Category: Second Life

Fate recently called upon me to travel to the Transylvanian town of Bistrița, and from there into the Inner Eastern Carpathian Mountains. It was no ordinary trip, for I was following the footsteps of cleric and solicitor Jonathan Harker, who had travelled there to complete business with a client from the region, only to seemingly disappear and causing much distress to his fiancée,  Mina Murray. 

Or at least, that is how the start of a visit to Castle Dracula: A Gothic Horror Experience might read when written as a journal entry by someone participating in its interactive adventure. The work of long-time resident and content creator, Wanders Nowhere (also famous for Prehistorica), this is an adventure reputedly “14 years in the making”.

How literal that might be, I’ll leave to others to cogitate upon; what I will say is, for anyone who is a fan of Gothic Horror and / or enjoys Bram Stoker’s classic novel, this is an Experience-led adventure which is engaging without being overly taxing, whilst offering a twist on the opening elements from the novel to offer a first-person narrative which takes Harker’s visit to Castle Dracula as the jumping off point for a related tale of an encounter with the Count. 

The adventure begins within a welcome area, reached either via the SLurl above, or by taking the teleport portal from the main Prehistorica lading point. This area contains all the information visitors require in order to enjoy the experience – or participate is a second, also set within the Castle and entitled Carmilla: The Love of the Dead, which can be entered into on payment of L$200 and which offers special rewards for those completing it. I opted to save this for a later option, focusing solely on Castle Dracula. 

I’m not going to trot through all of the info at the welcome area – it offers clear enough notes; suffice it to say you should accept the local shared environment and to have local sounds active. Whether or not you have Shadows enabled is a matter of choice; I actually found things a little too dark with them on.

Once all the notes have been read, the adventure can commence by stepping through the teleport portal to Castle Dracula; just be sure to Agree to the notes which will pop-up in a dialogue box when you attempt to do so, and also accept the local Experience – the latter will enable automatic teleports and also equip you with the necessary progress HUD.

Passing through the portal delivers you to the first of three locations – a train carriage as you sally forth from Bistrița to the village of Vesnic in the mountains, following the invitation of Harker’s mysterious client, Count Dracula. The carriage ride provides a narrative introduction to the adventure (s noted at the top of this article) and also introduces participants to the quest element of the story: locating 16 pages from Harker’s journal, which together might reveal his location – or fate. 

To get participants started, the first page of the journal is located alongside the carriage doors, providing a visual reference of what should be sought when looking for additional pages. When touched, the journal will deliver its page on-screen, allowing it to be read, after which clicking on it will place it on the game HUD, which is also the repository for other papers and notes, etc., found when exploring. Any item in the HUD can be expanded again by clicking on it.

Stepping “out of” the carriage doors on arrival at Vesnic will deliver participants to the garlic-strewn interior of the local hostelry, amusingly called The Stake and Hammer. It is here that the second page of Harker’s journal might be obtained, sitting on a table between arrivals and the exit.

More garlic is to be found outside the tavern, notably in the form of wreaths guarding the doors to local homes and places of business, with great sacks of cloves placed – strategically? – around the square as well. Outside of the church and the tavern, there is not a lot to see here,  but there is a horse-drawn carriage awaiting those wishing to reach the castle. Approaching it will bring a greeting from the driver, and sitting within it will start you on your way to your final destination, by way of a climb up through the mountains. Personal experience may vary here, but I found I needed to use the Camera floater and controls to get my camera out of the bottom of the carriage in order to see anything of the lands through which the ride passes – but I do use a custom camera preset rather than the SL default (and given the scale of things, Castle Dracula does seem to be built in expectation of oversized avatars using the SL default camera position).

It is on your arrival that the fun begins. From being greeted by the Count himself through to attempting to find the remaining 14 pages of Harker’s journal, there is a lot to see and explore – and potentially touch for interactions. There are some very nice touches to be appreciated – such as the count himself, a phantom NPC which is perfectly animated. Through the castle’s many rooms are elements from the novel as well as from other Gothic horror influences (perhaps most notably Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus) to touches of Giger-like neo-Gothic, together with what might be taken as nodes to M.C. Esher and others.

After being shown to your room by a rather chatty Count, you are free to commence your explorations – where they may take you is down to the route you chose on starting, and the branches you take thereafter, so I’m not about to give a room-by-room account. However, entering major locations in the castle – the entrance hall, the library, the ballroom, the Gallery, the Midnight Garden and so on – will be recorded on the HUD map in the form of clickable points you can use to jump between rooms, if necessary. But do take note – these are not the only locations within the Castle; you will need to explore carefully, as some of those which are not recorded on the map may well contain elements of Harker’s journal.

There is no reward to completing the quest per se outside of learning of Harker’s fate and the luxury of reading his journal entries – which follow most of the events found in the novel relating to his time at the case – in the correct order. However, finding all 16 pages will trigger the start of your own fate: will you be able to escape the Castle before the Count finds you (and without simply teleporting away!), or will you find yourself his next victim?

And even then; is it death that awaits you – or will you awaken in the hold of a ship bound for England (a hold in which you may well find yourself able to collect a few little mementos of your time at Castle Dracula before heading home)? Why not pay a visit and find out?

SLurl Details

• Castle Dracula: A Gothic Horror Experience (Fort Nowhere, rated Moderate)

It’s been almost a year since my last visit to Vivian Ewing’s Where Our Journey Begins. At the time of that visit, the region was dressed for winter 2022, and I wanted to catch it before the autumnal setting vanished in favour of something more in keeping with the turn of the year – and in the process adding autumn to my previous posts on the region, I will have now covered all four seasons at the region.

For autumn, Vivian has turned to a palette of hues and colours common to the time of year – yellows, browns, splashes of greens, reds and so on, which extend into the environment settings for the region as well, the sky cast in bronze on the horizons, darkening as it moves overhead before brightening once more, the clouds a patina of orange and yellow, dark underbellies hinting at the prospect of rain.

And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep, and autumn was awakened. Immerse yourself in a world full of autumnal colours and peace.

– Where Our Journey Begins, autumn 2023

To the north the lands are raised, curtain walls of cliffs helping to both separate them and bind them with the off-region surround to east and west. A tramway bursts forth from the western cliffs, exiting a tunnel mouth to pass between the tall arms of a grand wrought-iron bridge raised on tall stone-faced plinths as they across the river splitting the land in two from north to south, in the process spanning a shallow valley as it cups the waters in its arms.

Across this bridge – which is joined in spanning the river valley by an equally wide boardwalk on its own row of footings as it forms a pleasant place on which to stroll and watch the activities on the water below – sits a small borough fashioned around a central square. The modern 2- and 3-storey buildings arranged around three sides of the square suggest that this is part of a larger township even whilst it stands alone. The square itself is given over to a very pleasant café with seating indoors our under its broad awning. With the local clock tower standing guard alongside the café and the screen of surrounding trees illuminated by strings of lights winding through their boughs with leave turned to rust, it the square has a certain sense of romance about it.

Facing the café is a brick-built rich providing access to a shoulder of hill sitting above the river. The arch provides access to a path as it meanders around the hilltop, providing a suitable walk for lovers complete with a romantic folly presiding over things at the top of a raised thumb of rock. Those taking the path with find it circles half-way around the folly on its proud seat, then descends down towards the river.

Here the waters appear to have narrowed rapidly after passing beneath the bridge to the north, the ground lush with grass, the water a narrow ribbon running between banks. However, looks can be deceptive – as the slender boardwalk running out from behind a riverside  deck and hot tub quickly reveals. Rather than growing along the eastern bank of the river, the grass in fact marks the presence of a lush, shallow wetland extending out into the main channel of the river, a wetland which continues south, trees rising from its waters and its actual edge marked by a drystone wall as it borders the track running south from the foot of the folly’s hill.

A second narrow boardwalk spans the river towards its southern end, where the lowlands spread outwards to east and west, looking like golden pastures while again actually being a mix of solid ground and wetland under the carpeting of grass. To the west, the lowlands flow past another raised shoulder of land bordered on two of its remaining side by the aforementioned stream (itself crossed by a very sturdy wooden bridge which has seen much use / repair over the years). This triangle of land is home to a small ranch / farm, complete with a horse rezzer for those wishing to take a ride.

Those who do might try their hand at herding the cattle wandering along the local track – or perhaps head south and east to see if they can persuade the cows grazing out on the grass of the lowlands that it is perhaps time to come home! If such an exercise does not appeal, then a walk / ride along the dirt road running east will bring visitors to a low-slung bridge spanning the narrow neck of an inlet cutting into the land. With an old wooden gazebo and a hut-like tent offering places of retreat, this is again perhaps a location for those with a romantic heart.

With a modest farmer’s market (with a touch of quirkiness in it – those staffing the stalls appear to be some of the local deer and squirrel populace!) also sitting along the track leading to the inlet, these is much more to be found along the southern side of the region than might initially appear to be the case. As always, Vivian has certainly created a rich, photogenic setting ripe for exploration and spending time within – so enjoy it before winter steps in!

SLurl Details

• Where Our Journey Begins (Ilha Ipanema, rated Moderate)