, and some lead to interesting little spots, such as up in the temple ruins.

If you run the viewer with shadows enabled, you may want to flick them off when exploring, otherwise the performance hit can be pretty heavy. The lighting in the region is such that disabling them won’t spoil the visual ambience (just keep Advanced Lighting Model enabled), and should you need shadows for photography, you can always flick them on and then set them back to None when done.

Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

All told, Neverland is another marvellous gift to Second Life residents from Ty and Truck, one in which it a possible to spend an enjoyable hour or two exploring and discovering the various routes around and through the regions. It is very much a destination one which should be on the list of places to visit for anyone who enjoys Halloween – and do please consider a donation towards both the regions and Calas Galadhon as a whole when you drop in.

News on events at Neverland can be found on the Calas Galadhon Park blog, and the regions will be open through until the end of October, after which they will be closed to be made-over for the Calas Christmas theme.

Neverland - Calas Galadhon Halloween
Neverland – Calas Galadhon Halloween

SLurls and Bits

Of hounds, spectres, madness and vampires!

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s time to kick-off a week of story-telling in voice, brought to our virtual lives by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s Second Life home at Bradley University, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, October 2nd, 13:30: Tea Time at Baker Street

Tea-time at Baker Street returns for the summer, featuring a new location – 221B Baker Street at the University of Washington iSchool in Second Life. Caledonia Skytower, Corwyn Allen, John Morland and Kayden Oconnell invite you to join them as they return to what is quite possibly the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, and present their fourth reading from The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Baskervilles-1902The third full-length novel written about Sherlock Holmes, this is likely to be the one Holmesian story which – at least in outline – known to most, whether or not they have actually read any of Holmes’ adventures.

But how many of us know the story as it was originally written? Over the decades it has been adapted for film and television more than 20 times, starting as early as 1914/15 with the 4-part series, Der Hund von Baskerville, and continuing on through to Paul McGuigan’s The Hounds of Baskerville, featured in the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock series.

All of these adaptations have offered their own take on the tale. Some – such as McGuigan’s, have simply taken the title of the story and used it to weave a unique tale of their own; others have stayed true to the basics of the story whilst also adding their own twists and turns quite outside of Conan Doyle’s plot in order to keep their offering fresh and exciting to an audience.

So why not join Cale, John and Kayden as they read from the 1902 original, and discover just how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unfolded this apparently supernatural tale of giant hounds and murder, and the pivotal role played by John Watson himself?

Monday October 3rd, 19:00: A Spectre is Haunting Texas

spectreGyro Muggins reads Fritz Leiber’s 1969 novel telling of a world in which Texas had secretly run the United States from 1845 through until the Third World War, after which the former state conquered the entire North American continent.

Of it was never given out to the general public in the states, who never had no brains or guts nohow & flustered easy, that this assumption of leadership was annexation–but it was always known to the Speaker of the House & the senators who counted in Washington that secretest treaty Texas was boss…With the coming of the 3rd World War & the atomization of Washington, New York, San Francisco & so forth, secrecy became unnecessary.

Now, Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna & the Bubbles Congeries, has arrived in what he believes to be Canada. He’s come to reclaim family mining interests, but finds Canada is now N. Texas, ruled over by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual “good ol’ boys” convinced of their own moral superiority.

Tuesday October 4th, 19:00: Madness and Other Tales

With Trolley Trollop.

Wednesday October 5th, 19:00: In The Mist

Caledonia Skytower reads an updated version of her 2012 tale.

Thursday, October 6th,

19:00 Dracula!

With Shandon Loring in both Second Life and Kitely (check Seanchai Library’s Kitely event announcements for specific grid location details).

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Contemporary Sci-Fi with Finn Zeddmore.

Please check with the Seanchai Library SL’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.

The featured charity for September-October is Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), a childhood cancer foundation dedicated to raising funds for research into new treatments and cures for all children battling cancer.

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