Category: Second Life

I finally made time to drop into Endless: Permafrost, the latest design by Sombre Nyx that occupies her Full region in Second Life – my thanks to all who have been poking me to go over the course of the last week or so.

Sombre has a talent for capturing the essence of physical world environments from fenlands to the rugged beauty of Scottish / northern hemisphere islands and more. I’ve followed her work since she opened the first iteration of Endless – La Camargue – in 2019, and have always enjoyed the sense of place she incorporates within her designs – and Endless: Permafrost is no exception to this.

The setting offers a take on the sub-arctic permafrost that stretches beneath 65% of the Russian landmass and under nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere. It is a layer of soil up to several hundred metres deep that has been frozen for two or more years (most of it having been in a frozen state for hundreds of thousands of years). Only now it is changing – and it is this change that Endless: Permafrost uses as its focus.

In short, the permafrost is thawing as a result of global warming, and it is doing so at an increasing rate year-on-year – on average, temperatures with arctic and sub-arctic areas of the world are warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. This is both revealing a new landscape within the permafrost regions, and having serious implications for the planet as a whole.

By coincidence, I’ve recently been reading about the effects of permafrost thawing in the Chersky region in the far north-eastern tip of Russia. Around two decades ago, the main town in the region was referenced in western media as being “buried under ice and snow for eight months of the year” with temperatures averaging around -6ºC. Today, the periods of snow-bound isolation are less long-lasting and  the average winter temperature sits at -3ºC. Current estimates suggest that in the course of the next two decades this average will rise to around 0ºC – all of which is a stunning change in climate.

As a result, the once-solid permafrost around Chersky has been degrading: the few roads within the region that were once passable (in summer at least) by any type of vehicle are now the preserve of 4×4 drive vehicles, the thaw having caused the ground under them to collapse, breaking their surfaces. Similarly, buildings have been exposed to subsidence and severe structural damage and / or collapse – and not just houses and other structures that may not have deeply solid foundations.

Chersky was once home to the largest building in north-east Asia, a water treatment plant that had been built upon steel piles driven into the permafrost, held in place by the frozen soil. But with the thaw had come a melting of the ice and softening of the ground, opening sinkholes and craters that robbed the piles of support, causing them to sag and / or fall over, bringing down parts of the building such that it looks to have been struck by a massive earthquake.

I’ve no idea if Sombre has in any way used Chersky and its surroundings as a basis for her Permafrost design, but I was drawn to thinking about it, because Sombre’s landscape bring elements of it to mind. For example, close the the landing point is the Arimat-Lubyn Research Station. Leaving aside the slightly Russian sounding name, its presence brought to mind the climate and permafrost research facilities also located in Chersky – facilities noted for being among the first to raise concerns over permafrost thaw back in the 1990s.

Sombre’s research station sits at the western end of the setting’s upland are. This curves around the southern extent of the region, centring on high peak tall enough to rise above the tree line, its upper reaches bare of vegetation but still the home of paths that climb to its summit, where one the region’s sitting spots can be found.

To the north of these hills, the region offers a lowland setting reflective of more of the changes being wrought in northern latitudes by the thawing permafrost: the grass is potted by flooded sinkholes, while the broken remains of buildings and structures brought low by ground-level subsidence as the ice has melted. It’s an enticing setting, made all the more rich and photogenic by the presence of a sound scape and suitable wildlife – foxes, reindeer, geese, rock ptarmigan, all are awaiting discovery – while there are numerous sit-points for those who wish to make use of them.

Those who check the landing point should spot the information giver. This provides a note card with Sombre’s comments on the permafrost and the risks involved in its thaw. In them she comments on the fact that the permafrost is perhaps the largest carbon sink on the planet – an estimated 1,400 gigatonnes of carbon is believed to be locked in the frozen soil. This is a worry because as the soil thaws, so organic processes within it resume. These consume the carbon and produce the greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide and methane. and the consumption of the carbon alone could produce 1.5 times more carbon dioxide than is currently present in the atmosphere.

Also to be found within the information note card are a pair of additional LMs that give access to other locations in the region: the Light House and the Endless: Islands. The first of these is a gentle, dream-like setting created by Sombre, offering a long boardwalk over water, places to sit scattered along it, the surrounding waters home to ice floes and a lone green island. The second is another fantastical setting of from the imagination of Jackson Cruyff: series of floating islands visitors can lose themselves within, and populated with their own delights.

Beautifully conceived and executed, Endless: Permafrost is once again an engaged visit.

SLurl Details

• Endless: Permafrost (Heraiki Bat, rated Adult)

Back in May 2020, Num Bing-Howlett (Num Bing) and her partner Clifton Howlett) invited me to visit The Empire of Dreaming Books, an environment to honour the Zamonia series of books by German comic creator and author, Walter Moers (see: An empire of books in Second Life). The setting quickly – and rightly – became very popular among Second Life travellers, who now once again have the opportunity to travel to Zamonia, as Num and Clifton present The Path to Buchhaim.

The couple were kind enough to extend a personal invitation for me to visit this latest installation of their vision of Moer’s mystical land over the weekend, which I was delighted to accept – although offering a write-up has taken a while for me to get to. 

With Empire of Dreaming Books, Num and Clifton set a scene fairly focused on the city of Buchhaim, with its myriad bookshops, printers, and publishers. Now, in The Path to Buchhaim, the focus switches the focus a little away from the city to expand on the landscape of the Dull Plateau that was to be found in part the previous design, and which here offers some of the many trails that cross the plateau to converge of Buchhaim whilst also offer some of the steppe-like feel of the Dull landscape (a name that while taken from the Zamonia books, is a contradiction in terms here, given the richness to be found as one wanders the undulating landscape, whether keeping to the trails or walking through the long grass and seas of flowers).

A portion of the city is still to be found tucked into a corner of the region. It offers what appears to the end-knot of the winding alley of Schwarzmanngaße, and shop number 333, the home of Phistomefel Smeik and his bookimistic laboratory. Here – should you decide to accept it – an Experience awaits with the opportunity to be teleported to three further destinations.

I had hoped one of these destinations might be the the catacombs, as presented in the previous Zamonia build. However, two of the listed options will carry visitors to Hidden Bottle, another region design by Num and Clifton, and which I wrote about in May 2021, while the third goes to The Digital Apperture, a skybound gallery Clifton and Num present. At the time of my visit, the latter featured an  exhibition by the couple entitled A Day at Elvion (a destination also on my list for a return visit, as I understand it has expanded to  Full region).  

Whilst not a part of the theme of The Path to Buchhaim, both of these destinations are very much worth dropping into, with Hidden Bottle offering a further bewitching visit for those who have not previously seen it, with the portals there obviously offering a gateway to reach this setting, those coming through them – and returning from the gallery – being delivered to the cobbles in front of the good professor’s shop. 

Of course, I may have missed an entrance to the catacombs if they are still present – in which case, silly me – but even without them, this is still a setting where the central character is that of the book. Across the region books offer places to sit or stand as walls or stepping stones or rise rise in piles – they even form a kind of landslide as they fall away down a slope and into the waters of the island’s coast. 

Also to be found throughout the setting are numerous places to sit, both for individuals and for couples or groups of friends. Most of these are outdoors, although a couple of the bookshops in the little corner of Buchhaim offer quiet retreats as well. And needless to say, the entire setting is beautifully photogenic, the region’s environment settings making for an ideal backdrop for images.

All of which makes for a richly engaging visit, and rather than prattle on here, I’m going to urge those of you who have not done so already, to jump across an immerse yourself in this introduction to Zamonia and explore the Paths to Buchhaim.

SLurl Details

• The Path to Buchhaim (Zamonia, rated Adult)